Focus Spring 1998.tif 26 FOCUJ on Literalur Thomas, N. L. "Werther in a N ew G uise; Ulrich Plenzdor's Die Ileum Liden du jungw IV." ModlTtl Language: Jou rnal of tbe Modem Language Auotiation 57 (1976): 178-82. IVebIter'J Ninth New Co/legiate Dictionary. 1987 ed. Werth, Wolfgang. "Rebell mit positiver Halrung P knzdorfs neuer Werther." Plmzdoifs Neue Uzdtn du jungm If'. E d. Peter J. Brenner. Frankfurt a. i\t; Suhrkamp, 1982. 284-88. Wiesner, Herhert. "Zcnsiert - gefOrdcrt - verrunden - gendunigt." Die Zeniu,- de,. UUra/fir der DDR Eds. Ernest Wichner and Herbert Wiesner. Frankfurt a. 11: Suhrbmp , 1993. 7-17. Technologies of D eath In Thomas Mann's The M agic Mountain Julian Nelson D 11 Thomas lvlann's The A{agie A1olmlain, J laos Castorp confroms disease and death to transcend his morbid obsession with them. Mann himself points to the pedagogical functio!,! of death in the epi­ logue.' As Hans Castorp putS it after his near-death experience in the "Schnee" Chapter, "D er }.-fensch soll urn der Gute und Liebe willen clem Tode keine Herrschaft einraumen tiber seine Gedanken" (rv[ann 695). In Mann's view, exposure to illness and death i s a necessary route to knowledge, health, and life, echoing his Rom antic precur­ sors, who regarded the two as a vehicle o f evolution or Steigerung. Mann partakes of this tradition and employs the techn ology of the sanatorium as the apparatus which will mediate H ans Castorp's expo­ sure to It. Foregrounding death as a pedagogical tool makes sense in terms of the history behind Mann's novel, but turn-of-the-cenlury scientific discourse, as expressed by me clinic, tries to repress death through its regulation. Technology doesn't efface death in the novel, however, it only renders it more abstraC[ and disembodied. It rcally doesn't allow Castorp to transcend his morbid fasci nation, but allows him to expe­ rience death in a detached, fragmented, and aesthetisized form. Even though the mechanization of death will ac tivate his complicity as a consuming spectator, and then as a willing participant, technology also mediates brief, transcendent moments and eventually facilitates his return to the flatlands. Technology, then, is instrumental in Hans Castorp's "aesthetic education." This pointS to a viable reading of the contradictory ending of the novel, where Hans Castorp becomes a soldier on the killing fields of the Great War. Mann simates Hans Castorp in the Davos clinic to overcome death through death, a hom eopathic cure mediated by medical tech­ nology. Slavery to a death fascination, a product of repression and an Fomi an Literatur VoL 5, No.1 (1998) 28 FO&IIJ on Literatur agent of decadence, is antiLhecical [Q the spirit in which the novel appears to be written. Tht Magic iHolinfain seeks to reestablish death as the inevitable condition against which a person defines his life; it marks the boundaries of individuality, the moment when o ne tran­ scends personality and gives oneself over to the collective destiny of humankind. As an expression of the increasingly bureaucratized clinic, however, technology industrializes death. "The greater the degree of mechanization," Siegfried Giedion writes, "the further does contact with death become banished from life" (Giedion 242). From the mo­ ment of his arrival at Tnternational Sanatorium Becgbof, Hans Castorp is inundated with experiences of death: he hean; explanations of corpse transport in the winter JUS t as he hears a morbid, deathly sounding cough in the hallways. After seeing priests in black he hears the terri­ fied screams of a young girl receiving her last rites. Yet despite the overwhelming p resence of death at the sanatorium, the Berghof clinic and its technicians go to great lengths to make it disappear. By its scientific management of health, the clinic has pushed death away from human experience, exorcising it f.TOm tradition. rn le International Bergho£'s indusuialized healthcare system spares no ef­ fon to separate death from the perceptual world of the living. T he dead are disposed of quietly, so as nor to alen the other patients. After a patient dies, the room is speedily fumigated in an effort to sterilize any traces of death fo r the incoming guests, who, factory-like, are then pushed through an institutionalized and thoroughly hygienic death. In Tht NOltbookl of A-fa/It LaJlridl Briggt, Rainer Maria Rilk e also compares the sanatarium's industrialization of death to the effi­ ciency of a factOry, wherein the moribund look forward to a pro­ scribed, hygienic, and bureaucratically correct death. "Man starb darin," Rilke writes, "natlirl ich fabrikmillig . In den Sanatorien stirbr man einen von den an der Anstalt angestellten Toden; das wird gerne gesehen" (Rilke 113-14). In Sanatorium Berghof the patients barely acknowledge the empty seats duting