Elias Canetti and Social Theory

Elias Canetti is a key thinker in the trend towards the renewal of social theory for the 21st century. He is increasingly being recognised in the social and political sciences for the seminal text, Crowds and Power (1960). While this work can sometimes be criticised for its alleged anti-historicity, anti-modernism, fixation on death, and a dark vision of humankind, Crowds and Power can, in fact, be interpreted as a study and a critique of the mono-dimensionality and the obsessiveness of power. In Canetti’s own words, it is an attempt ‘to find the weak spot of power’ and, ultimately, an invitation to recognise and explore the endless richness of human transformations. Elias Canetti and Social Theory argues that the alleged anti-modernism of Canetti actually makes him more contemporary than many contemporary social-political thinkers. It deals with key concepts within socio-political theory including: commands, increase, resistance, and commonality. Each of these ideas is connected with real, lived social realities making this book a compelling argument for Canetti's crucial relevance today.

In this commanding and demanding book, Andrea Brighenti prolongs Elias Canetti’s dark reflections on the human condition in brutal times with a wide-ranging study of the elementary forms of power, command and crowds. Canetti is only a pre-text to return to Freud, Durkheim, Tarde and Deleuze to prepare the ground for new forms of collective resistance and individual survival in the twenty-first century., This deeply original book offers a most fascinatingaccount of Elias Canetti’s relevance for contemporary social theory. Brighenti brilliantly shows that, though Canetti is widely disregarded by social theorists, this is undeserved, as his work offers a fresh perspective on power, resistance, and the social bond. A truly important intervention., This book is an original and thought-provoking interpretation of Canetti, and a significant addition to the far too scarce attempts at a theoretical reading of his work.

Andrea Mubi Brighenti is Professor of Social Theory and Space & Culture at the Department of Sociology, University of Trento, Italy. He is co-author of Animated Lands: Studies in Territoriology (2020), with Mattias Kärrholm, and author of The Ambiguous Multiplicities (2014) and Visibility in Social Theory and Social Research (2010).