Verbatim quote · from the corpus

“Only victimary status still provides some degree of universal authority, breadth of terrain being counterbalanced by narrowness of focus. And even here, the institutionalization of the various genres of victim studies generates new sets of professional specializations–and a concomitantly less victimary orientation. There is no world without resentment. The idea of a universal perspective on human affairs that puts aside our own resentments is illusory. This truth is the most valuable intellectual legacy of Marxism, despite its error in thinking that to enunciate this truth is to transcend its limits. Because human desire is not contingently but essentially in disequilibrium, there can be no well-defined goal on which all can agree. This does not mean, however, that the goal of universal peace is illusory. Although every human situation will provoke resentment, our goal is not the elimination of resentment but the deferral of violence. Where ritual societies purge mimetic tensions through sacrifice, market societies recycle resentment into economic, political, and cultural systems. The most crucial social goal–can we at least agree on this?–is to continue to expand the process of converting the energy of resentment into something exchangeable in one of society’s many marketplaces. The several human sciences study the human on the different levels at which this conversion is accomplished.”

— Eric Gans, Whither GA? · Saturday, February 5th, 2000 · Chronicles of Love & Resentment