- Email: [email protected]
The languages of paradise
~ Pergamon
History of European Ideas, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 271-280, 1995 0191-6599 (94) 00128-6
Copyright © 1995 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0191-6599/95 $9.50 + 00
THE RAGE FOR ORDER: SOME NEW BOOKS ON MIND, LANGUAGE, SCIENCE AND CULTURE BERNARD ZELECHOW*
Neo-Baroque: A Sign of the Times, Omar Calabrese (Princeton University Press, 1992), 227 pp. $15.00 cloth.
Crossroads Between Culture and Mind: Continuities and Change in Theories of Human Nature, Gustav Jahoda (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 221 pp., $29.95 cloth. The Languages of Paradise, Maurice Olender (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 193 pp. The Return of Thematic Criticism, ed. Werner Sollors (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 321 pp., $34.50 cloth, $15.95 paper. The flight from the chaotic flux of existence is a defining norm of culture. All cultures classify and organize all relevant aspects of life. Western culture displays what Wallace Stevens called a rage for order. It shows a persistent fascination with classificatory and taxonomical potential for order. The Western mind fastens especially on the need to provide uniformity and the illusion of universal identity. From the dream of the Tower of Babel to Chomsky's version of linguistics as transformative universal grammar, uniform typologies dominate the shape of Western thinking. Nietzsche railed against the erroneous European commitment to the illusory logic of identity which associated disparate things as the same, classified falsely, homogenized causation and invented typologies that distort the flux of existence. Even he began his career with a classifying typological work Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music. Nietzsche, the philologist manque, rejected this early work but its existence reminds us that he is the heir to a long tradition of inquiry concerning the origins of language, thought and cultural configuration. This essay explores some recent attempts to organize either historically or scientifically contemporary understanding of mind, culture and language, The most recent example of the rage for order is Omar Calabrese's NeoBaroque: Signs of the Times. Calabrese's scientific project, if not a contradiction in terms, is, at least, paradoxical. Despite the nominalism engendered by deconstructionism, he seeks the order of postmodern and modernist culture. His project is the illumination of the form of the formlessness. Calabrese espouses a two-prong procedure, the historical and the genetic methods. However, his *29 Admiral Road, Toronto, Canada, M5R 2L4
271
272
Reviews
preference for the genetic style is clear from the beginning of his argument. He pays scant attention to the historical element of his investigation. Calabrese's work suits the reader with an ordering temper. His classificatory systems are multifaceted justification for his typologies. He asserts that there are two basic forms of cultural organization, the classical and the baroque. These two modes, on the genetic level, are akin to Nietzsche's distinction between the Apollinian and the Dionysian. The classical and the baroque as types are diametric opposites. Essentially, the classical style manifests a totalizing order and the baroque expresses fragmentation and chaos. However, Calabrese states that on the historical level both patterns are always present even if unequally. For Calabrese postmodern culture is historically analogous to the seventeenth century baroque. He supports this assertion by claiming that both periods formally express pervasive fragmented, excessive, repetitive cultural patterns. This cultural signature is present in philosophy, science, the products of high and low culture and potentially in every expression of human activity. Calabrese amasses an impressive array of binary types to defend his thesis. The typologies range from limit and excess, part and whole, to complexity and dissipation. He uses etymological arguments effectively to explicate the binary differences. From the outset the reader is aware that the binary opposites are, for Calabrese, more than heuristic devices to probe cultural phenomena. They inhere in distinct cultural products. The insistence that the typologies are more than constructed models raises significant problems. First, at least one baroque binary set works just as well for classical music as for Calabrese's baroque examples. This is especially true of his discussion of the baroque quality of rhythm and repetition. Sonata form with its totalizing goals builds tension with precisely the kind of repetition and surprise Calabrese identifies with baroque phenomena. Perhaps, the binaries should be employed less inclusively. But such a shift will not meliorate an associated methodological problem. How, beyond the sophisticated etymological argument, does one derive the various typological forms? The question arises explicitly because Calabrese stakes his argument on sound methodological principles. Therein lies the crux of the problem. Calabrese employs implicitly the inverse inductive method similar to nineteenth century experimental positivism. For social and historical phenomena the investigator searches for similarities in diverse cultural products. The uniformities are then abstracted and generalized into a hypothetical/real model. In turn the construct is applied again to similar phenomena. In other words the method is completely circular. The value of the method depends on the elasticity of the circle and the recognition that the phenomena are always greater than its denoted classification. Ironically, Calabrese recognizes indirectly this dilemma in one of his most successful classifications. That is, the chapter devoted to the classical in contemporary film. Despite the methodological quandary Calabrese's discussion of the classical is provocative and convincing. First, he acknowledges that the form is less clear cut than he had previously argued. Calabrese recognizes that slavish repetition of historical examples distort the meaning of the classical. Instead, he defines the classical as a creative renewal and repetition of a traditional form. What is particular
History of European Ideas
Reviews
273
fascinating is his choice of what represents classical forms in postmodern culture. Playfully Calabrese shows how Rambo of film represents the classical hero while the 1950s cinema Hercules is an empty circus model of the type. Rambo expresses an idealizing aspect of classicism while the Maciste who played Hercules 'is a farmyard turkey'. Calabrese works hard to demonstrate that the 20th century is culturally one of fragmentation. The same conclusions can be reached through traditional methods of the history of ideas. What Calabrese presents is a social scientific exposition of the crisis of European culture at the turn of the twentieth century and its aftermath. His approach typifies most social science. It devalues the historical. The psychologist Gustav Jahoda in Crossroads Between Culture and Mind: Continuities and Change in Human Nature redresses the balance. In his introduction Jahoda apologizes for writing yet another history of psychology. But, his warrant is that his history will be untraditional. Jahoda means to broaden the context for understanding how contemporary psychology evolved. In so far as it is possible to minimize or correct the teleological bias in all historical writing Jahoda does so. He illuminates how ideas about the human psyche fit within historical cultural forms. Jahoda makes the human psyche the specific theme in a schematic general history of ideas. The utility of Jahoda's approach is the light it shines on psychology before the