Religion Program, Jewish Studies Program, and Hannah Arendt Center present:
A Poetic Mythology for an Age of Anger?
The Furious Construction of Subjectivity in 13th-Century Kabbalah
Dr. Nathaniel Berman
Rahel Varnhagen Professor of International Affairs, Law, and Modern Culture, Brown University
Tuesday, November 27, 2018
Olin, Room 102
4:45 pm – 6:15 pm
This event occurred on:
Tue. November 27, 4:45 pm – 6:15 pm
In the face of our current “Age of Anger,” Nathaniel Berman turns to the poetic mythology of the Jewish esoteric tradition – replete with tales of the crucial role of fury in the formation of divine, demonic, and human subjectivity. The Zohar, kabbalah’s central text, declares, “there is anger – and – there is anger”: foregrounding anger’s often ambivalent role, both igniting destructive hatred and impelling demands for social justice. Examining Zoharic mythology from rhetorical and psychoanalytic perspectives, Berman shows how it provides a productive language for perennial features of the human condition.
Dr. Samantha Hill (Political Studies, Hannah Arendt Center) will be responding to the paper.
In the face of our current “Age of Anger,” Nathaniel Berman turns to the poetic mythology of the Jewish esoteric tradition – replete with tales of the crucial role of fury in the formation of divine, demonic, and human subjectivity. The Zohar, kabbalah’s central text, declares, “there is anger – and – there is anger”: foregrounding anger’s often ambivalent role, both igniting destructive hatred and impelling demands for social justice. Examining Zoharic mythology from rhetorical and psychoanalytic perspectives, Berman shows how it provides a productive language for perennial features of the human condition.
Dr. Samantha Hill (Political Studies, Hannah Arendt Center) will be responding to the paper.