[lit-ideas] Re: Auerbach on Mimesis
- From: wokshevs@xxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:01:44 -0230
Would there be any philosophical propositions in any of the below for us to
critically consider?
Walter O.
Quoting John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>:
> 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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