1 00:00:01,020 --> 00:00:06,480 Good afternoon, welcome, everybody. Welcome to the first meeting of the week, 2 00:00:06,480 --> 00:00:13,410 four of these were studies seminar speaker today is a professor in Leibovich who is professor of history 3 00:00:13,410 --> 00:00:20,430 and the up to chair of Holocaust Studies in Ethical Values at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. 4 00:00:20,430 --> 00:00:25,830 And its own is the author of monographs and edited collections dedicated to German life philosophy, 5 00:00:25,830 --> 00:00:35,610 Zionism and melancholy or other had happy concepts such as nihilism, catastrophe, complicity and descent. 6 00:00:35,610 --> 00:00:44,010 Yes, that's just the start. Yes, that's a start. And the title of this talk today is, is Zionism a left? 7 00:00:44,010 --> 00:00:47,940 A left wing melancholy? Thank you and welcome. 8 00:00:47,940 --> 00:00:54,840 Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. And I'm very glad to see the room is full. 9 00:00:54,840 --> 00:01:02,110 In spite of the beautiful spring day. I thought on the way here until Yaakov that it's not very. 10 00:01:02,110 --> 00:01:07,680 It feels almost and appropriate to talk about melancholy at such a sunny, beautiful day spring day. 11 00:01:07,680 --> 00:01:14,070 But I'll do my best to send you back out with a hopeful mood. 12 00:01:14,070 --> 00:01:21,150 And with that, let's start. Maybe before we do, I I hope you don't mind. 13 00:01:21,150 --> 00:01:27,540 But if any everyone can just say you're worried about who they are and what they do here? 14 00:01:27,540 --> 00:01:33,990 Is that OK? It's OK to take five minutes for that and post the recording is on the table. 15 00:01:33,990 --> 00:01:43,290 What I'm going to do today is tell you a bit about the sort, the regions or the starting point of this research and where it's led me. 16 00:01:43,290 --> 00:01:52,350 The book I published two versions of this book one in Hebrew in 2015 and one 16 and one in English in 2019. 17 00:01:52,350 --> 00:01:57,900 This is the cover. You can pass that later and take a look if you're interested. 18 00:01:57,900 --> 00:02:04,920 And I'll say two words about the historical aspect of that and actually the stylistic aspect of it. 19 00:02:04,920 --> 00:02:16,680 I came across first. I came across an excerpt from a short story that these forgotten author I never heard about before wrote, 20 00:02:16,680 --> 00:02:23,100 Those of you who know Hebrew literature maybe know his daughter know exactly who's one of the best known offers. 21 00:02:23,100 --> 00:02:33,160 Guaranteed Israel the winner of the Israel prise and really well known author and poet and. 22 00:02:33,160 --> 00:02:40,600 And after reading that excerpt, some of which I'm a part of which you are going to see here later, I was interested. 23 00:02:40,600 --> 00:02:45,520 I was really baffled by that because I've never seen anything like that in Hebrew literature before. 24 00:02:45,520 --> 00:02:49,450 There was something that combined, as Yaakov mentioned, 25 00:02:49,450 --> 00:02:55,480 know I'm interested in catastrophic and apocalyptic and, you know, happy, happy concepts of the of that sort. 26 00:02:55,480 --> 00:03:03,730 And this author combining the very interesting way secular literature, German literature, Polish literature, 27 00:03:03,730 --> 00:03:12,700 but then also Christian apocalyptic motifs together with biblical eschatological motifs and in a way I never really came across before. 28 00:03:12,700 --> 00:03:15,520 And I thought, That's really interesting. I want to read more. 29 00:03:15,520 --> 00:03:26,260 And after reading more of that literature, I decided to actually try to find out who we was and why I never heard of him before because I did study. 30 00:03:26,260 --> 00:03:33,400 I started actually with Hebrew literature, theory of literature in English literature and at the university, 31 00:03:33,400 --> 00:03:40,150 and I moved on to intellectual history into history, and I thought, it's very odd that I never heard the name before. 32 00:03:40,150 --> 00:03:42,280 So I went and actually looked for material, 33 00:03:42,280 --> 00:03:53,020 and I found I couldn't find anything in there in the established histories of literature of of Israeli or Hebrew literature. 34 00:03:53,020 --> 00:03:55,930 There's nothing absolutely zero about this person. 35 00:03:55,930 --> 00:04:03,850 And then I look further and I found out that not only he published six novels and seven collections of short stories, 36 00:04:03,850 --> 00:04:09,790 he translated some of the best known, some of the best known classics, classical works from your ability to draw. 37 00:04:09,790 --> 00:04:19,450 And actually, he's translations. I'll give you a few examples. Those of you who know instance from Klyce, Michel Koolhaas, Janusz Korczak, 38 00:04:19,450 --> 00:04:24,880 Joseph Conrad from English, that they were in classical translations from different languages, 39 00:04:24,880 --> 00:04:35,500 which he introduced it to the Hebrew speaking public in the in the early nineteen forties, late 1930s, early 1940s and so on and so forth. 40 00:04:35,500 --> 00:04:41,260 I started actually researching the biography and I found out that the archive is. 41 00:04:41,260 --> 00:04:46,390 So when I started researching, it was those of you, anyone who knows the Israeli archive, it was in one archive. 42 00:04:46,390 --> 00:04:49,930 It is completely messed up and they couldn't find anything there. 43 00:04:49,930 --> 00:04:59,140 And luckily, about a year later, they actually moved the archive of the Museum Literary Archive from where it was before to a new location, 44 00:04:59,140 --> 00:05:03,640 and they had no choice but actually organise it, at least superficially. 45 00:05:03,640 --> 00:05:11,560 So I was able to find the files and the boxes and the letters and the diaries and all this stuff that no one actually knew even existed before. 46 00:05:11,560 --> 00:05:20,260 And that's, you know, for a historian, that's revelation, right? That's the god of the voice of God actually confiding in, you have something here. 47 00:05:20,260 --> 00:05:26,920 And I read through the material and then I decided, OK, there's enough material here for an actual research. 48 00:05:26,920 --> 00:05:34,690 That was after I finished and published my first book, which was about a completely different area of study. 49 00:05:34,690 --> 00:05:38,260 And first, I thought it was enough material for an article. 50 00:05:38,260 --> 00:05:45,940 And then I, after finding the archival materials that were so rich, I decided it was enough actually for a book. 51 00:05:45,940 --> 00:05:52,720 Someone actually gave me that advice amongst the lack of it. I know. And I decided to actually turn it into a book. 52 00:05:52,720 --> 00:06:03,760 So here's the thing when you read through both the translations and the literary writing of this offer, you find out the following thing. 