Canetti's Counter-image of Society

Thesis Eleven

Volumn 45, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 86-115

  Arnason, Johann P ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 34247692385     PISSN: 07255136     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0725513696001045008     Document Type: Article

References (23)

1. S. Moscovici, The Age of the Crowd: A Historical Treatise on Mass Psychology (Cambridge, Cambridge U.P., 1985; originally published in French in 1981).
2. For Moscovici's views on Canetti, cf “Social collectivities” in Essays in Honour of Elias Canetti (New York, Farrar, Straus & Giroux), pp. 42–59
3. “1st die Idee der Masse noch aktuell?” in J. Pattillo-Hess (ed.), Canettis Masse und Macht oder die Aufgabe desgegenwdrtigen Denkens (Wien, Bundesverlag, 1988), pp. 66–73. The latter text contains interesting reflections on the “invisible crowds” of the pacified postwar decomcracies.
4. Moscovici, The Age of the Crowd, p. 1.
5. For a spirited demolition of Le Bon, cf. J.S. McClelland, The Crowd and the Mob. From Plato to Canetti (London, Unwin Hyman, 1989), pp. 196–236.
6. For a more detailed critique of the sociological tradition from this point of view, cf. S. Moscovici, La machine dfaire des dieux (Paris, Fayard, 1988).
7. S. Freud “Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse”, in id., Gesammelte Werke, vol. 13 (Frankfurt, Fischer, 1963), p. 74 (my translation, J.PA). It has been pointed out that the use of the term “group psychology” in the English translation of this work obscures the connection with the older tradition of mass psychology. But it can also read as an oblique acknowledgment of Freud's interest in a general theory of social formations.
8. Moscovici, The Age of the Crowd, p.270.
9. Elias Canetti, Nachtrdge aus Hampstead. Aufzeichnungen 1954–1971 (Munich, Hanser, 1994), p. 24.
10. Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1973), p. 323; hereafter quoted in the text as CP.
11. Cf. R. Robertson, “Canetti als Anthropologe” in M. Kruger (ed.), Einladungzur Verwandlung. Essays zu Elias Canettis Masse undMacht (Munich, Hanser, 1995), pp. 190–206.
12. T.H. Adorno, Negative Dialectics (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973) p. 355.
13. Elias Canetti, The Secret Heart of the Clock (New York, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1989), p. 141; hereafter quoted in the text as SH.
14. Elias Canetti, The Human Province (New York, Seabury Press, 1978), p. 22; hereafter quoted in the text as HP.
15. For examples of such interpretations, cf. P.B. Armstrong, The Phenomenology of Henry James (New York, 1983)
16. P.W. Silver, Ortega as Phenomenologist (New York, Columbia U.P., 1978).
17. Elias Canetti, The Conscience of Words (New York, Seabury, 1979), p. 14; hereafter quoted in the text as CW.
18. For some reflections on this aspect of Canetti's thought, cf. E. Kiss, “Elias Canetti's phanomenologie der Masse oder eine Philosophic des Konkreten” in J.P. Strelka and Z. Szell (eds.) 1st Wahrheit ein Meer von Grashalmen? Zum Werk Elias Canettis (Bern, Peter Lang, 1993), pp. 111–120. However, this author uses an over-generalized notion of phenomenology (applicable even to post-structuralism), and this obscures the specific parallels noted above.
19. Elias Canetti. Die gespaltene Zukunft (Munich, Hanser, 1972), p. 120 (interview with J. Schickel, conducted in 1972; similar comments are made in the discussion with Adorno). In this context, Canetti also comments on what he thinks was Freud's most disastrous misconception: the postulate of the death drive, erroneously derived from the experience of the first world war. A thinker with particular pretensions to critical insight thus repeated in a more extreme form one of the cardinal sins of traditional thought: the naturalization of death.
20. Cf. Elias Canetti, The Torch in my Ear (New York, Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 1982), pp. 118–124, 141–152. As this text shows, Canetti also saw Freud–or at least Freud's public image–as a model in a more fundamental sense: “people talked about him in such a way as if every individual could, by himself, of his own accord and at his own reslove, find explanations for things” (p. 122). This vision of single-handed defiance of the intellectual division of labour remained intact, despite growing disagreement with Freud's theories. Some indications of the projected alternative to pschoanalysis can be gleaned from the discussion with Adorno. In particular, Canetti singles out the concept of identification, which he thinks does more to obscure than to explain the transforming processes involved in relationships to role-models. We can assume that a fully developed theory of transformation would–among other things–have generated an alternative account of psychic development.
21. E. Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (London, Allen & Unwin, 1976), p. 218.
22. This is my translation of Canetti, Masse und Macht (Munich, Hanser, 1972), Bd.2, p. 181. The English version translates “Weltkorper” as “celestial body”, (CP 506) which is no doubt a possible reading, but the other seems more suggestive.
23. Elias Canetti, The Play of the Eyes (New York, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986), p. 89.