The strange case of canetti's Crowds and Power — widely recognized as a key work of a major writer, but virtually ignored as a contribution to social theory — can only be explained in the context of a more general discursive blockage. There is no denying that Canetti's image of man and society is an exceptionally hermetic and idiosyncratic one, but it is in some ways comparable to other deviations from the mainstream.

The idea of a pluralistic or “multi-paradigmatic” character of modern social thought is misleading in that it obscures the underlying strength of unquestioned — and often inarticulate — notions that constitute the common ground of otherwise different interpretations, affect the understanding of historical experience, and obstruct the formulation of fundamental alternatives.