Originary Scene: Difference between revisions

From Generative Anthropology
Line 5: Line 5:
The '''Originary [[Scene]]''' or Originary Event is the central concept of [[Generative Anthropology]]. This hypothetical historical event is the origin of the human and simultaneously the origin of language. Eric Gans, the founder of Generative Anthropology, articulated the first version of the Originary Scene in his 1981 book The Origin of Language. Gans referred to the Originary Scene as the "little bang" of human culture, analogous to the "big bang" of the Universe.   
The '''Originary [[Scene]]''' or Originary Event is the central concept of [[Generative Anthropology]]. This hypothetical historical event is the origin of the human and simultaneously the origin of language. Eric Gans, the founder of Generative Anthropology, articulated the first version of the Originary Scene in his 1981 book The Origin of Language. Gans referred to the Originary Scene as the "little bang" of human culture, analogous to the "big bang" of the Universe.   


== Origins of the Scene ==
== Freud, Girard, and Gans ==
 
Eric Gans was one of the first PhD students of René Girard and the Originary Scene is modeled on Girard's Scapegoating Mechanism. Girard in turn modeled his mechanism on Freud's description the father murdered by his sons''.'' Gans recognized the shared core of these scenes that purport to describe the origin of the human social order as "the designation of the central figure by a [[sign]]".       
==== Freud, Girard, and Gans ====
Eric Gans was one of the first PhD students of René Girard and the Originary Scene is modeled on Girard's Scapegoating Mechanism. Girard in turn modeled his mechanism on Freud's description the father murdered by his sons''.'' Gans recognized the shared core of these scenes that purport to describe the origin of the human social order as "the designation of the central figure by a sign".       


Generative Anthropology's Originary Scene, unlike that of Freud, Girard, and all other theories of the origin of language focuses on the paradoxical emergence of this first sign.   
Generative Anthropology's Originary Scene, unlike that of Freud, Girard, and all other theories of the origin of language focuses on the paradoxical emergence of this first sign.   


== The Originary Scene ==
== Setting the Scene ==
The Originary Scene is an ''event''. We will likely never find out exactly when and where the Originary Scene took place, but something ''like it'' must have taken place in order for us to be using language right now. Without a shared origin of language, communication would be impossible, and the Originary Scene is a hypothesis that accounts for that shared origin.     
The Originary Scene is a hypothesis about what must have been an actual historical ''event''. We will likely never find out exactly when and where the Originary Scene took place, but something ''like it'' must have taken place in order for us to be using language right now. Without a shared origin of language, communication would be impossible, and so the Originary Scene is a hypothesis about the scene of that shared origin.     


Specifically, the Originary Scene attempts to hypothesize how it is possible for a community of hominids without the capacity for representation to become capable of representation. We cannot take the absurd position that these pre-linguistic beings had already had something like "ideas" they wanted to "express" because that would be to assume the very thing we are attempting to explain. Instead, we need a minimal account of the origin of something radically new, a sign, from a community that does not yet have the ability to use signs.     
Specifically, the Originary Scene attempts to hypothesize how it is possible for a community of hominids ''without'' the capacity for representation to become capable of representation. We cannot take the absurd position that pre-linguistic beings already had something like "ideas" they wanted to "express" because that would be to assume the very thing we are attempting to explain. Instead, GA attempts to develop a minimal account of the origin of something radically new, a sign, from a community that does not yet have this ability.     


The Originary Scene shares the same starting point as Girard: human beings are the most mimetic species, and [[mimesis]] leads to rivalry and conflict. Our representational human culture comes into being only when our hominid ancestors became ''too mimetic'' and they could not rely on their existing animal mechanisms for withholding their violence.   
The Originary Scene shares the same starting point as Girard: human beings are the most mimetic species, and [[mimesis]] leads to rivalry and conflict. Our representational human culture comes into being only when our hominid ancestors became ''too mimetic'' and could no longer rely on their existing animal mechanisms to withholding their potential violence.   


The animal pecking order common to higher animals depends on the group’s forming a queue structure rather than a centralized community. Violence is suppressed at least temporarily by this serial hierarchy and the hypothetical Originary Scene presupposes only that the progression of mimetic ability among a group of proto-humans has reached the point where this serial hierarchy broke down.     
The animal pecking order common to higher animals depends on the group’s forming a queue structure rather than a centralized community. Violence is suppressed at least temporarily by this serial hierarchy and the hypothetical Originary Scene presupposes that the progression of mimetic ability among a specific group of proto-humans reached the point where that serial hierarchy broke down.     


