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Ο Φρόυντ και οι μη Ευρωπαίοι
Ο Έντουαρντ Σαΐντ έπρεπε να δώσει τη διάλεξη στη μνήμη του Φρόυντ για το έτος 2001 στο Ινστιτούτο Φρόυντ της Βιέννης, στο πλαίσιο του εορτασμού των 100 χρόνων από την έκδοση της "Ερμηνείας των ονείρων", αλλά η διάλεξη ματαιώθηκε με πρόσχημα "την πολιτική σύγκρουση στη Μέση Ανατολή" και την παλαιστινιακή ταυτότητα του Σαΐντ. Φιλοξενήθηκε τον Δεκέμβριο του ίδιου χρόνου στο Μουσείο Φρόυντ του Λονδίνου. Χρησιμοποιώντας ένα ευρύτατο φάσμα υλικού από τη λογοτεχνία, την αρχαιολογία και την κοινωνική θεωρία, το δοκίμιο του Έντουαρντ Σαΐντ είναι μια εξερεύνηση στις βαθύτατες συνέπειες που έχει σήμερα για την πολιτική στη Μέση Ανατολή το βιβλίο του Φρόυντ "Ο Μωυσής και ο μονοθεϊσμός". Αποδεικνύοντας το σταθερό του ενδιαφέρον για το έργο του Φρόυντ και την επιρροή που ασκεί στο δικό του, ο Έντουαρντ Σαΐντ προτείνει ότι η υπόθεση του Φρόυντ πως ο Μωυσής ήταν Αιγύπτιος υπονομεύει κάθε απλοϊκή αποδοχή μιας "καθαρής" ταυτότητας και ακόμα παραπέρα ότι δεν μπορούμε να σκεφτούμε την ίδια την ταυτότητα και να την επεξεργαστούμε χωρίς την αναγνώριση των εγγενών της ορίων. Ο Σαΐντ υπονοεί ότι ένα τέτοιο αξεδιάλυτο, με αποχρώσεις, νόημα της ταυτότητας θα μπορούσε να ενσωματωθεί στην πολιτική πραγματικότητα, να αποτελέσει τη βάση μιας νέας αλληλοκατανόησης μεταξύ Εβραίων και Παλαιστινίων. Αντιθέτως, η αδιάκοπη πορεία του Ισραήλ προς ένα κράτος αποκλειστικά εβραϊκό αρνείται κάθε έννοια ενός πιο πολύπλοκου και περιεκτικού παρελθόντος.
105 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
About the author
Edward W. Said
240 books4,441 followers(Arabic Profile إدوارد سعيد)
Edward Wadie Said was a professor of literature at Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies. A Palestinian American born in Mandatory Palestine, he was a citizen of the United States by way of his father, a U.S. Army veteran.
Educated in the Western canon, at British and American schools, Said applied his education and bi-cultural perspective to illuminating the gaps of cultural and political understanding between the Western world and the Eastern world, especially about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Middle East; his principal influences were Antonio Gramsci, Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Michel Foucault, and Theodor Adorno.
As a cultural critic, Said is known for the book Orientalism (1978), a critique of the cultural representations that are the bases of Orientalism—how the Western world perceives the Orient. Said’s model of textual analysis transformed the academic discourse of researchers in literary theory, literary criticism, and Middle-Eastern studies—how academics examine, describe, and define the cultures being studied. As a foundational text, Orientalism was controversial among the scholars of Oriental Studies, philosophy, and literature.
As a public intellectual, Said was a controversial member of the Palestinian National Council, because he publicly criticized Israel and the Arab countries, especially the political and cultural policies of Muslim régimes who acted against the national interests of their peoples. Said advocated the establishment of a Palestinian state to ensure equal political and human rights for the Palestinians in Israel, including the right of return to the homeland. He defined his oppositional relation with the status quo as the remit of the public intellectual who has “to sift, to judge, to criticize, to choose, so that choice and agency return to the individual” man and woman.
In 1999, with his friend Daniel Barenboim, Said co-founded the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra, based in Seville, which comprises young Israeli, Palestinian, and Arab musicians. Besides being an academic, Said also was an accomplished pianist, and, with Barenboim, co-authored the book Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society (2002), a compilation of their conversations about music. Edward Said died of leukemia on 25 September 2003.
Edward Wadie Said was a professor of literature at Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies. A Palestinian American born in Mandatory Palestine, he was a citizen of the United States by way of his father, a U.S. Army veteran.
Educated in the Western canon, at British and American schools, Said applied his education and bi-cultural perspective to illuminating the gaps of cultural and political understanding between the Western world and the Eastern world, especially about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Middle East; his principal influences were Antonio Gramsci, Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Michel Foucault, and Theodor Adorno.
As a cultural critic, Said is known for the book Orientalism (1978), a critique of the cultural representations that are the bases of Orientalism—how the Western world perceives the Orient. Said’s model of textual analysis transformed the academic discourse of researchers in literary theory, literary criticism, and Middle-Eastern studies—how academics examine, describe, and define the cultures being studied. As a foundational text, Orientalism was controversial among the scholars of Oriental Studies, philosophy, and literature.
As a public intellectual, Said was a controversial member of the Palestinian National Council, because he publicly criticized Israel and the Arab countries, especially the political and cultural policies of Muslim régimes who acted against the national interests of their peoples. Said advocated the establishment of a Palestinian state to ensure equal political and human rights for the Palestinians in Israel, including the right of return to the homeland. He defined his oppositional relation with the status quo as the remit of the public intellectual who has “to sift, to judge, to criticize, to choose, so that choice and agency return to the individual” man and woman.
In 1999, with his friend Daniel Barenboim, Said co-founded the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra, based in Seville, which comprises young Israeli, Palestinian, and Arab musicians. Besides being an academic, Said also was an accomplished pianist, and, with Barenboim, co-authored the book Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society (2002), a compilation of their conversations about music. Edward Said died of leukemia on 25 September 2003.
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July 29, 2022
اولین مواجهه من با اثری از ادوارد سعید از قضا مواجهه ای روانکاوانه بود، در ادامهی مطالعات روانکاوی که چند سالی است درگیر آنم.
پس از خواندن توتم و تابو فروید، ذهنم درگیر سوال از روان دیگر اقوام بدوی که در اثر اشاره ای به آنها نشده، بود. سعید در این اثر دست به تحلیل کتاب توتم و تابو در راستای مسأله ی اسراییل و فلسطین پرداخته است. شاید تمام سوالات من پاسخ داده نشد اما خواندن این کتاب دریچه ای بود برای پر کردن خلاء نبود نگاهی تازه (نگاهی غیر آمریکایی یا اروپایی) به مسائل انسان معاصر که از زمان ادوارد سعید تا به امروز همچنان با آن در کشاکش هستیم.
پس از خواندن توتم و تابو فروید، ذهنم درگیر سوال از روان دیگر اقوام بدوی که در اثر اشاره ای به آنها نشده، بود. سعید در این اثر دست به تحلیل کتاب توتم و تابو در راستای مسأله ی اسراییل و فلسطین پرداخته است. شاید تمام سوالات من پاسخ داده نشد اما خواندن این کتاب دریچه ای بود برای پر کردن خلاء نبود نگاهی تازه (نگاهی غیر آمریکایی یا اروپایی) به مسائل انسان معاصر که از زمان ادوارد سعید تا به امروز همچنان با آن در کشاکش هستیم.
March 25, 2020
الكتاب هو ترجمة لمحاضرة للدكتور إدوارد سعيد في ذكرى عالم النفس الأشهر سيغموند فرويد كان قد ألقاها في متحف فرويد في لندن بعد أن ألغيت سنة ٢٠٠١ دعوته الرسمية التي تلقاها من المؤسسة المعنية بإرث فرويد لإلقائها في فيينا مسقط رأس فرويد كما جرت العادة قبيل تاريخ مولده تحت ضغط من الكيان الصهيوني والجهات الممثلة له بحجتهم الواهية بمعاداة سعيد للسامية، وقد صدر كتابه هذا سنة ٢٠٠٣ في لندن بعنوان Freud and the non European ونقله إلى العربية بإقتدار ثائر ديب بعنوان فرويد وغير الأوروبيين.
يبدأ سعيد محاضرته بتحديد ماهية التقسيم الذي ساد عصر فرويد (نهاية القرن التاسع عشر وبداية القرن العشرين) وتناوله ملمح من فكره، متمثلا في تقسيم الأمم والشعوب الى أوروبيين (غربيين) متقدمين ثقافيا وفكريا وحضاريا والآخر الغير أوروبي من شعوب العالم الأخرى في آسيا وأفريقيا وغيرها من الذين لا يماثلون أوروبا في تقدمها أو قيمها، وهو فكر كان قد ساد جميع الأوساط الغربية وعززته ممارسات وتوجهات الكولونيالية الأوروبية، غير أن فرويد كان يرى أن يهود أوروبا واليهود عموما ينتمون إلى أوروبا أو كما أورد "ينحدرون من شعوب متوسطية" تدليلا على قربهم من الأصل الأوروبي، كما أشار الى ذلك سعيد في سياقاته مع استعانته بتحليل أعمال من الموروث الأدبي الغربي الكولنيالي متمثلة بأعمال كونراد، مقابل استحضار العمل الأبرز لفرانز فانون والذي يعري فيه الفكر الكولونيالي الغربي، ممارساته وأسطورة تفوقه، وتلك المقدمة التي كان قد هيئها سعيد لمناقشة عمل فرويد الفارق ممثلا بكتابه موسى والتوحيد.
يشير سعيد في تناوله عمل فرويد موسى والتوحيد إلى التناقضات التي إعترت فرويد وبرزت جليا في مؤلفاته الأخيرة، بين لا دينيته وأروبيته العلمانية وبين انتماءه لهويته وإرثه اليهودي، كما تجلى هذا الصراع في موقف فرويد من الصهيونية، تارة يرفض تكوين دولة يهودية على أراضي فلسطين وأخرى يبين دعمه وحماسه للحركة الصهيونية ومشروعها، غير أن قراءة سعيد لعمله موسى والتوحيد قد ألقت الضوء على رؤية (تاريخية في اطارها، استشرافية في مضمونها) مهمة لفرويد، تدحض فيها أسطورة الهوية اليهودية الخالصة للشعب المختار ووطنه الأبدي كما حاول أو يحاول الكيان الصهيوني الترويج لها منذ ما يزيد عن السبعين سنة، من خلال علم الآثار ذو المخرجات الانتقائية والمسيسة، وإختلاق التاريخ من العدم؛ بأن أرجع أصل ديانة التوحيد، الديانة اليهودية تحديدا ومؤسسها موسى إلى أصل مصري (غير يهودي) وهو المعادل بحسب سعيد "لغير الأوروبي بخلاف اليهودي المعاصر الذي يعتقد بأوروبيته" الامر الذي يفتح الباب واسعا على انفتاح اليهود على أصلهم التاريخي الغير يهودي، وفكرة أنهم كشعب وأمة إن جاز التعبير، عبارة عن خليط من الهويات، الأمر الذي يدفع باتجاه مزيد من الإنفتاح على الهويات الأخرى (الغير أوروبية/الغير يهودية) ويقوض مبدأ التفرد والسمو للقومية والشعب اليهوديين كما روجت وتروج له الدعاية الصهيونية في تسطيحها لمفهوم الهوية، والمفارقة تكمن في تماثلها الى حد التطابق مع الدعاية النازية في الترويج لتفوق وسمو وتفرد العرق الآري على باقي الأعراق!
