Literature and the Renewal of the Public Sphere by Susan VanZanten Gallagher , M. D. Walhout (review)

Abstract

MLR, 97.4, 2002 1053 thesis: its literary references range from Matthias Claudius to Lion Feuchtwanger (in one sentence), and from the Middle Ages to contemporary Berlin. It occasionally gives itself up to the luxury of an extended analysis of an individual text, as in the case of Keller's Die mifibrauchtenLiebesbriefe, and the Fortunatus story is an appropriate leitmotif throughout, as is the turning point marked by the Mephistophelean introduction of paper money in Faust II. Horisch also explores in detail and with historical and philological differentiation the way money is a (curiously speechless) signifying system (the poetics of money), and in one of the most compelling chapters, 'What Counts: Money and Validity', he expounds and extols Alfred Sohn-Rethel's extraordinary theory of the economic substructure to Kantian epistemology. It is hard to pick holes in cultural and literary discourse of such sustained brilliance, nor would one wish to, so rich and stimulating are the insights on nearly every page, but the ludic disavowal of the grand narrative that the book actually relies on is tricky in several ways. One is that the book, in all its marvellous variety,attacking the issue from so many angles in such quick succession, threatens to dissolve its own topic and undermine itself. This is partly intended, no doubt: it is the tribute paid to the postmodern condition, in order to oppose it. However, it is a risk, and the very basic relay of ontosemiologies that makes the analyses possible is at the same time selfevidently an oversimplification, itself a kind of game. Furthermore, it is in the nature of Horisch's anti-authoritarian attitude that the book is not conceived as a treatise, but is in fact compiled from previously published essays, each on a differentcomplex theme. This leads to repetition and an exasperating lack of focus. Horisch's intellectual style also leads to insuperable difBculties for a translator. The book simply does not read in English as it reads in German. The translator is to be greatly admired for taking on and completing the task, with often excellent results. Nevertheless, Horisch cannot be rendered without oversimplification on the one hand or clumsiness on the other. Either solution will detract substantially from the all-important performance. How can one render the range of 'Tiefsinn' in one word? 'Melancholy' certainly won't do on its own, but what would? Sometimes the perpetual play of Horisch's style threatens to make it impossible to judge whether a translation is right or not. Can 'daB wir nicht kommunizieren konnen' (p. 267) really be rendered as 'that we cannot not communicate' (p. 220, my emphasis)? The factthat either would mean something in the context is testimony to the threat of arbitrariness throughout Horisch's work. This does seem to constitute a valid criticism of this book as well as of Horisch's others (although it should be said that he is quite capable of being an effective polemical journalist in the appropriate circumstances). Yet it seems more just to recall that the presence of this threat is not itself arbitrary: it is historically given, and both the author and his translator do much in word and deed to withstand it. Jesus College, Cambridge Michael Minden Literature and the Renewal of the Public Sphere. Ed. by Susan VanZanten Gallagher and M. D. Walhout. London: Palgrave. 2000. x + 247 pp. ?42.50. The acknowledgements section of this book explains how, following annual discussions between a group of scholars on the relationship between literature and Christianity ,this collection of essays on Habermas's concept of the public sphere gradually came into being, with the help of funding from the Calvin Centre forChristian Scholarship in the United States. Despite the extended dialogue behind the essays in this volume, the overall result lacks unity and coherence. While this is a criticism often levelled against multi-author collections, it is exacerbated in this case by a number of problems. 1054 Reviews According to Habermas, 'a robust civil society' requires a healthy public sphere which mediates between individual interests, and political and economic systems. The chief concern of this book is to reflectupon the nature of that public sphere, with particular reference...