Generative thinking strikes the impatient mind as reductive thinking, an arbitrary grid placed on the blooming buzzing confusion of empirical reality. Tracing the cultural work's originary derivation doesn't rob it of its specificity but situates it in human history. This is not a trivial challenge. The answer clearly cannot be given in the abstract. The value of GA's minimalist anthropological paradigm is not in reducing the diversity of the cultural to a predictable set of originary structures, but permitting us to grasp the consciousness of and concomitant freedom within the originary structure embodied by the cultural work.
Some examples are in order.
I'll first briefly remind the reader of my recent discussion of Hamlet . Here the sacrificial structure of tragedy is evident, but that's not what's interesting about this play. Another case I've discussed is that of Madame Bovary. But that's not the original feature of this novel, which lies rather in Emma's ability to defer her final self-sacrifice through her creativity in assigning significance to actions and persons with the aid of consumer goods. Hers is a less self-conscious reflection on the scene of desire, but it is a reflection nonetheless, one with a vast future ahead of it.