Verbatim quote · from the corpus

“The sacred inheres in the “profane” use of language in the constraint of meaning that binds the sign independently of any ritual context. This minimal sacred inherent in the laws of language is too weak to support a god or a law of ritual sacrifice; it can guarantee only the most parsimonious of anthropologies. Here, the scare quotes around “profane” seem to suggest that the use of the term is metaphorical, which is to say this marked usage is straining against the constraints of the situation in the speech event; and, if it is not altering what it signifies, “profane” must be another word for “sacred,” a euphemism which is necessary insofar as we associate the sacred exclusively with ritual. If we release the sacred from this association (if we change the situation), we can amplify the tension implicit in the use of “profane” so as to scrutinize what is directly below designated a “weak” sacrality, since the only measure of such weakness is that provided by the assumption of that very association. If we abandon that assumption, the strength of any mode of sacrality must reside in the strength of the “ will that opposes the participants’ desire to possess the central object” ( Chronicle 326). And there is no reason why the strength of that will must depend upon the presence of ritual. Rather than viewing the significant as an attenuated form of the sacred, we can re-frame the issue by attributing “significance” to the sign and sacrality to the object .”

— Eric Gans, The Esthetic, the Sacred, and Originary Modernity · Fall 2007 · Anthropoetics