nineteenth century institutionalization of academic disciplines. Therefore, this approach minimizes the distortions created by the retrospective self-justification practiced by every academic discipline. Jahoda does an admirable job in tracing and summarizing the psychological ideas of the Enlightenment in a few short pages. He begins by describing the historical meaning of the word 'culture' from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century. At first the term applied normatively to attributes of the educated person. Then its meaning expanded to embrace all products of human activity. Jahoda's elegant analysis continues through his discussion of the diverse threads of nineteenth century ideas about the human psyche and mind. However, he is less successful in summarizing the developments in the field as he enters the twentieth century. The discussion of Wundt and Dilthey lacks the crispness of the earlier sections. Possibly, the historically and psychologically significant contours of the field have yet to be discemed. Jahoda delineates the clash of ideas dividing the adherents of the empirical and experimental orientation against the idealistic approach of the humanist philosophical theoreticians. Nonetheless, his even handed analysis plainly exhibits his sympathy for the achievements of the 'hard' scientific approach. But paradoxically, as the narrative unfolds Jahoda remedy's the apparent bias. He reveals that his motivation for writing this book is to make the discipline more aware of the valuable contribution made by the humanistically oriented theorists of mind. Jahoda would be gratified to see the publication of Arnold Modell's The Private Self. This extraordinary book meets all the criteria Jahoda sets out for psychology at the end of the twentieth century. Modell embraces both the concepts of mind and psyche. His work is truly interdisciplinary. It encompasses Volume 21, No. 2, March. 1995
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the results of the humanistic tradition and experimental science. Despite his biological orientation Modell takes positive account of the writings of William James, Charles Taylor, Emanuel Levinas, Susanne Langer, and Mikhail Bakhtin, among a host of literary figures, philosophers, and psychoanalysts. His rationale is that the traditional psychoanalytic paradigm has frayed badly. Arnold Modell is a psychoanalyst who wishes to alter radically the present orientation of the field. He wants to return to earlier, mostly discarded presuppositions, and to ground psychoanalysis in the new field of evolutionary biology. His programme calls for a return to Freud's early hope that somatic phenomena would eventually be located in physiology and neurology, Modell argues that Gerald Edelman's evolutionary biology with its doubled nervous system provides a good basis for such a reorientation. Unlike many writers, particularly those who fancy themselves scientific, Modell forthrightly announces that his work is about paradox. He cautions those readers temperamentally allergic to paradox that this is not a book for them. His warning is not a gratuitous disclaimer for sloppy thinking or an incomplete thesis. Modell argues forcefully that paradox is at the center of all thought about the human mind, The problem is inherent in the subject matter. According to Modell, there are two ways of envisioning the human mind and its processes; one, as a somatic structure and two, an account of temporal change, human consciousness. The first provides a satisfactory paradigm for the unity and identity of the psyche. Furthermore, it seems to provide a more amenable model to the scientific canon a third person objective report of the human mind. This model serves as the basis of ego psychology. However, the structural version cannot describe the facts of temporality and the data of consciousness. Moreover, it inadvertently minimizes and devalues human autonomy. The second paradigm, mind, accounts for the data of consciousness, volition, the sense of temporality, and the subjective sense of self. But it lacks the means and substantiality to ground the continuity of identity. Philosophically, Modell's title made this reader initially apprehensive. Can his title mean private as opposed to personal? Does he intend to present a book about the literally inaccessible? The answer is, yes. That is, if the yes refers to the grounds of what is accessible (manifested) about the self. Modell has chosen his title with care. He wants to demonstrate that the human psyche sense of self that owes little to social determinants. He poses this hypothesis paradoxically. He grants that the private self generates its independence only out of a nurturing social dependency (relationship). He cites experiential data to support this position. Modell takes social determinism and intersubjectivity of human encounters into his account of the autonomous self. But he feels that contemporary psychoanalytic thinking underestimates or dismisses the powers of the vital private self. The reasons for the relative disregard of the private self are obvious. There is no direct knowledge of such an entity, somatically or any other way. Modell is aware of this. He believes the problem is overcome by the psychoanalytic appropriation of Gerald Edelman's evolutionary biological theories. According to Modell, Edelman argues that two nervous system evolved in the higher species that function differently. The first, responds to 'real' time and is geneti-
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cally 'hard wired'. The second, a system found only in the most complexly organized organisms, recategorizes the stimulus of 'real time' into memory that makes possible the generation of value laden temporal distinctions. This is, a nervous system that transmutes 'real' time into a memory encompassing past, present and future. Edelman, according to ModeU, argues that this historical memory system is relatively less genetically determined, more uniquely individual and capable of autonomous value making (judgment) in its retranscription of 'real' time. His ideas hark back to humanistic 'speculation' about mind; that is to Nietzsche's conception of the unique possibilities of individual thinking prior to language and to Buber's notion of distance and relation. For Buber animals are restricted to the distancing capabilities necessary for a sphere of activity. For humans the capacity to be able to relate makes for a world. For Buber, the unique aspect of worldmaking is the temporal dimensionality of recategorizing time into history. Given Modell's admission that his work embraces paradox, there are no surprises in his balanced assessment of the social theories of self and the biological grounding of the private self. The strength of Modell's position is that it provides a theoretic foundation for understanding individual difference. It locates a 'volitional' and purposeful human centre (a biological value laden nervous system). Modell's formulation is dialectical and subtle. He shows that exclusive social theories of the self fail to account for the diverse human responses to similar social conditions. But, he accepts simultaneously the importance of socialization of the development of persons. Moreover, he is amenable to the cultural diversity of self-expression. He sees no contradiction in the generation of an autonomous self and determined social expression. Lastly, his work transcends the trap of the privacy concept. Modell's formulation carefully emphasizes that the nervous system is not the self, nor is it consciousness. It is the biological system that provides the possibility for the recatagorizition of 'real' time into memory. Modell's work is provocative and stimulating. Through evolutionary biology, history becomes