Eric Gans
Biographic Data
| ID | 255861 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Eric Gans |
| GIVEN NAMES | Eric |
| FAMILY NAME | Gans |
| SIGNATURE | GANS E |
| AFFILIATIONS | UCLA Health |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7987-244X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 14 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1974 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Generative Anthropology
The dominant postmodern intellectual movement of deconstruction was premised on the notion that the rationality of anthropology and the social sciences was spurious, grounded in unexamined metaphysical postulates that had to be “deconstructed.” But René Girard taught us that although we should reject the metaphysical perspective that cannot comprehend the historical essence of the human because it has no place for a scene of origin, we must not r…
Toward a Triangular Aesthetics
Research Article| May 01 2017 Toward a Triangular Aesthetics Eric Gans; Eric Gans ERIC GANS is distinguished professor emeritus of French and francophone studies at UCLA, where he taught for 45 years. With The Origin of Language: A Formal Theory of Representation (California, 1981) he created the discipline of generative anthropology. His major recent works in that area are The Scenic Imagination from Hobbes to Freud (Stanford, 2007) and A New Wa…
Introduction to “Toward a Triangular Aesthetics”
Introduction| May 01 2017 Introduction to “Toward a Triangular Aesthetics” Eric Gans Eric Gans ERIC GANS is distinguished professor emeritus of French and francophone studies at UCLA, where he taught for 45 years. With The Origin of Language: A Formal Theory of Representation (California, 1981) he created the discipline of generative anthropology. His major recent works in that area are The Scenic Imagination from Hobbes to Freud (Stanford, 2007)…
Religion et connaissance
Religion and Knowledge. Our understanding of the contribution of religious revelation to fundamental anthropological self-consciousness is clarified by Derrida’s remark that every linguistic communication involves an “ act of faith” independent of any particular belief. But this faith is understandable only within the framework of a hypothesis that explains the origin of the human capacity to exchange representations. Although Christian anthropol…
Qu'est-ce que la littérature, aujourd'hui
The concept of Literature is associated with the emergence of national consciousness around 1800; its master genre is the novel. But in the developing consumer society of the nineteenth century, the novelist's fiction of authentic life becomes asymptotic to his own, culminating with Proust, whose novel is a series of intermittent narratives structured only by the ultimate realization of the narrator's literary vocation. This desultory structure i…
Originary democracy and the critique of pure fairness
Thucydides’ account of Pericles’ funeral oration demonstrates that the first democracy was sensitive to what generative anthropology considers the central function of political systems: holding in check the resentment inevitably generated by inequality among beings whose possession of language instills in them a ‘moral model’ of ‘symmetrical reciprocity’. Pericles’ words demonstrate an awareness that the increased fairness of democratic choice on…
Staging as an Anthropological Category
New Literary History - Volume 31, Number 1, Winter 2000
The Last Word in Lyric
New Literary History - Volume 30, Number 4, Autumn 1999
Aesthetics and Cultural Criticism
The End of Culture
Gans demonstrates that human representation language, ritual, art could only have originated as an event taking place on a scene present to the consciousness of its participants. This volume lays the foundation for an important revision of our understanding of cultural achievement
The Necessity of Fiction
All representation proceeds from the periphery to the center, but all representation is not fiction. Fiction is not content to designate a central object; it creates its own. Thus, for the philosopher, the poet is a liar. Some centuries ago, it was suggestd that the poet's lie preceded truth, which was only invented by philosophers. But neither the anthropologies of the Enlightenment nor those of the Romantic era could give rigor to the notion of…
The End of Culture
Beckett and the Problem of Modern Culture
The most obvious problem of modern culture is that there doesn't seem to be very much more of it. The dearth of great writers today is unjustly dismissed as a problem of perspective. For there are scarcely even any major writers, those known outside the c6teries of specialized amateurs of nouvelle poesie, nouveau (nouveau) roman, nouveau theatre. There remains, to be sure, at least one 75-year-old writer who constitutes exception to this generali…
Differences
Scandal to the Jews, Folly to the Pagans
Northrop Frye's Literary Anthropology
Philosophy and the Novel
Balzac's Unkowable Masterpiece and the Limits of the Classical Esthetic
Education sentimentale
The End of Culture
Staging as an Anthropological Category
New Literary History - Volume 31, Number 1, Winter 2000
The End of Culture
Gans demonstrates that human representation language, ritual, art could only have originated as an event taking place on a scene present to the consciousness of its participants. This volume lays the foundation for an important revision of our understanding of cultural achievement
