Anthropology as Memory : : Elias Canetti's and Franz Baermann Steiner's Responses to the Shoah / / Michael Mack.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DGBA Backlist Complete English Language 2000-2014 PART1
• VerfasserIn: Mack, Michael,
• Place / Publishing House: Tübingen : : Max Niemeyer Verlag, , [2011]; ©2001
• Year of Publication: 2011
• Language: English
• Series: Conditio Judaica : Studien und Quellen zur deutsch-jüdischen Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte , 34
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (230 p.)

This essay is offered particularly as a contribution to the relationship between theological and literary writings on the Holocaust. Franz Baermann Steiner’s (1909–1952) detailed sociological work – he taught at the Department of Social Anthropology at Oxford and developed a sociology of danger that strongly influenced Mary Douglas, T. W. Adorno, Iris Murdoch, H.G. Adler and Julia Kristeva – contrasts with Canetti’s emphasis on shock. Canetti’s response to the Holocaust constitutes, in Dominick LaCapra’s terms, an ‘acting out’ of trauma: a comparison between Canetti’s »Masse und Macht« and the anthropological texts he uses brings to the fore his bleak depicton of humanity. By contrast, Steiner – in comparison to Canetti – lays emphasis on ‘working through’ the Holocaust, that is to say, on overcoming the paralysis of trauma by reflecting critically on values that might transform a damaged society. However, Canetti’s depiction of humanity cannot entirely be seen in LaCapra’s notion of ‘acting out’: for through the shock of ‘acting out’, Canetti nonetheless wants to bring about a ‘working through’. Similarly, despite the ‘working through’ shock and trauma are dramatized in Steiner’s poetry and his aphoristic writings. Morever, Canetti thematizes an ethical impact on his readership in his aphorisms. In response to the Holocaust both writers advance a theory of power: what Steiner calls danger, Canetti attacks as death. Steiner’s and Canetti’s respective responses to the Holocaust consists in a critique of static ways of thought, affirming ‘metamorphosis’, and deconceptualized understanding of the world which connects linguistic fluidity to the everchanging contextualities of social and embodied life.

Whereas many other post-Holocaust Jewish thinkers - including Derrida - have concentrated on a refusal of totality and celebration of 'otherness', the poet and intellectual Franz Baermann Steiner (1909-1952) combines this emphasis with an equal stress on the 'need' for certain collectively acknowledged limits. Next to the wider significance of this book for discussions of Holocaust studies in relation to current theoretical and social issues, it will also offer a new interpretation of Elias Canetti's work. This is the first detailed examination of Steiner's anthropology and philosophy and its relation to the work of his close intellectual friend Canetti.

Table of Contents

I-VIII -- Introduction: The Holocaust, Literature, Anthropology and History -- Part I: Elias Canetti – Anthropology as Literature -- Part II: Franz Baermann Steiner – Anthropology and Totalitarian Terror -- Part III: Style, Law and Danger -- Conclusion: Steiner’s and Canetti’s Contribution to Debates About Postmodernity -- Bibliography -- Index