Towards a Theory of Eccentricity — Page 2:
6 What catches one’s attention is that we do not get any kind of information regarding the content of what it means to be eccentric – all we get are negative attributions which serve to distance the speaker from the behaviour or person he describes as “eccentric.” This is an important aspect because it is the reason why there is a genuine difficulty in defining “eccentric” with regard to what it means positively to be eccentric, apart from just being different in a certain sense. It might be worth mentioning that from an etymological perspective this aspect already holds true for the origin of the English word: the adjective “eccentric” originates from the Greek ekkentros. Unlike many other words, it has kept its meaning ever since: ek is a prefix, meaning “out” and “out of”, whereas kentron is Greek for “centre” (cf. Liddell/Scott 1953).
7 A second feature of the everyday usage of “eccentric” is more subliminal. If you take a closer look at the synonyms and also listen carefully to the tone when somebody describes someone as eccentric, it emerges that this description always has a certain pejorative sense to it: being labeled as an eccentric is a depreciatory judgment.
8 The final feature I want to draw attention to is in a certain way the result of the first two: usually, nobody describes himself as being eccentric. Instead, it is always an attribution from the outside. More to the point, it is always made by somebody who does not consider himself eccentric.
9 Summing up, we get three notable features of “eccentric” from its usage in everyday language. It is (i) only a negative description which tells us what the depicted person is not, namely, in
2. The realm of the eccentric
10 In her marvelous book English Eccentrics (1933), Edith Sitwell brings together short biographies and stories of strange and odd individuals. The book itself mingles scientific aspects – citing historical sources and displaying an index of names at the end – with a literary writing style, a fusion which results in a rather unusual, almost essayistic style. It is not easy to access the work because it appears to be very difficult to pin down what Sitwell is actually aiming at. Is she displaying the eccentrics, like a freak-show, just for everybody’s amusement? Presumably not, since she makes extensive use of irony throughout the whole book with regard to people who consider themselves not to be eccentric. Is it, then, a defense of eccentricity? Again, this does not seem to be the case since Sitwell never offers such a defense. We are therefore left with a dissatisfying feeling with regard to the book’s aim, to its communicative intent, because it appears to be somewhat indifferent to its readers and to what they are likely to make of the book.