Beckett and the Problem of Modern Culture
The most obvious problem of modern culture is that there doesn't seem to be very much more of it. The dearth of great writers today is unjustly dismissed as a problem of perspective. For there are scarcely even any major writers, those known outside the c6teries of specialized amateurs of nouvelle poesie, nouveau (nouveau) roman, nouveau theatre. There remains, to be sure, at least one 75-year-old writer who constitutes exception to this generali…
Education sentimentale
Balzac's Unkowable Masterpiece and the Limits of the Classical Esthetic
Philosophy and the Novel
Northrop Frye's Literary Anthropology
Scandal to the Jews, Folly to the Pagans
Differences
Beckett and the Problem of Modern Culture
The most obvious problem of modern culture is that there doesn't seem to be very much more of it. The dearth of great writers today is unjustly dismissed as a problem of perspective. For there are scarcely even any major writers, those known outside the c6teries of specialized amateurs of nouvelle poesie, nouveau (nouveau) roman, nouveau theatre. There remains, to be sure, at least one 75-year-old writer who constitutes exception to this generali…
The Necessity of Fiction
All representation proceeds from the periphery to the center, but all representation is not fiction. Fiction is not content to designate a central object; it creates its own. Thus, for the philosopher, the poet is a liar. Some centuries ago, it was suggestd that the poet's lie preceded truth, which was only invented by philosophers. But neither the anthropologies of the Enlightenment nor those of the Romantic era could give rigor to the notion of…
The End of Culture
The End of Culture
Gans demonstrates that human representation language, ritual, art could only have originated as an event taking place on a scene present to the consciousness of its participants. This volume lays the foundation for an important revision of our understanding of cultural achievement
Aesthetics and Cultural Criticism
The Last Word in Lyric
New Literary History - Volume 30, Number 4, Autumn 1999
Originary democracy and the critique of pure fairness
Thucydides’ account of Pericles’ funeral oration demonstrates that the first democracy was sensitive to what generative anthropology considers the central function of political systems: holding in check the resentment inevitably generated by inequality among beings whose possession of language instills in them a ‘moral model’ of ‘symmetrical reciprocity’. Pericles’ words demonstrate an awareness that the increased fairness of democratic choice on…
Staging as an Anthropological Category
New Literary History - Volume 31, Number 1, Winter 2000
Qu'est-ce que la littérature, aujourd'hui
The concept of Literature is associated with the emergence of national consciousness around 1800; its master genre is the novel. But in the developing consumer society of the nineteenth century, the novelist's fiction of authentic life becomes asymptotic to his own, culminating with Proust, whose novel is a series of intermittent narratives structured only by the ultimate realization of the narrator's literary vocation. This desultory structure i…
Religion et connaissance
Religion and Knowledge. Our understanding of the contribution of religious revelation to fundamental anthropological self-consciousness is clarified by Derrida’s remark that every linguistic communication involves an “ act of faith” independent of any particular belief. But this faith is understandable only within the framework of a hypothesis that explains the origin of the human capacity to exchange representations. Although Christian anthropol…
Generative Anthropology
The dominant postmodern intellectual movement of deconstruction was premised on the notion that the rationality of anthropology and the social sciences was spurious, grounded in unexamined metaphysical postulates that had to be “deconstructed.” But René Girard taught us that although we should reject the metaphysical perspective that cannot comprehend the historical essence of the human because it has no place for a scene of origin, we must not r…
Toward a Triangular Aesthetics
Research Article| May 01 2017 Toward a Triangular Aesthetics Eric Gans; Eric Gans ERIC GANS is distinguished professor emeritus of French and francophone studies at UCLA, where he taught for 45 years. With The Origin of Language: A Formal Theory of Representation (California, 1981) he created the discipline of generative anthropology. His major recent works in that area are The Scenic Imagination from Hobbes to Freud (Stanford, 2007) and A New Wa…
Introduction to “Toward a Triangular Aesthetics”
Introduction| May 01 2017 Introduction to “Toward a Triangular Aesthetics” Eric Gans Eric Gans ERIC GANS is distinguished professor emeritus of French and francophone studies at UCLA, where he taught for 45 years. With The Origin of Language: A Formal Theory of Representation (California, 1981) he created the discipline of generative anthropology. His major recent works in that area are The Scenic Imagination from Hobbes to Freud (Stanford, 2007)…
Art (12 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Literature (9 works) · History (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Aesthetics (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Linguistics (4 works) · Theology (4 works) · Anthropology (3 works)