Sandor Goodhart - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Sandor Goodhart
Judaism and the Exodus from Archaic Religion:: Reading René Girard among the World Religions
Catskill Reflections: Testimonial, Literary, and Jewish Values in Singer’s Novel
Summer Haven
Dionysus and the Violent Genesis of the Sacred
boundary 2, 1977
Page 1. Dionysus and the Violent Genesis of the Sacred' Rene Girard translated by Sandor Good... more Page 1. Dionysus and the Violent Genesis of the Sacred' Rene Girard translated by Sandor Goodhart ... Without Euripides would we see this terrible mimesis of violence which makes toys of the barriers one offers against it, which operates the most freely across the very ...
For René Girard: essays in friendship and in truth
Page 1. S-"l'l'H[l5E'- IN 'a&... more Page 1. S-"l'l'H[l5E'- IN 'a']{Jl'liH(']E.MH\'iIiE'-IE.1\HIJ{f|.T].'l"l'Rl§ _=:-_-~-:- Essays in Fl'iL'lH] it ~'*= 1':'¢I'|'ImHry Edlltlii-1' i:ruu|]|tafl, I-:1r~,.'§u|:z ]nr{c11sur|,Tu|1| R31:-1,.1:|:.1 ].1||1cs IQ. w'|“i.1|1u= Page 2. For R ené G irard Page 3. ...
The Prophetic Law: Essays in Judaism, Girardianism, Literary Studies, and the Ethical
The Holocaust, Three Women, One Man, and a Rabbi: Posthumous Reading in Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Enemies, A Love Story
Summer Haven
Conscience, Conscience, Consciousness
What is the difference between consciousness and conscience? The first, we say, is a matter of pe... more What is the difference between consciousness and conscience? The first, we say, is a matter of perception or awareness. In philosophy, for example, I am a subject of consciousness before an object of knowledge. The second is a matter of moral authority, the degree to which I am constrained or governed by a voice which speaks to me of what I should or should not do. In Freudian language (as opposed to Kantian language), the first would correspond to the scheme conscious, pre-conscious, unconscious, the second to the scheme id, ego, and supergo, where conscience would translate superego. In French, the same word, conscience, designates both.
Screen Memories: Trauma, Repetition, and Survival in Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker
The Palgrave Handbook of Holocaust Literature and Culture
Sidney Lumet’s Hollywood production of The Pawnbroker in the early sixties based upon a novel of ... more Sidney Lumet’s Hollywood production of The Pawnbroker in the early sixties based upon a novel of the same name (and released during the same period the Eichmann trial gained traction in Europe and Israel) significantly exceeded films of the preceding decade in America where the Holocaust was commonly presented more swiftly and obliquely. Few historians of the treatment of the Holocaust in American cinema would deny its endurance as an icon of America’s engagement with the European past. This chapter argues that Lumet’s post war “screening of the Holocaust” acquires a new depth and urgency today in the post 9/11 era where liberal democracy would once again appear trumped (if not entirely banished) by private devastations and shifting local and global cultural alignments.
Fathers and Sons, Sacrifice and Substitution: Mimetic Theory and Islam in Genesis 22 and Sura 37
Mimetic Theory and Islam, 2019
The author’s comparative study of Genesis 22 and Sura 37 (the Hebrew and Qu’ranic treatments of A... more The author’s comparative study of Genesis 22 and Sura 37 (the Hebrew and Qu’ranic treatments of Abraham’s sacrifice of his son, the akeidah) is intended to shed light on key questions arising from Girard’s own ambivalent comments on Islam and its alleged return to “archaic” religion. Goodhart’s contribution to the major task of interpreting our contemporary situation is a close comparative reading of the named texts. They share, he claims, a common trajectory of anti-idolatry and the “war against child sacrifice.” They urge us toward a new dramatic view of the akeidah, one in which “we must learn to hear commandments in quotation marks, i.e. prophetically.” The core tradition of anti-idolatry is more implicit in the biblical tradition and its commentaries but is explicitly expressed in the Qur’an. In each case, the call to “read prophetically”—“with the eyes of the prophet”—is identical.
BACK TO THE FUTURE:: The Prophetic and the Apocalyptic in Jewish and Christian Settings
In Memoriam: Mark Shechner (1940-2015)
Philip Roth Studies, 2016
Mark Shechner was a mensch. I first met Mark when he arrived at SUNY Buffalo in 1970 in the Engli... more Mark Shechner was a mensch. I first met Mark when he arrived at SUNY Buffalo in 1970 in the English Department. A modernist by trade, he was a specialist in James Joyce’s writing, while, as a graduate student, I explored the dazzle of the new continental theory with Eugenio Donato and René Girard. In those days, our paths rarely crossed. We met again in the early years of the new decade in the offshoot of the American Literature Association that became the Jewish American and Holocaust Literature Symposium (JAHLIT). He had written a book on Philip Roth with the irreverent title Up Society’s Ass, Copper (2003) and, having migrated to Jewish Studies myself, I was impressed with his chutzpah, his panache, and the sheer brilliance of his mind. Here was an iconoclast I could fathom as a big brother. We admired similar women, swam together in the waters off A1A (near the now demolished Seagate Motel in Del Ray Beach, Florida, where the conference met in the early years), extolled the valu...
