Historically, GA may well be the last significant attempt to understand the human on the basis of the textual perspective that defines the Humanities, and whose current decline presages the end of the Humanities claim to a shaping influence on the public dialogue. I recall hearing many years ago a professor of European history reproach the French Department for teaching Proust , who was little known during his lifetime, rather than Romain Rolland , whose works were influential best-sellers. This old dispute between the historian and the literary critic has, generally speaking, been resolved in the historian's favor. GA originates in reflection on the literary text reduced to the minimal dimension of the first linguistic sign. None of today s social sciences, anthropology and linguistics included, concern themselves with originary scenes.
Empirical science requires prudent hypotheses that stick close to the data.
Prior to any attempt at empirical justification, the originary hypothesis affirms the absolute originality of the language-world. That the sacred is accessible through representation alone is the central truth of all culture, one that leads us to spend money and time on religion, tragedy, and pornography. I have often reflected on Doug Collins explanation for the failure of the originary hypothesis to win general acceptance. For Doug, if I understand him accurately, postmodernism merely prolongs modernism s strategic flight from the center. Thus I prefer to see postmodernism, with its roots in the Holocaust, not as a prolongation of modernism but as its repudiation, not as a strategic avoidance of the center but as a demystification of it in the service of decentralized dialogue.