53 00:06:03,760 --> 00:06:10,090 So he himself and I'll connect the literature to the biography in the way literature people are very conscious about. 54 00:06:10,090 --> 00:06:14,110 But I'll explain why do that? So he's very let's argue the biography. 55 00:06:14,110 --> 00:06:22,630 So he was born in Genji Genji of in Poland in 1889, died in 1947. 56 00:06:22,630 --> 00:06:27,210 So very, very young. I'm sorry, 1919 09 was born in nineteen. 57 00:06:27,210 --> 00:06:32,560 Eighty nine died in 1947. So very, very young died of cancer. 58 00:06:32,560 --> 00:06:37,870 But after many years of of what we now know his clinical depression. 59 00:06:37,870 --> 00:06:42,250 Back then, people called it melancholy. He was a melancholic author. 60 00:06:42,250 --> 00:06:48,340 When you read the literature, you find out that he wrote about the life of Zionist pioneers. 61 00:06:48,340 --> 00:06:54,490 He kind of documented that as as Einstein himself. He emigrated to Palestine in 1928. 62 00:06:54,490 --> 00:07:02,170 He worked in the kibbutz, in the fields and then in the orchards. He actually worked in who then the painter you see here. 63 00:07:02,170 --> 00:07:07,900 The painting were blue velvet painter paints behind him in his own orchard. 64 00:07:07,900 --> 00:07:16,480 And the author I'm going to tell you about. Zaki worked in the orchard you see behind there and cultivated the land. 65 00:07:16,480 --> 00:07:19,450 Then he moved to pave roads. 66 00:07:19,450 --> 00:07:32,760 You know, kind of the classical Zionist story about often, you know, occupying the frontier and getting the winning back the land and flourishing in. 67 00:07:32,760 --> 00:07:42,810 And blossoming and and making something out of the usual zany story of pioneers and got married, 68 00:07:42,810 --> 00:07:48,630 had a child, the single child and who exactly was nine of herself and died as set in 1947. 69 00:07:48,630 --> 00:07:56,640 The literature, though, about the Zionist pioneers that he meant or that he introduces as if he knows very intimately, 70 00:07:56,640 --> 00:08:00,270 are all organised in a melancholic mode. 71 00:08:00,270 --> 00:08:08,970 What does that mean? It means that they all come with these high language of of ideals to Palestine, to work the land, 72 00:08:08,970 --> 00:08:14,670 cultivate the land, and with this mission that these collective in their minds. 73 00:08:14,670 --> 00:08:20,500 And they all feel. So there is a gap between the ideal and there are these Asian. 74 00:08:20,500 --> 00:08:30,130 And as you'll see in a minute that connects with the language of men and poorly that is at the heart of these at the heart of this project. 75 00:08:30,130 --> 00:08:37,330 And when I read the diaries and the letters, the diaries and the letters actually followed that form, that structure. 76 00:08:37,330 --> 00:08:40,900 So in the diaries and the letters in the archive. 77 00:08:40,900 --> 00:08:47,860 He recurrently echoes that notion of high, idealistic language, on the one hand, European idealistic language. 78 00:08:47,860 --> 00:08:51,130 And I mean that in the philosophical sense of idealism. 79 00:08:51,130 --> 00:09:00,220 So German idealism, European idealism that assumes that the progress of humanity should go from ideal to realisation, right? 80 00:09:00,220 --> 00:09:03,490 Can't and Hegel and so on and so forth. 81 00:09:03,490 --> 00:09:13,300 And the failure, the notion that once he actually comes to Palestine and starts working in the land and wants to realise his ideals as a pioneer, 82 00:09:13,300 --> 00:09:18,190 he's not able to achieve that for different reasons, as you will see in a minute. 83 00:09:18,190 --> 00:09:28,060 And the whole thing falls apart. And that creates a melancholic mode for the story and for his own reports about his own life. 84 00:09:28,060 --> 00:09:30,160 And I thought, that's really interesting. It's interesting, 85 00:09:30,160 --> 00:09:38,200 interesting for me as a historian who documents people's lives right and the collective movement and the language and the discourse of Zionism. 86 00:09:38,200 --> 00:09:46,930 And it's interesting as it as a reader of texts of literature, because the two work hand in hand more or less. 87 00:09:46,930 --> 00:09:54,400 Now what I wanted to do here today is the following I'll say a few words I'll try to do that very quickly, 88 00:09:54,400 --> 00:10:01,930 which is why I have this line so you can follow. I'll say a few words about what melancholy is, and of course, there's much more to say about it. 89 00:10:01,930 --> 00:10:07,390 But just to get the language, the lingo of melancholy, 90 00:10:07,390 --> 00:10:16,840 then I'll say a few words about where Zazi or other authors of that period of the 1930s and 1940s, 91 00:10:16,840 --> 00:10:20,320 how they write and why they write in the melancholic mode. 92 00:10:20,320 --> 00:10:31,950 So within a Jewish framework, and then I'll take a third step, which is I'll try to ponder about his own poetics or what he tries to do with it. 93 00:10:31,950 --> 00:10:41,140 So what is melancholy, the danger of collective melancholy or the relation to Auburn, which is the Jewish echo of that literary Zionist utopia, 94 00:10:41,140 --> 00:10:50,880 and I'll touch on a few classical well-known figures and descend from Ya'akov amongst source was even here in Oxford for a while. 95 00:10:50,880 --> 00:10:53,400 So Klausner, who was Amos Oz, his uncle. 96 00:10:53,400 --> 00:11:02,700 I'm talking about Amos Oz and then exactly, and I'll try to characterise all that as a mode of left wing melancholy. 97 00:11:02,700 --> 00:11:10,290 So let's start with melancholia. What is melancholy? So according to Freud, and this is a essay an essay from 1915 Freud wrote. 98 00:11:10,290 --> 00:11:20,670 The essay in 1915 revised that in 1917, and the second part of that to the essay were and this became one of the classical big essays. 99 00:11:20,670 --> 00:11:25,470 Much of the contemporary critical theory is is going back to that. 100 00:11:25,470 --> 00:11:27,870 If you read Judith Butler, you read the reader. 101 00:11:27,870 --> 00:11:34,500 You know, all these big fear is of critical fear of the second half of the 20th century echo that that essay, 102 00:11:34,500 --> 00:11:37,470 when they write Christopher, as we'll see in a minute, echoed that notion. 103 00:11:37,470 --> 00:11:45,870 So what is my melancholy, according to Freud, is a reaction to the loss of a loved person or the loss of some abstraction. 