Reviews Amerikastudien / American Studies 59.1 Hannes Bergthaller

Reviews ★ Amerikastudien / American Studies 59.1 Hannes Bergthaller and Carsten Schinko , perspective on systems theory. In the pres - eds., Addressing Modernity: Social Systems ent, they argue, American Studies converges Theory and U.S. Cultures (Amsterdam: with Luhmannian thought in its thorough Rodopi, 2011), 372 pp. dismissal of the nation state as the primary conceptual bracket of social evolution. The Niklas Luhmann’s standing in American oft-proclaimed transnational turn would thus academic circles over the past decades in many have cleared the table for a more theoreti - ways suffered from bad timing. The heyday of cally rigorous (instead of merely political and American cybernetics, which lasted from the normative) description of American cultural New York Macy Conferences in the late 1940s evolution. In this endeavor, the nation must and early 1950s at least into the 1960s, saw cede its place at the helm of the discipline and systemic thinking rise to prominence across instead resurface among its objects of obser- a wide spectrum of disciplines, including vation. The social semantics surrounding the mathematics, information theory, physiology, American nation as an imagined community and psychology. Through the writings of Nor - would therefore constitute “a regional adapta- bert Wiener, Luhmann’s intellectual forebear tion to the new structural conditions produced Talcott Parsons became invested in applying by the functional differentiation of an incipi- cybernetic tenets to sociology. Having attend- ent world society” (19). ed Parsons’s lectures at Harvard in 1960/61, The book contains four thematic sections, Luhmann took until 1984 to complete Soziale the rst of which (“Literary Observations”) Systeme , his (self-proclaimed) leap forward showcases the deep investment of the volume from both Parsonian social theory and rst- in literary studies. Martin Klepper’s open - wave cybernetics. At this time, the cybernetic ing essay on Henry James and William Dean moment in American academia had all but Howells functions as an excellent portal to the passed, leaving Luhmann’s growing oeuvre individual chapters. Reecting on late nine- out in the cold on this side of the Atlantic. teenth-century realism, Klepper succinctly Meanwhile, debates in American Studies traces how American literature developed a became mired in the trenches of the culture communicational sphere of autonomy through wars, with theoretical impulses streaming in its turn from the representation of the real to through the transatlantic channels of post- its self-conscious observation. He correlates structuralism. A seemingly lifeless super - James’s and Howells’s poetological writings theory of society with little regard for power with Luhmann’s comments on art as a social structures, representations, or even human system. Beyond this, he parses canonical texts subjects could hardly take root in this intel- by Poe, Melville, and Hawthorne to indicate lectual climate. the discursive development of a semantics of The editors of Addressing Modernity may literary value that became feasible only after have caught a more timely moment of publica - markets and reading publics opened up a spe - tion. Among scholars of American literature cialized niche for belles lettres . While Klep- and culture, Luhmann has recently found fol - per does not undertake a radical rereading of lowers such as Bruce Clarke and Joseph Tab- established historiographies, he demonstrates bi, both of whom contributed to the volume. admirably how concepts such as operational Additionally, emergent strands of research in closure can be eshed out in literary analyses. the elds of media studies and posthuman- Christoph Reinfandt and Edgar Landgraf ism have (re-)discovered Luhmann’s writings each focus on a single text in their contribu - in their quest to resituate the human subject tions. In T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land , Rein- and its technological environment within the fandt nds the paradigmatic modernist ex- communicative structures of modern societ- ploration of literary form, specically with ies. Finally, Stanford UP (not Fordham UP, regard to what he calls “texture,” i. e., the as indicated in Addressing Modernity ) put out material presence of the literary artifact. Yet Luhmann’s magnum opus Die Gesellschaft despite his focus on just one work, Reinfandt der Gesellschaft in two volumes as Theory of presents anything but a close reading. Instead, Society in 2012/13, fteen years after its origi- his essay includes a dense theoretical model of nal publication in German. Building on these literary mediality alongside a schematic map expedient contexts, Bergthaller and Schinko of Western literary history from the Renais- use their introductory remarks to make a sance to the present. While the scope of Rein- convincing case for a distinct Americanist fandt’s model appears daunting, one feels that Amerikastudien / American Studies 59. Jg., ISSN 0340-2827 © 2014 Universitätsverlag WINTER GmbH, Heidelberg Amerikastudien / American Studies 59.1 ★ Reviews it relegates the literary work to the sidelines. lithic understanding of “U.S.