In 1946, in the wake of the Holocaust, Jean-Paul Sartre published Reflexions sur la Quesion Juive. The collection of essays was renamed, translated as Anti-Semite and Jew (my edition is from 1965, Schocken Books). Sartre’s book was reprinted over twelve times, and in many languages. The book presents a reading of anti-Semitism and the anti-Semitic […]
Antonin Artaud was a French actor, playwright, and poet who was (and is) most well known for his book The Theater and its Double – written in the 1930s – and the concept of the “Theater of Cruelty.” The play was widely read and amply discussed in Europe and the United States by people interested […]
What can we learn from madness? And what does it imply when thinkers, writers, or artists suggest that we go mad or look to the mad for truth or insight? Many Continental writers, artists, and thinkers have found madness a source of thought and reflecting. Think of Antonin Artaud, Friedrich Nietzsche, or George Bataille. Think […]
Since he is in constant motion, Saul Bellow’s schlemiel, Moses Herzog can’t hold on to things. He moves from place to place, from memory to memory, and from slow motion to speed. His narrative can turn on a dime. Things move through him, too: With me, money is not a medium. It passes through me […]
When I first ask my students about the meaning of skepticism, they often give me answers that confuse it with pessimism, bitterness, and negativity. Roland Barthes argues the contrary: that skepticism has nothing to do with bitterness. According to Diogenes Laertius, the 3rd century biographer of Greek philosophers, “sweetness is the final word of skepticism.” […]
Many Continental thinkers discuss “excess.” Besides Friedrich Nietzsche, the most notable exploration of excess can be found in the writings of Georges Bataille. He loves excess and his writings exude what he calls “expenditure” and “waste,” which, to his mind, is what life is all about. His book, Inner Experience is one of the most […]
Dan Miron is one of the greatest living critics of Yiddish and Jewish-American literature today. His books on these bodies of literature have won him critical claim. What interests me most is how Miron would approach a schlemiel like Motl (the main character of Sholem Aleichem’s Motl the Cantor’s Son: Writings of an Orphan Boy. […]
One of the most fascinating things Walter Benjamin notes about Franz Kafka’s main characters is that many of them are what he calls “prehistoric.” Several of these characters are actually animals or insects: they include apes, bugs, and mice. They exist in a world that is not outside of history, but before it. Taking another […]
Many a schlemiel-comedian has made his or her livelihood by way of this or that physical gesture (or series of gestures). Oftentimes, these gestures are animations of this or that physical feature. One need only think of the assemblage (to use a word made popular by the philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guittari) of Groucho […]
All anarchists are fully conscious of their will to destroy the law. The unconscious anarchist would not be; his anarchic “effect” would therefore be an accident. Steven Shaviro calls Jerry Lewis an “unconscious anarchist.” But what does Lewis’s anarchism consist of? Before we can answer that question, we need to look at the origin of […]
Schlemiel Theory 