104 00:11:45,870 --> 00:11:50,310 So the loss of loss of an of a loved person or the loss of some abstraction, 105 00:11:50,310 --> 00:11:59,610 which has taken the place of one that is a loved one, such as one's country liberty, an idea and so on. 106 00:11:59,610 --> 00:12:04,290 According to Freud, the melancholic displays something which is lacking in mourning, 107 00:12:04,290 --> 00:12:13,200 so Freud echoes or contrasts melancholy and mourning melancholy note is the pathological side mourning or inwardly 108 00:12:13,200 --> 00:12:19,770 that would later call the work of mourning is the therapeutic or the the the positive side of melancholy, 109 00:12:19,770 --> 00:12:23,640 right? So that when you work through your morning after the loss, 110 00:12:23,640 --> 00:12:31,290 you are able to go out from the exit that from the other side by integrating the loss into your ego right? 111 00:12:31,290 --> 00:12:39,750 And create a complete and then healthy ego melancholy when you sink into that kind of pathological notion of loss. 112 00:12:39,750 --> 00:12:49,410 So unlike which is lacking in mourning and extraordinary diminution in self-regard and impoverishment of his ego and the grand scale in mourning, 113 00:12:49,410 --> 00:12:57,120 it is the world which has become poor and empty in melancholy. It is the ego itself, so we see the ego he is. 114 00:12:57,120 --> 00:13:01,650 You become obsessed with that notion of loss. You celebrate the loss, right? 115 00:13:01,650 --> 00:13:10,110 And Freud in this in this essay actually attaches that to a degree to what narcissism means ease doing very often so. 116 00:13:10,110 --> 00:13:23,280 And the link there is is melancholy, something we are letting ourselves get obsessed about and by our ego identify with. 117 00:13:23,280 --> 00:13:33,180 So we integrate the loss as part of our identity. And at that point, Freud argues, we fetishise the loss. 118 00:13:33,180 --> 00:13:41,760 We stop thinking about the person, let's say the person we lost who died or, you know, lost love we lost track of. 119 00:13:41,760 --> 00:13:46,830 And what we become obsessed with is the notion of loss itself. So it's not the person anymore. 120 00:13:46,830 --> 00:13:53,100 It's not what we lost. It's not the object. It's not the celebration of the loss itself, which replaces the person. 121 00:13:53,100 --> 00:14:05,280 Yeah, that's the pathological aspect of it. Critical theory now in the second half of the 20th century is trying to work with Freud, 122 00:14:05,280 --> 00:14:14,190 but beyond Freud about what melancholy means in cultural and in political terms, and Christopher in Black Son says the following. 123 00:14:14,190 --> 00:14:24,170 Maybe Jonathan that will connect with classicism in a way. The Iliad gave us in the long, bitter phone the melancholic tendency to self-pity footsy. 124 00:14:24,170 --> 00:14:30,550 You see, she keeps the pathological aspect of Freud's observation forsaken by the gods exiled by divinely. 125 00:14:30,550 --> 00:14:38,190 To create these desperate, desperate men was condemned not to mania, but to banishment, absence and void. 126 00:14:38,190 --> 00:14:47,310 Melancholy for her is a denial of loss. So now it's not just the person we lost, but it's the attempt to denial the notion of loss, 127 00:14:47,310 --> 00:14:55,440 but not being able to free ourselves from it, which belongs to a world devoid of signifies of signifiers or signification. 128 00:14:55,440 --> 00:15:01,890 And I'll give an example for that. It's a self-referential reality brought close to narcissism and fetishism. 129 00:15:01,890 --> 00:15:10,530 Now, if you think about that notion of obsession, right when all we think about obsessively is the notion of loss, 130 00:15:10,530 --> 00:15:18,330 we stop thinking as as Freud tells us about the world is something that has any relevance to our notion of loss, 131 00:15:18,330 --> 00:15:26,850 and we let ourselves sink dive into that notion of loss as if that actually can fill us with new content. 132 00:15:26,850 --> 00:15:34,590 In other words, signifiers or, let's say, markers out the in the in the world seem completely irrelevant. 133 00:15:34,590 --> 00:15:40,140 And you'll see why that is relevant when we talk about something even more recently. 134 00:15:40,140 --> 00:15:42,780 George, your argument the theoreticians, 135 00:15:42,780 --> 00:15:50,910 the Italian tradition identified with now a thinking about what we call the bio political critique or bile politics. 136 00:15:50,910 --> 00:15:56,760 He's saying the following. So when he thinks about melancholy, it's planets is Saturn. 137 00:15:56,760 --> 00:16:07,320 And here we see how melancholy works in personal psychological terms as collective cultural forum, but also in cosmological terms, right? 138 00:16:07,320 --> 00:16:13,860 It's plant these Saturn, and amongst those children, the melancholic finds himself with the hanged men, the cripple, the peasant, 139 00:16:13,860 --> 00:16:22,170 the gambler, the physiological syndrome of Abu Nazir melancholia, abundance of melancholy humour and humour by humour. 140 00:16:22,170 --> 00:16:26,940 We'll see what he means, including includes darkening of the skin, blood and urine. 141 00:16:26,940 --> 00:16:34,230 Hardening of the pores burning in the gut. Flatulence, I.V. burping, whistling in the left ear constipation. 142 00:16:34,230 --> 00:16:40,950 Everything you ever thought. He's bad, you know it's here. Or problematic excessive faeces. 143 00:16:40,950 --> 00:16:51,420 A gloomy, gloomy dreams amongst the diseases. It can include our hysteria dementia, epilepsy, leprosy, haemorrhoids, scabies and suicidal mania mania. 144 00:16:51,420 --> 00:16:55,770 The melancholic is proximal, complex sonatas worse, 145 00:16:55,770 --> 00:17:03,650 complicated so the complexion of the skin said envious, malevolent evade fraudulent, cowardly and deadly. 146 00:17:03,650 --> 00:17:13,390 So the cosmos right? Saturn, which is the sign the symbol of melancholia and the melancholic the melancholic psychology are a tightly interwoven. 147 00:17:13,390 --> 00:17:17,850 Yeah, and that's maybe the force Freud is actually trying to revive. 148 00:17:17,850 --> 00:17:27,230 Going back to classical symbols and trying to bring back to modernity to the modern world. 149 00:17:27,230 --> 00:17:37,430 Now, when a gunman and Christopher and other theoreticians think about the history of melancholy and how to integrate that into critical theory, 150 00:17:37,430 --> 00:17:45,260 they actually think about the history of melon melancholia itself, of melancholy itself. 151 00:17:45,260 --> 00:17:52,220 And the history has an interesting it's its own intellectual history behind it. 152 00:17:52,220 --> 00:17:56,390 So usually and I'll now digress. I'll walk back. 153 00:17:56,390 --> 00:18:03,180 So critical theory right now usually mentions is obsessed in some ways with Voltaire Benyamin, the theoretician, 154 00:18:03,180 --> 00:18:13,280 the German Jewish refugee from Germany who committed suicide in the border of France, trying to tempt attempting to escape the Nazis himself. 155 00:18:13,280 --> 00:18:17,570 If your addition of melancholy when he thinks about early modern, 156 00:18:17,570 --> 00:18:26,570 the early modern figure of Hamlet or the sovereign, the dark, the Dark Prince, bright, 157 00:18:26,570 --> 00:18:37,310 the figure that actually enables it in early modernity, an alternative to notions to the positive or progressive notions of sovereignty since hopes. 