لم تخلوا المحاضرة من الإسقاطات المفاهيمية على واقع المأساة الفلسطينية وسياسات الإحتلال الصهيوني، التي تشبه في تجلياتها الى حد بعيد، الاستعلاء الكولينيالي الاوروبي والذي تتمثله الحركة الصهيونية على ما هو غير أوروبي -وهو ما مورس على اليهود حين اخرجتهم النازية من انتمائهم الى الهوية الأوروبية وبالتالي جواز التخلص منهم- المتجسد بعرب فلسطين اليوم، وكيف كانت كتابات فرويد وأفكاره تحمل ملامح إستشرافية لواقع لم تسعفه الحياة ليعيشه، غير أن قراءة متعمقة معاصرة لأدبياته وأفكاره تكفي لإستحضارها في سياق الحاضر.
كما أن الكتاب اشتمل على تعقيب الدكتورة جاكلين روز على ما أورده سعيد في محاضرته، قراءة جاكلين أضافت الى المحتوى المعرفي المطروح أبعاد أخرى وعدد من التساؤلات للنقاش والتي بدورها كانت قد أثرت الطرح.
قراءة لامعة في منحاها الإجتماعي والسياسي تلك التي أوردها سعيد لإرث فرويد وفكره الغني الذي يتجلى عن طبقات أعمق وأوثق علاقة بالحاضر إذا ما قرأت في سياقه.
يبدأ سعيد محاضرته بتحديد ماهية التقسيم الذي ساد عصر فرويد (نهاية القرن التاسع عشر وبداية القرن العشرين) وتناوله ملمح من فكره، متمثلا في تقسيم الأمم والشعوب الى أوروبيين (غربيين) متقدمين ثقافيا وفكريا وحضاريا والآخر الغير أوروبي من شعوب العالم الأخرى في آسيا وأفريقيا وغيرها من الذين لا يماثلون أوروبا في تقدمها أو قيمها، وهو فكر كان قد ساد جميع الأوساط الغربية وعززته ممارسات وتوجهات الكولونيالية الأوروبية، غير أن فرويد كان يرى أن يهود أوروبا واليهود عموما ينتمون إلى أوروبا أو كما أورد "ينحدرون من شعوب متوسطية" تدليلا على قربهم من الأصل الأوروبي، كما أشار الى ذلك سعيد في سياقاته مع استعانته بتحليل أعمال من الموروث الأدبي الغربي الكولنيالي متمثلة بأعمال كونراد، مقابل استحضار العمل الأبرز لفرانز فانون والذي يعري فيه الفكر الكولونيالي الغربي، ممارساته وأسطورة تفوقه، وتلك المقدمة التي كان قد هيئها سعيد لمناقشة عمل فرويد الفارق ممثلا بكتابه موسى والتوحيد.
يشير سعيد في تناوله عمل فرويد موسى والتوحيد إلى التناقضات التي إعترت فرويد وبرزت جليا في مؤلفاته الأخيرة، بين لا دينيته وأروبيته العلمانية وبين انتماءه لهويته وإرثه اليهودي، كما تجلى هذا الصراع في موقف فرويد من الصهيونية، تارة يرفض تكوين دولة يهودية على أراضي فلسطين وأخرى يبين دعمه وحماسه للحركة الصهيونية ومشروعها، غير أن قراءة سعيد لعمله موسى والتوحيد قد ألقت الضوء على رؤية (تاريخية في اطارها، استشرافية في مضمونها) مهمة لفرويد، تدحض فيها أسطورة الهوية اليهودية الخالصة للشعب المختار ووطنه الأبدي كما حاول أو يحاول الكيان الصهيوني الترويج لها منذ ما يزيد عن السبعين سنة، من خلال علم الآثار ذو المخرجات الانتقائية والمسيسة، وإختلاق التاريخ من العدم؛ بأن أرجع أصل ديانة التوحيد، الديانة اليهودية تحديدا ومؤسسها موسى إلى أصل مصري (غير يهودي) وهو المعادل بحسب سعيد "لغير الأوروبي بخلاف اليهودي المعاصر الذي يعتقد بأوروبيته" الامر الذي يفتح الباب واسعا على انفتاح اليهود على أصلهم التاريخي الغير يهودي، وفكرة أنهم كشعب وأمة إن جاز التعبير، عبارة عن خليط من الهويات، الأمر الذي يدفع باتجاه مزيد من الإنفتاح على الهويات الأخرى (الغير أوروبية/الغير يهودية) ويقوض مبدأ التفرد والسمو للقومية والشعب اليهوديين كما روجت وتروج له الدعاية الصهيونية في تسطيحها لمفهوم الهوية، والمفارقة تكمن في تماثلها الى حد التطابق مع الدعاية النازية في الترويج لتفوق وسمو وتفرد العرق الآري على باقي الأعراق!
لم تخلوا المحاضرة من الإسقاطات المفاهيمية على واقع المأساة الفلسطينية وسياسات الإحتلال الصهيوني، التي تشبه في تجلياتها الى حد بعيد، الاستعلاء الكولينيالي الاوروبي والذي تتمثله الحركة الصهيونية على ما هو غير أوروبي -وهو ما مورس على اليهود حين اخرجتهم النازية من انتمائهم الى الهوية الأوروبية وبالتالي جواز التخلص منهم- المتجسد بعرب فلسطين اليوم، وكيف كانت كتابات فرويد وأفكاره تحمل ملامح إستشرافية لواقع لم تسعفه الحياة ليعيشه، غير أن قراءة متعمقة معاصرة لأدبياته وأفكاره تكفي لإستحضارها في سياق الحاضر.
كما أن الكتاب اشتمل على تعقيب الدكتورة جاكلين روز على ما أورده سعيد في محاضرته، قراءة جاكلين أضافت الى المحتوى المعرفي المطروح أبعاد أخرى وعدد من التساؤلات للنقاش والتي بدورها كانت قد أثرت الطرح.
قراءة لامعة في منحاها الإجتماعي والسياسي تلك التي أوردها سعيد لإرث فرويد وفكره الغني الذي يتجلى عن طبقات أعمق وأوثق علاقة بالحاضر إذا ما قرأت في سياقه.
February 12, 2021
The point of Said's lecture is that Freud's appropriation(s) of his own identity, as exemplified primarily in his last book, 'Moses and Monotheism', points out ways in which the Palestine/Israel conflict might be constructively handled. For those unfamiliar with the text, Freud assumes monotheism to have originated with the pharaoh, Akhenaton, to have been adopted by the Egyptian, Moses, who led the enslaved Hebrews to freedom in the Sinai only to have been murdered by them and subsequently elevated to the status of a pre-eminent culture hero. This constitutes a counter-myth to Judaic orthodoxy, one that opens their identity to the broader world.
Said, like Freud, has little concern in this lecture with the historicity of claims made by the Hebrew Scriptures, modern Egyptologists, Zionists, or the State of Israel.
Said, like Freud, has little concern in this lecture with the historicity of claims made by the Hebrew Scriptures, modern Egyptologists, Zionists, or the State of Israel.
June 18, 2026
This is an interesting short lecture on Freud in relation to Jewishness and Zionism that I think might be helpful for a modern-day context. Just as Freud did not live to see the Holocaust, Said did not live to see the 2023 Palestinian genocide, but as Said himself argues, "the often surprising dynamics of human history can dramatize the latencies in a prior figure or form that suddenly illuminate the present."
I read this as a Jew who witnessed the Palestinian genocide unfold entirely on my TV and phone, wholly removed from the violence yet obviously implicated in it even while sitting in a comfortable-enough apartment across the ocean. I've been very interested in what, exactly, it means to be Jewish in the wake of this genocide—which is not to detract from the genocide or center Jewish issues, it's just a separate topic. 2023 was also the death knell for any sense of "the" Jewish community—I feel absolutely no sense of brotherhood, camaraderie, or sameness with Zionists who espouse colonialism in the name of Judaism. But I think to disavow Zionist Jews completely and pretend at a simple cleavage is, at best, a defensive maneuver that helps some anti-Zionist Jews feel better about themselves and avoid their own implication in this genocide. It feels like white folks saying they're "one of the good ones" and so don't have to consider legacies of slavery and so forth.
The usurpation of Jewish identity by Zionism is complex. On the one hand, Zionism is avowedly anti-Jewish, disregarding not only the central tenets of pikuach nefesh, tikkun olam, and our pre-moshiach exodus, but also being originally based on an explicitly racist, Ashkenazi-supremacist secular ideology that dehumanized religious Jews of Eastern Europe, Sephardim, Mizrahim, and Ethiopian Jews (and continues to do so today despite their (at times partial) incorporation into the Israeli settler project), as well as the post-Haskalah repression of Yiddish in favor of Modern Hebrew, and so on.
On the other hand, Zionism, obviously, is indissociably Jewish. In its modern form it posits a nationalist version of Judaism tied to the nation-state, might-makes-right politics, and ethnoreligious supremacy. Though it distorts or represses much of Jewish history and theology, it also foregrounds many of Judaism's own problematic lines of thought and weaponizes them for its political mission—particularism, Noachidism, militant readings of the stories of Chanukah and Purim, etc.
In thinking of what it means to be Jewish in the wake of the Palestinian genocide, it is truly unclear where to go. With the (in my opinion utterly irreconcilable) fissure between Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews, the task for the latter would seem to be the recovery of a form of Judaism that absolutely opposes any Zionist, supremacist, or otherwise nationalist impulse. But what does this mean? If Judaism has a history thousands of years longer than the existence of Israel, do we simply 'go back' to that version? Many anti-Zionists seem to think so, but I do believe the indelible stain Zionism has left on Judaism is harder to remove than simply 'moving past it' or, G–d forbid, ignoring it. We cannot go on being Jews as though the Palestinian genocide never happened; but how do we account for this in our own thought and identity? How will the legacy of this genocide live on in Judaism? How will we respond to it? And perhaps these are all the wrong questions to be asking while the genocide is ongoing. But maybe that fact makes it all the more necessary.
