Eric Gans


Eric Lawrence Gans is an American literary scholar, philosopher of language, and cultural anthropologist. Since 1969, he has taught, and published on, 19th century literature, critical theory, and film in the UCLA Department of French and Francophone studies.
Gans invented a new science of human culture and origins he calls Generative Anthropology, based on the idea that the origin of language was a singular event and that the history of human culture is a genetic or "generative" development of that event. In a series of books and articles beginning with The Origin of Language: A Formal Theory of Representation Gans has developed his ideas about human culture, language, and origins. In 1995, Gans founded the web-based journal as a scholarly forum for research into human culture and origins based on Generative Anthropology and the closely related Fundamental Anthropology of René Girard. Since 1995, Gans has web-published his "Chronicles of Love and Resentment", consisting of reflections on everything from popular culture, film, post-modernism, economics, contemporary politics, the Holocaust, philosophy, religion, and paleoanthropology. In 2010, the Generative Anthropology Society & Conference was created for sponsoring annual conferences dedicated to Generative Anthropology.

Generative Anthropology

Background

grew out of Gans' association with Girard at Johns Hopkins University. Gans was Girard’s first doctoral student, receiving his PhD in 1966. But it was only on the publication of Violence and the Sacred in 1972 that Gans became interested in Girard's idea of mimetic desire and the connection between violence and the sacred in Girard's work. The concept of mimetic desire forms one of the cornerstones of Generative Anthropology. Girard argues that human desire is essentially cultural or social in nature, and thus distinct from mere appetite, which is biological. For Girard, desire is triangular in structure, an imitation of the desire of another. Desire, therefore, leads to conflict, when two individuals attempt to possess the same object. In a group, this mimetic conflict typically escalates into a mimetic crisis which threatens the very existence of the group. For Girard, this conflict is resolved by the scapegoat mechanism, in which the destructive energies of the group are purged through the violence directed towards an arbitrarily selected victim. Girard sees the scapegoating mechanism as the origin of human culture and language.

The Originary Hypothesis

Gans agrees with Girard that human language originates in the context of a mimetic crisis, but he does not find the scapegoat mechanism, by itself, as an adequate explanation for the origin of language. Gans hypothesizes that language originates in "an aborted gesture of appropriation," which signifies the desired object as sacred and which memorializes the birth of language, serving as the basis for rituals which recreate the originary event symbolically. The originary sign serves to defer the mimetic violence threatening the group, hence Gans's capsule definition of culture as "the deferral of violence through representation." For a more detailed explanation of the originary hypothesis, see Generative Anthropology.

The Scene of Representation

For Gans, language is essentially "scenic" in character, that is, structurally defined by a sacred center and human periphery. In the secular culture which develops later, "significance" serves as an attenuated form of the sacred. The scene of representation is a true cultural universal and the basic model for cultural analysis. Generative Anthropology attempts to understand the various means by which transcendence or meaning is created on a scene of representation.

Life and education

Eric Lawrence Gans was born in Bronx, New York on August 21, 1941. He went to Columbia University at the age of 16 and received a B.A. in French in 1960. Going on to graduate work in Romance languages at Johns Hopkins University, he received his M.A. in 1961 and a Ph.D in 1966. After two years as an Assistant Professor at Indiana University, he moved to the Dept. of French at University of California, Los Angeles in 1969, where he became full professor in 1976. In 1978, he served at Johns Hopkins University as a visiting Professor. From 2007-2014 he was honored as a Distinguished Professor at UCLA until he resigned after being found in violation of the UCLA sexual misconduct policy. Since 2015, he is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at UCLA but is forbidden to teach or advise students.

Sexual harassment allegations

In 2015, Gans was found guilty of violating the UC Policy on Sexual Harassment and the Faculty Code of Conduct. In 2011-2012, Gans began sending unwanted and unsolicited emails to his female graduate student, professing his love for her. Gans acknowledged the feelings were one-sided: “There is no doubt an asymmetry in our affection.” According to the results of the Title IX investigation launched in response to the student's complaints, Gans continued his advancements after his student repeatedly tried to get him to cease.
Gans, however, denied his advances were unwanted in an interview with The Daily Californian:“I’m an old-fashioned guy. I treat women with a kind of reverence. Some women appreciate this, but some don’t.” Gans alleged the Title IX was a set-up orchestrated by the department chair and described his former student as “ a weak person, she was intimidated by them, she wasn’t the best student."

Critics

The main source of criticism directed against Gans's work comes from Girard himself, who claims that Generative Anthropology is just another version of social contract theories of origins. Gans has responded to Girard's criticisms and defended his theory in his books and articles. Others take issue with Gans' conservative political views as expressed in his Chronicles of Love and Resentment. Gans has entered into constructive conversation with contrasting views on Middle Eastern politics in his published dialogue with Ammar Abdulhamid: A Dialogue on the Middle East and Other Subjects.

