Anthropology As Memory : Elias Canetti's and Franz Baermann Steiner's Responses to the Shoah

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. 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. Acknowledgements 7 Introduction: The Holocaust, Literature, Anthropology and History 9 Part I: Elias Canetti – Anthropology as Literature 17 1 Science, Power, Literature and the Holocaust 17 1.1 The Lack of an Intellectual and a Historical Context: The Holocaust and the Symbolic Exertion of Power 17 1.2 Canetti – A Ruler? 31 1.3 Canetti – A Scholar or a Writer? 37 2 Auto Da Fé as a Negative Poetics 40 3 Canetti’s Literary Devices for the Exertion of Power 54 3.1 Canetti’s Thinking in Images 54 3.2 Canetti’s Use of Philosophical and Anthropological Literature 68 3.3 Metamorphosis and Totemism 75 3.4 Death 82 3.5 Authority and Power 87 Part II: Franz Baermann Steiner – Anthropology and Totalitarian Terror 89 4 Anthropology and the Perception of Non-Western Peoples 91 4.1 The German Background 91 4.2 The Influence of Marcel Mauss’s Conceptual Approach 93 4.3 The Context of British Anthropology 96 4.4 Steiner’s Relationship to British Anthropology 98 5 An Oriental Undermines Orientalism 113 5.1 Steiner’s »A Comparative Study of the Forms of Slavery« and Said’s Orientalism 114 5.2 Taboo 126 5.3 Civilization 143 Part III: Style, Law and Danger 157 6 Elias Canetti’s and Franz Baermann Steiner’s Notion of Literature as Scholarship 157 7 Coincidences Between Steiner’s Anthropology and Poetry 165 8 Law, Myth and Danger 186 Conclusion: Steiner’s and Canetti’s Contribution to Debates About Postmodernity 199 Bibliography 213 Index 235 Main description: 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 Discusses the "anthropological" responses to the Holocaust of two intellectual friends, Franz Steiner (1909-1952), a poet and anthropologist, and Elias Canetti. Both wrote about violence without limits, Canetti in his fiction and Steiner especially in his works of anthropology, like his comparative study of slavery. Steiner viewed primitive society as less dangerous than modern society. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism) 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 combines this emphasis with an equal stress on the need for certain collectively acknowledged limits. This book offers discussions of Holocaust studies and a new interpretation of Canetti's work