Review Essay: Reading Kurt Wolff.

The article focuses on two books of Kurt H. Wolff, "O Loma! Constituting a Self (1977-1984)," and "Survival and Sociology: Vindicating the Human Subject." There are two, among many, ways to read and respond to these two recent texts by Wolff. One is to read Wolff against the backdrop of his earlier work especially the method of surrender-and-catch. At all times the reader must invoke and be enveloped by Wolff's surrender-and-catch which should be understood as "an orientation, an outlook, a Weltanschauung." In such a reading an operative thematic is phrased as 'becoming.' This expression captures not only the essential thrust of "O Loma!", but encapsulates the processes evident in "Survival and Sociology." "O Loma!" appears as a series of journal entries contextualized around the preparation of writing about Loma, a town in New Mexico where Wolff has done a series of studies. There are few notations about the physical site or interactional features of the community of Loma; instead the entries reflect an author becoming better acquainted with himself.