Sherlock Holmes and the dog
example · Arthur Conan Doyle (Silver Blaze) ·
retold in 4 talks
Paraphrasing Sherlock Holmes: 'To the curious thing I noticed between her legs.' 'But there was nothing hanging out between her legs.' 'That was the curious thing.'
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 4
“To the curious thing I noticed between her legs. But there was nothing hanging out between her legs. That was the curious thing.”
“The dog did nothing. But this is the curious incident.”
“the dog did nothing in the night time. that was the curious incident.”
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
Zygmunt Bauman1Salam Fayyad1Clive James1Al-Qaeda1Clifford Geertz1Strauss1Salome1Françoise Paul-Lévy1
alongside works
Every retelling 4
Paraphrasing Sherlock Holmes: 'To the curious thing I noticed between her legs.' 'But there was nothing hanging out between her legs.' 'That was the curious thing.', illustrating sexual difference,asymmetry of excess
Holmes asks about the 'curious incident' of the dog in the night; the inspector says the dog did nothing, Holmes replies that this is precisely the curious incident. The absence of an expected action is the clue., illustrating differentiality,absence in the mode of presence
Holmes draws attention to the dog that did nothing in the night-time. The dog's silence is the significant clue. Applied to ideology: what is not said while something is said is often the most important element., illustrating differentiality,ideology and silence
Holmes draws attention to the curious incident of the dog in the night-time; it did nothing, that was the curious incident. Žižek uses this as the model for attending to negative determinations: what is absent is often the crucial clue., illustrating differential approach,ideology as the unsaid