Anthropology as Memory: Elias Canetti's and Franz Baermann Steiner's Responses to the Shoah by Michael Mack (review)

Abstract

MLRy 98.1, 2003 243 and whether in 'War beides wahr | Und beides trug' (p. 291) the last word should be 'trog'. In 'Titans Wetterleuchten' (p. 229) Jean Paul's character Roquairol is called 'Raquairol'. The strange word 'volksauspeisungswissen' (p. 231) appears to be a misprint : H. G. Adler's edition has the more plausible 'volksausspeisungswissen'. Most of these and similar puzzles can only be solved by examining the Steiner Nachlass in Marbach. Such an examination remains necessary for anyone undertaking the interpretative study of Steiner's poetry which is now desirable, and which Jeremy Adler has shown himself exceptionally qualified to write. St John's College, Oxford Ritchie Robertson Anthropology as Memory: Elias Canetti's and Franz Baermann Steiner's Responses to the Shoah. By Michael Mack. (Conditio Judaica, 34) Tiibingen: Niemeyer. 2001. vii + 23opp. ?52. ISBN 3-484-65134-2 (pbk). Michael Mack has done a tremendous service to Canetti scholarship by comparing and contrasting Canetti's theory ofthe crowd with Franz Baermann Steiner's anthro? pology of danger. Since Mack's study is the firstdetailed examination of Steiner's relation to Canetti, it deserves to be called ground-breaking. However, Mack has made an important contribution to German-Jewish literary and cultural history in more than one respect: his study rediscovers Steiner's poetry and anthropological work in its own right. Much of it has only subsequently been published (Steiner, Selected Writings,ed. by JeremyAdler and Richard Fardon, 2 vols (Oxford: Berghahn, 1999)). The introduction, which briefly recounts Steiner's life and work as well as his friendship with Canetti, makes the case that both writers share an anthropological re? sponse to the Shoah. Turning away from purely literary writing, Steiner and Canetti engage in a social anthropology that is concerned with an ethical impact on the reader. Although the thematic concerns of the two writers appear to be quite divergent in that Canetti focuses on the phenomenon of the crowd and Steiner on a sociology of danger, Mack argues convincingly that both thinkers are ultimately concerned with analysing violence that knows no limits (p. 4). The firstpart deals with Canetti's well-known flouting of established notions of scholarship in Crowds and Power and its uneasy generic status between literature and anthropology. Applying Dominick LaCapra's use of Freudian concepts, Mack sug? gests that Canetti's literary devices such as his 'rhetoric of immediacy', his 'thinking in images', and defamiliarization techniques result in a type of 'thick description' (Clifford Geertz's term) that is an implicit acting-out of trauma. The second part moves on to a discussion of Steiner's anthropology, in particular his theory of taboo as avoidance of danger and power. Placing Steiner's thinking in the context of British anthropology and its shift from evolutionism to functionalism , Mack argues that, unlike his mentors, Steiner pinpointed the West's failure to understand Eastern concepts. There follows a comparison of Steiner's thesis on slavery with Edward Said's Orientalism (London: Routledge, 1977), in which Mack highlights Steiner's pre-deconstructionist critique of Western 'epistemic violence' (p. 112). This prepares the ground fora detailed analysis of Steiner's theory of taboo, at the heart of which is the idea that taboos are 'thought-out rituals that help prevent social tensions and violent divisions within society' (p. 133). The final part focuses on the notion of literature as scholarship in Steiner's and Canetti's works. Returning to Canetti's hybridization of literature and anthropology, Mack puts forward the idea that Canetti's insistence on the factuality of his argument underlines his claim to responsibility. By presenting normal behaviour as psychopathic , Canetti aims at a metamorphosis of social practice. The 'acting-out' that 244 Reviews characterizes Crowds and Power should therefore be understood as a provocation for a 'working-through' (p. 152). However, if Canetti does ontologize violence, then this raises the question how social change can be instigated at all and what the basis for his notion of metamorphosis is, a point that Mack does not address. His application of the Freudian notion of 'working-through' to Crowds and Power is, in my view, the least convincing argument of his study in that it...