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Curiosity, or the exponential nature of intertext · AF

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Grab any book from your shelf, and read the first few pages. Chances are, you unknowingly just skipped over a few implicit references that the book’s author left there in anticipation of another learned reader, someone who, unlike you, had read the same tomes as the writer and kept the same lessons from them. Chances are, too, that the author explicitly cited other works, ones which you might recognize, even if you’re not intimately familiar with them. Perhaps, you know the works referenced well. If you’re lucky, it is even possible that you recognize the arguments being made with or without direct allusion to their origin. Books are historical artifacts, crystals created by a person who was defined by the times in which they lived and the places they inhabited while writing. Like the Heraclitean river, not even the author themselves could step back into the state of mind that enabled them to pen their masterpiece, so how can we expect to fully and completely understand the meaning of

Este ensayo también está disponible en español . Grab any book from your shelf, and read the first few pages. Chances are, you unknowingly just skipped over a few implicit references that the book's author left there in anticipation of another learned reader, someone who, unlike you, had read the same tomes as the writer and kept the same lessons from them. Chances are, too, that the author explicitly cited other works, ones which you might recognize, even if you're not intimately familiar with them. Perhaps, you know the works referenced well. If you're lucky, it is even possible that you rec

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