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Massimo Cacciari’s Posthumous People. Vienna at the Turning Point is only the second book on a Germanist subject in Stanford University Press’ “Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics” series-the majority of works in the series have been translations of French theoretical works by such writers as Blanchot, Derrida, Bourdieu, and Levinas (to name but a few). As its presentation in this series suggests, Roger Friedman’s translation of Dallo Steinhof (1980) represents something new in English-language scholarship on fin-de-siècle Vienna.
Like much work on the ever-popular yet somehow always under-studied epoch, Cacciari’s book is interdisciplinary in approach: architecture, music, literature, philosophy, art, and religion are all discussed. But Cacciari eschews the “amorphous ‘strudel’ made of waltzes, decadence ... carefree apocalypse, and theatrical destinies that in the course of the last twenty years has come to be glorified as ‘Grand Vienna’” (“Preface to the American Edition”). His approach is decidedly theoretical, transcending the analogy-based approach which defines many interdisciplinary studies to create, in addition to dialogues between particular works, a methodological dialogue, even dialogism.
Drawing primarily on Benjamin and a rather strong, even startling, reading of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, Cacciari articulates a set of problems in terms of which he can discuss a wide range of aesthetic and philosophical works. Readers offended on principle by a sentence such as “In Lulu, the domain of Trauerspiel combines itself, beyond style, with the logical space of the Tractatus” will find Cacciari’s book rough going. Those willing to brave the sometimes dizzying range and difficulty of Cacciari’s subjects will be, if not always persuaded, rewarded. This is especially so for those who feel that Berg, Hofmannsthal, and Schiele deserve to be treated with the same seriousness and sophistication as Wagner, Rilke, and Klee have been. For example, Cacciari suggests that the ways in which Heidegger misreads Trakl provide an important corrective to Benjamin’s influential definition of the modern lyric through Baudelaire.
The book’s central thesis becomes explicit in its final chapters, emerging from what might be called an Orientalist subtext. Wittgenstein is discussed in terms of Zen, Kraus’s style compared to classical Chinese. The final goal of this orientumversus is a renewed consideration of the familiar theme of Vienna’s Ostjudentum, a theme which takes on a new appearance and new dimensions in this context. Cacciari suggests that Hassidism constitutes not only a significant subtext of Viennese modernism, but something like an alternative to modernity as such. For Cacciari, the Hassidic articulation of the relationship between hermeneutics and salvation dovetails with, for example, Agamben’s work on modernity.
I would suggest that the book’s greatest appeal (which is not to say its greatest strength) lies in the scope of its ambition. While some of Cacciari’s arguments are carefully constructed (e.g., his subtle and central interpretation of the inexpressible in Wittgenstein), at times his writing has an epigrammatic and declamatory quality which can only be taken or left: “Blanchot’s writings about Jünger and De Chirico’s about Klinger are-not by accident-interchangeable” (119). But in all cases his arguments remain suggestive and original, and go a considerable way towards filling a scholarly gap. If scholarship on fin-de-siècle Vienna is not to become a victim of its own successes (Schorske, Johnston) there is surely room for bringing its cultural wealth into dialogue with “critical theory,” however defined. For a period which demands interdisciplinarity and which in many ways represents a dialogue between French and German cultural traditions, it is surprising how relatively little attention fin-de-siècle Vienna has received from what we call “theory”. In short, while Austrianists will benefit from the ambition and depth of these readings of the fin-de-siècle’s sacred cows, literary theorists will benefit from this new consideration of the incredible cultural and intellectual wealth of the Viennese Jahrhundertwende, which has yet to receive its due.
The book itself (available in both paper and cloth) is, like the rest in the series, attractively presented. There is, unfortunately, no bibliography, but those who survey the footnotes will find a wealth of Italian-language scholarship which might otherwise escape the attention of the Anglophone Germanist. This is especially the case for the work Agamben, increasingly available in English translation.