the central category of the possibility of personhood. This notion raises a curious questions: If memory and the recatorization of time are biologically determined, why does the concept of historicity/eternity arise only in biblical culture? Is it the absence of a metaphoric equivalent of the second nervous system that daunts even the greatest pagan historians when it comes to the puzzle of the memory of past--present--and future? The so named father of history, Thucydides, failed utterly to unravel the idea of recategorization. Finally, although Modell cannot be expected to do everything there is an eccentric lack in his exposition. He makes little attempt to show how Edelman arrives at and supports his fruitful evolutionary notions. Unless the reader is up on the literature in biology the hypothesis grounding this book must be presupposed but not assumed to be demonstrated. For the common reader, without confirmation Modell's thesis remains an interesting model of psychoanalysis. But without further evidence he fails to convince the reader that a reorienting of the discipline along psychobiological lines has been accomplished. Unlike Jahoda, Modell restricts his discussion mostly to twentieth century thinkers. He thereby avoids the thorny problems embedded in nineteenth cenVolume 21, No. 2, March, 1995
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tury theories of mind and human nature. Those theories encompass race, biology, and imperialism. While Jahoda shows how dangerous so many of these themes can become he cautions against reading the horrors of twentieth century racialism back into an earlier age. Although Maurice Olender does not address Jahoda directly or specifically his work redresses Jahoda's cautionary words. In his The Languages of Paradise:Race Religion and Philology in the Nineteenth Century Olender traces the way in which ideas about linguistic science intersect with the worst features of twentieth century racism and genocide. But race and genocide are not Olender's exclusive preoccupation. He analyzes and amplifies the genealogy of linguistic study beginning with the pioneering work of Pere Simon and Benedict Spinoza. The Language of Paradise bears on the whole study of mind, culture, and science. Olender's work is examplary scholarship in the history of ideas. While he is a professional philologist his project goes far beyond recording the progress of the propositional truths of the discipline. He, like Jahoda, is interested in explicating the context and cultural meaning of philological research. Olender's goal is particularly significant because philology wraps itself in the mantle of scientific objectivity. The claims of scientific status serves as a smoke screen implicitly suppressing the discipline's somewhat sordid history. Olender traces the discipline's obsession with the theme of the genealogy of language. At the end of the twentieth century the search for the Ur language appears innocent if not quaint. However, Olender demonstrates elegantly and empathetically the way in which this philological theme confronted a central issue of modernity-secularism. Whether thinkers were in favor of the secular or frightened by its implications, its presence colored the agenda of the various academic disciplines in the nineteenth century. The problem was the future status of privileged Christianity. This issue provided the discipline's subtext. How could philological and received religious truth be reconciled? The major protagonists in the history of linguistics conceived of their discipline in secular terms. They explicitly hoped to study language groupings comparatively and without privileging any single grouping. However, the question was already a loaded issue. Ostensibly the philologists were interested in discovering the language of paradise. Traditionally, Christians, whatever they thought about Judaism, following St. Augustine assumed that Adam and Eve spoke Hebrew. Theologically and scientifically the question and the answer are equally absurd. The question is sensible only if linguistic determinism is presupposed. Not only did the discipline's pioneers Herder, Renan, and Muller assume determinism, they elaborate its meaning. Language shaped thought, it determined psychological characteristics, it made culture, and most importantly it conceptualized the nature of the deity. Linguistics shared with other intellectual spheres evolutionary, progressive, and genealogical hypotheses. These presupposition created a seemingly irreconcilable contradiction. Since Judaism was considered a dead religion and Jews, fossils, how could progressive Europeans have their origin in a decadent religion? How could Jesus emerge in so tainted a soil. Sanskrit, the Ur language of the Indo-European cultures came to the rescue. Although semites provided
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the kernel of monotheism, semitic languages were incapable of dynamic development. Semite civilization exemplified stunted development. On the other hand, Sanskrit, was a language that epitomized dynamism, thought, abstraction and finally science. While Herder, Muller and Renan allowed a place for Semite monotheism they privileged Sanskrit. By the beginning of the twentieth century the liberal theologian Harnack no longer saw any necessity of so doing. Theology now took its cue from racialist science. Hamack argues in The Essence of Christianity that Judaism and Christianity virtually lack a common background. They are different in kind. Olender narrates these developments from the perspective of the late twentieth century. However, his work is more than a simple teleological account of the paternity of nazi ideology. He demonstrates clearly that race as understood in nineteenth century terms is polymorphous and ambiguous. He also shows how unintentionally Renan and Muller provide the critical weapons to undermine their positions. Both argue for a linguistic science that nullifies the privileging of any language or culture. They argue in favor of universal tolerance and equality. However, they do not live up to their stated canons. In the final analysis Renan and Muller understand Christianity, albeit, a non-dogmatic version, to be the repository of universal culture. There is an irony in the nineteenth century philologists' inability to forgo privileging Christianity. It was to take the great French linguist Saussure and the Jewish Arabist Ignaz Goldziher to demystify the discipline. Even more ironic Saussure and Goldziher take us back to the beginning of Olender's story, philology's origins. Their works resonate with the secularism of Spinoza and the recognition of Pere Simon that Judaism was a living autonomous vital religion. Pere Simon was unique amongst 17th century Christian Hebraists in his recognition of the autonomous vigor of Judaism. However, his judgement appears less eccentric and anomalous against the backdrop of Christian Hebraic scholarship in the 17th century. Frank Manuel in The Broken Staff." The Christian Use Of Judaism ~ sheds light on this intellectual current. Whether Judaiaphobic or Philosemetic in its response Christian religious scholarship was deeply imbued with an understanding of Rabbinic Judaism in the seventeenth century. Christian scholars such as Jean Bodin, John Locke and Harrington made use of talmudic and rabbinic understanding of the Jewish Commonwealth and halachah to understand contemporary political issues. Even Milton was influenced by aspects of the rabbinic interpretation of biblical texts. The mood changes in the Enlightenment. This sets the tone for Olender's theme. Olender understands nineteenth century linguistic explorations as a drama between siblings, The older child, with a language without vowels, is denied speech, sacrificed by the sibling with the language of excessive surpluses on the alter of universal revelation. The philologists envisioned a hopeful future. Instead, the twentieth century bears witness to universal tragedy. Olender concludes the text with the transfiguration of the linguistic drama into the Wagnerian Aryan Gotterdammerung. The recent publications discussed above show little influence of postmodern criticism. This is not the case when the study of mind and culture is engaged by literary thinkers. Literary faculties in North America have been unusually Volume 21, No. 2, March, 1995
