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Preface
Though worlds may change and nations disappear
Above the shrieking chaos you will hear…
––Lyrics from Noël Coward’s song,
“I Wonder What Happened to Him?” (1944)
As this book was completed, Claude Lévi-Strauss died. Structuralism predeceased him. Ironically, poststructuralism was too ill to attend the funeral, and could not risk depending on postmodernism as an escort. By the time you read this, “altermoderism” might have gone beyond the nonce to keep the hermeneutic circle rolling, hence this work’s title of “genus envy.”
Once when I was a boy, a neighbor banged on our door just after sunset on the Fourth of July to insist that we take in the flag flying on the pole in our front yard. My father, who today lies buried in Arlington National Cemetery, hastily lowered the