mealtime and any talk of death is avoided. Hans Castorp has a memorable altercation with Frau Stohr who becomes incensed when H ans Castorp makes the ultimate fa ux pas of talking of a patient's death while din.ing. He exclaims to his cousin J oachim that despite the fact Ula[ death is all about them, the Berghof manage­ ment has carefully arranged everything "in order to spare us and pre- Technologies of Death 29 vent our coming into cOntact with it [death], or seeing anything at all­ -they will rake away Lhe gentleman rider while we are at breakfast or tea--and that I find immoral" (Mann 295). The mechanization of death is a rationale embodied in· social, cultural and technical processes. According to Phillipe i\rit':s, its re­ pression is the characteristic attirude toward death of modern indus­ trial societies. What was previously omnipresent becomes shameful and forbidden, all but completely replacing sex as the taboo subject (20). Walter Benjamin discusses how technological developments, spe­ cifically the sanatorium, have made it possible for people to avoid the spectacle o f death: Tn the course of the nineteenth cen.tury bourgeois society has, by means of hygien ic and social, private and public institu­ tions, realized a secondary effect which may have been its unconscious main purpose; to make it possible for people to avoid the sight of the dying. D}~ng was once a public process in the life of the individual and a most exemplary one; in the course of modern times dying has been pushed further and further out of the perceptual world of the living. (qtd. in Josipovici 54) Technology further distances death by commodifying it. The clinic grows up as a byproduct of induslrializacion, the growth of cities, the enormous increases in the comfortS of life and availability of products. The clinic, then, is available like any other commodity. Arguably, the bourgeois, for whom (his commodity is most readily available, attempts to conceal death, ac hieved in g rea t part through perpetuating a myth of immortality through consumerism. Through the endless consumption of commodities tha t will far outlive him, the bourgeois is in effect engaged in the impossible pu rsuit of per­ sonal immortality. Although unable to give his earthly being perma­ nence, he can maintain his purchases indefinitely and domestic spaces are veritable museums in which these products can be exhibited. This commodity fe tish reveals the psychology of taboo feelings underly­ ing an ostensibly conventional "cover Story" of buying; it obscures deeper, less socially acceptable levels of meaning . . Commodity fetish­ ism symbolicall}' manages the unacceptable and Lnevi table truth of 30 31 Focus on Literatur death, which is an end to the cycle of consumption. The market economy abhors death, which represents an end to the circulation of commodities. Death does not exist from the per­ spective of the commodity--that is until economic systems reinvent death itself as such. The clinic and, to a greater extent, war-time tech­ nologies promote death as an eminently profitable commodity. Great fortunes are amassed in both sectors. The clinic also makes ever new promises of immortality with the latest technological gadgets and quack surgical procedures. Death is systematically suppressed by an elabo­ rate corporate medical facility, bent on marketing itself to a growing international, leisured class. Corporation Berghof generates the patients' complicity in the consumption process; the patients become willing consumers who consent to take the cure, regardless of the cost. There are those for whom sickness is a threat, the patients, and those for whom it is an economic and cultural practice. Circulating in a world of privilege within the clinic, the patients are victims to a culrured disease. The regulation of death generates an entire economy and bureaucratic apparatus, around which a bewildering array of professionals and busi­ nesses hover. There are the enormous costs of pharmaceuticals and surgical procedures. In order to check in comfortably and stave off death in a medically approved manner, the patients must invest in a dizzying array of health commodities and accoutrements, gadgets like sleep sacks for taking up the "horizontal," thermometers, flasks for collecting sputum (termed blue Peeter), and suitable clothing. Hans Castorp is a quintessential dandy, and his inventory of accoutrements is astounding: from clothing and toiletries to accessories required to do the cure correctly. Denial of death in the sanatorium is consump­ tlon. By effectively displacing the site of death to the clinic and attempting to efface its traces, however, technology surrounds it with an aura of fascinating otherness. Death, technologically repressed, reemerges, transfigured with all the power