The Holocaust and the Palestinian genocide have a curious relation. With the Holocaust being the crucial justification for the colonization of Palestine, political/defensive Zionism won over (not that the messianic form is any better) and initiated the Nakba, resulting in nearly a million people being displaced. A significant portion of what we might call Judaic studies is essentially Holocaust studies: what is it to be Jewish after the Holocaust? This question has been written about ad nauseam, to the point where I think it is getting a bit… trite, if I may say so?
More to the point, we have to be careful in how we utilize the legacy of the Holocaust, for this very trauma is a crucial talking point among Zionists. To continue to harp on about the trauma of the Holocaust, about the work of memory, about its fundamental unassimilability to linear History, risks playing into Zionist narratives. This is obviously not to say we should just forget the Holocaust—far from it—but, to go back to Said, we must investigate its latencies to see how it might illuminate the present. In other words, what good is it to talk about the Holocaust without talking about Palestine? 'Never again' meant 'never again,' not 'never again to us.'
So we are left with an uneasy, unsettled identity fractured by the Holocaust and exile, distorted and instrumentalized by Zionist narratives, and now somehow tied to Palestine and the countless lives it has taken, homes it has bulldozed, forests it has uprooted, refugee camps it has bombed. For better or for worse, Judaism is inextricably tied with the land of Palestine, but not in the way Zionists envisioned it. How do we see Judaism as the victim in the bombed-out wasteland of post-war Europe, and at the same time the aggressor in the bombed-out wasteland of Gaza, and a shrinking West Bank facing increasing violence by the day? These are not reconcilable facets, but as Freud and Said would point out, irreconcilable fractures are central to Jewish identity in the first place. But I'm not sure what to make of that.
The task to recover a Judaism from the claws of Zionists must go hand-in-hand with the task of laboring toward a free Palestine. This is easier said than done, and does not get much closer to an answer. But if we are to take the protection of life seriously, take the repair of the world seriously, take our own exiled selves seriously and hope to learn even a single lesson from the Holocaust, it must be in service of Palestinian liberation and self-determination. Perhaps the most important things Jews can do today are: deradicalize fellow Jews from Zionism; work to recover the non-nationalist, non-exclusivist facets of Judaism repressed by Israel; and above all else, support the Palestinian struggle in whatever way we can.
I read this as a Jew who witnessed the Palestinian genocide unfold entirely on my TV and phone, wholly removed from the violence yet obviously implicated in it even while sitting in a comfortable-enough apartment across the ocean. I've been very interested in what, exactly, it means to be Jewish in the wake of this genocide—which is not to detract from the genocide or center Jewish issues, it's just a separate topic. 2023 was also the death knell for any sense of "the" Jewish community—I feel absolutely no sense of brotherhood, camaraderie, or sameness with Zionists who espouse colonialism in the name of Judaism. But I think to disavow Zionist Jews completely and pretend at a simple cleavage is, at best, a defensive maneuver that helps some anti-Zionist Jews feel better about themselves and avoid their own implication in this genocide. It feels like white folks saying they're "one of the good ones" and so don't have to consider legacies of slavery and so forth.
The usurpation of Jewish identity by Zionism is complex. On the one hand, Zionism is avowedly anti-Jewish, disregarding not only the central tenets of pikuach nefesh, tikkun olam, and our pre-moshiach exodus, but also being originally based on an explicitly racist, Ashkenazi-supremacist secular ideology that dehumanized religious Jews of Eastern Europe, Sephardim, Mizrahim, and Ethiopian Jews (and continues to do so today despite their (at times partial) incorporation into the Israeli settler project), as well as the post-Haskalah repression of Yiddish in favor of Modern Hebrew, and so on.
On the other hand, Zionism, obviously, is indissociably Jewish. In its modern form it posits a nationalist version of Judaism tied to the nation-state, might-makes-right politics, and ethnoreligious supremacy. Though it distorts or represses much of Jewish history and theology, it also foregrounds many of Judaism's own problematic lines of thought and weaponizes them for its political mission—particularism, Noachidism, militant readings of the stories of Chanukah and Purim, etc.
In thinking of what it means to be Jewish in the wake of the Palestinian genocide, it is truly unclear where to go. With the (in my opinion utterly irreconcilable) fissure between Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews, the task for the latter would seem to be the recovery of a form of Judaism that absolutely opposes any Zionist, supremacist, or otherwise nationalist impulse. But what does this mean? If Judaism has a history thousands of years longer than the existence of Israel, do we simply 'go back' to that version? Many anti-Zionists seem to think so, but I do believe the indelible stain Zionism has left on Judaism is harder to remove than simply 'moving past it' or, G–d forbid, ignoring it. We cannot go on being Jews as though the Palestinian genocide never happened; but how do we account for this in our own thought and identity? How will the legacy of this genocide live on in Judaism? How will we respond to it? And perhaps these are all the wrong questions to be asking while the genocide is ongoing. But maybe that fact makes it all the more necessary.
The Holocaust and the Palestinian genocide have a curious relation. With the Holocaust being the crucial justification for the colonization of Palestine, political/defensive Zionism won over (not that the messianic form is any better) and initiated the Nakba, resulting in nearly a million people being displaced. A significant portion of what we might call Judaic studies is essentially Holocaust studies: what is it to be Jewish after the Holocaust? This question has been written about ad nauseam, to the point where I think it is getting a bit… trite, if I may say so?
More to the point, we have to be careful in how we utilize the legacy of the Holocaust, for this very trauma is a crucial talking point among Zionists. To continue to harp on about the trauma of the Holocaust, about the work of memory, about its fundamental unassimilability to linear History, risks playing into Zionist narratives. This is obviously not to say we should just forget the Holocaust—far from it—but, to go back to Said, we must investigate its latencies to see how it might illuminate the present. In other words, what good is it to talk about the Holocaust without talking about Palestine? 'Never again' meant 'never again,' not 'never again to us.'
So we are left with an uneasy, unsettled identity fractured by the Holocaust and exile, distorted and instrumentalized by Zionist narratives, and now somehow tied to Palestine and the countless lives it has taken, homes it has bulldozed, forests it has uprooted, refugee camps it has bombed. For better or for worse, Judaism is inextricably tied with the land of Palestine, but not in the way Zionists envisioned it. How do we see Judaism as the victim in the bombed-out wasteland of post-war Europe, and at the same time the aggressor in the bombed-out wasteland of Gaza, and a shrinking West Bank facing increasing violence by the day? These are not reconcilable facets, but as Freud and Said would point out, irreconcilable fractures are central to Jewish identity in the first place. But I'm not sure what to make of that.
The task to recover a Judaism from the claws of Zionists must go hand-in-hand with the task of laboring toward a free Palestine. This is easier said than done, and does not get much closer to an answer. But if we are to take the protection of life seriously, take the repair of the world seriously, take our own exiled selves seriously and hope to learn even a single lesson from the Holocaust, it must be in service of Palestinian liberation and self-determination. Perhaps the most important things Jews can do today are: deradicalize fellow Jews from Zionism; work to recover the non-nationalist, non-exclusivist facets of Judaism repressed by Israel; and above all else, support the Palestinian struggle in whatever way we can.
January 3, 2024
Very important text to understand the phenomena of identity in the present day context—of Palestine and Israel. Edward Said clearly states that though there are so many conflicting accounts regarding Freud's understanding of his Jewish identity and racial history, Freud was confident enough when he said that Jewish identity itself is rooted in a very non-jewish heritage. Very interesting, nah? If Moses was an egyptian and a non-jewish, then how come there is that brutal revisitionist narrative since 1948 about the Israeli coming back to their homeland or securing their sovereignty. Of course Freud didn't live till 1948 to see what would happen. But what is most important is that the identity of human beings belonging to a particular racial or state group is always problematic. Someone is always an other in his own self.
January 23, 2021
پیشنهادم اینه که پیش از خوانش کتاب، موسی و یکتاپرستی فروید رو مطالعه کنید و اشراف کلیای هم بر اتفاقات تاریخی فلسطین و اسرائیل داشته باشید. گرچه اولی رو اگر نخونده باشید باز هم نقد و تبیین ادوارد سعید شفاف و روشن باقی میمونه اما دومی رو به نظرم اگر هیچ چیزی ازش ندونید کمی ساختار استدلالهای این سخنرانی از دستتون در میره.
ترجمه هم به نظرم خیلی تمیز و خوب بود.
به شکل کلی، ادوارد سعید همیشه یک جون به جونهای من اضافه میکنه. چون جایی که میایسته واقعا جای سختیه.
این که به دام بندهای خاورمیانه و همچنین به دام بندهای غربی، نیفتی.
اما چهار ستاره میدم، چون میشد که این کتاب به یک سخنرانی و دو نقد آخر کتاب بسنده نکنه. میشد که مجموعه خفنی باشه از تمامی نکاتی که سعید توی این سخنرانی گذرا بهش اشاره میکنه. اما برای انتشار همین هم خیلی خوشحالم.
ترجمه هم به نظرم خیلی تمیز و خوب بود.
به شکل کلی، ادوارد سعید همیشه یک جون به جونهای من اضافه میکنه. چون جایی که میایسته واقعا جای سختیه.
این که به دام بندهای خاورمیانه و همچنین به دام بندهای غربی، نیفتی.
اما چهار ستاره میدم، چون میشد که این کتاب به یک سخنرانی و دو نقد آخر کتاب بسنده نکنه. میشد که مجموعه خفنی باشه از تمامی نکاتی که سعید توی این سخنرانی گذرا بهش اشاره میکنه. اما برای انتشار همین هم خیلی خوشحالم.
August 15, 2025
I read Said's Orientalism a couple of years back and was totally blown away. As it was relatively short, I decided to pick up this essay during a lunch break at work. In typical Said fashion he references countless literary, historical and political sources. At its core, Said set about critiquing and framing Sigmund Freud's Totem and Taboo in relation to questions on Jewish identity.
March 27, 2020
Etkileyici bir konuşmanın kitaplaştırılmış hali idi. Edward Said zaten sosyal bilimlerle uğraşan herkesin hakkında şöyle ya da böyle bilgi sahibi olduğu bir entelektüel. Her ne kadar daha çok şarkiyatçılık konseptiyle tanınsa da psikoloji ve edebiyat üzerine ne kadar bilgi sahibi olduğunu gördüm bu konuşma sayesinde. Yalnızca başlığın biraz yanıltıcı olduğunu düşünüyorum zira Freud ve Avrupa kimliği üzerine bir şeyler okuyacağımı düşünürken Freud'un "Musa ve Tektanrıcılık" kitabının genel bir değerlendirmesi ve Yahudilik üzerine bir şeyler okudum.
