Notice bibliographique
- Notice
Type(s) de contenu et mode(s) de consultation : Texte noté : sans médiation
Auteur(s) : Librett, Jeffrey S.
Titre(s) : Orientalism and the figure of the Jew [Texte imprimé] / Jeffrey S. Librett
Publication : New York : Fordham university press, 2014
Description matérielle : 1 vol. (XV-357 p.) ; 23 cm
Note(s) : Notes bibliogr. Index
"Orientalism and the Figure of the Jew proposes a new way of understanding modern
German Orientalism in particular and modern Orientalism in general. To do so, it traces
a path of modern Orientalist thought in German across crucial writings from the late
eighteenth to the mid twentieth centuries, texts by Herder, F. Schlegel, Goethe, Hegel,
Schopenhaer, Buber, Kafka, and Freud. It argues first of all that Orientalism and
anti-Judaism are inextricably entangled. It suggests, further, that we misconstrue
modern Orientalism if we see it exclusively as an expression of superior Western "material"
power. Rather, while the modern West certainly asserts "material" power in the East,
this self-assertion is overdetermined by a "spiritual" weakness of sorts: by an anxiety
about the absence of absolute foundations and values that coincides with Western modernity
itself. The book shows how the modern--here, German--West posits the Oriental "origin"
as a fetish to fill the absent place of lacking foundations. Orientalism thus has
the structure of (Freudian-Lacanian) disavowal. But a fetish always needs to be made
mine. This particular fetish--the fetish of the Eastern "origin"--is appropriated
as Western by means of the displaced, quasi-secularized application of Christian typology.
The Orient now prefigures its Occidental realization as Judaism once prefigured its
Christian fulfillment. This structure of appropriation entails, however, that the
Orient is always double, divided into an inappropriable, "bad" Orient and an appropriable,
"good" Orient, just as in Christian typology prefigural Judaism was haunted by its
irredeemably material, pagan double. This splitting of the Orient appears in the German
tradition--but not just there--especially as the Semite-Aryan couple. The book traces
variations on this theme through historicist texts of the nineteenth century, and
then shows how high modernists like Buber, Kafka, Mann, and Freud place this historicist
narrative in question. After a discussion of Orientalist dimensions in contemporary
German culture, the book concludes with the outlines of a cultural historiography
that would distance itself from the metaphysics of historicism, confronting instead
its underlying anxieties" ; "This book demonstrates the inextricable entanglement
of Orientalism and anti-Judaism in modern German letters. It shows how historicist
narratives posit the Orient as fetish in lieu of absent origins, then appropriate
this fetish by applying to the East-West relation the Christian supercessionist typology
earlier developed to construe the Jewish-Christian relation"
Sujet(s) : Orientalisme -- Allemagne -- Histoire
Juifs -- Opinion publique
Opinion publique -- Allemagne
Juifs -- Dans la littérature
Orientalisme -- Dans la littérature
Vie intellectuelle -- Allemagne
Identifiants, prix et caractéristiques : ISBN 978-0-8232-6291-5. - ISBN 0-8232-6291-X (rel.). - ISBN 978-0-8232-6292-2. - ISBN 0-8232-6292-8 (br.)
Identifiant de la notice : ark:/12148/cb438320967
Notice n° :
FRBNF43832096
(notice reprise d'un réservoir extérieur)
