Heidegger

mP:

>> A quote from Howard Jacobson’s excellent novel (about Jewishness, about
>> Jewing):
>>
>> “They sang songs in Buchenwald. Figure that. … True, they were ironic
>> songs about _Schicksal_, but a song’s still a song.
>>
>> “_Schicksal_ — meaning fate or destiny.
>>
>> “Shikse — meaning floozie. From which shikseh — meaning Gentile girl…
>>
>> “They used to say that character was destiny, but now they know that
>> language is.”
>>
>> [from Howard Jacobson ‘Kalooki Nights’]
>>
>> You see, the hero of the novel keeps marrying shiksehs; his destiny…
>>
>> Language = Destiny: Remind anyone of anyone?

>> ps: above, I kept mistyping ‘destiny’ as desyiny (daseiny, anyone?)

Bernard:

> Yes, of course, MichaelP, but in Heidegger’s case the destiny was reversed
> (qua his love affair with a jewess) to the effect of removing ‘theos’ from
> the ‘onto-theo-logic’ embedded in language and by which his philosophy is
> destined.

Yeh, but, two points I didn’t make clearly enough:

What interested me most about Jacobson’s point is that it is language (not
what they used to say: character) that destines, that language sends/posts
ahead of its present/presence; that this notion that the people of the
book/word (jews) know is so reminiscient of Heidegger’s notion of
geschichte, of be-ing-historical, of the linguistic sending of be-ing
(logos, physis, ousia, idea…), of language be(-)ing the dwelling of
be-ing, etc.

Also, on reflection, that it seems (to Jacobson’s hero at least) the jew’s
destiny is to en-gage/mate-with/marry its negative (the goyish, the
shiksehs), that it is, that its be-ing is consumed/consummated in the heat
of apophatic minglings; thus the (possibly etymologically unsound)
paronomasiac coupling of schicksal-shikseh (and, of course, ge-schichte).

And, Bernard, it never occurred to me to think Heidegger’s coupling with
Hannah Arendt as a reverse schicksal-shikseh. Cheers.

michaelP

Posted on Monday, February 25th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
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