Generative Anthropology Society & Conference

The Generative Anthropology Society & Conference is a scholarly association formed for the purpose of facilitating intellectual exchange amongst those interested in fundamental reflection on the human, originary thinking, and Generative Anthropology, including support for regular conferences. GASC was formally organized on June 24, 2010 at Westminster College, Salt Lake City during the 4th Annual Generative Anthropology Summer Conference. Further information, including how to join, can be found at the Generative Anthropology Society & Conference Website.
Since 2007, Generative Anthropology Society & Conference has held an annual summer conference on Generative Anthropology.
2007 - Kwantlen University College of University of British Columbia
2008 - Chapman University
2009 - University of Ottawa
2010 - Westminster College and Brigham Young University
2011 - High Point University
2012 - International Christian University
2013 - University of California, Los Angeles
2014 - University of Victoria, Canada
2015 - High Point University
2016 - Kinjo Gakuin University

Honors

"Scandal to the Jews, Folly to the Pagans." Diacritics 9, 3, : 43-53.
"Differences." MLN 96 : 792-808.
"Beckett and the Problem of Modern Culture." Sub-Stance XI, 2 : 3-15.
"The Culture of Resentment." Philosophy and Literature 8, 1 : 55-66.
"Christian morality and the Pauline Revelation." Semeia 33 : 97-108.
"Sacred Text in Secular Culture." In To Honor René Girard, Stanford French & Italian Studies 34, : 51-64.
"Art and Entertainment." Perspectives of New Music 24, 1 : 24-37.
"The Necessity of Fiction." Sub-Stance 50 : 36-47.
"The Past and Future of Generative Anthropology: Reflections on the Departmental Colloquium." Paroles Gelées: UCLA French Studies 8 : 35-41.
"The Beginning and End of Esthetic Form." Perspectives of New Music 29, 2 : 8-21.
"The Unique Source of Religion and Morality." Anthropoetics 1, 1 : 10 pp. Revised version in Contagion 3 : 51-65.
"Mimetic Paradox and the Event of Human Origin." Anthropoetics 1, 2 : 15 pp.
"Plato and the Birth of Conceptual Thought." Anthropoetics 2, 2 : 11 pp.
"Chronicles of Love and Resentment" . Epoché XX : 1-22.
"The Holocaust and the Victimary Revolution." In Poetics of the Americas: Race, Founding, and Textuality, Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1997, 123-139.
"Originary Narrative." Anthropoetics 3, 2 : 10 pp.
"Aesthetics and Cultural Criticism." boundary 2 25, 1 : 67-85.
"The Little Bang: The Early Origin of Language." Anthropoetics 5, 1 : 6 pp. Also in 'Contagion' 7 : 1-17.
"The Last Word in Lyric: Mallarmé's Silent Siren." New Literary History 30, 4 : 785-814.
"'Staging as an Anthropological Category.'" New Literary History 31, 1 : 45-56.
"The Sacred and the Social: Defining Durkheim's Anthropological Legacy." Anthropoetics 6, 1 : 7 pp.
"Form Against Content: René Girard's Theory of Tragedy." Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 56, 1-2 : 53-65.
"The Body Sacrificial." In The Body Aesthetic: From Fine Art to Body Modification, ed. Tobin Siebers, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000, 159-78.
"Originary Democracy and the Critique of Pure Fairness." In The Democratic Experience and Political Violence, ed. David Rapoport and Leonard Weinberg, London: Frank Cass, 2001, 308-24. Also issued as Terrorism and Political Violence 12, 3-4.
"Mallarmé contra Wagner." Philosophy and Literature 25, 1 : 14-30.
"A Dialogue on the Middle East and Other Subjects." Anthropoetics 7, 2 : 16 pp. Also in Maaber 8 and 9.
“Originary and/or Kantian Aesthetics.” Poetica 35, 3-4 : 335-53.
"End of an Illusion." Cinematic: The Harvard Annual Film Review 2 : 29-31.
"The Market and Resentment." In Passions in Economy, Politics, and the Media, ed. Wolfgang Palaver and Petra Steinmar-Pösel, Vienna: Lit Verlag, 2005, 85-102.
"Clouzot's Cruel Crow." p.o.v.: A Danish Journal of Film Studies 20 : 51-58.
"John Rawls's Originary Theory of Justice." Contagion 13 : 149-58.
"White Guilt, Past and Future." Anthropoetics 12, 2 : 8 pp.
"Qu’est-ce que la littérature, aujourd’hui?" New Literary History 38, 1 : 33-41.
"Razgovor o generativnoj antropologiji" ; "Podrijetlo jezika" . Republika LXIII, 5 : 48-76.
"On Firstness" and “Generative Anthropology and Bronx Romanticism”. The Originary Hypothesis: A Minimal Proposal for Humanistic Inquiry, Davies Publishing Group, 2007.
"Generative Anthropology: A New Way of Thinking?" Anthropoetics 13, 2.
"La priméité: de l'origine à l'Holocauste et au-delà." In René Girard. Paris: L'Herne, 2008, 255-60.
"Religion et connaissance." Intellectica. 50 : 61-72.
"René et moi." In For René Girard. ed. Goodhart et al., East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2009, 19-25.
Interview with Blaue Narzisse August 2009.
"Hermeneutika" . Republika. LXVI, 1 : 46-50.
"A Brief Analysis of Deconstruction." Dialectic, 1 : 31-34.
"Eric Gans traduit Les Fleurs du Mal de Baudelaire." Po&sie 144 : 146-58.
Foreword to Ammar Abdulhamid, The Irreverent Activist. Self-published, 2014: xxiii-xxvi.
"On the One Medium." In Mimesis, Movies, and Media,, ed. Cowdell, Fleming, and Hodge. New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2015, 7-15.