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open to European ideas. American 'New Criticism' was succeeded by Russian formalism, French Structuralism and Deconstructionism. Equally, potent theoretical models have been provided by Freudianism and Lacanian analysts. Recently gender theory, feminism, and the 'new' historicism have entered the fray. Walter Sollors in his introductory essay to his anthology The Return of Thematic Criticism adds a new dimension to the battle of the theories. As the title suggests, Sollors argues that after decades of decline themology has made modest inroads in the literary world. His introductory essay is followed by his collection of definitions of the term 'theme' beginning with the Greeks and concluding with modems such as Benedetto Croce. Sollors remains silent about the myriad definitions of typologies that he offers. He offers no comment on the diverse response to the value of themology for the literary enterprise. The relativity of judgements indicates that the literary community is seriously divided over the nature and function of the discipline. The anthology reflects this diversity. Therefore, it comes as no surprise to read in this anthology a diverse set of essays on a field loosely defined as thematic. The essays range from the defense of extreme nominalism to exclusive analyses of archetypes. This diversity reflects intellectual vigor as well as theoretical weakness. The authors are in general agreement that thematic studies cannot merely supplant other theoretical models. Universally they argue for a synthesis between what has come before and the potential value of a new investigation into thematics. The ecumenism of the writers however doesn't overcome some major problems in reconciling the disparate literary concerns dominating literary criticism. To be sure agreement is attainable when the definition of theme is diffuse. All the writers agree (and I cannot imagine a reader disagreeing) that thematics implies that literature is about something, that literature has a content and is referential. This denotation reverberates with the wounds inflicted on themology by formalism. The irony however is that themology claims that its function is much like formalism's. That is, it studies constant elements. The critique of thematics is much like the argument against formalism. Both value abstraction at the expense of the rich experience gained by close concrete reading of texts. This predicament is universally acknowledged but resolution eludes the contributors. The most insightful essay addressing this issue is Claude Bremond's 'Concept and Theme'. By arguing that literary study is a process Bremond breaks through the inherent problem of abstraction and nominalism in theoretical discussions. He shows how both conceptualization and close reading go hand in hand. More importantly he argues effectively that within a successful research project the concept and theme negate one another. His theory further accounts for the diversity within a thematic whole understood as a historical cultural unit. Sollors divides the essays into several categories--general, thematic practice, case studies and 'short takes'. By far the most interesting studies are the ones devoted to thematic practice and case studies. Within the thematic practice category David Perkin's 'Literary Histories and the Themes of Literature', and Thomas Pavel's 'Thematics and Historical Evidence' stand out. Pavel takes on the issue of the new historicism with its commitments to new thematics centered around gender and gay studies. While not disputing that works have several 'voices' and lend themselves to differing interpretations he strongly
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(and uncritically) defends authorial intentionality. Therefore, for Pavel a decentered reading, even when justified by the text, is less viable than what he deems to be the author's intentional communication. Pavel's essay centers on Stephen Greenblatt's revisionist readings of sexuality in Shakespeare. In addition to his dislike of decentered reading Pavel more thoughtfully raises the question of the contemporary inclination to anachronistically overdetermine factors in reading. But his critique depends on the historical validity of Greenblatt's reading. It is unclear whether he disapproves of Greenblatt's search for historical confirmation or he finds the evidence wanting. The latter provides the stronger argument. Perkins examines the reasons why literary historians have made little use of themes in organizing their material. The emphasis falls on the need for the historian to explain the literary series in context. Biography and social and economic conditions play a primary role in historical explanation. Nonetheless Perkins goes on to show the advantages of building literary history on thematic models. The lack of context can highlight the way themes interact with the extraliterary conditions. He names Peter Burger and Leo Marx as successful practitioners of thematic history. The inherent problem for the historian is the bias toward repetition in thematic studies. However, Perkins argues, not entirely convincingly, that repetition is 'undertheorized' in thematic histories. The various case studies, particularly the two excellent essays by Franco Orlando and Theodore Ziolkowski, exemplify why repetition is 'undertheorized'. What makes Ziolkowski's study of Wagner's Parsifal fascinating is not the link to the traditional Parsifal themes but to Wagner's divergence from the received material and his peculiar synthesis grounded in his personal eccentricities and his intellectual biography. Similarly, Orlando gives innumerable examples of the repetition of a set of colors in 19th century realist literature. The import is not the repetition of the metaphors but Orlando's ability to link the color set to the dynamics of sociological change. The essays in this collection on the whole avoid dogmatism. Few of the writers argue from an absolutist platform. Even adherents of the structuralist notion of deep structures appreciate the value of less theoretical interpretive readings. What emerges in this collection is the sense that theory that demands an either/or response serves as a barrier to the understanding of the richness of the literary enterprise. What I've said about the vigor of literary criticism applies to cultural studies in general. By and large postmodernism has neither hobbled nor paralyzed the study of mind, culture and self. Nonetheless, postmodern 'suspicion' offers a healthy antidote to uncritical acceptance of contemporary certainties and truths. The history of modernity is replete with examples of 'innocent' truths that wreaked havoc on European society. Without counselling a 'dark age' it behooves us to bear in mind Martin Buber's wise reminder that the 'well ordered world isn't necessarily the world order'.) Bernard Zelechow York University (Toronto)
Volume 21, No. 2, March, 1995
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Reviews NOTE
1. Frank E. Manel, The Broken Staff: Judaism through Christian Eyes (Cambridge: Harvard University press, 1992). A separate review of this book will appear in History of European Ideas.
