You might have noticed that I have not expanded on Elster for a while. On the back of his book, a joker is quoted saying that Elster writes "with verve". You should be grateful to me for drudging through his pedestrian writings. He's not into glamour, Jon Elster, but into understatement and ... lists: (1) anger at people who have offended us (2) anger at people who have helped us (3) enjoyment of other's envy (4), etc. Because he does not believe in a systematic sociology, with rules that work and apply and allow for precise predictions. He says that given a certain situation, some people will react with x and others will react with y, and it's not possible to estimate how many people will do x or y. He says he's like a dentist, with a box of tools. In the box of tools, there's (1) and (2) and (3). And 5 pages - written in a dreary style - after the list, , he starts refering to the list, so you (I) have to go flip over to that page as I have not memorized the (17) items in the list, to make sense of what he's trying to say. I took a break from Elster's prose to read Twyla Tharpe's memoirs - fun! she slept with Baryshnikov! - and to dive into Glissant. More about the latter soon.