158 00:18:37,310 --> 00:18:42,680 I know it sounds all over the place, but I'll connect the dots, I promise. 159 00:18:42,680 --> 00:18:50,420 So Benyamin thinks we need to actually understand modernity and the notion of sovereignty as the inheritor. 160 00:18:50,420 --> 00:18:57,590 The outcome of that history, which he thinks actually starts with the early modern notion of sovereignty. 161 00:18:57,590 --> 00:19:01,800 Those of you who know fuko for calling someone else who things along those lines right? 162 00:19:01,800 --> 00:19:08,390 Modern sovereignty created a different notion of sovereignty that actually is devoid of divine entities. 163 00:19:08,390 --> 00:19:18,050 And that secularise is right. secularised is our relation to hierarchy, trying to rationalise it, trying to create the scientific discourse. 164 00:19:18,050 --> 00:19:23,240 And then actually because of that lays all the responsibility over the shoulders of the prince. 165 00:19:23,240 --> 00:19:31,250 That's why we have in early modernity so many guides to princes and kings and queens, how to behave and how to be a good ruler, right? 166 00:19:31,250 --> 00:19:36,500 Machiavellian. So on, so forth. So Benjamin says, we need to actually understand that all these princes, 167 00:19:36,500 --> 00:19:44,990 actually when we look and actually read them or read their entire correspondences 168 00:19:44,990 --> 00:19:50,720 or exchanges with other with other people are usually very melancholic people. 169 00:19:50,720 --> 00:19:55,880 And the reason is because of that cut. Yeah, now they do not represent anymore. 170 00:19:55,880 --> 00:19:59,990 So they become the new deities right of our world. 171 00:19:59,990 --> 00:20:01,190 And that's too much of the burden. 172 00:20:01,190 --> 00:20:08,540 They all become that figure of Hamlet, which means he for him, he's becoming a symbol for new notion of sovereignty. 173 00:20:08,540 --> 00:20:15,980 Now, Benjamin is himself actually comes writes that a few short time to three years after a historical 174 00:20:15,980 --> 00:20:24,180 research by The Vow Book School in London or two students they've actually emigrate to, 175 00:20:24,180 --> 00:20:27,680 to London and to America, then Panopto in Zahn's Zyxel, 176 00:20:27,680 --> 00:20:34,940 who then added a third scholar and will write together the history of melancholy about Southern and melancholia. 177 00:20:34,940 --> 00:20:38,180 That's the title of the book published in 1923. 178 00:20:38,180 --> 00:20:48,200 All German Jews, all of them are thinking about melancholy, not by by coincidence, within the context of Europe basically falling apart. 179 00:20:48,200 --> 00:20:51,140 Yeah, and the catastrophe that happens in Europe. 180 00:20:51,140 --> 00:20:59,660 So it's not by coincidence that they they decide that melancholy becomes the model, the prototype of everything that happens in modernity. 181 00:20:59,660 --> 00:21:05,960 And it's not by coincidence, they think that in order to understand why sovereignty is falling apart in modernity, 182 00:21:05,960 --> 00:21:12,780 we need to understand its history since coming more than inherited from the early modern period. 183 00:21:12,780 --> 00:21:17,940 So when we get back to the Middle Ages, Panopto up soon and then Benyamin, 184 00:21:17,940 --> 00:21:21,000 we see the following if you're in the Middle Ages, that's Panopto transaxle. 185 00:21:21,000 --> 00:21:25,830 The melancholy gaze was compared to the look of the Mad Dog, usually black, 186 00:21:25,830 --> 00:21:34,950 which is why I put this image of the black dog in the first line, usually black and the impression of the impression of the night later. 187 00:21:34,950 --> 00:21:37,410 It was psychology's and personified. 188 00:21:37,410 --> 00:21:43,650 That's Barnosky Anzac Hall's point of transformation between the Middle Ages and the early morning time melancholic, 189 00:21:43,650 --> 00:21:50,400 which went melancholy, which before was cosmological on the one hand and very private and the other. 190 00:21:50,400 --> 00:22:00,120 Yeah, part of the four humours of the body, physical and medical is personified and becomes part of this psychological cycle the larger, 191 00:22:00,120 --> 00:22:04,290 contextualised collective notion of human beings in modern times. 192 00:22:04,290 --> 00:22:11,940 And that's Benyamin falling Panopto Keynes axial melancholy turn to be the liminal space between different zones of existence. 193 00:22:11,940 --> 00:22:20,580 It was made to be transgressed. Walter Benjamin in Townsville. The Morning Play showed that the paradigmatic, melancholic fear that's me, not him. 194 00:22:20,580 --> 00:22:26,910 The melancholy figure of the time was for that very reason, the fear of the prince or other a beastly prince. 195 00:22:26,910 --> 00:22:33,510 This is hamlet Beazley brings, in his words, nothing demonstrates the frailty of the creature. 196 00:22:33,510 --> 00:22:40,740 So the beastly prince is becoming the model of the creature, really something that isn't in between the animal and the human. 197 00:22:40,740 --> 00:22:49,730 In his words, nothing demonstrates the phrasing of the creature only so drastically as the fact that even he is subject to melancholy. 198 00:22:49,730 --> 00:22:57,890 Now that brings us to the second part, and that's very, very brief because I do want to get to Zaki and modernity. 199 00:22:57,890 --> 00:23:02,960 Ali means in the classical work, those of you who do not know it, I highly recommend it from 1984, 200 00:23:02,960 --> 00:23:07,750 but already kind of classical in Jewish studies, morning in Hebrew literature in 1984, 201 00:23:07,750 --> 00:23:15,200 it talks about the whole bank destruction in Jewish history as being usually connected again 202 00:23:15,200 --> 00:23:22,880 to the modern form of modern politics connected directly to a notion of divine punishment. 203 00:23:22,880 --> 00:23:23,720 In this case, 204 00:23:23,720 --> 00:23:31,550 a system of coding events that interpreted catastrophes as disasters of such magnitude that could be contained within a system of commemoration. 205 00:23:31,550 --> 00:23:36,530 The telescope events back to the beginning and then a social socialism. 206 00:23:36,530 --> 00:23:43,590 His education called for a substantial transformation of Jewish life, but emphasise apocalyptic threats and Zionist ideology as a solution. 