Let us imagine an appetitive object, such as the cadaver of a large animal discovered or killed by a hunting party. The members of the group surround the object, the Alpha among them. But the level of mimetic tension in the group has risen too high for the Alpha to be able to rely on his primacy as in the past: appropriating the (whole) animal, taking his portion, then passing the remainder to the Beta, and so on. Under the pressure of increased [[Mimetic Rivalry|mimetic rivalry]], the Alpha taking the first piece of meat, from being simply at the head of the queue, comes to be viewed and resented as a unique privileged figure in opposition to all the others, who for the moment are not benefiting from the meat distribution.   
== The Originary Scene ==
The Originary Scene begins when a group of proto-humans, possibly a hunting party, kill or come across a source of food. This food object of would become the [[center]] of their attention and the hungry hominids would encircle it and attempt to consume it.    


Hence the Alpha’s potential act of appropriation is contested not by individual rivals but by the group as a whole. Like the hands of children at a party reaching out for the last piece of cake, all make a gesture of appropriation toward the object, but, observing this symmetry, all including the Alpha hesitate to incur the aggression of the others by prolonging their gesture toward the object.  
Ordinarily, like all higher primates, the Alpha would eat first, then pass the remainder to the Beta, and so on down the serial hierarchy. However, the mimetic capacities or these hominids must have been so intense that the normal serial pecking order would have broken down. All of the hominids, no longer held back by their animal dominance structure, would have started to simultaneously approach the object in a kind of fearful symmetry of mimetic acceleration. Animal appetite has been transformed into desire, a social phenomenon, that is enhanced by the mimetic models simultaneous desire for the same object.    


Thus the members of the group are obliged to defer their appropriation of the animal, and consequently abort their gesture. “Defer” (différer) is a term I have anthropologized” from Jacques Derrida, who uses it to refer to the hesitation implicit in the choice of a word in a paradigm. But before the existence of linguistic paradigms, the originary object of deferral must have been the potential violence attendant on a worldly rather than a “symbolic” act. It is this [[Aborted Gesture of Appropriation|aborted gesture of appropriation]], designating the object, but no longer directed at appropriating it, that we postulate as the first sign.  
The Alpha, normally the first to appropriate the food object, is now facing an entire group. It is not just the Beta, or an individual rival, that contests the alpha, but the entire mimetic group as a whole. Each of the hands reaches out for the object of appropriation simulteanoulsy and the animal pecking order ceases to hold any of them back as their mimetic desire accelerates them towards the object at the center.  


This suspension of appropriative activity would convert the “theater of action” in which the hunter-scavengers confront the animal as a source of nourishment into a scene where, although action is for the moment impossible, the group’s attention remains jointly focused on the animal at the center. The aborted gesture would then come to be collectively understood as a new form of communication, directed both at the central object itself as the first “deity” and at the other members of the group. This originary occurrence of [[Joint Shared Attention|joint shared attention]] would arise through the consciousness shared by the participants of both their own gesture and that of the others, coupled with the awareness that peacefully exchanging this gesture, in contrast to fighting over the central object, makes this new form of exchange memorable and desirable, worthy of being repeated. The idea that the sign both reproduces and participates in the “aura” or numinousness of its referent while at the same time leaving it intact is the essential benefit of signification.”  
This desire intensifies the [[Mimetic Crisis|mimetic crisis]] and within the group some member hesitates, presumably out of something like terror, and is seen by others to hesitate, and is imitated by others. As each of the hominids reach out like hands of children at a party for the last peace of cake in a gesture of appropriation, one of them hesitates, and makes a gesture of aborted appropriation. Something like a "grabbing" becomes something like a "pointing" and others recognize this hesitation. First one, then two, then each one in the group imitates this new aborted gesture of appropriation which becomes the first sign.   


    
It would have been only momentary, but enough to begin a kind of mimetic deceleration that converts this mimetic    


Origin of Desire 
The mimetic acceleration turns into a mimetic deceleration and as they all simultaneously issue this same gesture. The animal pecking order has been transcended and a new order is born: a social order, with a center, and a group of hominids on the periprhy, all sharing joint attention via the same object. The first sign, like all signs after it, defers violence through representation. 