and seduction of a taboo. AltllOugh it would appear that technology demystifies and industrial­ izes death, thus removing it from tradition and destroying any of its uniqueness (the signature of aura, according to Benjamin), it acrually reinforces this auric value. Death is ubiquitous at the clinic, but is increasingly foreign and abstract. I argue that the technologically dis- Technologies of Death tanced death is imbued with a fascinating aura of uniqueness and oth­ erness, which enthralls Hans. As the abject, death represents what human life and culture must exclude to maintain well-delineated bound­ aries, but it possesses an uncanniness that is as tempting and fascinat­ ing as it is revolting. The violence of the denial or negation of death only afftrms its presence in the end. For Hans Castorp, death has an irresistible seduction, and he begins to search everywhere for its spec­ tral traces. This is clearly evidenced when he becomes obsessed with vis­ iting the moribund and spending post mortem time with mourning families and corpses. Hans Castorp pays a visit to and entertains the moribund (more out of didactic than humanitarian grounds), and he witnesses the death of Joachim, and two suicides (peeperkorn's and Naphta's). He observes this relatively objectively and in full conscious­ ness. And yet other opportunities for Hans Castorp to attain a greater proximity to and understanding of death present themselves to him; these opportunities speak to the unconscious and afford a brief "tran­ scendental" moment, an opportUnity to exceed the boundaries of the self. But this proximity does not allow him to corne any closer to the ever elusive phenomenon of death, which is forever slipping away. Although Hans Castorp's near-death experience in the snow storm is pivotal, it is just one of his numerous encounters with death. Hans Castorp rurns to technology as a means of mediating the gap between the dead body and the ever abstract signifier; yet technological media, consisting of the cinema, the x-ray machine, scientific textbooks and the gramophone, dematerialize death, only to rematerialize it through technological representations. These are cleansed of the body's or­ ganic residue, which recreate death in ever more abstract, atomized narratives. The above mentioned technology, which I refer to as media of death, reproduces death in a sanitized and mass-produced form, freeze-framing past moments for future consumption. But it is also endowed with epiphanic potential. Friedrich IZittler maintains that "there is no difference between occult and technological media. Their truth is fatality, the field the unconscious" (229). This initially some­ what enigmatic statement seems correct when considered more closely. Preoccupation with occult practices is a method of experiencing phe­ nomena that both thrill and terrify as they indicate the possibility of 30 Focus on Literatur death, which is an end to the cycle of consumption. The market economy abhors death, which represents an end to the circulation of cornmoclities. Death does not exist from the per­ spective of the commoclity--that is until economic systems reinvent death itself as such. The clinic and, to a greater extent, war-time tech­ nologies promote death as an eminently profitable commodity Great fortunes are amassed in both sectors. The clinic also makes ever new promises of immortality with the latest technological gadgets and quack surgical procedures. Death is systematically suppressed by an elabo­ rate corporate meclical facility, bent on marketing itself to a growing international, leisured class. Corporation Berghof generates the patients' complicity in the consumption process; the patients become willing consumers who consent to take the cure, regardless of the cost. There are those for whom sickness is a threat, the patients, and those for whom it is an economic and cultural practice. Circulating in a world of privilege within the clinic, the patients are victims to a cultured disease. The regulation of death generates an entire economy and bureaucratic apparatus, around which a bewildering array of professionals and busi­ nesses hover. There are the enormous costs of pharmaceuticals and surgical procedures. In order to check in comfortably and stave off death in a meclically approved manner, the patients must invest in a dizzying array of health commoclities and accoutrements, gadgets like sleep sacks for taking up the "horizontal," thermometers, flasks for collecting sputum (termed blue Peeter), and suitable clothing. Hans Castorp is a quintessential dandy, and his inventory of accoutrements is astounding: from clothing and toiletries to accessories required to do the cure correctly. Denial of death in the sanatorium is consump­ tion. By effectively displacing the site of death to