207 00:23:43,590 --> 00:23:53,000 So in other terms, when we move from the early modernist understanding of Jewish culture following 208 00:23:53,000 --> 00:23:58,940 the pogroms and persecution since the Inquisition and so on to modern times, 209 00:23:58,940 --> 00:24:08,420 the notion of of a destruction that is guided by divine weal, some kind of mystical plan. 210 00:24:08,420 --> 00:24:12,260 And then that connects to motive such as scepticism and so on. 211 00:24:12,260 --> 00:24:21,860 We can talk about that is being secularised and then fetishised in some ways by through that process of social, Zionist, 212 00:24:21,860 --> 00:24:33,760 socially Zionist process of education, according to which the threat of destruction of Zionism means is being compared to an apocalyptic event, right? 213 00:24:33,760 --> 00:24:45,880 And here we see a paradigmatic shift, melancholy, which has been before diasporic and Zelig and contrasted with the theme Revival of Zionism. 214 00:24:45,880 --> 00:24:54,640 Right, Zionists, I didn't identify melancholy as part of exotic existence that is abnormal. 215 00:24:54,640 --> 00:25:00,260 And I quote in parentheses these are observations made by historians of literature such as Donelon. 216 00:25:00,260 --> 00:25:06,070 One causal melancholy in that sense is peripheral rather than universal and canonical. 217 00:25:06,070 --> 00:25:11,800 I'm normalising acute skin David Bill, and I'm, however, in a shortcut to the Shanab in others, 218 00:25:11,800 --> 00:25:19,810 and they see Zion or historians of Zionism see melancholy showing in the form of minor literature. 219 00:25:19,810 --> 00:25:27,130 And we can talk about what that means later expresses how British patogeni identity rather than unity and homogeneity. 220 00:25:27,130 --> 00:25:33,250 Historians of Zionism of Zionist literature usually emphasise that notion that in Zionism, 221 00:25:33,250 --> 00:25:41,800 we usually get attempts to to project some kind of unity and homogeneity and or Kim Chakraborty and others. 222 00:25:41,800 --> 00:25:49,150 And again, the notion is that melancholy contrasts with a triumphalist narrative, and that will connect us too. 223 00:25:49,150 --> 00:25:52,960 Without these wanting to do but before that, 224 00:25:52,960 --> 00:26:06,670 I want to mention two three examples of people who bring us or who introduce us to this process or the Stalin process of each turn, 225 00:26:06,670 --> 00:26:13,750 so that he writes the time when the academic discipline of the history of literature 226 00:26:13,750 --> 00:26:18,970 is just being invented is created for the first time at the Hebrew University. 227 00:26:18,970 --> 00:26:28,990 As I mentioned, he immigrates in 1924 and 1928. The Hebrew University is established in 1925 1926 by luminaries such as Goes from Sholem Walter, 228 00:26:28,990 --> 00:26:35,800 Benjamin's best friend and other many of them German Jews or European Eastern European Jews who speak German. 229 00:26:35,800 --> 00:26:40,210 And there's kind of those of you who know the Hebrew or know the history of the Hebrew University. 230 00:26:40,210 --> 00:26:51,670 There's a lot of complaints about that. The the only German speaking university outside the German World Bank at the time that is in Jerusalem. 231 00:26:51,670 --> 00:26:57,400 One of these people is Yousef Clouseau, whose dissertation was published in German first. 232 00:26:57,400 --> 00:27:00,010 Klausen is the great uncle of Amos Oz. 233 00:27:00,010 --> 00:27:09,310 The author Amos Oz and Yusef Claasen is considered to be one of the first historians of literature of Hebrew literature. 234 00:27:09,310 --> 00:27:19,570 A. An interesting, transformative figure who gathered, invented and then was the head of the of the department. 235 00:27:19,570 --> 00:27:23,020 So really establishing a whole discipline, a very important one. 236 00:27:23,020 --> 00:27:31,450 In 1984, his book Ties links his notion of Zionism specifically to a messianic discourse. 237 00:27:31,450 --> 00:27:42,220 He views Zionism as what will use the tools of modern secular politics to realise the promise of messianic theology, 238 00:27:42,220 --> 00:27:48,070 of eschatological form of mass and the promise of the of the land today to the nation of Israel, 239 00:27:48,070 --> 00:27:56,620 to the people of Israel will be realised, but not by a divine decree, but by sovereign, secular and modern politics. 240 00:27:56,620 --> 00:28:08,800 In 1919, he immigrate to Palestine and declares Hebrew as a messianic language, so the language itself, he is then carrying the weight of messianism. 241 00:28:08,800 --> 00:28:16,180 In 1940, writes the following The political, spiritual messianic ideal of Israel will be realised in all its fullness, 242 00:28:16,180 --> 00:28:23,020 and the Jewish people will dwell in the land. Historically, those and will speak the language historically theirs and Judaism in the form of ethical, 243 00:28:23,020 --> 00:28:26,290 prophetic monotheism will spread over all the world. 244 00:28:26,290 --> 00:28:38,890 Now, those of you who know the history of the intellectual history class knows enemy in Jerusalem at the Hebrew University was girls from Sholom, 245 00:28:38,890 --> 00:28:40,420 Girls from Sholom. 246 00:28:40,420 --> 00:28:52,150 The story of Kabbalah believed that that form of understanding messianic language in in a sovereign, modern cloth is an apocalyptic threat itself. 247 00:28:52,150 --> 00:28:59,650 He said these people who speak messianism in their sovereign political forum are bringing the end on 248 00:28:59,650 --> 00:29:04,940 all of us because they don't understand that what they integrate now is the war of all against all, 249 00:29:04,940 --> 00:29:16,240 basically. So they they create a structure, a language and linguistic structure that incorporates to begin with an apocalyptic form of thinking that, 250 00:29:16,240 --> 00:29:22,090 if not leading to redemption, will lead inevitably to destruction. 251 00:29:22,090 --> 00:29:27,940 That's the two opposite sides. So Klausner is leading into the realisation side. 252 00:29:27,940 --> 00:29:32,290 Sholem is really warning and trying to get away from that. 253 00:29:32,290 --> 00:29:42,470 And again, you see the. Goals from Sharon Foster Benyamin kind of discussion leading one way and the the that for him of secular secularism, 254 00:29:42,470 --> 00:29:53,670 of messianism leading in the opposite direction. Now musos before I conclude with Zaki, is the nephew of Yousef Klausner. 255 00:29:53,670 --> 00:29:58,530 He's writing about Klausner at length in the Tale of Love and Darkness Darkness, 256 00:29:58,530 --> 00:30:06,150 a book that won huge acclaim and that tells the history his own personal history, his own biography, but in the very poetic voice. 257 00:30:06,150 --> 00:30:11,970 And he tells about Klausner, and he talks about his parents, and he talks about something very interesting. 258 00:30:11,970 --> 00:30:14,940 I'm actually not sure I don't mention that here, 259 00:30:14,940 --> 00:30:21,090 but those of you who read the book will see something interesting in this book in a Tale of Love and Darkness. 