[lit-ideas] Auerbach on Mimesis

I am sure that I've mentioned this phenomenon before. But anyway, have you
ever had the experience of looking at the books on your shelves and having
one reach out and catch your eye as if to say, "Read me"? Happened again to
me last night. The book in question is an aged Doubleday paperback edition
of Erich Auerbach's Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western
Literature. It was "Written in Instanbul between May 1942 and April 1945.
First published in Berne, Switzerland in 1946." The English translation of
the German original was published by Princeton University Press in 1953, the
Doubleday Anchor paperback in 1957. Why would it now, in 2008, more than a
half century later, reach out to me, demanding to be read?
It may have something to do with my having been asked to write a review of
Patricia Sunderland and Rita Denny's 2007 Doing Anthropology in Consumer
Research, where the issues of what is expected and permitted in certain
genres of writing loom large.

Sunderland and Denny is, in fact, an excellent book, a book of which I am
tempted to write, "A book that lives up to its billing." It is, in effect, a
series of case studies describing how two academically trained
anthropologists, acutely aware of the expectations and limitations imposed
by the conventions of their academic discipline, come to grips with the very
different expectations of work for corporate sponsors. Their disciplinary
model prescribes a year or two of fieldwork: participant observation in one
particular place, willingness to shift research focus to seize newly
discovered opportunities, the flexibility to change research design in the
face of unanticipated material circumstances, all with the goal of making
some contribution to anthropological theory. In contrast their corporate
employers demand quick results, require work in multiple sites to offset the
possibility of local bias, a firm focus on the task at hand, all with the
aim of producing actionable proposals in relation to products and brands.
Increasingly, moreover, what they want is Power Points and illustrative
imagery, both still and video; not long ruminations in academic prose. The
truly lovely thing about this book is the way in which the authors show us
their thoughts and feelings as they wrestle with these contrasts, neither
going away mad nor surrendering to corporate imperatives, searching instead
for ways to do serious anthropology while satisfying their clients.

Why, then, Auerbach?  From his opening discussion of the contrast between
Homer's account of the incident in which Odysseus' scar almost blows his
cover on his anonymous return home and the Biblical account of God's command
to Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, Auerbach is close reader of how
generic limitations affect what authors can do. The former reminds me of
corporate demands for clarity, with no detail left unaccounted for. The
latter recalls what doing fieldwork is like, hearing something for which the
source and implications remain obscure and attentive to ethical demands on
how to present and interpret it.

As for why am I bothering to write to this list? Auerbach's central thesis,
that the Western tradition is an amalgam of a classic, Greco-Roman desire
for clarity and a Judaeo-Christian focus on moral struggle in the face of
the unknowable strikes me as a theme that might become an interesting
thread.

Thoughts? Comments? Anyone?

John
-- 
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
http://www.wordworks.jp/

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