History of European Ideas
History of European Ideas, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 271-280, 1995 0191-6599 (94) 00128-6
Copyright © 1995 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0191-6599/95 $9.50 + 00
THE RAGE FOR ORDER: SOME NEW BOOKS ON MIND, LANGUAGE, SCIENCE AND CULTURE BERNARD ZELECHOW*
Neo-Baroque: A Sign of the Times, Omar Calabrese (Princeton University Press, 1992), 227 pp. $15.00 cloth.
Crossroads Between Culture and Mind: Continuities and Change in Theories of Human Nature, Gustav Jahoda (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 221 pp., $29.95 cloth. The Languages of Paradise, Maurice Olender (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 193 pp. The Return of Thematic Criticism, ed. Werner Sollors (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 321 pp., $34.50 cloth, $15.95 paper. The flight from the chaotic flux of existence is a defining norm of culture. All cultures classify and organize all relevant aspects of life. Western culture displays what Wallace Stevens called a rage for order. It shows a persistent fascination with classificatory and taxonomical potential for order. The Western mind fastens especially on the need to provide uniformity and the illusion of universal identity. From the dream of the Tower of Babel to Chomsky's version of linguistics as transformative universal grammar, uniform typologies dominate the shape of Western thinking. Nietzsche railed against the erroneous European commitment to the illusory logic of identity which associated disparate things as the same, classified falsely, homogenized causation and invented typologies that distort the flux of existence. Even he began his career with a classifying typological work Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music. Nietzsche, the philologist manque, rejected this early work but its existence reminds us that he is the heir to a long tradition of inquiry concerning the origins of language, thought and cultural configuration. This essay explores some recent attempts to organize either historically or scientifically contemporary understanding of mind, culture and language, The most recent example of the rage for order is Omar Calabrese's NeoBaroque: Signs of the Times. Calabrese's scientific project, if not a contradiction in terms, is, at least, paradoxical. Despite the nominalism engendered by deconstructionism, he seeks the order of postmodern and modernist culture. His project is the illumination of the form of the formlessness. Calabrese espouses a two-prong procedure, the historical and the genetic methods. However, his *29 Admiral Road, Toronto, Canada, M5R 2L4
271
272
Reviews
preference for the genetic style is clear from the beginning of his argument. He pays scant attention to the historical element of his investigation. Calabrese's work suits the reader with an ordering temper. His classificatory systems are multifaceted justification for his typologies. He asserts that there are two basic forms of cultural organization, the classical and the baroque. These two modes, on the genetic level, are akin to Nietzsche's distinction between the Apollinian and the Dionysian. The classical and the baroque as types are diametric opposites. Essentially, the classical style manifests a totalizing order and the baroque expresses fragmentation and chaos. However, Calabrese states that on the historical level both patterns are always present even if unequally. For Calabrese postmodern culture is historically analogous to the seventeenth century baroque. He supports this assertion by claiming that both periods formally express pervasive fragmented, excessive, repetitive cultural patterns. This cultural signature is present in philosophy, science, the products of high and low culture and potentially in every expression of human activity. Calabrese amasses an impressive array of binary types to defend his thesis. The typologies range from limit and excess, part and whole, to complexity and dissipation. He uses etymological arguments effectively to explicate the binary differences. From the outset the reader is aware that the binary opposites are, for Calabrese, more than heuristic devices to probe cultural phenomena. They inhere in distinct cultural products. The insistence that the typologies are more than constructed models raises significant problems. First, at least one baroque binary set works just as well for classical music as for Calabrese's baroque examples. This is especially true of his discussion of the baroque quality of rhythm and repetition. Sonata form with its totalizing goals builds tension with precisely the kind of repetition and surprise Calabrese identifies with baroque phenomena. Perhaps, the binaries should be employed less inclusively. But such a shift will not meliorate an associated methodological problem. How, beyond the sophisticated etymological argument, does one derive the various typological forms? The question arises explicitly because Calabrese stakes his argument on sound methodological principles. Therein lies the crux of the problem. Calabrese employs implicitly the inverse inductive method similar to nineteenth century experimental positivism. For social and historical phenomena the investigator searches for similarities in diverse cultural products. The uniformities are then abstracted and generalized into a hypothetical/real model. In turn the construct is applied again to similar phenomena. In other words the method is completely circular. The value of the method depends on the elasticity of the circle and the recognition that the phenomena are always greater than its denoted classification. Ironically, Calabrese recognizes indirectly this dilemma in one of his most successful classifications. That is, the chapter devoted to the classical in contemporary film. Despite the methodological quandary Calabrese's discussion of the classical is provocative and convincing. First, he acknowledges that the form is less clear cut than he had previously argued. Calabrese recognizes that slavish repetition of historical examples distort the meaning of the classical. Instead, he defines the classical as a creative renewal and repetition of a traditional form. What is particular
History of European Ideas
Reviews
273
fascinating is his choice of what represents classical forms in postmodern culture. Playfully Calabrese shows how Rambo of film represents the classical hero while the 1950s cinema Hercules is an empty circus model of the type. Rambo expresses an idealizing aspect of classicism while the Maciste who played Hercules 'is a farmyard turkey'. Calabrese works hard to demonstrate that the 20th century is culturally one of fragmentation. The same conclusions can be reached through traditional methods of the history of ideas. What Calabrese presents is a social scientific exposition of the crisis of European culture at the turn of the twentieth century and its aftermath. His approach typifies most social science. It devalues the historical. The psychologist Gustav Jahoda in Crossroads Between Culture and Mind: Continuities and Change in Human Nature redresses the balance. In his introduction Jahoda apologizes for writing yet another history of psychology. But, his warrant is that his history will be untraditional. Jahoda means to broaden the context for understanding how contemporary psychology evolved. In so far as it is possible to minimize or correct the teleological bias in all historical writing Jahoda does so. He illuminates how ideas about the human psyche fit within historical cultural forms. Jahoda makes the human psyche the specific theme in a schematic general history of ideas. The utility of Jahoda's approach is the light it shines on psychology before the nineteenth century