Passing “The Imitation Game”: Ex Machina, the Ethical, and Mimetic Theory
René Girard and Creative Reconciliation
Reading René Girard and the Hebrew Bible
Levinas and the Prophetic Current
In the following article, I identify some instances in which Rene Girard invokes the work of Emma... more In the following article, I identify some instances in which Rene Girard invokes the work of Emmanuel Levinas and read some exchanges in Battling to the End in which Girard aligns the author of Totality and Infinity with some of his own insights regarding Hegel, Clausewitz, and totalitarian thinking. Subsequently, I comment briefly upon the Jewish prophetic tradition and outline prospects for a new and robust amplification of mimetic theory, one that presumes a complementarity between these two powerful contemporary thinkers along ethical and prophetic lines.
Oedipus and Greek Tragedy
The figure of Oedipus functions in several distinct ways in Rene Girard’s work. It first appears ... more The figure of Oedipus functions in several distinct ways in Rene Girard’s work. It first appears in a discussion in which Girard moves from an analysis of the European novel (and French drama) in the mid-1960s to his full articulation of the sacrificial structure of all culture by means of the scapegoat mechanism in the late 1960s and the 1970s. In the latter decade, the theme reappears as a critical component of Girard’s theory of sacrifice where he contrasts it with Freud’s use of the myth in psychoanalysis and Claude Levi-Strauss’s use of it in structural anthropology. In this anthropological connection, the figure of Oedipus and his relation to Sophocles’ tragedy also comes to assume a primary place in the close reading of literary texts developed by early proponents of Girard’s ideas. The figure of Oedipus reappears finally in Girard’s work in the mid-1980s and the 1990s where it is contrasted with the Joseph story in the Hebrew Bible.
Lear’s “Darker Purpose”
Of Levinas and Shakespeare
Princeton Readings in Religion and Violence
Los ritos constituyen un continuum interpretativo alrededor de la víctima propiciatoria que jamás... more Los ritos constituyen un continuum interpretativo alrededor de la víctima propiciatoria que jamás llegan a alcanzar y cuya constelación dibuja su imagen en huecograbado. Así pues, cualquier esfuerzo para clasificar los ritos a partir de sus diferencias está condenado al fracaso. Siempre
Judaism and the Exodus from Archaic Religion:: Reading René Girard among the World Religions
Catskill Reflections: Testimonial, Literary, and Jewish Values in Singer’s Novel
Summer Haven
Dionysus and the Violent Genesis of the Sacred
boundary 2, 1977
Page 1. Dionysus and the Violent Genesis of the Sacred' Rene Girard translated by Sandor Good... more Page 1. Dionysus and the Violent Genesis of the Sacred' Rene Girard translated by Sandor Goodhart ... Without Euripides would we see this terrible mimesis of violence which makes toys of the barriers one offers against it, which operates the most freely across the very ...
For René Girard: essays in friendship and in truth
Page 1. S-"l'l'H[l5E'- IN 'a&... more Page 1. S-"l'l'H[l5E'- IN 'a']{Jl'liH(']E.MH\'iIiE'-IE.1\HIJ{f|.T].'l"l'Rl§ _=:-_-~-:- Essays in Fl'iL'lH] it ~'*= 1':'¢I'|'ImHry Edlltlii-1' i:ruu|]|tafl, I-:1r~,.'§u|:z ]nr{c11sur|,Tu|1| R31:-1,.1:|:.1 ].1||1cs IQ. w'|“i.1|1u= Page 2. For R ené G irard Page 3. ...
The Prophetic Law: Essays in Judaism, Girardianism, Literary Studies, and the Ethical
The Holocaust, Three Women, One Man, and a Rabbi: Posthumous Reading in Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Enemies, A Love Story
Summer Haven
Conscience, Conscience, Consciousness
What is the difference between consciousness and conscience? The first, we say, is a matter of pe... more What is the difference between consciousness and conscience? The first, we say, is a matter of perception or awareness. In philosophy, for example, I am a subject of consciousness before an object of knowledge. The second is a matter of moral authority, the degree to which I am constrained or governed by a voice which speaks to me of what I should or should not do. In Freudian language (as opposed to Kantian language), the first would correspond to the scheme conscious, pre-conscious, unconscious, the second to the scheme id, ego, and supergo, where conscience would translate superego. In French, the same word, conscience, designates both.