Kitabın başında fikirleri bulundukları çağın ötesine geçmiş kişilerden bahsederken Jane Austen'ı da alması beni şaşırttı, bir kez daha okumaya karar verdim; İngiliz edebiyatıyla pek anlaşamadığım için bırakmıştım.
İsrail'in arkeoloji alanındaki çalışmaları ve Freud'un akademik kimliğinin aslında hiç de objektif olmayışıyla karşılaşmak benim için bu kısacık kitabın en güzel yanlarıydı.
Çeviri mi sorunluydu bilemiyorum ama ben artık Türkçenin akademik okuma için uygun bir dil olmadığını düşünmeye başladım, çeviri söz konusu olduğunda. Direkt Türkçe yazılmış makalelerde hiçbir sorun yokken başka bir dilden Türkçeye çevrilmiş makalelerde hep böyle bir karmaşa söz konusu, cümleler netliğini kaybediyor sanki. Neden böyle oluyor bilemiyorum...
Kitabın başında fikirleri bulundukları çağın ötesine geçmiş kişilerden bahsederken Jane Austen'ı da alması beni şaşırttı, bir kez daha okumaya karar verdim; İngiliz edebiyatıyla pek anlaşamadığım için bırakmıştım.
İsrail'in arkeoloji alanındaki çalışmaları ve Freud'un akademik kimliğinin aslında hiç de objektif olmayışıyla karşılaşmak benim için bu kısacık kitabın en güzel yanlarıydı.
Çeviri mi sorunluydu bilemiyorum ama ben artık Türkçenin akademik okuma için uygun bir dil olmadığını düşünmeye başladım, çeviri söz konusu olduğunda. Direkt Türkçe yazılmış makalelerde hiçbir sorun yokken başka bir dilden Türkçeye çevrilmiş makalelerde hep böyle bir karmaşa söz konusu, cümleler netliğini kaybediyor sanki. Neden böyle oluyor bilemiyorum...
June 3, 2025
Really fascinating take on identity and an especially pertinent book to read when identity is being weaponized the justify actions. Spoke eloquently about I/P and had an interesting read of Freuds interpretation of Moses (which I didn’t know!). Overall enjoyed this read- it was for class- and I appreciated the response written by a Jewish woman.
February 10, 2026
Briefly touches on a bunch of things that have been the subject of more expansive scholarship before and since (none of which will I probably ever get around to reading): the origins of Mediterranean monotheism, Freud's relationship to Zionism, how readers might still utilize Joseph Conrad and various stuff that might otherwise be confined to the Racism of Yore pile, and how archaeology is used for roughshod storytelling to affirm Zionist national identity: revising upward the land's ethnocratic coziness based on unearthed muqarnas and shattered Arab entablatures and whatnot.
“You read a historic writer not for what they failed to see, not for the ideological blindspots of their writing – too easy, too programmatic in the literary academy of recent years – but for the as-yet-unlived, still-shaping history which their vision – which must mean including the limitations of that vision – partially, tentatively, foresees and provokes. ”
Like a lot of short published lectures, it's a readable little tract that makes plenty of primary references for further reading.
“You read a historic writer not for what they failed to see, not for the ideological blindspots of their writing – too easy, too programmatic in the literary academy of recent years – but for the as-yet-unlived, still-shaping history which their vision – which must mean including the limitations of that vision – partially, tentatively, foresees and provokes. ”
Like a lot of short published lectures, it's a readable little tract that makes plenty of primary references for further reading.
April 2, 2026
it’s been back to back to back bangers for a second now goodreads familyyyy
July 27, 2019
There is a deadly dose of anti-semitism covered within an intellectual / academic debate.
The book could have been a perfect 5-star if Said wasn't so bluntly biased and preacher for anti-israeli/zionism agenda to prove.
There is a lot to learn from the book, nonetheless, about Freud and his very controversial book to the end of his years.
The book could have been a perfect 5-star if Said wasn't so bluntly biased and preacher for anti-israeli/zionism agenda to prove.
There is a lot to learn from the book, nonetheless, about Freud and his very controversial book to the end of his years.
September 15, 2025
4 stars
I read this for class in response to Freud and his Moses and Monotheism that I also read. This was my first foray into reading Said and I think it was a great start. He brought up really interesting points about various parts of Freud’s work as well as a very important discussion of Zionism and anti-Semitism that still remains prevalent to this day.
I read this for class in response to Freud and his Moses and Monotheism that I also read. This was my first foray into reading Said and I think it was a great start. He brought up really interesting points about various parts of Freud’s work as well as a very important discussion of Zionism and anti-Semitism that still remains prevalent to this day.
Read
November 8, 2025— "In other words, identity cannot be thought or worked through itself alone; it cannot constitute or even imagine itself without that radical originary break or flaw which will not be repressed ... the strength of this thought is, I believe, that it can be articulated in and speak to other besieged identities as well - not through dispensing palliatives such as tolerance and compassion but, rather, by attending to it as a troubling, disabling, destabilizing secular wound -"
September 5, 2024
Ok, so this is a little out of my intellectual borders! So, I cannot confirm or deny the validity of the opinions in Said’s lecture but I found it very interesting. Strong themes of identity and conflict.
December 24, 2023
Said and Rose be cooking fr fr fr
May 7, 2024
I wish i could ever be as good at reading books as these guys are.
October 3, 2024
So important!!!!
June 5, 2026
Much as I would have loved for Said’s interpretation of Freud and the antinomies of identity to have been vindicated by history, the intervening two decades suggest that Jacqueline Rose’s ambivalence was more prescient.
September 9, 2023
A brilliant reading of Freud's Moses and Monotheism by the late Edward Said. It originates as a talk given at the Freud Museum in London. After Said's talk, Jacqueline Rose responded, and her response was fittingly included in the Verso book.
Said concludes:
"Freud's uneasy relationship with the orthodoxy of his own community is very much a part of the complex of ideas so well described by Deutscher, who forgets to mention what I think is an essential component of it: its irremediably diasporic, unhoused character. This is a subject which George Steiner has celebrated with great elan for many years. But I would want to quality Deutscher by saying that this needn't be seen only as a Jewish characteristic; in our age of vast population transfers, of refugees, exiles, expatriates and immigrants, it can also be identified in the diasporic, wandering, unresolved, cosmopolitan consciousness of someone who is both inside and outside of his or her community. This is now a relatively widespread phenomenon, even though an understanding of what that condition means is far from common. Freud's meditations and insistence on the non-European from a Jewish point of view provide, I think, an admirable sketch of what it entails, by way of refusing to resolve identity into some of the nationalist or religious herds in which so many people want so desperately to run. More bold is Freud's profound exemplification of the insight that even for the most definable, the most identifiable, the most stubborn, communal identity—for him, this was the Jewish identity—there are inherent limits that prevent if from being fully incorporated into one, and only one, Identity.
"Freud's symbol of those limits was that the founder of Jewish identity was himself a non-European Egyptian. In other words, identity cannot be thought or worked through itself alone; it cannot constitute or even imagine itself without that radical originary break or flaw which will not be repressed, because Moses was Egyptian, and therefore always outside the identity inside which so many have stood, and suffered—and later, perhaps, even triumphed. The strength of this thought is, I believe, that it can be articulated in and speak to other besieged identities as well—not through dispensing palliatives such as tolerance and compassion but, rather, by attending to it as a troubling, disabling, destabilizing secular wound—the essence of the cosmopolitan, from which there can be no recovery, no state of resolved or Stoic calm, and no utopian reconciliation even within itself. This is a necessary psychological experience, Freud says, but the problem is that he doesn't give any indication of how long it must be tolerated or whether, properly speaking, it has a real history—history being always that which comes after and, all too often, either overrides or represses the flaw. The questions Freud therefore leaves us with are: can so utterly indecisive and so deeply undetermined a history ever be written? In what language, and with what sort of vocabulary?
Can it aspire to the condition of a politics of diaspora life? Can it ever become the not-so-precarious foundation in the land of Jews and Palestinians of a bi-national state in which Israel and Palestine are parts, rather than antagonists of each other's history and underlying reality? I myself believe so—as much because Freud's unresolved sense of identity is so fruitful an example, as because the condition he takes such pains to elucidate is actually more general in the non-European world than he suspected."
Properly for a Freudian, Jacqueline Rose was far less optimistic about the prospects of such a notion, as she made clear in her response to Said's lecture.
"What I am suggesting is that we move, in a sense, further along the path of Said's reading: that we should see Freud less as purely the diagnostician of—more squarely inside—the dilemma of identity which he describes. More simply, I am suggesting that the fixity of identity—for Freud, for any of us—is something from which it is very hard to escape—harder than Said, for wholly admirable motives, wants it to be. And on this subject, Moses and Monotheism also has a great deal to say. For if it offers an account, so brilliantly drawn out here this evening, of identities that know their own provisionality, it also does the opposite. In addition to bearing all the marks of late style so vividly characterized by Said—and, indeed, perhaps for that very reason—Moses and Monotheism is also one of Freud's most violent texts.... It offers the thesis, already adumbrated in Totem and Taboo, that an act of murder is constitutive of the social tie. In fact monotheism, together with the "advance in intellectuality" that is said to accompany it, takes hold only because of the bloody deed which presided over its birth. As has often been pointed out, you can reject the flawed historical argument of both these texts while accepting the underlying thesis that there is no sociality without violence, that people are most powerfully and effectively united by what they agree to hate. What binds the people to each other and to their God is that they killed him.
"It would be odd, then, if Freud himself was free of all the conflictual strains of identity to which, in this last work, he gives such potent and strange shape. What a people have in common, Freud suggests, is a trauma: a "knowledge"—to return to the quote from Said's Beginnings—so devastating as to be unbearable in one's down sight, and only slightly more bearable as a subject of psychoanalytic investigation. This is, if you like, the other half of the story. For trauma, far from generating freedom, openness to others as well as to the divided and unresolved fragments of self, leads to a very different kind of fragmentation—one which is, in Freud's own words, "devastating", and causes identities to batten down, to go exactly the other way: towards dogma, the dangers of coercive and coercing forms of faith? Are we at risk of idealizing the flaws and fissures of identity?...
"... I am less sanguine about the ability of new forms of nationalist to bypass the insanity of the group, especially given the traumatized history of both sides of the conflict in the Middle East. As Judge Richard Gladstone put it at the Ernest Jones Memorial Lecture in October, on the subject of the Albanians of Kosovo, we have an unrealistic expectation of how traumatized peoples will behave.