institutionalization of academic disciplines. Therefore, this approach minimizes the distortions created by the retrospective self-justification practiced by every academic discipline. Jahoda does an admirable job in tracing and summarizing the psychological ideas of the Enlightenment in a few short pages. He begins by describing the historical meaning of the word 'culture' from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century. At first the term applied normatively to attributes of the educated person. Then its meaning expanded to embrace all products of human activity. Jahoda's elegant analysis continues through his discussion of the diverse threads of nineteenth century ideas about the human psyche and mind. However, he is less successful in summarizing the developments in the field as he enters the twentieth century. The discussion of Wundt and Dilthey lacks the crispness of the earlier sections. Possibly, the historically and psychologically significant contours of the field have yet to be discemed. Jahoda delineates the clash of ideas dividing the adherents of the empirical and experimental orientation against the idealistic approach of the humanist philosophical theoreticians. Nonetheless, his even handed analysis plainly exhibits his sympathy for the achievements of the 'hard' scientific approach. But paradoxically, as the narrative unfolds Jahoda remedy's the apparent bias. He reveals that his motivation for writing this book is to make the discipline more aware of the valuable contribution made by the humanistically oriented theorists of mind. Jahoda would be gratified to see the publication of Arnold Modell's The Private Self. This extraordinary book meets all the criteria Jahoda sets out for psychology at the end of the twentieth century. Modell embraces both the concepts of mind and psyche. His work is truly interdisciplinary. It encompasses Volume 21, No. 2, March. 1995
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the results of the humanistic tradition and experimental science. Despite his biological orientation Modell takes positive account of the writings of William James, Charles Taylor, Emanuel Levinas, Susanne Langer, and Mikhail Bakhtin, among a host of literary figures, philosophers, and psychoanalysts. His rationale is that the traditional psychoanalytic paradigm has frayed badly. Arnold Modell is a psychoanalyst who wishes to alter radically the present orientation of the field. He wants to return to earlier, mostly discarded presuppositions, and to ground psychoanalysis in the new field of evolutionary biology. His programme calls for a return to Freud's early hope that somatic phenomena would eventually be located in physiology and neurology, Modell argues that Gerald Edelman's evolutionary biology with its doubled nervous system provides a good basis for such a reorientation. Unlike many writers, particularly those who fancy themselves scientific, Modell forthrightly announces that his work is about paradox. He cautions those readers temperamentally allergic to paradox that this is not a book for them. His warning is not a gratuitous disclaimer for sloppy thinking or an incomplete thesis. Modell argues forcefully that paradox is at the center of all thought about the human mind, The problem is inherent in the subject matter. According to Modell, there are two ways of envisioning the human mind and its processes; one, as a somatic structure and two, an account of temporal change, human consciousness. The first provides a satisfactory paradigm for the unity and identity of the psyche. Furthermore, it seems to provide a more amenable model to the scientific canon a third person objective report of the human mind. This model serves as the basis of ego psychology. However, the structural version cannot describe the facts of temporality and the data of consciousness. Moreover, it inadvertently minimizes and devalues human autonomy. The second paradigm, mind, accounts for the data of consciousness, volition, the sense of temporality, and the subjective sense of self. But it lacks the means and substantiality to ground the continuity of identity. Philosophically, Modell's title made this reader initially apprehensive. Can his title mean private as opposed to personal? Does he intend to present a book about the literally inaccessible? The answer is, yes. That is, if the yes refers to the grounds of what is accessible (manifested) about the self. Modell has chosen his title with care. He wants to demonstrate that the human psyche sense of self that owes little to social determinants. He poses this hypothesis paradoxically. He grants that the private self generates its independence only out of a nurturing social dependency (relationship). He cites experiential data to support this position. Modell takes social determinism and intersubjectivity of human encounters into his account of the autonomous self. But he feels that contemporary psychoanalytic thinking underestimates or dismisses the powers of the vital private self. The reasons for the relative disregard of the private self are obvious. There is no direct knowledge of such an entity, somatically or any other way. Modell is aware of this. He believes the problem is overcome by the psychoanalytic appropriation of Gerald Edelman's evolutionary biological theories. According to Modell, Edelman argues that two nervous system evolved in the higher species that function differently. The first, responds to 'real' time and is geneti-
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cally 'hard wired'. The second, a system found only in the most complexly organized organisms, recategorizes the stimulus of 'real time' into memory that makes possible the generation of value laden temporal distinctions. This is, a nervous system that transmutes 'real' time into a memory encompassing past, present and future. Edelman, according to ModeU, argues that this historical memory system is relatively less genetically determined, more uniquely individual and capable of autonomous value making (judgment) in its retranscription of 'real' time. His ideas hark back to humanistic 'speculation' about mind; that is to Nietzsche's conception of the unique possibilities of individual thinking prior to language and to Buber's notion of distance and relation. For Buber animals are restricted to the distancing capabilities necessary for a sphere of activity. For humans the capacity to be able to relate makes for a world. For Buber, the unique aspect of worldmaking is the temporal dimensionality of recategorizing time into history. Given Modell's admission that his work embraces paradox, there are no surprises in his balanced assessment of the social theories of self and the biological grounding of the private self. The strength of Modell's position is that it provides a theoretic foundation for understanding individual difference. It locates a 'volitional' and purposeful human centre (a biological value laden nervous system). Modell's formulation is dialectical and subtle. He shows that exclusive social theories of the self fail to account for the diverse human responses to similar social conditions. But, he accepts simultaneously the importance of socialization of the development of persons. Moreover, he is amenable to the cultural diversity of self-expression. He sees no contradiction in the generation of an autonomous self and determined social expression. Lastly, his work transcends the trap of the privacy concept. Modell's formulation carefully emphasizes that the nervous system is not the self, nor is it consciousness. It is the biological system that provides the possibility for the recatagorizition of 'real' time into memory. Modell's work is provocative and stimulating. Through evolutionary biology, history becomes the central