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Unlike Elias Canetti’s novel, aphorisms and autobiography, his «life’s work» dit not obtain a similar fortune, nor it has been taken into serious consideration by human and social sciences. Besides analyzing the main charges against Crowds and Power, the article sheds light on its stylistic, substantive and methodological uniqueness in order to demonstrate the lasting importance of this socio-political and philosophical masterpiece of the Twentieth Century. As admitted by its author, Crowds and Power was aimed at «grabbing the twentieth century by the throat» by clarifying the historical complicity between crowds and totalitarian power in the first half of the Twentieth century. In order to achieve this goal, Canetti refused the classical categories used by the academic disciplines and adopted a multidisciplinary approach; at the same time, he renewed their vocabulary by introducing a new lexicon, able to identify the historical dynamics between the crowds and the phenomenon of power. Moreover, Canetti refused the main theoretical paradigms of collective psychology and political theory in order to highlight the plurality of the crowds, the potential autonomy of some of them and the constitutive link between power and the experience of physical and social surviving, the pathology of paranoia and the so called «prohibitions on social transformation». Unlike the negative dialectic of Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno, Canetti tried to «overcome the concept» through the images disseminated in his masterpiece, rather than by adopting further conceptual mediations. Such a theoretical attempt molds the literary style of Crowds and Power. Far from being only an aesthetic choice, such as richness of images reflects an epistemological challenge: without these images it wouldn’t be possible to understand the crowds nor the predatory gestures of power. Together with these content and stylistic choices, and other feature of this work is its lasting gestation, which allowed Canetti to put systematically into question his conclusions and to compare them with historical events of his time. All these features make the reading of Crowds and Power a real experience, able to identify current phenomena of social domination and to exhort its readers to join in critical crowds, resist and overcome nowadays manhunts.

The paper tries to highlight the potential merits of the application of so called “politics of recognition” to the context of international relations. Besides having to do with political sphere, this hypothesis concerns the theory of international relations. In the first part, the article introduces and explains the category of “epochal events” in order to describe the global challenges which Statehoods have to face in the “post-national constellation”. In a second step, the paper summarizes the main theories of international relations which have differently conceived the causes and remedies to wars. In the last part, the article will show analogies and differences between these traditional approaches and the theory of recognition applied to international relations, as recently recommended by Axel Honneth.

The article reviews the main aspects of the research led by Elias Canetti in Crowds and Power. By analyzing the meanings of the images of his life’s work” [Lebenswerk], the article tries to demonstrate the relevance of its categories for a critical diagnosis of the present. Beyond “grabbing the twentieth century by the throat” by showing the hunting dynamics between individuals, crowds and power, the categories introduced by Canetti in his most important book can be updated in order to understand the predatory relations among humans in contemporary societies. For this reason, the last part of the article will be focused on the main transformations that have occurred in the collective and individual processes of domestication in contemporary societies: the final paragraph analyzes the latest developments of the baiting and double crowds of war in western democracies together with the spreading of the “secret strategy of commands” inside and outside contemporary workplaces. Finally, the article will examine the possibility of social transformation embodied in today’s flight and prohibition crowds., Politics. Rivista di Studi Politici, Vol 6, N° 2 (2016)

Quando morì, a Zurigo, il 14 agosto 1994, Elias Canetti lasciò a lungo increduli amici e conoscenti. Il premio Nobel per la letteratura aveva infatti dedicato tutta la vita al tentativo di sconfiggere la morte attraverso il potere salvifico della scrittura. Suoi compagni, in questa missione impossibile, furono la lingua tedesca, il vizio di ascoltare le voci dei contemporanei, l’abilità nel decifrare alcuni dei fenomeni più enigmatici del Novecento con immagini capaci di “afferrare il secolo alla gola”. Tracce affascinanti di questa guerra solitaria attraversano il suo unico romanzo, i drammi teatrali, i quaderni di appunti, i saggi e quella che Canetti stesso definì l’opera della sua vita: Massa e potere. Questa Introduzione restituisce al lettore tutta la ricchezza della produzione letteraria, autobiografica, saggistica, aforistica e drammaturgica di un grande intellettuale indisciplinato.

Möglichkeiten für eine politische Auslegung von Canettis theoretischem Werk bieten drei weitere Beiträge an. Leonard Mazzone vergleicht Canettis Masse und Macht mit Blochs Prinzip Hoffnung und mit dem „Prinzip der Verzweiflung“ aus Günther Anders Antiquiertheit des Menschen und sieht Canettis „Mission“ darin: „Canetti kehrt dieses Anliegen wieder um: Alle seine Werke – vor allem Masse und Macht – behandeln ein unerforschtes Thema. Ich würde vorschlagen, es als das ,Prinzip der Möglichkeit‘ zu bezeichnen, das sich jeder positiven oder negativen Version der historischen Notwendigkeit widersetzt. […] In diesem Sinne ruft der Wille der Emanzipation ein dreidimensionales Prinzip hervor, das auf die unerforschten Möglichkeiten der Vergangenheit und der Gegenwart angewandt werden muss.“