Re: New US book on Ernst Juenger

[Gary Kern <gkern@alumni.princeton.edu>]

Bertil Häggman wrote:
> 
> Listmembers,
> 
> In September this year The University of California Press published a new book on Juenger. Already the title makes me suspicious: _A Dubious Past - Ernst Juenger and the Politics of Literature after Nazism_ .
> The author, Elliot Y. Neaman is a history professor at the University of Sand Francisco.
> 
> UCP claims that Neaman has made impressive investigations of published and unpublished material, including letters, interviews, and other media. The author is addressing, so the publishers, central questions of German intellectual life.
> 
> See address
> 
> www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/8310.html
> 
> Here we go again.
> 
> Best EJ-greetings
> 
> Bertil Haggman
> 
**********************
The key phrase in the advertisement, I think, is this:

"A Dubious Past reconceptualizes intellectual fascism as a sophisticated
critique of liberal humanism and Marxism, one that should be seen as
coherent and--for a surprising number of contemporary intellectuals--all
too attractive."

Note the clever juxtaposition of "liberal humanism and Marxism," as if
the two are somehow equivalent.  It allows the author, undoubtedbly a
high priest of political correctness, to wage war on the "fascists"
(i.e. everyone he does not like), to defend the radical university
(i.e., the institution that supported the Soviet experiment from start
to finish) and to advance "liberal humanism" (i.e., the author's
politics).  All this is evident before reading the book, which, alas,
the requirements of scholarship will force us to do.

GK