260 00:30:21,090 --> 00:30:31,560 There's a pretty long, and I quote that at length in, and I got amongst those confirmations actually quote verbatim from this book. 261 00:30:31,560 --> 00:30:41,730 There's a long excerpt telling about abusos as a child, and when Amos Oz grew up with his parents and with Klausner as his great uncle who he admired, 262 00:30:41,730 --> 00:30:52,170 he tells about being living for a while, actually renting a room in the Southie apartment in Jerusalem as a child. 263 00:30:52,170 --> 00:31:01,440 So he spent actually rented a room from Israel Southie from the feeder I'm writing about, and I'm also talks about him with great admiration, he says. 264 00:31:01,440 --> 00:31:10,620 This person actually taught me that another is someone who can see the world with his own mind, and as a child, he used to play in Zaki studies. 265 00:31:10,620 --> 00:31:20,590 He saw Zafar used to babysit him. So when he's very left to scroll through the streets of Jerusalem, Zaki actually babysat him and the young abusos, 266 00:31:20,590 --> 00:31:24,990 the child who would sit and play with the books that were spread all around. 267 00:31:24,990 --> 00:31:32,970 I won't ruin the story for him, but he tells a beautiful, beautiful anecdote about Zaki actually about his friendship with his own father. 268 00:31:32,970 --> 00:31:38,850 But just to get to the political angle here. 269 00:31:38,850 --> 00:31:45,890 So why is all that a laugh? Or why does the early messianic language actually now connected to a left wing melancholy? 270 00:31:45,890 --> 00:31:51,690 And one source whose represent all is considered to be the representative of left wing liberal Zionism. 271 00:31:51,690 --> 00:31:57,720 Social democratic Zionism is connecting more or blinking through again. 272 00:31:57,720 --> 00:32:00,250 He's both biography and literature. 273 00:32:00,250 --> 00:32:08,430 The the the linking the missing link in some way between the rightwing messianic language of his great uncle is a class now and the 274 00:32:08,430 --> 00:32:18,060 liberal Social Democratic Labour Party that still keeps the language of theof revivalism of secularism and of the redemption of the land, 275 00:32:18,060 --> 00:32:23,940 even though it's supposedly a left wing left wing ideology. 276 00:32:23,940 --> 00:32:29,250 And he says the following So we can see through the biography how that's from that transformation actually occurs. 277 00:32:29,250 --> 00:32:36,810 My parents were attracted to the intelligentsia of the caveat that is a German speaking quarter in Jerusalem, 278 00:32:36,810 --> 00:32:42,150 but the pacifist ideals of Martin Buber and Bubbles, which along Martin Buber and gives him short lived, 279 00:32:42,150 --> 00:32:49,680 were the founders of which, along sentimental kinship between Jews and Arabs, total abandonment of dream of Hebrew of the Hebrew state, 280 00:32:49,680 --> 00:32:55,380 so that arms would take pity on us and kindly allow us to leave here and at their feet. 281 00:32:55,380 --> 00:33:06,490 Such ideals appear to my parents as spineless appeasement, craven defeatism of the type that had characterised the centuries of Jewish diaspora life. 282 00:33:06,490 --> 00:33:14,380 And source, he's the founder of what we call in Hebrew, the the see, I mean, 283 00:33:14,380 --> 00:33:22,810 they they combatant discourse amongst those in 1967 went with I've I'm sure people are those of you who know we know the name 284 00:33:22,810 --> 00:33:30,610 the best-known editor of the time of the from the kibbutz movement to interview the soldiers that came back from the 67 war. 285 00:33:30,610 --> 00:33:35,650 And in that report, which he published, he does something interesting. 286 00:33:35,650 --> 00:33:40,930 He echoes in a very poetic language the suffering, 287 00:33:40,930 --> 00:33:48,340 the morning and what he actually deems as he doesn't mean he approves that the melancholic 288 00:33:48,340 --> 00:33:57,700 voice of the soldiers who were forced against their will to fight and shoot at the enemy, 289 00:33:57,700 --> 00:34:04,690 and that you see the kind of hard bleeding kind of left wing melancholy we see of of, you know, again, 290 00:34:04,690 --> 00:34:09,820 that the great uncle, who was a right wing messianic now translated through the language of sovereignty 291 00:34:09,820 --> 00:34:15,700 to the left wing grandson or the nephew who now thinks there's no other choice 292 00:34:15,700 --> 00:34:22,780 but actually echoing the melancholy of those who are not able to realise their 293 00:34:22,780 --> 00:34:27,130 messianism literally and therefore sink into melancholy and have no other choice. 294 00:34:27,130 --> 00:34:32,860 But right after 1967, a certain melancholy distance the sorrow of decency. 295 00:34:32,860 --> 00:34:39,640 Right? Esau experienced by people who felt shot in their hearts, longing for other places that are non-specific, but they are decent. 296 00:34:39,640 --> 00:34:49,390 These are quotes from In the Land of Israel in 1983, where he contemplates about 1967, the trembling heart, the feeling of eyes and sore of the mind. 297 00:34:49,390 --> 00:34:54,730 These are what we call in these all the shooting and crying, the soldiers they shoot and the cry at the same time. 298 00:34:54,730 --> 00:35:00,520 And I'm is completely affirmative about it. They have no choice, but they shoot and they cry the cry as they shoot. 299 00:35:00,520 --> 00:35:07,440 Yeah. Now, finally, the conclusion sides after 19 nine, 1947, 300 00:35:07,440 --> 00:35:15,540 and I want to actually and conclude with the excerpt I mentioned in the beginning and show you why things up you are really 301 00:35:15,540 --> 00:35:23,610 writing about melancholy is enabling us to see this history of the shift from the right wing to the left me left wing. 302 00:35:23,610 --> 00:35:28,780 When we see that from a melancholic opposite perspective in a non-Korean fullest way, 303 00:35:28,780 --> 00:35:35,910 why the history of melancholy allows us an alternative to an alternative history that brings together 304 00:35:35,910 --> 00:35:42,330 the secularisation of mechanism on the one hand and these shooting and crying or left wing melancholy. 305 00:35:42,330 --> 00:35:51,000 In 1967, he thought, historically speaking, this is a shift from 19th, the 1940s or 1950s to a generation. 306 00:35:51,000 --> 00:35:59,790 The generation that came after 1967 and were the melancholy itself, which began as is an alternative now becomes now he's celebrated. 307 00:35:59,790 --> 00:36:05,060 He's become fetishised itself with Amatil's and that generation. 308 00:36:05,060 --> 00:36:10,430 He signs out here, I think. And that's why that's how I explain forgetting him, 309 00:36:10,430 --> 00:36:16,820 he's the fact that he was completely surprised and disappeared from the pages of history of literature in this role. 310 00:36:16,820 --> 00:36:25,400 I think he's riding in a different mode. The fact that he really dives into melancholy allows a different form, the different historical mode, 311 00:36:25,400 --> 00:36:31,100 and this is the way he writes so in the Guest House Melancholy 19, published in 1942. 