Sunday, October 9, 2011
THE UNCANNY
Psalm 27,5. In the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me. im fasinated that freud pick this up as an "heimlich, unheimlich" effect. the tabernacle is a place where god would meet with his people, its normally a very wholy place where the smell of sin or sin itself cannot abound, but it is wriiten that we are born in sin and shapen in iniquity (Isaiah 53:6), so its fascinating that the almighty god would dwell inside or with sinful men. holy dwelling with unholy in secret, uncanny?. pharoah naming a jew "joseph" to be second in command of egypt. joseph both jew and egyptian, uncanny? there's soo many stories in the bible that carries the uncanny effect. Iran president ahmadinejad at the world trade center, uncanny?
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Oh, I'm glad you spotted this! Although it is only one of a long string of associations, it is interesting to think of the familiar/unfamiliar, heimlich/unheimlich in terms of holy/unholy. You can see that kind of split running through a lot of Judeo/Christian thought (and likely other religious traditions that I'm less familiar with). If God dwells in everything you can even see its reversal: inside the unheimlich is the heimlich. And your association with the tabernacle as a kind of house is also interesting to think about as an example of "unheimlich" as associated with that which is concealed and secret.
ReplyDeleteYou can think about this dichotomy in terms of the Return of the Repressed in a couple of ways, too. Both on an individual level (that which is repressed never leaves) but also on a cultural level (the past still marks the present).
As you know, I am not most well read of Bible scholars (that is of course a very ironic sentence in itself). I've only recently begun studying the Old Testment. But the Book of Job has me very interested, partly because it seems to defy reasonable, rational explanation. But maybe this essay will be interesting for me to consider alongside my reading of Job?