Signs of Paradox: Irony, Resentment, and Other Mimetic Structures

by Eric Gans

Starting from the minimal principle of generative anthropology—that human culture originates as "the deferral of violence through representation"—the author proposes a new understanding of the fundamental concepts of metaphysics and an explanation of the historical problematic that underlies the postmodern "end of culture." Part I begins with the paradoxical emergence of the "vertical" sign from the "horizontal" world of appetite. Two persons reaching for the same object are a minimal model of this emergence; their "pragmatic paradox" can be resolved only by substituting the representation of the object for its appropriation. The nature of paradox and the related notion of irony, as well as the fundamental concepts of being, thinking, and signification, are rethought on the basis of this triangular model, leading to an anthropological interpretation of the origin of philosophy and semiotics in Plato's Ideas . Part I concludes with an exploration of the psychoanalytic categories of the unconscious and the erotic. Part II develops the idea that material exchange originates in the sparagmos or violent rendering of the sacrificial victim from which each participant obtains a roughly equal portion. The dependence of the process on the central victimary figure culminates in the Holocaust, the extermination of the Jews, whose crucial role in Western culture is their rejection of the central image in favor of peripheral exchange. As a result, postmodern dialogue becomes dominated by the rhetoric of victimage, and the culture of centrality gives way to an aesthetic of the marginal.

236 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1997

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had been meaning to read Gans for some time now. Having been a little disappointed that as an Anthropology undergrad all my professors seemed to talk about was how "all anthropology is imperialistic" and the best we could do was declare our field dead. So the idea of a new theory past the pomo deadlock sounded interesting to me.

Gans' "event" theory of language is plausible but lacking in substance, which the author admits is all hypothesis (yet he strings a lot on to the hypothesis.) His understanding of logic is poor. And the last part of the book is one of the most inane backlash rants I've ever heard from an anthropologist.