Kierkegaard's classification: officers, maids, and chimney sweeps
example · Kierkegaard ·
retold in 4 talks
Kierkegaard cites a wit who divides mankind into officers (men), serving maids (women), and chimney sweeps, the third term disrupts the masculine/feminine binary and embodies the antagonism between them.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 4
“a wit has said that one might divide mankind into officers serving maids and chimney sweeps”
“all people can be classified into officers housemaids and chimney sweepers…antagonism always involves three points never two.”
“A wit has said that one might divide mankind into officers, serving maids, and chimney sweeps.”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
Its cast and sources
populated by
Pierre-Augustin de Beaumarchais1Hardt and Negri1J. Doyne Farmer1Derek Hook1Donald Moss1Terblanche Delport1Isabella Rossellini1Paul Fussell1
alongside works
Every retelling 4
Kierkegaard cites a wit who divides mankind into officers (men), serving maids (women), and chimney sweeps, the third term disrupts the masculine/feminine binary and embodies the antagonism between them., illustrating chimney sweep,difference as such,objet petit a,antagonism
A Danish comic writer cited by Kierkegaard classifies all people into officers, housemaids, and chimney sweepers, illustrating Žižek's Lacanian point that antagonism always involves three positions, not two, with a privileged third term., illustrating sexual difference,trans identity as third term
Kierkegaard proposes dividing all humanity into officers (military manliness), serving maids (subordinate woman), and chimney sweeps, the inexplicable third term. Žižek adopts the chimney sweep as his formula for critical thought., illustrating chimney sweep,antagonism
Kierkegaard cites a Danish humor writer's absurd claim that all humanity divides into officers, housemaids, and chimney-sweepers. Žižek reads it as a logic of the three, male, female, and the surplus third, and offers a dirty triangular gloss on the structure., illustrating objet petit a,class structure,the third term in social structure