"And I believe that Freud was less sanguine too—not only because, as Edward Said puts it, history represses the flaw, but because the most historically attested response to trauma is to repeat it. It is for similar reasons that I believe Freud to have been more torn between belonging and not belonging as a Jew, between his own remarkable vision of the Jew as created by a non-European and his belief in the Jew as the bravest—even the last—embodiment of the best of the spirit of Europe; between the Jew as eternal foreigner and the Jew as someone who wanted to enter the world of nations, who wanted, deluded or not, to go home. This evening, Edward Said has paid the most extraordinary tribute to Freud by taking out of his last work a vision of identity as able to move beyond the dangers of identity in our times. If I dissent a little, it is not just because I am not sure that Freud was quite there, but also because I wonder—as we look at the world around us today—whether any of us ever will be."
Said concludes:
"Freud's uneasy relationship with the orthodoxy of his own community is very much a part of the complex of ideas so well described by Deutscher, who forgets to mention what I think is an essential component of it: its irremediably diasporic, unhoused character. This is a subject which George Steiner has celebrated with great elan for many years. But I would want to quality Deutscher by saying that this needn't be seen only as a Jewish characteristic; in our age of vast population transfers, of refugees, exiles, expatriates and immigrants, it can also be identified in the diasporic, wandering, unresolved, cosmopolitan consciousness of someone who is both inside and outside of his or her community. This is now a relatively widespread phenomenon, even though an understanding of what that condition means is far from common. Freud's meditations and insistence on the non-European from a Jewish point of view provide, I think, an admirable sketch of what it entails, by way of refusing to resolve identity into some of the nationalist or religious herds in which so many people want so desperately to run. More bold is Freud's profound exemplification of the insight that even for the most definable, the most identifiable, the most stubborn, communal identity—for him, this was the Jewish identity—there are inherent limits that prevent if from being fully incorporated into one, and only one, Identity.
"Freud's symbol of those limits was that the founder of Jewish identity was himself a non-European Egyptian. In other words, identity cannot be thought or worked through itself alone; it cannot constitute or even imagine itself without that radical originary break or flaw which will not be repressed, because Moses was Egyptian, and therefore always outside the identity inside which so many have stood, and suffered—and later, perhaps, even triumphed. The strength of this thought is, I believe, that it can be articulated in and speak to other besieged identities as well—not through dispensing palliatives such as tolerance and compassion but, rather, by attending to it as a troubling, disabling, destabilizing secular wound—the essence of the cosmopolitan, from which there can be no recovery, no state of resolved or Stoic calm, and no utopian reconciliation even within itself. This is a necessary psychological experience, Freud says, but the problem is that he doesn't give any indication of how long it must be tolerated or whether, properly speaking, it has a real history—history being always that which comes after and, all too often, either overrides or represses the flaw. The questions Freud therefore leaves us with are: can so utterly indecisive and so deeply undetermined a history ever be written? In what language, and with what sort of vocabulary?
Can it aspire to the condition of a politics of diaspora life? Can it ever become the not-so-precarious foundation in the land of Jews and Palestinians of a bi-national state in which Israel and Palestine are parts, rather than antagonists of each other's history and underlying reality? I myself believe so—as much because Freud's unresolved sense of identity is so fruitful an example, as because the condition he takes such pains to elucidate is actually more general in the non-European world than he suspected."
Properly for a Freudian, Jacqueline Rose was far less optimistic about the prospects of such a notion, as she made clear in her response to Said's lecture.
"What I am suggesting is that we move, in a sense, further along the path of Said's reading: that we should see Freud less as purely the diagnostician of—more squarely inside—the dilemma of identity which he describes. More simply, I am suggesting that the fixity of identity—for Freud, for any of us—is something from which it is very hard to escape—harder than Said, for wholly admirable motives, wants it to be. And on this subject, Moses and Monotheism also has a great deal to say. For if it offers an account, so brilliantly drawn out here this evening, of identities that know their own provisionality, it also does the opposite. In addition to bearing all the marks of late style so vividly characterized by Said—and, indeed, perhaps for that very reason—Moses and Monotheism is also one of Freud's most violent texts.... It offers the thesis, already adumbrated in Totem and Taboo, that an act of murder is constitutive of the social tie. In fact monotheism, together with the "advance in intellectuality" that is said to accompany it, takes hold only because of the bloody deed which presided over its birth. As has often been pointed out, you can reject the flawed historical argument of both these texts while accepting the underlying thesis that there is no sociality without violence, that people are most powerfully and effectively united by what they agree to hate. What binds the people to each other and to their God is that they killed him.
"It would be odd, then, if Freud himself was free of all the conflictual strains of identity to which, in this last work, he gives such potent and strange shape. What a people have in common, Freud suggests, is a trauma: a "knowledge"—to return to the quote from Said's Beginnings—so devastating as to be unbearable in one's down sight, and only slightly more bearable as a subject of psychoanalytic investigation. This is, if you like, the other half of the story. For trauma, far from generating freedom, openness to others as well as to the divided and unresolved fragments of self, leads to a very different kind of fragmentation—one which is, in Freud's own words, "devastating", and causes identities to batten down, to go exactly the other way: towards dogma, the dangers of coercive and coercing forms of faith? Are we at risk of idealizing the flaws and fissures of identity?...
"... I am less sanguine about the ability of new forms of nationalist to bypass the insanity of the group, especially given the traumatized history of both sides of the conflict in the Middle East. As Judge Richard Gladstone put it at the Ernest Jones Memorial Lecture in October, on the subject of the Albanians of Kosovo, we have an unrealistic expectation of how traumatized peoples will behave.
"And I believe that Freud was less sanguine too—not only because, as Edward Said puts it, history represses the flaw, but because the most historically attested response to trauma is to repeat it. It is for similar reasons that I believe Freud to have been more torn between belonging and not belonging as a Jew, between his own remarkable vision of the Jew as created by a non-European and his belief in the Jew as the bravest—even the last—embodiment of the best of the spirit of Europe; between the Jew as eternal foreigner and the Jew as someone who wanted to enter the world of nations, who wanted, deluded or not, to go home. This evening, Edward Said has paid the most extraordinary tribute to Freud by taking out of his last work a vision of identity as able to move beyond the dangers of identity in our times. If I dissent a little, it is not just because I am not sure that Freud was quite there, but also because I wonder—as we look at the world around us today—whether any of us ever will be."
September 17, 2020
A bit of an intellectual masturbation: he's all over the place, as befits Said's sprawling knowledge. He does tie it together, but doing so relies on a vague and philosophical tone throughout. It helps to have read some of his other work to understand what he is saying. The knowing irony of Said invoking Freud and Beethoven's late style, in which pieces were crafted more for themselves than the public, is that Said appears to be doing exactly the same thing here (in his last book). The entire speech is in service of the last paragraph, where he brings out his old saw of the humanist one state solution. It is a triumph - but only because he is so profoundly right. If he were to have made the argument in plainer language, however, it would not be such an exciting point to have made, since there is no direct connection, apart from his musing, between Freud identifying Moses as an Egyptian and the practical hope for a one state outcome. Still, a jolly romp from a great thinker - and nice and short, so you can easily get through it without a headache.
June 24, 2026
ادوارد سعید در ظاهر از فروید، موسی، یهودیت، فانون، کنراد، آئرباخ و حتی هانتینگتون سخن میگوید، اما در عمق، مسئلهاش این است که آیا هویتها، فرهنگها و تمدنها واقعاً آنقدر خالص و مستقلاند که ما دوست داریم تصور کنیم یا نه. آنچه در این میان بیش از هر چیز جلب توجه میکند شیوه خوانش سعید است. او برخلاف بسیاری از منتقدان پسااستعماری، نه به دنبال محکوم کردن گذشتگان است و نه به دنبال تقدیس آنان. او نه میخواهد کنراد را به دلیل نگاه استعمارزدهاش از تاریخ ادبیات حذف کند و نه میخواهد فروید را به خاطر اروپامحوریاش از جایگاهش پایین بکشد. در عوض میکوشد آنها را در زمانه خودشان بفهمد و سپس نشان دهد که آثارشان چگونه از محدودیتهای همان زمانه فراتر رفتهاند و وارد گفتگویی شدهاند که خود نویسندگان هرگز نمیتوانستند آن را پیشبینی کنند.
شاید زیباترین ایده کتاب همین باشد که آثار بزرگ پس از مرگ نویسندگانشان زندگی تازهای پیدا میکنند و در کنار صداهایی قرار میگیرند که در زمان خلق آن آثار هنوز وجود نداشتهاند.
سعید در فروید چیزی میبیند که بسیاری از خوانندگان نادیده میگیرند؛ او فروید را نه صرفاً به عنوان بنیانگذار روانکاوی، بلکه به عنوان متفکری میخواند که در واپسین سالهای زندگیاش به مسئله هویت خود بازگشته است. فروید در این کتاب دیگر آن دانشمند مطمئن و منظم آثار اولیهاش نیست. او تبعیدی، سالخورده، بیمار و درگیر پرسشهایی است که مستقیماً به خودش مربوط میشوند. در کتاب موسی و یکتاپرستی دو فروید همزمان حضور دارند یکی فروید دانشمند که میخواهد فرضیهای تاریخی را دنبال کند و دیگری فروید یهودی که با گذشته، تبار، تعلق و جایگاه خود درگیر است و هیچکدام از این دو بهطور کامل بر دیگری غلبه نمیکند.
فروید فردی لامذهب بود و به خدای ادیان ابراهیمی باور نداشت، اما در عین حال یهودی بودن را انکار نمیکرد. گویی یهودیت برای او بیش از آنکه یک ایمان دینی باشد، یک حافظه تاریخی، یک سنت فکری و یک تجربه فرهنگی بود.
ادعای جنجالی فروید مبنی بر اینکه موسی نه یهودی، بلکه مصری بود، برای سعید صرفاً یک بحث تاریخی نیست، بلکه استعارهای برای تمام هویتهای انسانی است. اگر بنیانگذار یک ملت و یک سنت دینی از بیرون آن قوم آمده باشد، نمیتوان هویت را چیزی کاملاً درونی، خالص و خودبسنده دانست. به بیان دیگر از همان آغاز (دیگری) در قلب هویت حضور داشته است. آنچه سعید در فروید تحسین میکند، شجاعت او در شکستن همین اسطوره خلوص است. در این نگاه، یهودیت نه از خلأ پدید آمده و نه از سرچشمهای کاملاً مستقل.