category of the possibility of personhood. This notion raises a curious questions: If memory and the recatorization of time are biologically determined, why does the concept of historicity/eternity arise only in biblical culture? Is it the absence of a metaphoric equivalent of the second nervous system that daunts even the greatest pagan historians when it comes to the puzzle of the memory of past--present--and future? The so named father of history, Thucydides, failed utterly to unravel the idea of recategorization. Finally, although Modell cannot be expected to do everything there is an eccentric lack in his exposition. He makes little attempt to show how Edelman arrives at and supports his fruitful evolutionary notions. Unless the reader is up on the literature in biology the hypothesis grounding this book must be presupposed but not assumed to be demonstrated. For the common reader, without confirmation Modell's thesis remains an interesting model of psychoanalysis. But without further evidence he fails to convince the reader that a reorienting of the discipline along psychobiological lines has been accomplished. Unlike Jahoda, Modell restricts his discussion mostly to twentieth century thinkers. He thereby avoids the thorny problems embedded in nineteenth cenVolume 21, No. 2, March, 1995
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tury theories of mind and human nature. Those theories encompass race, biology, and imperialism. While Jahoda shows how dangerous so many of these themes can become he cautions against reading the horrors of twentieth century racialism back into an earlier age. Although Maurice Olender does not address Jahoda directly or specifically his work redresses Jahoda's cautionary words. In his The Languages of Paradise:Race Religion and Philology in the Nineteenth Century Olender traces the way in which ideas about linguistic science intersect with the worst features of twentieth century racism and genocide. But race and genocide are not Olender's exclusive preoccupation. He analyzes and amplifies the genealogy of linguistic study beginning with the pioneering work of Pere Simon and Benedict Spinoza. The Language of Paradise bears on the whole study of mind, culture, and science. Olender's work is examplary scholarship in the history of ideas. While he is a professional philologist his project goes far beyond recording the progress of the propositional truths of the discipline. He, like Jahoda, is interested in explicating the context and cultural meaning of philological research. Olender's goal is particularly significant because philology wraps itself in the mantle of scientific objectivity. The claims of scientific status serves as a smoke screen implicitly suppressing the discipline's somewhat sordid history. Olender traces the discipline's obsession with the theme of the genealogy of language. At the end of the twentieth century the search for the Ur language appears innocent if not quaint. However, Olender demonstrates elegantly and empathetically the way in which this philological theme confronted a central issue of modernity-secularism. Whether thinkers were in favor of the secular or frightened by its implications, its presence colored the agenda of the various academic disciplines in the nineteenth century. The problem was the future status of privileged Christianity. This issue provided the discipline's subtext. How could philological and received religious truth be reconciled? The major protagonists in the history of linguistics conceived of their discipline in secular terms. They explicitly hoped to study language groupings comparatively and without privileging any single grouping. However, the question was already a loaded issue. Ostensibly the philologists were interested in discovering the language of paradise. Traditionally, Christians, whatever they thought about Judaism, following St. Augustine assumed that Adam and Eve spoke Hebrew. Theologically and scientifically the question and the answer are equally absurd. The question is sensible only if linguistic determinism is presupposed. Not only did the discipline's pioneers Herder, Renan, and Muller assume determinism, they elaborate its meaning. Language shaped thought, it determined psychological characteristics, it made culture, and most importantly it conceptualized the nature of the deity. Linguistics shared with other intellectual spheres evolutionary, progressive, and genealogical hypotheses. These presupposition created a seemingly irreconcilable contradiction. Since Judaism was considered a dead religion and Jews, fossils, how could progressive Europeans have their origin in a decadent religion? How could Jesus emerge in so tainted a soil. Sanskrit, the Ur language of the Indo-European cultures came to the rescue. Although semites provided
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the kernel of monotheism, semitic languages were incapable of dynamic development. Semite civilization exemplified stunted development. On the other hand, Sanskrit, was a language that epitomized dynamism, thought, abstraction and finally science. While Herder, Muller and Renan allowed a place for Semite monotheism they privileged Sanskrit. By the beginning of the twentieth century the liberal theologian Harnack no longer saw any necessity of so doing. Theology now took its cue from racialist science. Hamack argues in The Essence of Christianity that Judaism and Christianity virtually lack a common background. They are different in kind. Olender narrates these developments from the perspective of the late twentieth century. However, his work is more than a simple teleological account of the paternity of nazi ideology. He demonstrates clearly that race as understood in nineteenth century terms is polymorphous and ambiguous. He also shows how unintentionally Renan and Muller provide the critical weapons to undermine their positions. Both argue for a linguistic science that nullifies the privileging of any language or culture. They argue in favor of universal tolerance and equality. However, they do not live up to their stated canons. In the final analysis Renan and Muller understand Christianity, albeit, a non-dogmatic version, to be the repository of universal culture. There is an irony in the nineteenth century philologists' inability to forgo privileging Christianity. It was to take the great French linguist Saussure and the Jewish Arabist Ignaz Goldziher to demystify the discipline. Even more ironic Saussure and Goldziher take us back to the beginning of Olender's story, philology's origins. Their works resonate with the secularism of Spinoza and the recognition of Pere Simon that Judaism was a living autonomous vital religion. Pere Simon was unique amongst 17th century Christian Hebraists in his recognition of the autonomous vigor of Judaism. However, his judgement appears less eccentric and anomalous against the backdrop of Christian Hebraic scholarship in the 17th century. Frank Manuel in The Broken Staff." The Christian Use Of Judaism ~ sheds light on this intellectual current. Whether Judaiaphobic or Philosemetic in its response Christian religious scholarship was deeply imbued with an understanding of Rabbinic Judaism in the seventeenth century. Christian scholars such as Jean Bodin, John Locke and Harrington made use of talmudic and rabbinic understanding of the Jewish Commonwealth and halachah to understand contemporary political issues. Even Milton was influenced by aspects of the rabbinic interpretation of biblical texts. The mood changes in the Enlightenment. This sets the tone for Olender's theme. Olender understands nineteenth century linguistic explorations as a drama between siblings, The older child, with a language without vowels, is denied speech, sacrificed by the sibling with the language of excessive surpluses on the alter of universal revelation. The philologists envisioned a hopeful future. Instead, the twentieth century bears witness to universal tragedy. Olender concludes the text with the transfiguration of the linguistic drama into the Wagnerian Aryan Gotterdammerung. The recent publications discussed above show little influence of postmodern criticism. This is not the case when the study of mind and culture is engaged by literary thinkers. Literary faculties in North America have been unusually Volume 21, No. 2, March, 1995