“Gans sees the outcome of the originary event differently. Gans assumes that the [[Mimetic Crisis|mimetic crisis]] is organized around some object of appetitive attention—most likely some food source, perhaps a recent kill. Ordinarily, among the higher primate species, the object would be consumed in order, first by the Alpha animal, then by the Beta, and so on. But on this occasion, the [[Mimetic Rivalry|mimetic rivalry]] induced by the object overrides the pecking order as all members of the group move toward the object at the [[center]]. Appetite becomes “desire,” that is, a social phenomenon involving one’s relation to others and not merely the object itself. Desire intensifies the [[Mimetic Crisis|mimetic crisis]]. However, within the group, some member hesitates, presumably out of something like terror (“anxiety” would not be quite right here), is seen by others to hesitate, and is imitated by others.  
A new species i they would partake in a new kind of awareness shared by each of them that at least while they are exchanging this new sign they are not fighting over the central object. This would have been memorable and desirable and worthy of repetition.  


The gesture indicates a renunciation, perhaps momentary (but that is enough), of the desired object. This, what Gans calls “the [[Gesture of Aborted Appropriation|gesture of aborted appropriation]],” is the first [[sign]]. The rivalrous imitation that first propels the group toward the center and potentially cataclysmic violence is converted into a pacifying imitation that de-escalates the crisis; the order provided by the animal pecking order is replaced by an order mediated by the sign, which defers violence through representation. A new species is born: the human, the only species, as Gans puts it, that poses a greater danger to its own survival than is posed to it by anything in its environment.
The first sign is an [[ostensive]] sign.


The first sign is an [[ostensive]] sign—that is, it is inextricable from the event in which it is issued and therefore constitutes the object it refers to. But this is not an act of existential free will on the part of each member of the new community. None of them could articulate such a will, not only because they have no language in which to do so, but because the sign cannot be attributed to an intentionality “internal” to any of the members of the group. Each is only repeating the others’ reference to the central object—none of them could be the origin. And yet intention has been introduced into the community, in the form of the object itself. As the participants on the scene see each other sharing attention to the object of desire, the only agency that could be holding them back is the potential victim itself. The creation of the human is mediated by the creation of the sacred center as the creator of the human.  
It is not an act of existential free will on the part of each member of the new community. None of them could articulate such a will, not only because they have no language in which to do so, but because the sign cannot be attributed to an intentionality “internal” to any of the members of the group. Each is only repeating the others’ reference to the central object—none of them could be the origin. And yet intention has been introduced into the community, in the form of the object itself. As the participants on the scene see each other sharing attention to the object of desire, the only agency that could be holding them back is the potential victim itself. The creation of the human is mediated by the creation of the sacred center as the creator of the human.  


The victim does need to be consumed, and the emergent community does need to put its new sign to work to ensure this can be done in a communal and non-violent (or, sufficiently non-violent so that the [[Mimetic Crisis|mimetic crisis]] is not re-activated) manner. In the [[sparagmos]], the tension generated by the prior restraint is released, and so this danger does present itself as the community attacks the meal in this unprecedented manner. [[Resentment]] at the object itself, for imposing restraint and refusing itself, intensifies the devouring of the body. The only thing preventing each member from overreaching his bounds and turning on his fellows is the sign itself, which we can imagine working within the sparagmos as a kind of reminder of the collective limits making this peaceful consumption possible. Following the sparagmos, as the members of the community face each other over the remains of their victim/meal/deity, the sign would be issued once again, this time pointing to the remainders and mementos of the sacred being, marking the first [[ritual]]. Naturally, this hypothetical account in fully developed language that is both unavailable to the participants on the scene and marked by the limitations of constructing the emergence of language from within language, must present coherently a sequence that might have developed over a series of similar events—and, more importantly, might be reconstructed for memory through more orderly rituals. The value of such an account, though, lies in the need to hypothesize the sign being repeated, made memorable, and acting generatively within the community. Eventually the ritual would be moved to prior to the act of consumption, so as to prevent in advance the possibility that this time the scene might not play out in ideal form.
The victim does need to be consumed, and the emergent community does need to put its new sign to work to ensure this can be done in a communal and non-violent (or, sufficiently non-violent so that the [[Mimetic Crisis|mimetic crisis]] is not re-activated) manner. In the [[sparagmos]], the tension generated by the prior restraint is released, and so this danger does present itself as the community attacks the meal in this unprecedented manner. [[Resentment]] at the object itself, for imposing restraint and refusing itself, intensifies the devouring of the body. The only thing preventing each member from overreaching his bounds and turning on his fellows is the sign itself, which we can imagine working within the sparagmos as a kind of reminder of the collective limits making this peaceful consumption possible. Following the sparagmos, as the members of the community face each other over the remains of their victim/meal/deity, the sign would be issued once again, this time pointing to the remainders and mementos of the sacred being, marking the first [[ritual]]. Naturally, this hypothetical account in fully developed language that is both unavailable to the participants on the scene and marked by the limitations of constructing the emergence of language from within language, must present coherently a sequence that might have developed over a series of similar events—and, more importantly, might be reconstructed for memory through more orderly rituals. The value of such an account, though, lies in the need to hypothesize the sign being repeated, made memorable, and acting generatively within the community. Eventually the ritual would be moved to prior to the act of consumption, so as to prevent in advance the possibility that this time the scene might not play out in ideal form.


