Paul Eisenstein | Otterbein University (original) (raw)
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Papers by Paul Eisenstein
International Journal of Žižek Studies, 2016
Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, 2010
It can have escaped few people's attention that Kabbalah study and Kabbalistic wisdom have in... more It can have escaped few people's attention that Kabbalah study and Kabbalistic wisdom have in the past decade or so become increasingly fashionable. Each day, it seems, a new celebrity (Jewish or otherwise) identifies him or herself as an acolyte of Kabbalah, following the path of Madonna, whose 1997 immersion in Jewish mysticism prompted her conversion from Material Girl to Esther (the Jewish name she has taken on). Salient Kabbalistic texts and commentaries, moreover, are now widely available to the reading public, as are a host of commodities imagined to bear the power of its mystical insights. These include videos and DVDs, bracelets made of red string that are believed to ward off negativity and evil, lines of clothing, and even, alas, a high-energy drink. Centers for the study of Kabbalah now exist in nearly a dozen of the largest American cities, and in major cities in no fewer than thirty countries around the world. And even within distinctly Jewish educational venues, i...
Choice Reviews Online, 2013
The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, 1998
The German Quarterly, 1997
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 10436920500468543, Aug 19, 2006
Twentieth Century Literature, 2004
Otterbein College Humanities Journal
International Journal of Žižek Studies, 2016
Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, 2010
It can have escaped few people's attention that Kabbalah study and Kabbalistic wisdom have in... more It can have escaped few people's attention that Kabbalah study and Kabbalistic wisdom have in the past decade or so become increasingly fashionable. Each day, it seems, a new celebrity (Jewish or otherwise) identifies him or herself as an acolyte of Kabbalah, following the path of Madonna, whose 1997 immersion in Jewish mysticism prompted her conversion from Material Girl to Esther (the Jewish name she has taken on). Salient Kabbalistic texts and commentaries, moreover, are now widely available to the reading public, as are a host of commodities imagined to bear the power of its mystical insights. These include videos and DVDs, bracelets made of red string that are believed to ward off negativity and evil, lines of clothing, and even, alas, a high-energy drink. Centers for the study of Kabbalah now exist in nearly a dozen of the largest American cities, and in major cities in no fewer than thirty countries around the world. And even within distinctly Jewish educational venues, i...
Choice Reviews Online, 2013
The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, 1998
The German Quarterly, 1997
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 10436920500468543, Aug 19, 2006
Twentieth Century Literature, 2004
Otterbein College Humanities Journal
Traumatic Encounters lays out an alternative path toward memory in Holocaust and cultural studies... more Traumatic Encounters lays out an alternative path toward memory in Holocaust and cultural studies, one that shows the vital necessity of thinking in a universal way about an event like the Holocaust. Invoking Hegel's notion that the particular, insofar as it reaches the level of thought and langauge, is already universal, the book attempts to map a course for memorializing the Holocaust that would arrive at its trauma precisely by way of exaggerated, universalizing gestures. Rather than insisting on the singularity of the Holocaust as an event, Eisenstein argues for the ethical possibilities inherent in thinking of it as an event that cannot remain singular. In pursuit of this argument, Eisenstein's book visits several significant sites where lively debates exist about what it means to bear witness. These include Spielberg's Schindler's List and the disagreements pertaining to the meaning of Jewish rescue; D.M. Thomas' novel The White Hotel and the implications of postmodern narrative strategies in literature for historical memory; Thomas Mann's novel Doctor Faustus and the presumed links between fascism and universalist thinking; and finally, David Grossman's novel See Under: Love and the way a story of the Holocaust written in the form of an encyclopedia might be the most authentic way of recognizing what prompts violence in the first place.
Political philosophy, from Plato onward, has occupied itself with the distribution of power. Rup... more Political philosophy, from Plato onward, has occupied itself with the distribution of power. Rupture opens up a new way of conceiving politics. What we term a rupture is the violent disruption of the givens and norms of a situation, and the contention of this book is that rupture creates value by introducing distinction into being and that there is no value without this event. Distinctions, such as those between justice and injustice, owe their existence to a rupture from the natural world, but the link between these distinctions and rupture is lost over time. Distinctions come to seem self-evident and self-authorized, but their radical origin never fully disappears. Rupture both theorizes and performs the primordially creative dimension of the rupture: the book argues it is only through the idea of rupture that one can re-vivify the giant themes of political philosophy—universality, equality, fraternity, freedom.