Theorist Broadens His Scope

Han Magnus Enzensberger’s sensibility may best be described as polymorphously perverse, although not quite in the sense that Freud used this phrase. In “Zig Zag,” Enzensberger’s new collection of essays--which span a 35-year-period--the German critic casts his net over an impressively wide range of subjects, from the history of an antislavery cleric in 16th century Spain to “transitional figures” like Mikhail Gorbachev to television’s triumphant emptiness. Enzensberger’s tone recalls that of the Czech writers Miroslav Holub and Milan Kundera: ironic without being cynical, unflinching without being angry, wry, unsentimental, antinostalgic, paradoxical, counterintuitive, playful and bold.

Enzensberger, whose previous English-language books include “Civil Wars: From L.A. to Bosnia,” is perhaps best known in the U.S. as a political theorist. Somewhat surprisingly, then, “Zig Zag’s” most overtly and conventionally political essays--such as “Second Thoughts on Consistency,” a polemic that blames the rise of lunatics like Pol Pot on the supposed congruence between thought and action--are not the high points of this book. (Enzensberger closes the essay in praise of “obstinacy”--which, he claims rather dubiously, is vastly superior to consistency.) His insistence that Saddam Hussein is not just your average bloodthirsty dictator but, rather, a second Hitler (“Hitler Walks Again”) is also singularly unconvincing. It is some of “Zig Zag’s” far more arcane essays--concentrating primarily on culture, economics and history--that shine.

“The Pastry Dough of Time,” for instance, is a refreshing defense of anachronism--a concept that modernists find dangerously repellent and postmodernists comfortingly cute. But to Enzensberger, anachronisms are the inevitable result of our capacity--indeed, our need--for memory, for meaning, for intellectual and historical complexity.

“We are composed of layers of time, reaching immeasurably far into the past,” he writes. “The ‘violation of the passage of time,’ a violation called an exception by the discourse of modernism, is actually the rule. The present ‘new’ only skims the thin surface layer of an opaque ocean of latent possibilities.” Thus, Enzensberger insists, “anachronism is no avoidable mistake, but a fundamental condition of human existence.” (“Pastry Dough” is charmingly illustrated by a series of equations and diagrams that this nonmathematician found totally incomprehensible, but from which other readers may well benefit.)

Is it possible to write about the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in ways that are demystifying, comprehensible, even funny? Apparently yes, for this is what Enzensberger does in “Billions of All Countries, Unite!” He argues that these fantastically powerful organizations, which presumably exist to ensure the stability of world markets and established governments, are, in fact, entirely dependent on chaos, economic anarchy and dramatic failures. Thus he quotes a “highly paid insider”: “ ‘The functions of the Fund and of the Bank, like those of the fire brigade, can only be defined negatively. . . . [W]ithout crises nobody would give a hoot about us. . . . One could say that we need catastrophes just as the secret police need terrorists.’ ”

In “The Future of Luxury,” Enzensberger traces the history of, and debate over, conspicuous consumption, noting the views of various wise men such as Montesquieu (pro) and Diderot (con). Traditionally, Enzensberger argues, there has been a symbiotic complicity between rich and poor, rulers and ruled, when it comes to flaunting wealth: “Every act of ostentatious consumption is a demonstration of power. . . . Luxurious overspending is always dependent on spectators who allow themselves to be impressed. . . . The rich and powerful were obligated, even forced, to offer the world an exorbitant spectacle at any cost, even at the price of their own ruin.”

But in our present, fanatically individualized world, even spectacle may be too dangerously collective a process for the elite; Enzensberger therefore predicts that “the luxury of the future will depend . . . not on accumulation but on avoidance. Excess will enter a new stage in which it negates itself. . . . Its privatization would be complete.” Time, space, quietude, a clean environment and physical safety will, Enzensberger predicts, be the new luxuries--although, just like the old ones, they too will be available only to the rich.

What connects the 20 essays in “Zig Zag” is Enzensberger’s refusal of conventional wisdoms, comforting homilies and orthodox certainties--be they those of capitalists or communists, modernists or postmodernists, Easterners or Westerners, artists or politicians. Enzensberger’s eclectic ideas can--indeed, must--be argued with. That’s OK, though, because Enzensberger doesn’t seem to fear conflict or contradiction but, rather, their cessation. “Anyone incapable of dialectical thinking,” he writes, “is doomed.”