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open to European ideas. American 'New Criticism' was succeeded by Russian formalism, French Structuralism and Deconstructionism. Equally, potent theoretical models have been provided by Freudianism and Lacanian analysts. Recently gender theory, feminism, and the 'new' historicism have entered the fray. Walter Sollors in his introductory essay to his anthology The Return of Thematic Criticism adds a new dimension to the battle of the theories. As the title suggests, Sollors argues that after decades of decline themology has made modest inroads in the literary world. His introductory essay is followed by his collection of definitions of the term 'theme' beginning with the Greeks and concluding with modems such as Benedetto Croce. Sollors remains silent about the myriad definitions of typologies that he offers. He offers no comment on the diverse response to the value of themology for the literary enterprise. The relativity of judgements indicates that the literary community is seriously divided over the nature and function of the discipline. The anthology reflects this diversity. Therefore, it comes as no surprise to read in this anthology a diverse set of essays on a field loosely defined as thematic. The essays range from the defense of extreme nominalism to exclusive analyses of archetypes. This diversity reflects intellectual vigor as well as theoretical weakness. The authors are in general agreement that thematic studies cannot merely supplant other theoretical models. Universally they argue for a synthesis between what has come before and the potential value of a new investigation into thematics. The ecumenism of the writers however doesn't overcome some major problems in reconciling the disparate literary concerns dominating literary criticism. To be sure agreement is attainable when the definition of theme is diffuse. All the writers agree (and I cannot imagine a reader disagreeing) that thematics implies that literature is about something, that literature has a content and is referential. This denotation reverberates with the wounds inflicted on themology by formalism. The irony however is that themology claims that its function is much like formalism's. That is, it studies constant elements. The critique of thematics is much like the argument against formalism. Both value abstraction at the expense of the rich experience gained by close concrete reading of texts. This predicament is universally acknowledged but resolution eludes the contributors. The most insightful essay addressing this issue is Claude Bremond's 'Concept and Theme'. By arguing that literary study is a process Bremond breaks through the inherent problem of abstraction and nominalism in theoretical discussions. He shows how both conceptualization and close reading go hand in hand. More importantly he argues effectively that within a successful research project the concept and theme negate one another. His theory further accounts for the diversity within a thematic whole understood as a historical cultural unit. Sollors divides the essays into several categories--general, thematic practice, case studies and 'short takes'. By far the most interesting studies are the ones devoted to thematic practice and case studies. Within the thematic practice category David Perkin's 'Literary Histories and the Themes of Literature', and Thomas Pavel's 'Thematics and Historical Evidence' stand out. Pavel takes on the issue of the new historicism with its commitments to new thematics centered around gender and gay studies. While not disputing that works have several 'voices' and lend themselves to differing interpretations he strongly
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(and uncritically) defends authorial intentionality. Therefore, for Pavel a decentered reading, even when justified by the text, is less viable than what he deems to be the author's intentional communication. Pavel's essay centers on Stephen Greenblatt's revisionist readings of sexuality in Shakespeare. In addition to his dislike of decentered reading Pavel more thoughtfully raises the question of the contemporary inclination to anachronistically overdetermine factors in reading. But his critique depends on the historical validity of Greenblatt's reading. It is unclear whether he disapproves of Greenblatt's search for historical confirmation or he finds the evidence wanting. The latter provides the stronger argument. Perkins examines the reasons why literary historians have made little use of themes in organizing their material. The emphasis falls on the need for the historian to explain the literary series in context. Biography and social and economic conditions play a primary role in historical explanation. Nonetheless Perkins goes on to show the advantages of building literary history on thematic models. The lack of context can highlight the way themes interact with the extraliterary conditions. He names Peter Burger and Leo Marx as successful practitioners of thematic history. The inherent problem for the historian is the bias toward repetition in thematic studies. However, Perkins argues, not entirely convincingly, that repetition is 'undertheorized' in thematic histories. The various case studies, particularly the two excellent essays by Franco Orlando and Theodore Ziolkowski, exemplify why repetition is 'undertheorized'. What makes Ziolkowski's study of Wagner's Parsifal fascinating is not the link to the traditional Parsifal themes but to Wagner's divergence from the received material and his peculiar synthesis grounded in his personal eccentricities and his intellectual biography. Similarly, Orlando gives innumerable examples of the repetition of a set of colors in 19th century realist literature. The import is not the repetition of the metaphors but Orlando's ability to link the color set to the dynamics of sociological change. The essays in this collection on the whole avoid dogmatism. Few of the writers argue from an absolutist platform. Even adherents of the structuralist notion of deep structures appreciate the value of less theoretical interpretive readings. What emerges in this collection is the sense that theory that demands an either/or response serves as a barrier to the understanding of the richness of the literary enterprise. What I've said about the vigor of literary criticism applies to cultural studies in general. By and large postmodernism has neither hobbled nor paralyzed the study of mind, culture and self. Nonetheless, postmodern 'suspicion' offers a healthy antidote to uncritical acceptance of contemporary certainties and truths. The history of modernity is replete with examples of 'innocent' truths that wreaked havoc on European society. Without counselling a 'dark age' it behooves us to bear in mind Martin Buber's wise reminder that the 'well ordered world isn't necessarily the world order'.) Bernard Zelechow York University (Toronto)
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1. Frank E. Manel, The Broken Staff: Judaism through Christian Eyes (Cambridge: Harvard University press, 1992). A separate review of this book will appear in History of European Ideas.
History of European Ideas