-American cul- He accordingly speaks of The Waste Land ture” feels somewhat irritating (207). as a mere “example” of communicative prac- Overall, I wish to single out Bruce Clarke’s tices already determined on the theoretical excellent chapter on the Whole Earth Cata- macro-level (80). Where Reinfandt envelops logue (WEC) , “that premier document of the literary text in a theoretical frame, Land- the American counterculture of the late graf challenges this approach by describing 1960s” (260). In the WEC , Clarke nds the both Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise and ideal material metaphor for the holistic on - Luhmannian systems theory as epistemic pro- tologies and pop-philosophies of the day, grams of sensemaking. Taking off from this a printed enactment of the exuberant con - analogy, Landgraf argues that DeLillo pres - junction between Stewart Brand’s activism, ents a counter version to operational closure Buckminster Fuller’s and Gregory Bateson’s in his “focus on the nodes formed where in- cybernetic thinking, and the American back- congruent systems realities intersect and force to-the-land movement. In artifacts such as an observer to confront and negotiate their the WEC , systemic discourses performed incongruence” (88). Other chapters on litera- their very own cultural work in a more disor - ture and literary theory engage with the travel dered and popular, but no less complex form writing of Henry James (Ulrich Brinkmann), than Luhmann’s orderly prose. Essays like Thomas Pynchon’s “world-ction” Against those by Clarke, Klepper, and Staeheli—the the Day (Joseph Tabbi), and the aesthetic im- latter on 19th-century semantics of monetary port of orality for African American Studies speculation—are suggestive illustrations of (Schinko) (313). what it means to think with Luhmann, not Several of the remaining essays underscore just like him. the self-reexive pull of Luhmann’s writing, The editors naturally have to walk a tenu - as they provide meta-perspectives on systems ous line with regard to their audience, as they theory itself (Hans-Georg Moeller, Gert Ver - attempt to cater both to seasoned Luhmann schraegen, Rodrigo Jokisch) or on the eld of readers and to relative newcomers. As a re - American Studies (Michael Boyden, Andrew sult, Bergthaller and Schinko have allowed McMurry). The companion pieces by Boyden their contributors to paraphrase systems and McMurry continue recent debates about theoretical tenets at length. Between the in- the evolution of American Studies and pro- dividual chapters, some repetitions and re- vide suggestive readings of the discursive dy- dundancies accumulate, so that one begins to namics that propel paradigm shifts and polit- wish for a bit less ‘social systems theory’ and ical reversals within the eld. Pondering the for more extended engagement with ‘U.S. unlikely rise of Arnold Schwarzenegger to Cultures.’ The volume also exposes that the governorship in California, Moeller’s essay fusion of macro-social theory with common teases out the explicatory potential behind practices of close reading constitutes a dis- Luhmann’s often misinterpreted notions of tinct methodological challenge. In several structural coupling and operational closure. instances, there seems to be a logical or his- Moeller’s talent to explicate Luhmann and torical disconnection between readings of an produce lively accounts of systems theory individual artifact and the abrupt transfer to (without trivializing it) is on full display here, the hovering strata of society or literature. as it is in his elegant and accessible recent In general, however, Addressing Modernity monograph Radical Luhmann .1 Jokisch then delivers ample proof that systems theory is a tackles the very broad question: “Why did potent but still underrated contender in the Luhmann’s Social Systems Theory Find so theoretical repertoire of American Studies. Little Resonance in the US?” Jokisch con- The editors have initiated a transatlantic dia - ducts a hasty tour-de-force through extended logue among Americanists that promises to soundbites from transatlantic thinkers and open up fertile ground for further reection statesmen in an attempt to outline ideal na - and discussion. tional types. Within the volume’s nuanced conceptional frame, Jokisch’s crude, mono- Berlin Alexander Starre 1 Hans-Georg Moeller, Radical Luh- mann (New York: Columbia UP, 2012). Amerikastudien / American Studies 59. Jg., ISSN 0340-2827 © 2014 Universitätsverlag WINTER GmbH, Heidelberg.

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