Verbatim quote · from the corpus

“I am drawing on anthropology and history but I am not writing anthropology or history: “anthropomorphics” is completely hypothetical, following the originary hypothesis itself. All thinking is hypothetical, insofar as the issuance of any sign hypothesizes regarding the way the sign will “magnetize” a given field. I have been leading up to the emergence of permanent social hierarchies, and I mention these methodological considerations here to help make this discussion and, as much as possible, other discussions of social hierarchies, a source of deferral rather than resentment. Among those members of the community who establish the most lasting positions of leadership, each of them acting in the name of the center, one of them will eventually seize and occupy the (at this point still) ritual center. The term within anthropology for this position is the “Big Man.” Leadership through deferral is acquired by accumulation and distribution to one’s dependents, and through the gift economy with one’s peers and rivals. If one leader can throw a big enough potlatch to bankrupt his rivals and turn them all into dependents, then he has occupied the center, not only sacralizing himself but making himself the source of social distribution. There are, of course, millennia across which the historical transformations of the Big Man into sacral kingship, and then into divine kingship extend, along with the myriad forms taken by each of these political arrangements, and correspondingly diverse forms of priesthood paralleling them. I am only going to be interested in all of these in terms of the strict concerns of anthropomorphics, or the originary grammar of the center.”

— Adam Katz, The Centrality of the Center · 2020 · Anthropomorphics