It is when a phenomenon defies understanding that it 'announces' itself, and stands out from the background, requiring interpretation.
Contemporary social scientists struggle with the problem of being precise about that which defies precision : the cloudiness of our own lives.
And, finally, there are those - the truly problematic cases - which defy exclusive classification.
In contrast, signatures that result from recombination between ribosomal variants leave traces that defy any phylogenetic hypothesis.
Counteracting the conduct-book-like prescriptions of their words, the performative force of the female voice undoes the drama and defies its constraining messages.
Plus most women on death row, like their male counterparts, have complex, dysfunctional lives, and so defy easy categorisation.
His book effortlessly and purposefully defies the false dichotomy between a cultural studies approach and a historical one.
Such fanciful narratives are "mythical" rather than realistic, and the identities they invent defy historical or scientific discursivity.
