Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2(pesnta.1.2) 9/5/84; site scc.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!whuxl!houxm!ihnp4!zehntel!hplabs!pesnta!scc!steiny From: steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny) Newsgroups: net.jokes.d Subject: Bizarre Taxonomy Message-ID: <184@scc.UUCP> Date: Tue, 9-Oct-84 15:34:41 EDT Article-I.D.: scc.184 Posted: Tue Oct 9 15:34:41 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 11-Oct-84 08:20:17 EDT Distribution: net Organization: Personetics, Inc. - Santa Cruz, Calif. Lines: 39 *** I am not sure which story by the great writer from Chile, Jorges Borjes that the bizarre taxonomy in the joke came from, but the taxonomy is attributed to him by Micheal Foucault in *The Order of Things*. This book first arose out of a passage in Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought -- *our* thought, the thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography -- breaking up the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long aftewards to distrub and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other. The passage quotes a 'certain Chinese encyclopaedia' in which it is written that 'animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emporer, (b) enbalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) *et cetra*, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like files'. In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprend is one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking *that*. The Order of Things Michael Foucault p xv. -- scc!steiny Don Steiny - Personetics @ (408) 425-0382 109 Torrey Pine Terr. Santa Cruz, Calif. 95060 ihnp4!pesnta -\ fortune!idsvax -> scc!steiny ucbvax!twg -/