همین مسئله باعث میشود سعید فروید را در تقابل جالبی با صهیونیسم و تئودور هرزل قرار دهد؛ کسی که پاسخ مسئله یهود را در جغرافیا میجست و وطن را در نقشه جستجو میکرد، در حالی که فروید پاسخ را بیشتر در فرهنگ، حافظه و تاریخ میدید. این بحث ما را ناخواسته به مسئله ملیگرایی اروپایی در قرن نوزدهم میرساند. تمدنی که از جهانشمولی و انسانیت سخن میگفت، در عمل انسانها را بر اساس تبار و ریشه از یکدیگر جدا میکرد و یهودیان را با وجود آمیختگی فرهنگی، همچنان «بیگانه» میدانست. در همین نقطه است که شباهت میان سعید و فروید آشکار میشود. سعید نیز مانند فروید در یک هویت واحد نمیگنجید؛ فلسطینی بود اما تمام عمرش را در غرب گذراند، منتقد امپریالیسم بود اما عاشق ادبیات اروپایی. او در فروید تصویری از خودش میبیند انسانی که به ریشههایش تعلق دارد اما حاضر نیست در آنها زندانی شود. هویت نه یک جوهر خالص است، نه یک سرنوشت تغییرناپذیر.
از این نظر بخشهای مربوط به فانون نیز معنای تازهای پیدا میکنند. فانون در این کتاب پیامدهای سیاسی همان مرزبندیهای هویتی را نشان میدهد. اگر فروید از بیگانهای سخن میگوید که درون روان ما زندگی میکند، فانون از بیگانهای سخن میگوید که استعمار بر او برچسب زده. استعمار نه فقط سرزمینها، بلکه تخیل انسانها را نیز اشغال میکند و از طریق علم، پزشکی، مردمنگاری و زبان، سلسلهمراتبهایی میسازد که خود را طبیعی جلوه میدهند. سعید با قرار دادن این دو متفکر کنار یکدیگر نشان میدهد که مسئله دیگری هم بعدی روانی دارد و هم بعدی سیاسی.
اما نقد سعید به اروپامحوری هرگز به نفی کامل سنت اروپایی تبدیل نمیشود، چرا که او میداند خود اروپا نیز محل کشمکش، تبعید، حاشیهنشینی و چندپارگی بوده است. او از خواننده نمیخواهد دل تاریکی کنراد را کنار بگذارد، بلکه میخواهد آن را به شیوه (کنترپوان) در کنار آچهبه، طیب صالح و نایپل بخواند؛ یعنی شنیدن چند صدا به طور همزمان، بدون آنکه یکی از آنها دیگری را خاموش کند. او به جای حذف صداهای مسئلهدار، خواهان افزودن صداهای خاموششده است.
سعید برای تبیین این وضعیت از ایزاک دویچر ایده (یهودی غیریهودی) را وام میگیرد؛ متفکرانی چون اسپینوزا، مارکس و فروید که از دل یک سنت برخاستند اما دغدغه انسان به طور کلی را داشتند. سعید این وضعیت را منحصر به یهودیان نمیداند و آن را به تمام مهاجران و تبعیدیانی که در مرز میان هویتها زندگی میکنند تعمیم میدهد. یکی از زیباترین ایدههای این بخش مفهوم (جراحت سکولار) است؛ این ایده که در قلب هر هویتی زخمی وجود دارد که ناشی از ناتمامی و آمیختگی آن است. هیچ هویتی کاملاً بر خودش منطبق نیست. این جراحت را نمیتوان با بازگشت به یک گذشته خیالی یا ملیگرایی افراطی درمان کرد، باید با آن زندگی کرد.
برای همین سعید با تحمل صرف یا رؤیاهای آرمانشهری که میخواهند همه اختلافها را پاک کنند مخالف است و بر گفتگو تاکید میکند.
با این حال، کتاب بینقص هم نیست و گاهی سعید چنان آزادانه میان فروید، تاریخ یهودیت، نظریه استعمار، ادبیات تطبیقی و فلسفه فرهنگ حرکت میکند که خواننده احساس میکند به پیشزمینه عظیمی از دانش نیاز دارد.
او اغلب نامها و نظریههای والرشتاین یا آئرباخ را با فرض آشنایی مخاطب مطرح میکند و کمتر مکث میکند تا آنها را توضیح دهد. اما فراتر از این فرسایندگی متن یک پرسش اساسیتر باقی میماند. آیا ایده سعید درباره هویت به عنوان یک موجودیت همیشه گشوده و رودخانهای جاری، زیادی رمانتیک نیست؟ وقتی او در پایان کتاب تلاش میکند سرنوشت یهودیان و فلسطینیان را به عنوان دو مردم همبسته به هم گره بزند، آیا قدرت صلب و خشن ایدئولوژیهای مرزساز و جغرافیا را در بستر واقعیتهای سیاسی امروز دستکم نمیگیرد؟ آیا این شبیه به یک ژست زیبای آکادمیک نیست؟
در نهایت چیزی که در ذهن میماند نه جزئیات تاریخی فرضیه فروید است و نه مناقشههای فیلولوژیک. آنچه باقی میماند یک بینش انسانی است. این ایده که هویتها قلعه نیستند، رودخانهاند. آنها از برخوردها، وامگیریها، ترجمهها، مهاجرتها و آمیزشها شکل میگیرند. شاید مهمترین درس این کتاب همین باشد که دیگری هرگز کاملاً بیرون از ما نیست؛ همانطور که خود ما نیز هرگز کاملاً از دیگری جدا نیستیم. ارزش فروید برای سعید در حل کردن مسئله هویت نیست، بلکه در نهایی نکردن و گشوده نگه داشتن آن است.
شاید زیباترین ایده کتاب همین باشد که آثار بزرگ پس از مرگ نویسندگانشان زندگی تازهای پیدا میکنند و در کنار صداهایی قرار میگیرند که در زمان خلق آن آثار هنوز وجود نداشتهاند.
سعید در فروید چیزی میبیند که بسیاری از خوانندگان نادیده میگیرند؛ او فروید را نه صرفاً به عنوان بنیانگذار روانکاوی، بلکه به عنوان متفکری میخواند که در واپسین سالهای زندگیاش به مسئله هویت خود بازگشته است. فروید در این کتاب دیگر آن دانشمند مطمئن و منظم آثار اولیهاش نیست. او تبعیدی، سالخورده، بیمار و درگیر پرسشهایی است که مستقیماً به خودش مربوط میشوند. در کتاب موسی و یکتاپرستی دو فروید همزمان حضور دارند یکی فروید دانشمند که میخواهد فرضیهای تاریخی را دنبال کند و دیگری فروید یهودی که با گذشته، تبار، تعلق و جایگاه خود درگیر است و هیچکدام از این دو بهطور کامل بر دیگری غلبه نمیکند.
فروید فردی لامذهب بود و به خدای ادیان ابراهیمی باور نداشت، اما در عین حال یهودی بودن را انکار نمیکرد. گویی یهودیت برای او بیش از آنکه یک ایمان دینی باشد، یک حافظه تاریخی، یک سنت فکری و یک تجربه فرهنگی بود.
ادعای جنجالی فروید مبنی بر اینکه موسی نه یهودی، بلکه مصری بود، برای سعید صرفاً یک بحث تاریخی نیست، بلکه استعارهای برای تمام هویتهای انسانی است. اگر بنیانگذار یک ملت و یک سنت دینی از بیرون آن قوم آمده باشد، نمیتوان هویت را چیزی کاملاً درونی، خالص و خودبسنده دانست. به بیان دیگر از همان آغاز (دیگری) در قلب هویت حضور داشته است. آنچه سعید در فروید تحسین میکند، شجاعت او در شکستن همین اسطوره خلوص است. در این نگاه، یهودیت نه از خلأ پدید آمده و نه از سرچشمهای کاملاً مستقل.
همین مسئله باعث میشود سعید فروید را در تقابل جالبی با صهیونیسم و تئودور هرزل قرار دهد؛ کسی که پاسخ مسئله یهود را در جغرافیا میجست و وطن را در نقشه جستجو میکرد، در حالی که فروید پاسخ را بیشتر در فرهنگ، حافظه و تاریخ میدید. این بحث ما را ناخواسته به مسئله ملیگرایی اروپایی در قرن نوزدهم میرساند. تمدنی که از جهانشمولی و انسانیت سخن میگفت، در عمل انسانها را بر اساس تبار و ریشه از یکدیگر جدا میکرد و یهودیان را با وجود آمیختگی فرهنگی، همچنان «بیگانه» میدانست. در همین نقطه است که شباهت میان سعید و فروید آشکار میشود. سعید نیز مانند فروید در یک هویت واحد نمیگنجید؛ فلسطینی بود اما تمام عمرش را در غرب گذراند، منتقد امپریالیسم بود اما عاشق ادبیات اروپایی. او در فروید تصویری از خودش میبیند انسانی که به ریشههایش تعلق دارد اما حاضر نیست در آنها زندانی شود. هویت نه یک جوهر خالص است، نه یک سرنوشت تغییرناپذیر.
از این نظر بخشهای مربوط به فانون نیز معنای تازهای پیدا میکنند. فانون در این کتاب پیامدهای سیاسی همان مرزبندیهای هویتی را نشان میدهد. اگر فروید از بیگانهای سخن میگوید که درون روان ما زندگی میکند، فانون از بیگانهای سخن میگوید که استعمار بر او برچسب زده. استعمار نه فقط سرزمینها، بلکه تخیل انسانها را نیز اشغال میکند و از طریق علم، پزشکی، مردمنگاری و زبان، سلسلهمراتبهایی میسازد که خود را طبیعی جلوه میدهند. سعید با قرار دادن این دو متفکر کنار یکدیگر نشان میدهد که مسئله دیگری هم بعدی روانی دارد و هم بعدی سیاسی.
اما نقد سعید به اروپامحوری هرگز به نفی کامل سنت اروپایی تبدیل نمیشود، چرا که او میداند خود اروپا نیز محل کشمکش، تبعید، حاشیهنشینی و چندپارگی بوده است. او از خواننده نمیخواهد دل تاریکی کنراد را کنار بگذارد، بلکه میخواهد آن را به شیوه (کنترپوان) در کنار آچهبه، طیب صالح و نایپل بخواند؛ یعنی شنیدن چند صدا به طور همزمان، بدون آنکه یکی از آنها دیگری را خاموش کند. او به جای حذف صداهای مسئلهدار، خواهان افزودن صداهای خاموششده است.
سعید برای تبیین این وضعیت از ایزاک دویچر ایده (یهودی غیریهودی) را وام میگیرد؛ متفکرانی چون اسپینوزا، مارکس و فروید که از دل یک سنت برخاستند اما دغدغه انسان به طور کلی را داشتند. سعید این وضعیت را منحصر به یهودیان نمیداند و آن را به تمام مهاجران و تبعیدیانی که در مرز میان هویتها زندگی میکنند تعمیم میدهد. یکی از زیباترین ایدههای این بخش مفهوم (جراحت سکولار) است؛ این ایده که در قلب هر هویتی زخمی وجود دارد که ناشی از ناتمامی و آمیختگی آن است. هیچ هویتی کاملاً بر خودش منطبق نیست. این جراحت را نمیتوان با بازگشت به یک گذشته خیالی یا ملیگرایی افراطی درمان کرد، باید با آن زندگی کرد.