the clinic and attempting to efface its traces, however, technology surrounds it with an aura of fascinating otherness. D eath, technologically repressed, reemerges, transftgured with all the power and seduction of a taboo. AltllOugh it would appear that technology demystiftes and industrial­ izes death, thus removing it from tradition and destroying any of its uniqueness (the signature of aura, accorcling to Benjamin), it actually reinforces this auric value. Death is ubiquitous at the clinic, but is increasingly foreign and abstract. I argue that the technologically dis- Technologies of Death 31 tanced death is imbued with a fascinating aura of uniqueness and oth­ erness, which enthralls Hans. As the abject, death represents what human life and culture must exclude to maintain well-delineated bound­ aries, but it possesses an uncanniness that is as tempting and fascinat­ ing as it is revolting. The violence of the denial or negation of death only afftrms its presence in the end. For Hans Castorp, death has an irresistible seduction, and he begins to search everywhere for its spec­ tral traces. This is clearly evidenced when he becomes obsessed with vis­ iting the moribund and spending post mortem time wi h mourning families and corpses. H ans Castorp pays a visit to and entertains the moribund (more out of clidactic than humanitarian grounds), and he witnesses the death of Joachim, and two suicides (peeperkorn's and Naphta's). He observes this relatively objectively and in full conscious­ ness. And yet other opportunities for Hans Castorp to attain a greater proximity to and understanding of death present themselves to him; these opportunities speak to the unconscious and afford a brief "tran­ scendental" moment, an opportUnity to exceed the boundaries of the self. But this proximity does not allow him to come any closer to the ever elusive phenomenon of death, which is forever slipping away. Although Hans Castorp's near-death experience in the snow storm is pivotal, it is just one of his numerous encounters with death. Hans Castorp turns to technology as a means of mediating the gap between the dead body and the ever abstract signifter; yet technological media, consisting of the cinema, the x-ray machine, scientiftc textbooks and the gramophone, dematerialize death, only to rematerialize it through technological representations. These are cleansed of the body's or­ ganic residue, which recreate death in ever more abstract, atomized narratives. The above mentioned technology, which I refer to as media of death, reproduces death in a sanitized and mass-produced form, freeze-framing past moments for future consumption. But it is also endowed with epiphanic potential. Friedrich lZittler maintains that "there is no difference between occult and technological meclia. Their truth is fatality, the fteld the unconscious" (229). This initially some­ what enigmatic statement seems correct when considered more closely. Preoccupation with occult practices is a method of experiencing phe­ nomena that both thrill and terrify as they indicate the possibility of 32 33 Focus on Literatttr a realm beyond organic life, all the while underscoring mortality. The occult is concerned with supernatural or superhuman powers and their perceptible manifestations. The belief that forces exist independently of physical form or without emanating from some physical and defin­ able source, emphasizes, all the more, the body's essential temporal­ ity. Likewise, a technological reproduction, either optical or acoustic, is a death enactment in so far as it isolates and appropriates a living moment, freezes it in time, thus emphasizing the "once-and-never­ more" condition of each of the infinite number of moments that con­ stitute organic life. In preserving a present moment, which is already a past, dead moment, a technological recording (which harvests and stores physical, now disembodied, traits and emanations with "super­ human precision") provides a sort of afterlife for the extinguished moment. It is comforting to preserve this corporeal evidence of hu­ man life, and, to a degree, relive or reexperience the past through this phantom. And yet the facsimile is rather uncanny in its exactness. The image indicates an absence of physicality, an absent presence, and thus anticipates and evokes our mortality. Like Kittler, Walter Benjamin claims that the difference between magic and technology is merely one of historical variability. The "magic" of technology lies in its potential to provide the space in which opposites may come to­ gether: the death of the single moment and the persistence of the moment through technological preservation; the fleetingness of the moment and the opportunity to experience it repetitiously; ultimately, the Verschrankung of life and death itself ("J