The paradoxes of [[deferral]] we see on the originary scene are enduring features of the human. That which we desire and which therefore thrusts itself upon our attention, is given excess desirability through our mimetic relations with our fellows—desiring something is inseparable from imagining others desiring it. For this very reason we are forbidden our object of desire, as we intuit the violence implicit in our approach to it. And yet, we might be granted our desire, insofar as our satisfaction is mediated through the cultural (sign) systems that allot desirable objects in such a way as to build layers of deferral that themselves keep at bay the need to improvise means of deferral in dire circumstances (which circumstances, nevertheless, on occasion occur). The alienation of our desires must be represented to us, and we must receive our desired object as a gift from the center. “The fact that many take short cuts and evade or violate the cultural mechanisms that formalize our satisfactions as an exchange with the center doesn’t contradict this claim—rather, it explains our resentment towards those transgressors and our marking them as “criminal” or “immoral.” The immoral and criminal must tell themselves, meanwhile, that their own exceptional relation to the center, due to unique circumstances or unusual abilities, authorizes a form of appropriation forbidden to others. Our most immediate desires throw us into a net of social obligations.”
The paradoxes of [[deferral]] we see on the originary scene are enduring features of the human. That which we desire and which therefore thrusts itself upon our attention, is given excess desirability through our mimetic relations with our fellows—desiring something is inseparable from imagining others desiring it. For this very reason we are forbidden our object of desire, as we intuit the violence implicit in our approach to it. And yet, we might be granted our desire, insofar as our satisfaction is mediated through the cultural (sign) systems that allot desirable objects in such a way as to build layers of deferral that themselves keep at bay the need to improvise means of deferral in dire circumstances (which circumstances, nevertheless, on occasion occur).  


=== References ===
=== References ===

Revision as of 18:38, 25 March 2023


Introduction

The Originary Scene or Originary Event is the central concept of Generative Anthropology. This hypothetical historical event is the origin of the human and simultaneously the origin of language. Eric Gans, the founder of Generative Anthropology, articulated the first version of the Originary Scene in his 1981 book The Origin of Language. Gans referred to the Originary Scene as the "little bang" of human culture, analogous to the "big bang" of the Universe.

Freud, Girard, and Gans

Eric Gans was one of the first PhD students of René Girard and the Originary Scene is modeled on Girard's Scapegoating Mechanism. Girard in turn modeled his mechanism on Freud's description the father murdered by his sons. Gans recognized the shared core of these scenes that purport to describe the origin of the human social order as "the designation of the central figure by a sign".

Generative Anthropology's Originary Scene, unlike that of Freud, Girard, and all other theories of the origin of language focuses on the paradoxical emergence of this first sign.

Setting the Scene

The Originary Scene is a hypothesis about what must have been an actual historical event. We will likely never find out exactly when and where the Originary Scene took place, but something like it must have taken place in order for us to be using language right now. Without a shared origin of language, communication would be impossible, and so the Originary Scene is a hypothesis about the scene of that shared origin.

Specifically, the Originary Scene attempts to hypothesize how it is possible for a community of hominids without the capacity for representation to become capable of representation. We cannot take the absurd position that pre-linguistic beings already had something like "ideas" they wanted to "express" because that would be to assume the very thing we are attempting to explain. Instead, GA attempts to develop a minimal account of the origin of something radically new, a sign, from a community that does not yet have this ability.

The Originary Scene shares the same starting point as Girard: human beings are the most mimetic species, and mimesis leads to rivalry and conflict. Our representational human culture comes into being only when our hominid ancestors became too mimetic and could no longer rely on their existing animal mechanisms to withholding their potential violence.

The animal pecking order common to higher animals depends on the group’s forming a queue structure rather than a centralized community. Violence is suppressed at least temporarily by this serial hierarchy and the hypothetical Originary Scene presupposes that the progression of mimetic ability among a specific group of proto-humans reached the point where that serial hierarchy broke down.  

The Originary Scene

The Originary Scene begins when a group of proto-humans, possibly a hunting party, kill or come across a source of food. This food object of would become the center of their attention and the hungry hominids would encircle it and attempt to consume it.