312 00:36:31,100 --> 00:36:41,000 Of course not, by coincidence. Again, this is 1942 when the news about an elation in Europe starts to get to sort of get two to Palestine. 313 00:36:41,000 --> 00:36:46,730 And he thinks deeply about what does it mean to think about destruction that at that point, 314 00:36:46,730 --> 00:36:52,340 and those of you who know the Bible belong Ockimey is, of course, a trope from the Book of Jeremiah. 315 00:36:52,340 --> 00:36:59,780 Yeah. So the one of the prophecy of the prophecies of destruction and the Echo, 316 00:36:59,780 --> 00:37:08,990 that's how one of the stories and the echo of decent fine days rises from every piece of furniture and sweet longing lodges in the lavish, 317 00:37:08,990 --> 00:37:15,530 carved wood, reviving from the muffled sound of the clock, rejoicing with the beats of its deep heart. 318 00:37:15,530 --> 00:37:20,210 And here in the corners of the room, the Nathan's the family of Moloney's, the guesthouse. 319 00:37:20,210 --> 00:37:27,590 The owners of the guesthouse find a haven in the lonely hours of foreignness for in itself right there. 320 00:37:27,590 --> 00:37:33,860 One can search for the echo of decent vanished sound. 321 00:37:33,860 --> 00:37:37,970 This entire attempt to build a state. One of the guest house guests, 322 00:37:37,970 --> 00:37:47,570 a German Jew who contemplates about emigrating and who never really acclimatised to the new language of Hebrew into Zionist discourse, 323 00:37:47,570 --> 00:37:55,460 contemplates about his life there and thinks and says the following the entire attempt to build a state, it will all blown away by the wind. 324 00:37:55,460 --> 00:37:58,720 It will all blow over like the foam of the sea. 325 00:37:58,720 --> 00:38:05,750 A state may be established here in accordance with local natural law, but that is not what you were hoping for in the judge. 326 00:38:05,750 --> 00:38:12,200 This is the proof that the person who talks sank into a strange immobility after the war's early days. 327 00:38:12,200 --> 00:38:16,800 He had become perfectly still and was interested in was not interested. 328 00:38:16,800 --> 00:38:28,770 I'm sorry in anything. And before just I'll leave that here for you to refer to, but I want to frame, broadly speaking, 329 00:38:28,770 --> 00:38:35,190 my talk here today and open that to questions or any ideas about that in the following way. 330 00:38:35,190 --> 00:38:38,730 So I'm interested in in melancholy in the following Wayne for different 331 00:38:38,730 --> 00:38:43,500 frameworks and that is connected the way I wrote the book the style of the book, 332 00:38:43,500 --> 00:38:47,250 and I'll say I'll conclude with that. There are four different layers. 333 00:38:47,250 --> 00:38:54,450 One is actually the internal one. The internal one when I talk about the archive of this author is his psychology. 334 00:38:54,450 --> 00:38:58,560 On the one hand, which is psych or psychoanalysis, right? 335 00:38:58,560 --> 00:39:03,030 Psychoanalytic motives understanding his biography on the one hand, but also the tax, 336 00:39:03,030 --> 00:39:08,310 the way he writes about the zany sponsors who keep failing in their work daily labour. 337 00:39:08,310 --> 00:39:12,870 Yeah, they feel cultivating the land. They failed, paving the roads. 338 00:39:12,870 --> 00:39:16,740 They cannot sustain, sustain living in that place. 339 00:39:16,740 --> 00:39:23,650 They go everywhere, but they can't find their way. The they're all lost, somehow losing signifiers, right? 340 00:39:23,650 --> 00:39:29,790 They never know where they are directionless. They they they have no sense of direction, ever. 341 00:39:29,790 --> 00:39:33,900 So one layer is the internal one or the psychological one and the other one. 342 00:39:33,900 --> 00:39:41,910 The second one is the reception of of this figure, both as a as a, as a person. 343 00:39:41,910 --> 00:39:51,390 And I can say more about that is a figure during the time as an author and as someone who actually tries to deliver and deliver a certain message. 344 00:39:51,390 --> 00:39:55,200 In fact, you said Klausner, who Zaki was very close to. 345 00:39:55,200 --> 00:40:04,170 Zaki studied under him for years, Emefiele and then actually one in a a one year fellowship to Cambridge. 346 00:40:04,170 --> 00:40:10,430 So he spent a year and a half in Cambridge before going back to the Hebrew and under. 347 00:40:10,430 --> 00:40:14,190 And so he talks about that, about Klausner in these diaries as well. 348 00:40:14,190 --> 00:40:19,440 And Klausner, after his death, says the following about southeast literature. 349 00:40:19,440 --> 00:40:28,500 It is it's a literature that was not able to overcome forgetfulness. 350 00:40:28,500 --> 00:40:38,320 Oblivion. He doesn't explain what he means, that's in the eulogy to something which to me sounds really cruel, right? 351 00:40:38,320 --> 00:40:43,510 A leader that cannot overcome oblivion, meaning he deserves it. 352 00:40:43,510 --> 00:40:48,160 And it's not by coincidence that someone who's as messianic as clouds are things 353 00:40:48,160 --> 00:40:53,020 that someone who writes about the failures of pioneers deserves to be forgotten. 354 00:40:53,020 --> 00:40:56,530 Right? So the only place that any one of the very, very few, 355 00:40:56,530 --> 00:41:05,260 there are maybe two or three indications for or reviews or any any mentions of Southie are all about why he deserves to be forgotten. 356 00:41:05,260 --> 00:41:10,110 Yeah. So that's the reception. That's the second there. 357 00:41:10,110 --> 00:41:16,440 The third layer he's talking about literature or the style of the literature itself is a minor literature. 358 00:41:16,440 --> 00:41:18,600 I'm not going to go into the fury of that. 359 00:41:18,600 --> 00:41:27,000 Those of you who know where the concept is coming from, the listen carefully are talking about Kafka as a form of minor in literature. 360 00:41:27,000 --> 00:41:30,930 And I think that completely answer is that way of thinking. 361 00:41:30,930 --> 00:41:37,110 He tries to create a literature that he's spoken that is told in the in the minor language. 362 00:41:37,110 --> 00:41:44,160 And you can see that even, you know, by if you go back to his way of writing, it's combining more the way it integrates, 363 00:41:44,160 --> 00:41:52,140 you know, biblical inferences, Kleist, the kleist right motifs or apocalyptic motifs from Christianity. 364 00:41:52,140 --> 00:41:57,780 He's never explicit. It's always hidden. It's always coded in some way. 365 00:41:57,780 --> 00:42:04,980 So there's something about it that he's always disguises as minor, something you don't need to really pay much attention to. 366 00:42:04,980 --> 00:42:14,700 So that's the third level, the fourth level. And that is the most important for me as a historian is the one of the history of the discourse. 