Politics of the Imaginary in the Work of Edmond Jabès
type: CreativeWork
description: This thesis concerns the relationship between socio-historical context and literary criticism with respect to the work of Edmond Jabès (translated by Rosmarie Waldrop). I argue that literary discourse is a significant site in the history of ideas and that criticism accordingly bears a latent narrative in that it is not merely reflective or reactive but co-constitutive of political discourse. Taking my cue from Edward Said, I read Jabès’s text as an event contemporaneous with the Holocaust and the declaration of the State of Israel. The inquiry broadly follows three strands of purpose: (a) to ascertain modes and means through which dominant political ideas are sustained and preserved in a critical culture; (b) as consequence of which, to show how certain nuances, complexities and subtleties in the text are traded for essentialism; and (c) to assess the alternative possibilities created by the primary text. The secondary literature on Jabès is analysed to trace the underlying narrative, both political and historical, in relation to these events. Simultaneously Jabès’s text is examined as the site of an alternative imaginary against the hegemonic status quo. The first chapter focuses on exile and exilic consciousness in Jabès. After 1948 and the declaration of the State of Israel, Jewish exile ceases to be a religious abstraction. Most of Jabès’s interlocutors direct their attention to the theological while overlooking the socio-political context of exile in relation to statehood. These metaphysical readings, however, while refraining from explicit political pronouncement, tend to affirm and bestow legitimacy on the state’s construction of mythology as history. I determine the critical gestures that consolidate this narrative and read Jabès’s text as a form of resistance to teleological statehood. In the second chapter I examine the textual methodology employed in the translation of figural gesture in the Bible into political literalities. I argue that the hermeneutic …
abstract: This thesis concerns the relationship between socio-historical context and literary criticism with respect to the work of Edmond Jabès (translated by Rosmarie Waldrop). I argue that literary discourse is a significant site in the history of ideas and that criticism accordingly bears a latent narrative in that it is not merely reflective or reactive but co-constitutive of political discourse. Taking my cue from Edward Said, I read Jabès’s text as an event contemporaneous with the Holocaust and the declaration of the State of Israel. The inquiry broadly follows three strands of purpose: (a) to ascertain modes and means through which dominant political ideas are sustained and preserved in a critical culture; (b) as consequence of which, to show how certain nuances, complexities and subtleties in the text are traded for essentialism; and (c) to assess the alternative possibilities created by the primary text. The secondary literature on Jabès is analysed to trace the underlying narrative, both political and historical, in relation to these events. Simultaneously Jabès’s text is examined as the site of an alternative imaginary against the hegemonic status quo. The first chapter focuses on exile and exilic consciousness in Jabès. After 1948 and the declaration of the State of Israel, Jewish exile ceases to be a religious abstraction. Most of Jabès’s interlocutors direct their attention to the theological while overlooking the socio-political context of exile in relation to statehood. These metaphysical readings, however, while refraining from explicit political pronouncement, tend to affirm and bestow legitimacy on the state’s construction of mythology as history. I determine the critical gestures that consolidate this narrative and read Jabès’s text as a form of resistance to teleological statehood. In the second chapter I examine the textual methodology employed in the translation of figural gesture in the Bible into political literalities. I argue that the hermeneutic …
author: Ambikapathy, Janani
language: eng
keywords: Jabes
license: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/dfc99f7b-2041-4ac7-b379-8a59eb894c25/download
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2020-11-05
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:23:54Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.71669