Ordinarily, like all higher primates, the Alpha would eat first, then pass the remainder to the Beta, and so on down the serial hierarchy. However, the mimetic capacities or these hominids must have been so intense that the normal serial pecking order would have broken down. All of the hominids, no longer held back by their animal dominance structure, would have started to simultaneously approach the object in a kind of fearful symmetry of mimetic acceleration. Animal appetite has been transformed into desire, a social phenomenon, that is enhanced by the mimetic models simultaneous desire for the same object.

The Alpha, normally the first to appropriate the food object, is now facing an entire group. It is not just the Beta, or an individual rival, that contests the alpha, but the entire mimetic group as a whole. Each of the hands reaches out for the object of appropriation simulteanoulsy and the animal pecking order ceases to hold any of them back as their mimetic desire accelerates them towards the object at the center.

This desire intensifies the mimetic crisis and within the group some member hesitates, presumably out of something like terror, and is seen by others to hesitate, and is imitated by others. As each of the hominids reach out like hands of children at a party for the last peace of cake in a gesture of appropriation, one of them hesitates, and makes a gesture of aborted appropriation. Something like a "grabbing" becomes something like a "pointing" and others recognize this hesitation. First one, then two, then each one in the group imitates this new aborted gesture of appropriation which becomes the first sign.

It would have been only momentary, but enough to begin a kind of mimetic deceleration that converts this mimetic

The mimetic acceleration turns into a mimetic deceleration and as they all simultaneously issue this same gesture. The animal pecking order has been transcended and a new order is born: a social order, with a center, and a group of hominids on the periprhy, all sharing joint attention via the same object. The first sign, like all signs after it, defers violence through representation.

A new species i they would partake in a new kind of awareness shared by each of them that at least while they are exchanging this new sign they are not fighting over the central object. This would have been memorable and desirable and worthy of repetition.

The first sign is an ostensive sign.

It is not an act of existential free will on the part of each member of the new community. None of them could articulate such a will, not only because they have no language in which to do so, but because the sign cannot be attributed to an intentionality “internal” to any of the members of the group. Each is only repeating the others’ reference to the central object—none of them could be the origin. And yet intention has been introduced into the community, in the form of the object itself. As the participants on the scene see each other sharing attention to the object of desire, the only agency that could be holding them back is the potential victim itself. The creation of the human is mediated by the creation of the sacred center as the creator of the human.

The victim does need to be consumed, and the emergent community does need to put its new sign to work to ensure this can be done in a communal and non-violent (or, sufficiently non-violent so that the mimetic crisis is not re-activated) manner. In the sparagmos, the tension generated by the prior restraint is released, and so this danger does present itself as the community attacks the meal in this unprecedented manner. Resentment at the object itself, for imposing restraint and refusing itself, intensifies the devouring of the body. The only thing preventing each member from overreaching his bounds and turning on his fellows is the sign itself, which we can imagine working within the sparagmos as a kind of reminder of the collective limits making this peaceful consumption possible. Following the sparagmos, as the members of the community face each other over the remains of their victim/meal/deity, the sign would be issued once again, this time pointing to the remainders and mementos of the sacred being, marking the first ritual. Naturally, this hypothetical account in fully developed language that is both unavailable to the participants on the scene and marked by the limitations of constructing the emergence of language from within language, must present coherently a sequence that might have developed over a series of similar events—and, more importantly, might be reconstructed for memory through more orderly rituals. The value of such an account, though, lies in the need to hypothesize the sign being repeated, made memorable, and acting generatively within the community. Eventually the ritual would be moved to prior to the act of consumption, so as to prevent in advance the possibility that this time the scene might not play out in ideal form.

The paradoxes of deferral we see on the originary scene are enduring features of the human. That which we desire and which therefore thrusts itself upon our attention, is given excess desirability through our mimetic relations with our fellows—desiring something is inseparable from imagining others desiring it. For this very reason we are forbidden our object of desire, as we intuit the violence implicit in our approach to it. And yet, we might be granted our desire, insofar as our satisfaction is mediated through the cultural (sign) systems that allot desirable objects in such a way as to build layers of deferral that themselves keep at bay the need to improvise means of deferral in dire circumstances (which circumstances, nevertheless, on occasion occur).

References

Gans, E. L., Katz, A. L. (2019). The Origin of Language: A New Edition

http://anthropoetics.ucla.edu/gaintro/

Retrieved from "https://learn.generativeanthropology.com/index.php?title=Originary_Scene&oldid=288"