Description
Book SynopsisThis 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.
Trade Review"In this sweeping study reaching from Baruch Spinoza to Edward Said, Jeffrey Librett uncovers with superb erudition the driving force of Orientalism: the panicked disavowal of the 'crisis of foundations' in Western modernity. Librett's astute analyses of transcendental-historicist texts from Herder to Schopenhauer are followed by fresh interpretations of critical modernist responses by Kafka and Freud. A groundbreaking critique of Said's critique of Freud and a keen analysis of the vicissitudes of contemporary German Orientalism complement this 'anamnestic journey.' The 19th century historicist appropriation of typology is shown to culminate disastrously in the Semitic/Aryan split, only to be shadowed by the split between the 'good' and the 'bad Semite' - an antagonism that haunts international politics in ruinous ways to this day. Librett's study is of great relevance for scholars of German philosophy and culture, Middle-Eastern Studies, Religious Studies and Psychoanalysis, and for any scholar concerned about the conflict in the Middle-East." -- -Elisabeth Weber University of California, Santa Barbara "This magisterially researched and probingly argued study opens a completely new and potentially groundbreaking perspective on Orientalism. In impeccably executed detail, it demonstrates that what has long been seen as a binary opposition between East and West has in fact relied since its inception on a triangular dynamic between three shifting poles: not simply Occident vs. Orient, but the Occident, the Orient, and the Jew. Orientalism and the Figure of the Jew will be of interest to a wide range of scholars." -- -David Martyn Macalester College
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: Orientalism as Typology, or How to Disavow the Modern Abyss 1 Part I. Historicist Orientalism: Transcendental Historiography from Johann Gottfried Herder to Arthur Schopenhauer 1. Ordering Chaos: The Orient in J. G. Herder's Teleological Historicism 2. Figuralizing the Oriental, Literalizing the Jew: From Letter to Spirit in Friedrich Schlegel's On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians 3. Goethe's Orientalizing Moment (I): "Notes and Treatises for the Better Understanding of the West-East Divan" 4. Goethe's Orientalizing Moment (II): The Poetry of the West-East Divan Excursus: Jussuph and the Question of Anti-Semitism in Goethe 5. Thresholds of History: India and the Limits of Europe in Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of History Excursus: The History of Panic-Angst und Notgeschrei 6. Taking Up Groundlessness, Fulfilling Fulfillment: Schopenhauer's Orientalist Metaphysics between Indians and Jews Part II. How Not to Appropriate Orientalist Typology: Some Modernist Responses to Historicism 7. Dialectical Development or Partial Construction? Martin Buber and Franz Kafka Excursus on a Brief Excursus-Concerning Babel 8. The Dreamwork of History: Orientalism and Originary Disfiguration in Freud's Moses and Monotheism Excursus: Edward Said and the Identity of the Different, or Freud in Palestine Conclusion: For an Abstract Historiography of the Nonexistent Present Notes Index
