At some point around or a bit before the summer, I stopped writing here about “actual” things like politics, Covid, and Israel. There was more I am wanting to say about the “reality” or “surreality” of religion, animism, God, and world-creation. Bergson left a particular mark at the blog, with William James very much in the back of my mind. I didn’t have the time or energy to write about everything I wanted to blog, but I think I’ll continue more along this vein as I finish up a very involved project relating to a philosophical Talmud and virtual worlds. As always, thank you all for your patience with me here at the JPP.
thanks for the sparks and spurs
https://newbooksnetwork.com/jewish-primitivism
Around the beginning of the twentieth century, Jewish writers and artists across Europe began depicting fellow Jews as savages or “primitive” tribesmen. Primitivism—the European appreciation of and fascination with so-called “primitive,” non-Western peoples who were also subjugated and denigrated—was a powerful artistic critique of the modern world and was adopted by Jewish writers and artists to explore the urgent questions surrounding their own identity and status in Europe as insiders and outsiders. Jewish primitivism found expression in a variety of forms in Yiddish, Hebrew, and German literature, photography, and graphic art, including in the work of figures such as Franz Kafka, Y.L. Peretz, S. An-sky, Uri Zvi Greenberg, Else Lasker-Schüler, and Moï Ver.