367 00:42:14,700 --> 00:42:19,260 And my argument here is that I think melancholy is not by coincidence, 368 00:42:19,260 --> 00:42:28,020 something that is not really discussed openly by the early period in the 1940s and 1950s. 369 00:42:28,020 --> 00:42:34,260 Back then, what we see is what we call self-hating Hebrew or the revivalist discourse. 370 00:42:34,260 --> 00:42:38,700 That's what people are trying to echo, including Zaki and his diaries. 371 00:42:38,700 --> 00:42:45,520 They come with these idealised language of we're going to actually cultivate and realise these high ideals, 372 00:42:45,520 --> 00:42:53,880 right, revive the promise of the word of God, basically, but in a secular modern mode. 373 00:42:53,880 --> 00:43:00,720 And and after they fail, they they talk about they go, they retreat. 374 00:43:00,720 --> 00:43:03,720 They retreat back into the inner mode, 375 00:43:03,720 --> 00:43:11,760 so they they retreat back into something that is told in a psychological mode rather than contemplating about it in in a public way, right? 376 00:43:11,760 --> 00:43:17,500 Or something that connects back to the Bible or any collective discourse. 377 00:43:17,500 --> 00:43:25,180 So that's in the 1940s, 1950s when the State of Israel is declared 1948, right, when you move forward with 1967, 378 00:43:25,180 --> 00:43:31,960 you see the fetishisation of melancholy now adopted by the left wing not to celebrate the alternative to Zionism, 379 00:43:31,960 --> 00:43:37,600 but becoming a Sunday becoming actually identify with Zionism, the shooting and crying. 380 00:43:37,600 --> 00:43:44,890 So now we have a way to frame not only the right wing Zionist way of of realising the promise of the land, 381 00:43:44,890 --> 00:43:50,590 but in fact integrate into that the language of those who actually think you need to cry as you shoot. 382 00:43:50,590 --> 00:43:54,310 Yeah. So it's not just messianic, it's actually melancholic as well. 383 00:43:54,310 --> 00:44:00,040 And melancholy itself is being fetishised. As we move forward, we jump to the 1980s and 1990s. 384 00:44:00,040 --> 00:44:02,890 Something else happens and that is not in the book. 385 00:44:02,890 --> 00:44:11,110 That is my generation, or rather the generation that actually follows my generation, which is now actually melancholy itself, is forgotten. 386 00:44:11,110 --> 00:44:16,060 There's no sense of melancholy. You shoot. You don't cry. If you cry, you redeem. 387 00:44:16,060 --> 00:44:21,820 You were blamed for it for being someone who empathises with something that these anti-Zionist. 388 00:44:21,820 --> 00:44:25,450 So now melancholy itself is actually forgotten in other terms. What we see, 389 00:44:25,450 --> 00:44:34,960 I think when we follow the history of the discourse of melancholy is something that is indicative to the history of Zionist discourse through 390 00:44:34,960 --> 00:44:44,050 its symptomatic attempt to forget or its symptomatic attempt to actually suppress what is inconvenient for it and actually at the meeting. 391 00:44:44,050 --> 00:44:49,510 And I'll just say the. So that was my conclusion. 392 00:44:49,510 --> 00:44:55,930 But if you're interested, there's a lot of. So year after I published my book Actually and so Clavell, 393 00:44:55,930 --> 00:45:04,870 so one of the best historians of left wing neo-Marxist actually thinking came up with a left wing melancholy that he sort of left wing 394 00:45:04,870 --> 00:45:14,020 melancholy for thinking about new Marxism and why we need to revive the language of new Marxism that needs to overcome melancholy. 395 00:45:14,020 --> 00:45:18,070 Wendy Brown is thinking specifically about the mode of left wing melancholy you can 396 00:45:18,070 --> 00:45:24,250 see up there and following Walter Benjamin's essay that is dedicated to the question. 397 00:45:24,250 --> 00:45:31,330 She says it is a left left wing melancholy that has become more attached to its impossibility than to its potential fruitfulness. 398 00:45:31,330 --> 00:45:35,680 It is quoting the structure of melancholic attachment, a strain of its own dead past. 399 00:45:35,680 --> 00:45:40,600 She accuses the left wing melancholy, and she doesn't think about Zionism. 400 00:45:40,600 --> 00:45:45,250 So it's not a metaphor. It's not a historical form trope for her. 401 00:45:45,250 --> 00:45:54,140 But she really thinks about the second half of the 20th century as a mode of left wing melancholy about the liberal right. 402 00:45:54,140 --> 00:45:57,640 What we know is liberalism, classical liberal, at least in America. 403 00:45:57,640 --> 00:46:07,480 I don't know where I come from now. Classical liberalism as a form of or fetishised melancholy and pathological form of 404 00:46:07,480 --> 00:46:12,460 thinking about the world which for her or for people like its little vessel in her, 405 00:46:12,460 --> 00:46:17,410 is not that different from reactionary mode of messianic thinking. 406 00:46:17,410 --> 00:46:25,670 Messianic realisation. And finally. 407 00:46:25,670 --> 00:46:36,710 OK, I'll leave it at that, but I'll just say one last thing that wraps this up, which for me and that connects to my next book, 408 00:46:36,710 --> 00:46:43,670 which is now I finished another manuscript manuscript about thinking about time, 409 00:46:43,670 --> 00:46:49,250 Jewish time and what led actually to that subject was the notion that in melancholy, 410 00:46:49,250 --> 00:46:59,180 we find a form of thinking about temporality that is suppressed, that is uneasy, that is very often inconvenient for us to actually at the meeting. 411 00:46:59,180 --> 00:47:05,240 And I can say more about it, but that is built in specifically melancholy on the notion of stasis. 412 00:47:05,240 --> 00:47:14,630 Because in melancholy as this job, if you remember who sits back right and he's not interested in anything, yeah, perfectly still. 413 00:47:14,630 --> 00:47:20,480 And he's sinking in what is usually happening to Zarqawi's protagonist as well. 414 00:47:20,480 --> 00:47:22,670 They lose their sense of direction. 415 00:47:22,670 --> 00:47:32,210 They lose their sense of loss of of aim when the ideal cannot be realised and they sink back into something that is internal, 416 00:47:32,210 --> 00:47:37,250 something that is immobile, that they cannot get away from. 417 00:47:37,250 --> 00:47:41,840 And then they sink into what we identify very often and clinical is clinical depression mind, 418 00:47:41,840 --> 00:47:48,800 and that is how tsar himself beats his own life and his last year before his death. 419 00:47:48,800 --> 00:47:55,520 And with acting this beautiful spring day, I'll be happy to hear any thoughts. 420 00:47:55,520 --> 00:47:59,660 Feel free to be as critical as you think you may need to be. 421 00:47:59,660 --> 00:48:05,480 I'm happy to hear a critique. I'm very open. I love critique or anything you might want to ask. 422 00:48:05,480 --> 00:48:08,855 Thank you for giving me.