برای همین سعید با تحمل صرف یا رؤیاهای آرمانشهری که میخواهند همه اختلافها را پاک کنند مخالف است و بر گفتگو تاکید میکند.
با این حال، کتاب بینقص هم نیست و گاهی سعید چنان آزادانه میان فروید، تاریخ یهودیت، نظریه استعمار، ادبیات تطبیقی و فلسفه فرهنگ حرکت میکند که خواننده احساس میکند به پیشزمینه عظیمی از دانش نیاز دارد.
او اغلب نامها و نظریههای والرشتاین یا آئرباخ را با فرض آشنایی مخاطب مطرح میکند و کمتر مکث میکند تا آنها را توضیح دهد. اما فراتر از این فرسایندگی متن یک پرسش اساسیتر باقی میماند. آیا ایده سعید درباره هویت به عنوان یک موجودیت همیشه گشوده و رودخانهای جاری، زیادی رمانتیک نیست؟ وقتی او در پایان کتاب تلاش میکند سرنوشت یهودیان و فلسطینیان را به عنوان دو مردم همبسته به هم گره بزند، آیا قدرت صلب و خشن ایدئولوژیهای مرزساز و جغرافیا را در بستر واقعیتهای سیاسی امروز دستکم نمیگیرد؟ آیا این شبیه به یک ژست زیبای آکادمیک نیست؟
در نهایت چیزی که در ذهن میماند نه جزئیات تاریخی فرضیه فروید است و نه مناقشههای فیلولوژیک. آنچه باقی میماند یک بینش انسانی است. این ایده که هویتها قلعه نیستند، رودخانهاند. آنها از برخوردها، وامگیریها، ترجمهها، مهاجرتها و آمیزشها شکل میگیرند. شاید مهمترین درس این کتاب همین باشد که دیگری هرگز کاملاً بیرون از ما نیست؛ همانطور که خود ما نیز هرگز کاملاً از دیگری جدا نیستیم. ارزش فروید برای سعید در حل کردن مسئله هویت نیست، بلکه در نهایی نکردن و گشوده نگه داشتن آن است.
March 31, 2015
"فرويد وغير الاوروبي" هي محاضرة لإدوارد سعيد، وغير الاوروبي ذو معنيين حسب الفترة : وقت فرويد، وما بعد 1939. إدوارد سعيد وفي لمنهجه في الدراسات ما بعد الكولونيالية، ولقارئه أن يلاحظ خاصة في البداية تكرارا لأمثلة عزيزة عليه مثل جوزف كونراد وفرانز فانون.
يحلل إدوارد سعيد الأعمال الأخيرة لفرويد وخاصة "موسى والتوحيد"، ويقيم التشابه بينه وبين الأعمال الأخيرة لبيتهوفن من حيث المنحى الفكري : الإنتاج هو لذات المنتج. النتيجة لفرويد هو أن كتابه هو أقل كتبه "موضوعية"، ومليء بالتجاذبات حول الهوية اليهودية. هذه التجاذبات هي التي تمثل لإدوارد سعيد مادة خصبة للتحليل، ومنها يمر إلى الوضعية الراهنة في فلسطين.
الصراع الهووي في فلسطين يمنع كل تنسيب فرويدي، فكل جانب له علم آثار (في محاولة لإثبات الأحقية التاريخية، ومحاولة مضادة). رغم ذلك، يلاحظ إدوارد سعيد بداية ظهور تيارات مراجعة للسردية الرسمية الاسرائلية.
يحلل إدوارد سعيد الأعمال الأخيرة لفرويد وخاصة "موسى والتوحيد"، ويقيم التشابه بينه وبين الأعمال الأخيرة لبيتهوفن من حيث المنحى الفكري : الإنتاج هو لذات المنتج. النتيجة لفرويد هو أن كتابه هو أقل كتبه "موضوعية"، ومليء بالتجاذبات حول الهوية اليهودية. هذه التجاذبات هي التي تمثل لإدوارد سعيد مادة خصبة للتحليل، ومنها يمر إلى الوضعية الراهنة في فلسطين.
الصراع الهووي في فلسطين يمنع كل تنسيب فرويدي، فكل جانب له علم آثار (في محاولة لإثبات الأحقية التاريخية، ومحاولة مضادة). رغم ذلك، يلاحظ إدوارد سعيد بداية ظهور تيارات مراجعة للسردية الرسمية الاسرائلية.
April 12, 2021
Surprising lectures on Freud's Moses, suggesting that Freud's Judaism is a good partner for dialogue insofar as he re-conceptualizes the traditional boundary between Pharoanic Egypt and exilic Israel. By proposing that Moses wasn't originally Jewish, Freud is strategically puncturing a cultural illusion, making room for an encounter beyond dueling particularisms.
November 12, 2008
fascinating to read about Freud from the perspective of the enlightened mind of Edward Said
November 16, 2024
Edward Said's ability to hold together an incredibly sharp analytic (pun intended) critique and the deepest empathy for those of us who aren't perfect (see p. 25 where he identifies Conrad's flawed works as still useful and his decades long wrestling with sympathy for Jewish suffering and an unwillingness to let sympathy turn into approval for unethical acts carried out by Israel in the name of that suffering). This would be a useful piece to read in graduate school introductory psychodynamics courses -- in part to undercut the sloppy undervaluing of Freud that hipster woke therapists-in-training are likely to come to the material with. This exploration of the psychology of belonging, borders and difference is well worth reading.
3. "Provided that the exile refuses to sit on the sidelines nursing a wound," he writes in Reflections on Exile, "there are things to be learned: he or she must cultivate a scrupulous (not indulgent or sulky) subjectivity."
In response to Said's talk the following invites us to imagine Said and Freud in the framework of Cabral's political dictum to "Tell no lies; claim no easy victories.":
68. In Said's hands, therefore, the "intransigent and irascible transgressiveness" of Freud's "late style" -- which, perhaps not intentionally, sounds like a wonderful description of what many of us love most about Said himself -- announces in the political domain what Freud declared so often to his patients: learn to live without consoling fictions, for in the death of such numbing and dangerous fantasies lies your only hope. We are talking here not about whole, nor even divided, but something more like broken identities, In a recent article, Marc Ellis, Professor of American and Jewish Studies at Baylor University, puts the question: "What if the centre of contemporary Jerusalem was seen as broken rather than salvific and shared in that brokenness, rather than divided by victory and defeat?"
77. As Judge Richard Goldstone put it at the Ernest Jones Memorial Lecture in October, on the subject of the Albanians of Kosovo, we have an unrealistic expectation of how traumatized people will behave.
3. "Provided that the exile refuses to sit on the sidelines nursing a wound," he writes in Reflections on Exile, "there are things to be learned: he or she must cultivate a scrupulous (not indulgent or sulky) subjectivity."
In response to Said's talk the following invites us to imagine Said and Freud in the framework of Cabral's political dictum to "Tell no lies; claim no easy victories.":
68. In Said's hands, therefore, the "intransigent and irascible transgressiveness" of Freud's "late style" -- which, perhaps not intentionally, sounds like a wonderful description of what many of us love most about Said himself -- announces in the political domain what Freud declared so often to his patients: learn to live without consoling fictions, for in the death of such numbing and dangerous fantasies lies your only hope. We are talking here not about whole, nor even divided, but something more like broken identities, In a recent article, Marc Ellis, Professor of American and Jewish Studies at Baylor University, puts the question: "What if the centre of contemporary Jerusalem was seen as broken rather than salvific and shared in that brokenness, rather than divided by victory and defeat?"
77. As Judge Richard Goldstone put it at the Ernest Jones Memorial Lecture in October, on the subject of the Albanians of Kosovo, we have an unrealistic expectation of how traumatized people will behave.
September 10, 2024
This small book of lectures from Edward Said on Freud’s Moses and Monotheism and Jacqueline Rose’s response to Said create an interesting philosophical and psychological discussion for what it means to be part of the diaspora, to have identity, and to Said’s vision for Palestine and Israel.
One of the main topics Said discusses is his fascination with Freud’s concept of identity and Jewishness. But something more interesting to me is Said’s analysis of erasure. The Israeli’s and the West use a common trope in their erasure of Palestinians. Said in “Question of Palestine” alludes to Freud and calls it a “negative hallucination,” saying that the oppressor insists that the oppressed is not recognizable, out of sight, and (in their mind) hopefully eliminated. Frantz Fanon calls this a part of the Manicheanism process that imperialists do to those they oppress. Othering and denying the Palestinians in intellectual, cultural, and literal spaces is that process that leads to and is genocide. Palestinian resitantance to this process is the psychological violence to maintain sanity when they are told their history and even their literal identifying selves do not exist. It is the violent voice crying out to be heard.
Short, sweet and overall a very interesting read of 3 powerful psychoanalysts doing studies on each other. The voice of Said can still be heard and as Rose says “You read a historic writer not for what they failed to see… but for the as-yet-unloved, still-shaping history which their vision…partially, tentatively, foresees and provokes.”
One of the main topics Said discusses is his fascination with Freud’s concept of identity and Jewishness. But something more interesting to me is Said’s analysis of erasure. The Israeli’s and the West use a common trope in their erasure of Palestinians. Said in “Question of Palestine” alludes to Freud and calls it a “negative hallucination,” saying that the oppressor insists that the oppressed is not recognizable, out of sight, and (in their mind) hopefully eliminated. Frantz Fanon calls this a part of the Manicheanism process that imperialists do to those they oppress. Othering and denying the Palestinians in intellectual, cultural, and literal spaces is that process that leads to and is genocide. Palestinian resitantance to this process is the psychological violence to maintain sanity when they are told their history and even their literal identifying selves do not exist. It is the violent voice crying out to be heard.
Short, sweet and overall a very interesting read of 3 powerful psychoanalysts doing studies on each other. The voice of Said can still be heard and as Rose says “You read a historic writer not for what they failed to see… but for the as-yet-unloved, still-shaping history which their vision…partially, tentatively, foresees and provokes.”
August 31, 2024
أوصي بقراءة كتاب سيجموند فرويد "موسى والتوحيد" للاستمتاع الكامل بتحليل إدوارد سعيد لفرويد وغير الأوروبيين.
في موسى والتوحيد، يرتكب فرويد العديد من الأخطاء التاريخية. وعلى الرغم من أن موسى والتوحيد كتبا قبل أشهر قليلة من وفاة المؤلف، إلا أن القراء نفسي لا يستطيعون أن يعذروا المؤلف على تصريحاته المنافية للعقل حول هوية موسى عليه السلام. ويرى فرويد أن موسى (عليه السلام) لم يكن يهودياً بل مصرياً والمشكلة في حجته هنا هي الانفصال بين الهويتين: أحدهما ديني والآخر عرقي.
