Generative Anthropology

Generative Anthropology (GA) is a new science of the human based on the idea that the origin of language is a singular event and that the history of the culture is a genetic or "generative" development of that event. In contrast to fashionable methodologies that dissolve the human in the fractal complexity of cultural differences, Generative Anthropology attempts to understand cultural phenomena in the simplest terms possible: all things human are traced back to their source in the hypothetical scene of origin in which human beings as sign-using creatures first emerged.

Origins

Generative Anthropology originated with Professor Eric Gans of UCLA who has developed his ideas in a series of books and articles beginning with "The Origin of Language: A Formal Theory of Representation" (1981). Gans builds on the ideas of René Girard, notably mimetic desire, but Generative Anthropology also departs from and goes beyond Girard in many ways. Generative Anthropology stands as an independent and strikingly original way of understanding the human species, our origin, culture, history, and development.

Gans founded (and edits) the web-based journal [http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ Anthropoetics: The Journal of Generative Anthropology] as a scholarly forum for research into human culture and origins based on Generative Anthropology and the closely related Fundamental Anthropology of René Girard. In his web-based [http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/views/home.html Chronicles of Love and Resentment] Gans applies the principles of GA to a wide variety of fields including popular culture, film, post-modernism, economics, contemporary politics, the Holocaust, philosophy, religion, and paleo-anthropology.

The Originary Hypothesis

The core of Generative Anthropology is Eric Gans' "originary hypothesis." The originary hypothesis is a hypothesis about the origin of language. Gans claims that an originary hypothesis in some form is the necessary basis for humanistic inquiry. If the study of human culture and language is to be truly rigorous and scientific, Gans reasons, it must begin by defining its object of study. For Gans, what defines the human is language, which he sees as qualitatively different from animal communication systems. Unlike animal communication systems, language has syntax, allowing for unlimited new combinations and content, and language is symbolic in nature, not limited to empirical reference. Language also implies a capacity for history, the memorializing of specific historical events.

The origin of language marks off a new stage in human evolution, the beginning of culture, including religion, art, desire, and the sacred. In addition, language makes possible new forms of social organization which are radically different from animal "pecking order" hierarchies dominated by an alpha male. Because language is so radically different from animal communication systems, Generative Anthropology maintains that its origin must have been a singular event, and the principle of parsimony requires that language originated only once. This is the central claim of Generative Anthropology: the origin of language was an event. Since language entails the capacity for memory and history, that is, language serves as a more or less durable record of its own history, the best way to define language is through a hypothesis of its origin based on our knowledge of culture including religious and literary texts. Since this event leaves no fossil record, we can only hypothesize about the conditions of its origin. As with any scientific hypothesis, its value is in its capacity to account for the known facts of human history and culture including the fossil records of human origins.

What connects proto-hominid species with the human species is mimetic behavior: imitation is an adaptive learning behavior, a form of intelligence favored by natural selection. Imitation, however, as René Girard observes, leads to conflict, when two individuals imitate each other in their attempt to appropriate a desired object. The problem is to explain the transition from one form of mimesis, imitation, to another, qualitatively different form, representation. Many anthropologists have assumed that language evolved in order to mediate our relationship to the environment, that is, to describe the world. But this ignores the fact that humans are the species for whom the main danger to our existence is posed by other humans, intra-species violence, not the environment.Fact|date=July 2007 Human representation, according to Gans, is not simply a "natural" evolutionary development of animal communication systems, as many anthropologists have assumed. The human sign is a radical break from animal signs and gestures. The signifier implies a symbolic dimension that is not reducible to empirical referents.

At the originary scene, in evolutionary terms, we have a hominid species which is gradually becoming more mimetic, presumably in response to environmental pressures including climate changes and competition for limited resources. We know that the higher primates have dominance hierarchies which serve to limit and prevent destructive conflict within the social group. But as individuals within the proto-human group become more mimetic, the dominance system breaks down; it becomes inadequate to control the threat of violence posed by conflictual mimesis.Fact|date=July 2007

Gans envisions an "originary event" along the following lines. It is important to remember that this hypothesis is intended as a reconstruction of the minimal conditions for the emergence of the sign, rather than a naturalistic description of the event, the details of which must remain inaccessible.

A group of hominids have surrounded an appetitive object, such as the slain body of a large mammal following a hunt. The attraction of the object, however, exceeds the limits of simple appetite due to the operation of group mimesis, which, in the Girardian sense, is essentially an expression of competition or rivalry. The object becomes more attractive simply because each member of the group is attending to it as attractive: each individual notices the attention given to the object by the others. Appetite is thus artificially "inflated" through this mutual reinforcement. It is not appropriate to speak of desire at this point, since desire, strictly speaking, as a cultural relation, only comes into being with the sign.Fact|date=July 2007 The power of appetitive mimesis (in conjunction with the threat of violence) is such that the central object begins to assume that aura we call "sacred": infinitely desirable and infinitely dangerous.

