In corralling all of our preposterous critical fetishes into a single, nonsensical narrative, Lurie is, of course, writing a kind of meta-commentary on the ways in which we assess and value so-called outsider art — that Pontiac's characteristics (all of which point, in one way or another, to misshapen yet pervasive ideas of authenticity) are so precise and absurd is also what makes them funny.
Second, there was the pervasive idea, a holdover of pre-Darwininan thinking, that classifications could be based on similarity even at the expense of what we think we know about phylogenetic relationships.
Even as he explodes the notion that volunteers won the war, he underscores an equally pervasive idea that the actions of Congress and the American Revolution were one and the same.
The pervasive idea that the wives and girlfriends of professional athletes only matter because of their association with said high profile athlete proves just that.
You know, there's this pervasive idea in biology that I think is wrong.
For a long time, under the influence of the formidable Lewis Namier, the historian of Britain's eighteenth-century Parliament, the pervasive ideas in the political life of the period were held to depend on clans and clan relations, not systems of thought.
Once electronic devices become more pervasive, he says, the idea of a generic interface becomes obsolete.
What do you think about the idea of pervasive games – are we heading toward a future where there's no such thing as multiplayer and single player, where everything is seamless and organic?
Dr. Brown led the legendary Xerox laboratory in the late 1980's and early 90's, when researchers there pioneered the idea of pervasive computing, in which connected microprocessors are embedded into virtually every office tool.
In particular, the contrasting similarity between the ubiquitous existences of insect sensory networks in nature and the idea of pervasive computing has received little attention.
