A passage that struck me:
The alienist proceeded to a sweeping classification of his patients. He divided them first into two principal orders, the angry and the meek; then he moved on to the various subclasses, obsessions, deliriums, and hallucinations. With the taxonomy complete, he began his thorough and endless research.
Research only begins after taxonomy. Put differently, it's not really what his research does. Research obstructs and confounds the categories. Taking seriously cultural production and art objects is very much the same thing--not that we don't need taxonomic touchstones but they really falter as a means to interpret and gauge the scope of what culture does.
