Freud's imaginative work: Moses and monotheism and the non-European other

Added Title

Moses and Monotheism

College

College of Liberal Arts

Department/Unit

Literature, Department of

Document Type

Article

Source Title

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities

Volume

8

Issue

3

First Page

97

Last Page

104

Publication Date

1-1-2016

Abstract

This essay tracks and maps out the ideas that informed the writing of Sigmund Freud's final opus, the highly speculative and putatively historical text Moses and Monotheism. Contrary to interpretations of Moses and Monotheism as a work that critiques Jewishness as it outlines Freud's theories on culture and religion, this essay suggests that Freud, in fact, attempts to defend Judaism by isolating what he believes is its quality that attracts hate-its monotheism-and by then ascribing that quality to the non-European other. In Freud's work the non-European other is an exploitable resource that Freud uses to support and corroborate his theories with little concern at arriving at a genuine understanding of those cultures. Freud's imaginative reconfiguration of the non-European other for his own purposes, what this essay refers to as his imaginative work, animates much of his writings on culture and as this essay suggests, results from Freud's uneasy understanding of his own Jewish origins. © AesthetixMS 2016.

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Digitial Object Identifier (DOI)

10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.12

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities

Keywords

Sigmund Freud, 1856-1939. Moses and monotheism; Sigmund Freud, 1856-1939—Criticism and interpretation

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