The Pertinence of Exodus: Philosophical Questions on the Contemporary Symbolism of the Biblical Story

The Exodus has a risky and combative character that links individuals to their unconscious, to the uncertainty of their reality, and to the possibility of the disturbing event of the incalculable arrival of the Other. This encounter with the unknown does not expect a messianic salvation but a human solution, which is aware that change requires the abandonment of self-referential identities. This eccentricity is more than evasive desertion or escapism, but an experiment with new modes of organizing community that grows on the responsibilities that go with it.
This collected volume gathers contemporary philosophical perspectives on the Exodus, examining the story’s symbolic potentials and dynamics in the light of current social political events. The imagination of the Promised Land, the figure of the migrant, the provisional and precarious dwelling of the camp, the promise of a better future or the gradual estrangement from inherited habits are all challenges of our time that are already conceptualized in the Exodus. The authors reaffirm the pertinence of the story by addressing the fundamental link between the ancient narrative and the human condition of the 21st century.

Preface
Caterina Resta
European Center for Studies on Myth and Symbol, University of Messina, Italy

Introduction
Laurin Mackowitz
University of Innsbruck, Austria

I. GUESTS ON THE LAND

Chapter 1 The promised and the foreign land: the other Exodus
Sandro Gorgone
University of Messina, Italy

Chapter 2 Exodus from camps: prelude to a cosmopolity-to-come
Andreas Oberprantacher
University of Innsbruck, Austria

Chapter 3 Exodus or nomos: the temptation of the exiled to appropriate the earth
Aldo Bisceglia
University of Messina, Italy

Chapter 4 The Exodus way to democracy
Michele Zanardi
University of Trento, Italy

II. A WANDERING IDENTITY

Chapter 5 Exodus through the Word and nomadic politics
Maria Felicia Schepis
University of Messina, Italy

Chapter 6 The Jews and the nomadic truth
Angela Cimato
University of Messina, Italy

Chapter 7 Emmanuel Levinas: a philosophy of Exodus
Rita Fulco
Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy

Chapter 8 Exodus: an alien identity, a community of aliens
Valentina Surace
University of Messina, Italy

III. THE SYMBOLIC AND THE UNCONSCIOUS

Chapter 9 Exodus as a sacred myth of the foundation of a nomadic civilization
Giulio Maria Chiodi
University of Insubria, Italy

Chapter 10 The road between power and knowledge in Oedipus
Maria Grazia Recupero
University of Messina, Italy

Chapter 11 From taboo to Exodus: the emancipative trait of law in Freud and Lacan
Fabio Domenico Palumbo
University of Messina, Italy

Chapter 12 The terror and beauty of Moses’ image: a political aesthetics of Exodus
Laurin Mackowitz
University of Innsbruck, Austria

Notes on Contributors

Acknowledgements

Index

Sandro Gorgone is Researcher and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Messina. He qualified as Ordinary Professor in Theoretical Philosophy. He teaches at several Universities in Europe (Freiburg, Heidelberg, Tübingen, Innsbruck). His research areas are German and French Philosophy of the 20th century with a particular attention to the thoughts of Martin Heidegger, Ernst Jünger, Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-Luc Nancy. His main research itineraries encompass technology and the modern subject, ontology and temporality, power and the metaphysics of work, humanism and technology, the hermeneutics of religious experience, the phenomenology of the atmosphere, geophilosophy and philosophy of landscape. Gorgone’s research has been published in numerous articles, essays in collective books and international scientific reviews. His most recent book is Strahlungen und Annährungen. Die stereoskopische Phänomenologie Ernst Jüngers (Tübingen, 2016).

Laurin Mackowitz holds a PhD from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Innsbruck. His doctoral thesis analyzes critical and affirmative interpretations of the Exodus myth in the 20th century, demonstrating the ongoing importance of narratives in post-metaphysical philosophical and political reasoning. In the past two years he has been working at the Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada, and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Innsbruck. His work is published in a monograph and several articles concerning the imagination and narration of collective identity, the critique of unjust globalization, the tactics of artistic activism, the performance of multiculturalism, and the spirituality of social movements. His most recent article is The Pitfalls of Territorial Belonging: Violence and Amnesia in the Homeland Metaphor (Lagos, 2019).

Exodus, Democracy, Freedom, Emancipation, Desert, Promised Land, Political Theology, Jewish Mythology