وعن ميلاد موسى عليه السلام يقول فرويد أنه ولد في زمن أخناتون الذي حكم مصر في الفترة ما بين 1353 – 1336. ألغى أخناتون الشرك وجعل شعبه يؤمن بالتوحيد. ثم لاحقاً، يقول فرويد أنه من الممكن أن يكون موسى عليه السلام في الواقع، أخناتون وهو ما اختلف فيه لأن موسى ولد قبل أخناتون بقرون لعائلة متوسطة.
كانت الحجة الرئيسية لإدوارد سعيد في محاضرته عن فرويد وغير الأوروبيين هي أنه على الرغم من نجاة فرويد من الاضطهاد النازي، إلا أنه في نهاية حياته، أصبح منتسباً للصهيونية وتحدى القيود البريطانية على الهجرة اليهودية إلى أرض فلسطين.
كانت معاداة السامية تتصاعد في أوروبا خلال القرن التاسع عشر، وكانت أوروبا تبحث عن حل بديل لـ "المشاكل اليهودية". وكان ذلك عندما اعتمدوا على كتاب الله لمساعدتهم في اختراع "إسرائيل"، على الرغم من أن الكثيرين لم يؤمنوا بالله. استخدم الصهاينة الكتاب المقدس لتبرير وإقناع العالم بأن الله وعد إسرائيل بأرض "فلسطين"، ولا يمكن لأحد أن يجادل في قرار الله. وهكذا أصبح الفلسطينيون الأصليون عائقاً أمام تحقيق وعد الله. لا يمكننا إنكار دور الأدباء والمفكرين مثل فرويد، وكارل ماركس، وجورج إليوت في تحويل الحلم إلى الواقع (أرض فلسطين إلى غير فلسطينين).
I would recommend reading Sigmund Freud’s Moses and Monotheism to fully comprehend Edward Said’s analysis of Freud and non-Europeans.
In Moses and Monotheism, Freud commits many historical inaccuracies. Even though Moses and Monotheism were written a few months before the author’s death, still readers like myself can not excuse the author for his preposterous statements about Moses' identity. Freud argues that Moses (Peace Be Upon Him) was not a Jew but an Egyptian. The issue with his argument here is the disconnection between the two identities. One is religious and the other, ethnic. Freud goes on a lengthy discussion to prove that Moses is Egyptian, not Jewish.
Concerning Moses's (PBUH) birth, Freud says that Moses was born during the time of Ikhenaton, who reigned Egypt between 1353 - 1336 BC. Ikhenaton abolished polytheism and pantheism and institutionalized Monotheism to his people. He encouraged his people to worship one God only. Later on, Freud says that it's possible that Moses is, in fact, Ikhenaton which I beg to differ because Moses was born centuries before Ikhenaton to an average family.
Edward said’s main argument in his lecture on Freud and non-European was that even though Freud escaped Nazi persecution, toward the end of his life, he became affiliated with Zionism. He challenged British restrictions on Jewish immigration to the land of Palestine. Freud was a Jew but didn't believe in God. Anti-semitism was rising in Europe during the 19th century, and prominent Zionists figure had to find a solution to the “Jewish Problems.” This was when they relied on God’s scripture to help them with the invention of “Israel,” even though many did not believe in God. Zionists used Bible to justify and convince the world that God has promised Israel the land of “Palestine,” and no one can argue with God’s decision. Thus natives Palestinians became an obstacle to achieving God’s promise.
We cannot deny the pivotal role played by writers and thinkers such as Freud, Karl Marx, and George Eliot in preaching and propagating a “Jewish land” for the Jews at the expense of the indigenous Palestinians.
في موسى والتوحيد، يرتكب فرويد العديد من الأخطاء التاريخية. وعلى الرغم من أن موسى والتوحيد كتبا قبل أشهر قليلة من وفاة المؤلف، إلا أن القراء نفسي لا يستطيعون أن يعذروا المؤلف على تصريحاته المنافية للعقل حول هوية موسى عليه السلام. ويرى فرويد أن موسى (عليه السلام) لم يكن يهودياً بل مصرياً والمشكلة في حجته هنا هي الانفصال بين الهويتين: أحدهما ديني والآخر عرقي.
وعن ميلاد موسى عليه السلام يقول فرويد أنه ولد في زمن أخناتون الذي حكم مصر في الفترة ما بين 1353 – 1336. ألغى أخناتون الشرك وجعل شعبه يؤمن بالتوحيد. ثم لاحقاً، يقول فرويد أنه من الممكن أن يكون موسى عليه السلام في الواقع، أخناتون وهو ما اختلف فيه لأن موسى ولد قبل أخناتون بقرون لعائلة متوسطة.
كانت الحجة الرئيسية لإدوارد سعيد في محاضرته عن فرويد وغير الأوروبيين هي أنه على الرغم من نجاة فرويد من الاضطهاد النازي، إلا أنه في نهاية حياته، أصبح منتسباً للصهيونية وتحدى القيود البريطانية على الهجرة اليهودية إلى أرض فلسطين.
كانت معاداة السامية تتصاعد في أوروبا خلال القرن التاسع عشر، وكانت أوروبا تبحث عن حل بديل لـ "المشاكل اليهودية". وكان ذلك عندما اعتمدوا على كتاب الله لمساعدتهم في اختراع "إسرائيل"، على الرغم من أن الكثيرين لم يؤمنوا بالله. استخدم الصهاينة الكتاب المقدس لتبرير وإقناع العالم بأن الله وعد إسرائيل بأرض "فلسطين"، ولا يمكن لأحد أن يجادل في قرار الله. وهكذا أصبح الفلسطينيون الأصليون عائقاً أمام تحقيق وعد الله. لا يمكننا إنكار دور الأدباء والمفكرين مثل فرويد، وكارل ماركس، وجورج إليوت في تحويل الحلم إلى الواقع (أرض فلسطين إلى غير فلسطينين).
I would recommend reading Sigmund Freud’s Moses and Monotheism to fully comprehend Edward Said’s analysis of Freud and non-Europeans.
In Moses and Monotheism, Freud commits many historical inaccuracies. Even though Moses and Monotheism were written a few months before the author’s death, still readers like myself can not excuse the author for his preposterous statements about Moses' identity. Freud argues that Moses (Peace Be Upon Him) was not a Jew but an Egyptian. The issue with his argument here is the disconnection between the two identities. One is religious and the other, ethnic. Freud goes on a lengthy discussion to prove that Moses is Egyptian, not Jewish.
Concerning Moses's (PBUH) birth, Freud says that Moses was born during the time of Ikhenaton, who reigned Egypt between 1353 - 1336 BC. Ikhenaton abolished polytheism and pantheism and institutionalized Monotheism to his people. He encouraged his people to worship one God only. Later on, Freud says that it's possible that Moses is, in fact, Ikhenaton which I beg to differ because Moses was born centuries before Ikhenaton to an average family.
Edward said’s main argument in his lecture on Freud and non-European was that even though Freud escaped Nazi persecution, toward the end of his life, he became affiliated with Zionism. He challenged British restrictions on Jewish immigration to the land of Palestine. Freud was a Jew but didn't believe in God. Anti-semitism was rising in Europe during the 19th century, and prominent Zionists figure had to find a solution to the “Jewish Problems.” This was when they relied on God’s scripture to help them with the invention of “Israel,” even though many did not believe in God. Zionists used Bible to justify and convince the world that God has promised Israel the land of “Palestine,” and no one can argue with God’s decision. Thus natives Palestinians became an obstacle to achieving God’s promise.
We cannot deny the pivotal role played by writers and thinkers such as Freud, Karl Marx, and George Eliot in preaching and propagating a “Jewish land” for the Jews at the expense of the indigenous Palestinians.
August 5, 2025
a commentary on Freud's Moses and Monotheism, which in Said's words "come[s] alive in this tiny sliver of land in the Eastern Mediterranean," i.e., by making the early history of Judaism, as embedded within the ancient history of the middle east, a matter for psychoanalysis.
Edward Said was so relentlessly humanistic and thoughtful that I think actually the world could use more of him now.
I'll just end with Jacqueline Rose's afterword: "In Said's words [Freud] 'refuses to resolve identity into some of the nationalist or religious herds in which so many people want so desperately to run'. In Said's hands, therefore, the 'intransigent and irascible transgressiveness' of Freud's 'late style'--which, perhaps not intentionally, sounds like a wonderful description of what many of us love most about Said himself--announces in the political domain what Freud declared so often to his patients: learn to live without consoling fictions, for in the death of such numbing and dangerous fantasies lies your only hope."
Edward Said was so relentlessly humanistic and thoughtful that I think actually the world could use more of him now.
I'll just end with Jacqueline Rose's afterword: "In Said's words [Freud] 'refuses to resolve identity into some of the nationalist or religious herds in which so many people want so desperately to run'. In Said's hands, therefore, the 'intransigent and irascible transgressiveness' of Freud's 'late style'--which, perhaps not intentionally, sounds like a wonderful description of what many of us love most about Said himself--announces in the political domain what Freud declared so often to his patients: learn to live without consoling fictions, for in the death of such numbing and dangerous fantasies lies your only hope."
October 10, 2022
I'm reading Culture and imperialism at the same time and I can
reckon that E.Said is a devoted one giving meaning to other than European cultures
by emphasis and nominalization to all that were considered 2nd class or irrelevant
by the western canon.
This truly takes a very critical mind which Said brings to his text by worked argument.
The basic human problem ,that of one discovering oneself is becoming for him
the same problem that the national and collective is dealing with and still remains
unresolved.
This missing apperception is the creator of the meaning of enemy and the wish for obliteration
and scapegoating for whoever is the proximal other. The generator of hatred that ignores
that the human condition is the same for all mass.
The same mistakes are enacted in different forms as the well known farce of history.
A nice text that brings forth the sense of harmony that Said stresses and a fairly good epilogue by J. Rose on what is foresaid
reckon that E.Said is a devoted one giving meaning to other than European cultures
by emphasis and nominalization to all that were considered 2nd class or irrelevant
by the western canon.
This truly takes a very critical mind which Said brings to his text by worked argument.
The basic human problem ,that of one discovering oneself is becoming for him
the same problem that the national and collective is dealing with and still remains
unresolved.
This missing apperception is the creator of the meaning of enemy and the wish for obliteration
and scapegoating for whoever is the proximal other. The generator of hatred that ignores
that the human condition is the same for all mass.
The same mistakes are enacted in different forms as the well known farce of history.
A nice text that brings forth the sense of harmony that Said stresses and a fairly good epilogue by J. Rose on what is foresaid
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