Screen Memories: Trauma, Repetition, and Survival in Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker
The Palgrave Handbook of Holocaust Literature and Culture
Sidney Lumet’s Hollywood production of The Pawnbroker in the early sixties based upon a novel of ... more Sidney Lumet’s Hollywood production of The Pawnbroker in the early sixties based upon a novel of the same name (and released during the same period the Eichmann trial gained traction in Europe and Israel) significantly exceeded films of the preceding decade in America where the Holocaust was commonly presented more swiftly and obliquely. Few historians of the treatment of the Holocaust in American cinema would deny its endurance as an icon of America’s engagement with the European past. This chapter argues that Lumet’s post war “screening of the Holocaust” acquires a new depth and urgency today in the post 9/11 era where liberal democracy would once again appear trumped (if not entirely banished) by private devastations and shifting local and global cultural alignments.
Fathers and Sons, Sacrifice and Substitution: Mimetic Theory and Islam in Genesis 22 and Sura 37
Mimetic Theory and Islam, 2019
The author’s comparative study of Genesis 22 and Sura 37 (the Hebrew and Qu’ranic treatments of A... more The author’s comparative study of Genesis 22 and Sura 37 (the Hebrew and Qu’ranic treatments of Abraham’s sacrifice of his son, the akeidah) is intended to shed light on key questions arising from Girard’s own ambivalent comments on Islam and its alleged return to “archaic” religion. Goodhart’s contribution to the major task of interpreting our contemporary situation is a close comparative reading of the named texts. They share, he claims, a common trajectory of anti-idolatry and the “war against child sacrifice.” They urge us toward a new dramatic view of the akeidah, one in which “we must learn to hear commandments in quotation marks, i.e. prophetically.” The core tradition of anti-idolatry is more implicit in the biblical tradition and its commentaries but is explicitly expressed in the Qur’an. In each case, the call to “read prophetically”—“with the eyes of the prophet”—is identical.
BACK TO THE FUTURE:: The Prophetic and the Apocalyptic in Jewish and Christian Settings
In Memoriam: Mark Shechner (1940-2015)
Philip Roth Studies, 2016
Mark Shechner was a mensch. I first met Mark when he arrived at SUNY Buffalo in 1970 in the Engli... more Mark Shechner was a mensch. I first met Mark when he arrived at SUNY Buffalo in 1970 in the English Department. A modernist by trade, he was a specialist in James Joyce’s writing, while, as a graduate student, I explored the dazzle of the new continental theory with Eugenio Donato and René Girard. In those days, our paths rarely crossed. We met again in the early years of the new decade in the offshoot of the American Literature Association that became the Jewish American and Holocaust Literature Symposium (JAHLIT). He had written a book on Philip Roth with the irreverent title Up Society’s Ass, Copper (2003) and, having migrated to Jewish Studies myself, I was impressed with his chutzpah, his panache, and the sheer brilliance of his mind. Here was an iconoclast I could fathom as a big brother. We admired similar women, swam together in the waters off A1A (near the now demolished Seagate Motel in Del Ray Beach, Florida, where the conference met in the early years), extolled the valu...
Passing “The Imitation Game”: Ex Machina, the Ethical, and Mimetic Theory
René Girard and Creative Reconciliation
Reading René Girard and the Hebrew Bible
Levinas and the Prophetic Current
In the following article, I identify some instances in which Rene Girard invokes the work of Emma... more In the following article, I identify some instances in which Rene Girard invokes the work of Emmanuel Levinas and read some exchanges in Battling to the End in which Girard aligns the author of Totality and Infinity with some of his own insights regarding Hegel, Clausewitz, and totalitarian thinking. Subsequently, I comment briefly upon the Jewish prophetic tradition and outline prospects for a new and robust amplification of mimetic theory, one that presumes a complementarity between these two powerful contemporary thinkers along ethical and prophetic lines.
Oedipus and Greek Tragedy
The figure of Oedipus functions in several distinct ways in Rene Girard’s work. It first appears ... more The figure of Oedipus functions in several distinct ways in Rene Girard’s work. It first appears in a discussion in which Girard moves from an analysis of the European novel (and French drama) in the mid-1960s to his full articulation of the sacrificial structure of all culture by means of the scapegoat mechanism in the late 1960s and the 1970s. In the latter decade, the theme reappears as a critical component of Girard’s theory of sacrifice where he contrasts it with Freud’s use of the myth in psychoanalysis and Claude Levi-Strauss’s use of it in structural anthropology. In this anthropological connection, the figure of Oedipus and his relation to Sophocles’ tragedy also comes to assume a primary place in the close reading of literary texts developed by early proponents of Girard’s ideas. The figure of Oedipus reappears finally in Girard’s work in the mid-1980s and the 1990s where it is contrasted with the Joseph story in the Hebrew Bible.
Lear’s “Darker Purpose”
Of Levinas and Shakespeare
Princeton Readings in Religion and Violence
Los ritos constituyen un continuum interpretativo alrededor de la víctima propiciatoria que jamás... more Los ritos constituyen un continuum interpretativo alrededor de la víctima propiciatoria que jamás llegan a alcanzar y cuya constelación dibuja su imagen en huecograbado. Así pues, cualquier esfuerzo para clasificar los ritos a partir de sus diferencias está condenado al fracaso. Siempre