Verbatim quote · from the corpus

“After the object has been divided and no longer exists as a totality, the sign as a gesture of acquiescence to its interdiction remains in the memory of the members of the group. The sign is on the one hand motivated by its movement toward and turning-back from the object; on the other hand it is arbitrary, since it becomes an intentional goal on its own, independent of the appropriative praxis at its origin. The interdiction imposed by the sign is temporary, but the sign’s signification of interdiction is outside of time; it is the meaning of the sign. The sign is the signifier of the sacred, desired and interdicted: the name-of-god . As the sign’s persistent signified or Being to which the sign is first communicated, the central object/locus is understood as itself a user of signs and therefore as possessing a human-like subjectivity and, by extension, a human- or animal-like physical reality (“anthropomorphism”). This attribution to the central being of human-like intentionality–an intentionality dependent on the use of signs–is the non-parsimonious element of the versions of the originary hypothesis that precede generative anthropology. The desacralization or secularization characteristic of Western society since the Renaissance is the historical questioning of the necessity of the intentionality of the center to the most parsimonious formulation of the (origin of the) human.”

— Eric Gans, Originary Resistance · Saturday, June 11th, 2005 · Chronicles of Love & Resentment