From Mandarin to Chameleon: The Politics of Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis — a Talk by James Adam Redfield
Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis, written in Istanbul and the United States from 1936–1946, has a monumental reputation: on one hand, as a work of intellectual resistance against the Nazi regime which had just forced Auerbach and his family from Germany and, on the other, for its sweeping, comparative, and cosmopolitan approach to European literature, itself part and parcel of that resistance. While his famous interpretation of the Binding of Isaac is celebrated as a subversive gesture, reinserting his Jewish identity into a “Western” tradition under pressure from fascist reactionaries and supersessionist Christians, how different really is the Auerbach of Mimesis from the Auerbach of just the year before, in 1935 Germany, or even the Auerbach of the 1920s? How does his peculiar interpretation of the Hebrew biblical narrative not only subvert his present context but also continue his longer arc of engagement with both German and Christian thought? And how may the politics of our own particular present have prevented us from grasping Auerbach’s thought, in all its political and ethical commitment?
James Adam Redfield is assistant professor in the Department of Theological Studies at Saint Louis University and visiting assistant professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School. He writes mainly on rabbinic literature, with a focus on rabbinic ethnography, travel narratives, and storytelling more broadly. His monograph, Adventures of Rabbah & Friends: The Talmud’s Strange Tales and their Afterlife is forthcoming with Brown University Press (winter 2025), and Talmud /and/ Philosophy (ed. with Sergey Dolgopolski) has recently appeared with Indiana University Press (2024). His edition and translation of the Yiddish writings of M.Y. Berdichevsky, From a Distant Relation, appeared with Syracuse University Press in 2021.
This talk is being held in the context of BISR’s Language Learning and Critique program, an innovative approach to classical languages and their ever-changing scenes of reception. RSVPs will receive a link to the Zoom meeting room where the talk will be held. This talk will be recorded and available for later viewing.
This talk is now available for viewing on BISR’s Vimeo page; click here to watch.
Course Schedule
Thursday, 7:00pm ETDecember 05, 2024
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