Mimesis thus gives rise to a pragmatic paradox: the double imperative to appropriate and to refrain from appropriation (to avoid conflict). In other words, imitating the rival means not imitating the rival, because imitation leads to conflict, the attempt to destroy rather than imitate (Gans, "Signs of Paradox" 18). We can assume that a similar scenario plays itself out many times without necessarily giving birth to the sign. But when the mimetic instinct becomes so powerful that it endangers the survival of the group, we have an intra-species pressure which would favor the emergence of the sign. The power of mimesis compels each member of the group to reach out to appropriate the object in defiance of the dominance hierarchy. At the same time, the overwhelming possibility of violence makes appropriation impossible. The object seems to possess a sacred force which resists human control. The gesture to appropriate the object is therefore aborted, and at least one member of the group "intends" this aborted gesture as a sign designating the central object and is successful in communicating this meaning to the group, who follow suit by intending their aborted gestures as signs also. The sign focuses attention on the sacred power of the central object, which is conceived as the source of its own power. The object which compels attention yet prohibits consumption can only be represented. The basic advantage of the sign over the object is that "The sign is an economical substitute for its inaccessible referent. Things are scarce and consequently objects of potential contention; signs are abundant because they can be reproduced at will" (Gans, "Originary Thinking" 9). The desire for the object is mediated by the sign, which paradoxically both creates desire, by attributing significance to the object, yet also defers desire, by designating the object as sacred or taboo. The mimetic impulse is sublimated, expressed in a different form, as the act of representation. Individual self-consciousness is also born at this moment, in the recognition of alienation from the sacred center. The primary value/function of the sign in this scenario is ethical, as the deferral of violence, but the sign is also referential. What the sign refers to, strictly speaking, is not the physical object, but rather the mediated object of desire as realized in the imagination of each individual. The emergence of the sign on the originary scene is only a temporary deferral of violence. The emission of the sign is immediately followed by the "sparagmos", the discharge of the mimetic tension created by the sign in the violent dismemberment and consumption of the worldly incarnation of the sign, the central appetitive object. The violence of the sparagmos is mediated by the sign and thus directed towards the central object rather than the other members of the group. By including the sparagmos in the originary hypothesis, Gans intends to incorporate Girard's insights into scapegoating and the sacrificial (see "Signs of Paradox" 131-151).

The "scene of representation" is fundamentally social or interpersonal. The act of representation always implies the presence of another or others. The usage of a sign evokes the (communal) scene of representation, structured by a sacred center and a human periphery. The significance of the sign seems to emerge from the sacred center (in its resistance to appropriation), but the pragmatic significance of the sign is realized in the peaceful presence of the group to itself, that is, the relationship between the humans on the periphery. The sign allows for the evolution of new forms of social organization. The minimal basis of the uniquely flexible and dynamic human social order is the sign itself. The usage of the sign identifies one as a member of the community, and, "qua" sign-user, in principle equal to every other member of the community. The intuition of fundamental human equality, as expressed for example in "the golden rule," is based on the equal capacity for language. The scene of representation is a triangular structure including a human periphery and a sacred (or simply significant) center. The sign functions as a means of communication, but always in reference to a third term, originally the sacred center. All signs, in one way or another, point to the sacred, that which is significant to the community (the original form of significance is the sacred). At the same time, the sacred cannot be signified directly, since it is essentially an imaginary or ideal construction of mimetic desire. The significance is realized in the human relationships as mediated by the sign. When an individual refers to an object or idea, the reference is fundamentally to the significance of that object or idea for the human community. Language attempts to reproduce the non-violent presence of the community to itself, even though it may attempt to do so sacrificially, by designating a scapegoat victim.

Generative Anthropology is "generative" because human culture is understood as a "genetic" development of the originary event. The scene of representation is a true cultural universal, but it must be analyzed in terms of its dialectical development. The conditions for the generation of significance are subject to historical evolution, so that the formal articulation of the sign always includes a dialogical relationship to past forms.

External links

* [http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ Anthropoetics: The Journal of Generative Anthropology]
* [http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/views/home.html Chronicles of Love and Resentment]

Books by Eric Gans on Generative Anthropology

"The Origin of Language: A Formal Theory of Representation". University of California Press, 1981.

"The End of Culture: Toward a Generative Anthropology". University of California Press, 1985.

"Science and Faith: The Anthropology of Revelation". Savage, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1990.

"Originary Thinking: Elements of Generative Anthropology". Stanford University Press, 1993.

"Signs of Paradox: Irony, Resentment, and Other Mimetic Structures". Stanford University Press, 1997.

Articles on Generative Anthropology by Eric Gans

* [http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ap0101/gans.htm "The Unique Source of Religion and Morality."] "Anthropoetics" 1, 1 (June 1995): 10 pp. Revised version in "Contagion" 3 (Spring 1996): 51-65.
* [http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ap0102/mimesis.htm "Mimetic Paradox and the Event of Human Origin."] "Anthropoetics" 1, 2 (December 1995): 15 pp.
* [http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/Ap0202/plato.htm "Plato and the Birth of Conceptual Thought."] "Anthropoetics" 2, 2 (January 1997): 11 pp.
* [http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ap0302/narrative.htm "Originary Narrative."] "Anthropoetics" 3, 2 (February 1998): 10 pp.
* [http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ap0501/gans.htm "The Little Bang: The Early Origin of Language."] "Anthropoetics" 5, 1 (Spring / Summer 1999) : 6 pp. Also in 'Contagion' 7 (Spring 2000): 1-17.
* [http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ap0601/durkheim.htm "The Sacred and the Social: Defining Durkheim's Anthropological Legacy."] "Anthropoetics" 6, 1 (Spring / Summer 2000): 7 pp.

(With Ammar Abdulhamid) [http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ap0702/dialog.htm "A Dialogue on the Middle East and Other Subjects."] "Anthropoetics" 7, 2 (Fall 2001 / Winter 2002): 16 pp. Also (in two parts) in "Maaber" 8 (Fall 2002) and 9 (Fourth Quarter, 2002).