Verbatim quote · from the corpus

“For Gans, the demise of metaphysics and the poststructuralist elevation of representation signal the beginning of human science construed as a systematic construction of the”scene of human origin.” Ultimately, all culture is concerned with recreating the originary scene, but it is only generative anthropology that proposes this scenic creation as a subject for methodological reconstruction. The originary scene is thus a hypothesis, that is, a heuristic, which serves to generate explanations of cultural phenomena. As such, the hypothesis possesses a privileged position within the theory compared with those cultural developments that are seen to stem from it. This privileging, however, is not simply matter of personal preference. The scene itself must explain in a plausible fashion how language as the salient feature of the human originated to establish a collective scene of representation. Unlike the empirical sciences, human science must draw its evidence from the very same scene it is trying to describe. This is the paradox of human science which Derrida unveils as the unexplained Achilles’ heel covertly present in metaphysics since Plato. Generative anthropology takes this paradox as its starting point. Thus, the scene of human origin is also the origin of its theorization.”

— Eric Gans, Epistemology and Generative Theory: Derrida, Gans, and the Anthropological Subtext of Deconstruction · Spring 1995 · Anthropoetics