Verbatim quote · from the corpus

“You could call this a “nature,” if you like, but since these elements of the human are only manifested in events, and therefore in differing proportions and forms, no human nature can be abstracted from the historical emergence of social forms. We are always trying to retrieve and restore some form of the originary sign, but since such attempts cannot be anticipated, any delineation of an abstract “Anthropos,” or logic of the human, will be obsolete in its utterance. “Anthropomorphics,” then, suggests an ongoing transformation of the human, a dialectical movement of distancing from and retrieval of the origin. Even more, though, it suggests a reciprocal endowment of “humanity” by humans in their interrelations, rather than interaction between already fixed and defined beings. In an analysis I have had much recourse to lately, Eric Gans, in The End of Culture , shows that while the ritual form in which the originary event is commemorated is pre-verbal and exceeds in its “meaning” (its capacity to stabilize the community) any possibility of articulating that meaning by the community, the development of language, and myth in particular, confers upon those ritual acts and actors ever richer intentions.”

— Adam Katz, Anthropomorphics and Reaction · Sep 2016 · GABlog