ABSTRACT
In the history of etymology the authors note that from the beginning, etymological practice was power-play. Etymology, then, reeks of ideology; it can become the vehicle for disguised dogmas, for a race or folk wisdom, and thus etymologies become fables of irrationalist power. Indeed, etymology, as intellectual fabling, raises the issue of narrativity and its relation to power in a very economical and elegant way. Let the author at this point interrupt the discussion of etymology with a hasty characterization of the shift in modernity in the relationship of modes of humanistic inquiry to the issue of power, a characterization he have derived only in part from the evidence of etymology. To assign responsibility, he have named this shift an "abdication" of power, but he find it useful to distinguish two different stages or strategic moves in this trend to political dysfunction.
