Unclaimed Experience: Trauma and the Possibility of History Author(s): Cathy Caruth Source: Yale French Studies, No.

79, Literature and the Ethical Question (1991), pp. 181-192 Published by: Yale University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2930251 . Accessed: 18/07/2011 14:19
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CATHY CARUTH

Unclaimed Experience: of Trauma and the Possibility History

everything did.The problem you everything saw as youwerefor you was thatyoudidn'talwaysknowwhatyouwereseeinguntillater, madeit in at all, it juststayed thata lot ofit never maybe yearslater, in stored there youreyes. -Michael Herr, Dispatches
... it took the war to teach it, that you were as responsible for

criticismhas shown an increasingconcernthat the episRecent literary criticism,in particular temological problemsraised by poststructuralist The posdeconstruction, necessarilylead to politicaland ethicalparalysis. and that consequentlywe may not have is sibilitythat reference indirect, direct access to others',or even our own, histories,seems to imply the of impossibility any access to othercultures,and hence of any means of 1 I makingpoliticalorethicaljudgments. To such an argument would like to or contrasta phenomenonarisingnot onlyin the readingofliterary philomost prominently withinthewiderhistorical sophical texts,but emerging and political realms, that is, the peculiar and paradoxical experienceof traumadescribesan overwhelming trauma.In its most generaldefinition, events,in which the responseto the experienceof sudden,or catastrophic and uncontrolled occurrence of eventoccursin theoften repetitive delayed, The experience the solof phenomena.2 hallucinationsand otherintrusive dier facedwith sudden and massive death aroundhim, forexample,who suffers this sightin a numbed state, only to reliveit later on in repeated As is image oftraumain our century. a nightmares, a centraland recurring war expericonsequence of the increasingoccurrenceof such perplexing the ences and othercatastrophic years,physiresponsesduring last twenty
see "Us expression thisopinion, S. P. Mohanty, andThem,"in The of 1. Fora recent 2/2 1989). YaleJournal Criticism (Spring of at various descriptions for which beengiven has definition trauma, 2. Thereis no firm a different names.For gooddiscussion thehistory thenotion of of various timesandunder 1 and Volumes and2,ed.Charles to recent attempts define see Trauma Its Wake, it, andfor 1985 R. Figley (New York:Brunner-Mazel, and 1986). ed. and YFS 79, Literature theEthicalQuestion, ClaireNouvet,X 1991byYale University.

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aboutphysical have begunto reshapetheirthinking cians and psychiatrists and mental experience,includingmost recentlythe responsesto a wide rape,child abuse, auto and industrialacvarietyof experiences(including of in of understood terms theeffects cidents,and so on) whicharenow often I stress disorder." would propose that it is here, in the "post-traumatic encounterwith trauma-both in its equally widespreadand bewildering it-that we can begintorecogto and occurrence, in theattempt understand referenstraightforwardly whichis no longer of nize thepossibility a history and reference). on simplemodels ofexperience tial (thatis, no longerbased that a reThroughthe notion of trauma,I will argue,we can understand it but history, at resituating of is thinking reference notaimedat eliminating history arisewhere to permitting in ourunderstanding, is, ofprecisely that maynot. immediate understanding worksof in The questionofhistory raisedmosturgently one ofthefirst is Moses entitled of SigmundFreud'shistory theJews traumain this century, past, of and Monotheism.Because ofits seemingfictionalization theJewish this work has raised ongoingquestions about its historicaland political to with traumaseems,nonetheless, be deeply status; yetits confrontation tied to our own historicalrealities.I have chosen this text as a focus of because I believe it can help us understandour own analysis, therefore, of a from within as well as the difficulties writing history era, catastrophic in whichFreudoffers this it. I will suggestthatit is in thenotionofhistory that historical itself confronts events, work,as well as in thewayhis writing as of the we mayneed to rethink possibility history, well as our ethicaland political relationto it. of The entanglement Freud'sMoses and Monotheismwith its own urgent contextis evidentin a letterwrittento ArnoldZweig in 1934, historical of on while Freudis working thebook,andwhile Nazi persecutions theJews at are progressing rapidspeed. Freudsays: one againhow the Jews Facedwiththenew persecutions, asks oneself this haveattracted undying are havecometo be whatthey andwhythey the Moses created Jews.3 the hatred. soon discovered formula: I linked,in theselines,to the The projectofMoses and Monotheismis clearly of But to attempt explaintheNazi persecution theJews. thiscan apparently to reference a past,and in particuto onlythrough be done,according Freud, on lar to thepast represented Moses. Byplacingtheweightofhis history by the of thenamingofMoses, moreover, liberator theHebrewswho led them
Freudand Arnold of The Letters Sigmund of 3. Letter 30 May 1934. Quotedfrom BraceJovanovich, L. 1970). Zweig,ed. Ernst Freud(New York:Harcourt

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out ofEgypt, Freudimplicitly paradoxically and connectstheexplanation of the fromcaptivity to the Jews'persecutionto theirveryliberation, return of of In the freedom. the centrality Moses thus lies the centrality a return: return theHebrewsto Canaan, wheretheyhad livedpriorto theirsettleof ment,and bondage,in Egypt.Moses and Monotheism'smost directreference to, and explanationof,its presenthistoricalcontextwill consist in Freud'snew understanding the storyof captivity, exile, and return.4 of or as The notion of Jewishhistory, a historyof return, mightseem unof in whose worksrepeatedly surprising the perspective a psychoanalyst, to focuson thenecessityofvariouskindsofreturn-on thereturn origins in and memory, on the "return the repressed." in the description his of But of discovery, the concise littleformula in jotteddownforZweig, "Moses creFreud suggeststhat the historyof the Jewssurpasses any ated the Jews," For in simplenotionofreturn. ifMoses indeed"created"theJews,5 his act of thatis, transforms history the liberation-if the exodus from the of Egypt, livedin Canaan, into thehistory theJews, had previously of Hebrews,who who become a truenation only in theiract ofleavingcaptivity-then the is the momentofbeginning, exodusfrom Egypt, no longersimplya return, The moretruly, departure. questionwithwhichFreudframes a butis rather, his text,and which will explainboth the Jews' historicalsituationand his as withinit,is thus: in what wayis the own participation, a Jewish writer, and its relationto a politics,inextricably boundup with of history a culture, the notion of departure?6 Freud'ssurprising account ofJewish can be understood, history indeed, of as a reinterpretation the nature, as well as the significance, the of Hebrews'return In from captivity. thebiblicalaccount,Moses was one ofthe captiveHebrewswho eventuallyarose as theirleader and led them out of on back to Canaan. Freud, theother Egypt hand,announcesat thebeginning of ofhis accountthatMoses, thoughliberator theHebrewpeople,was notin a facthimselfa Hebrew,but an Egyptian, fervent follower an Egyptian of
4. Whiletheterm"exile," usedin thecontext Jewish of history, refers, strictly speaking,to theexilein Babylon, Egyptian the was captivity considered paradigmatic this of laterevent. Thus TheEncyclopedia Judaism of under heading says, the "exile," that"itis this 'prenatal' servitude whichbecomestheparadigm Galut [exile]in the Egyptian of mind."See Geoffrey rabbinic The Wigoder, Encyclopedia Judaism of (New York:Macmillan,1989). 5. "Created" is an accurate translationof the German text, which says 6. Amongthemoreinteresting to attempts grapple withthepoliticaldimension of Moses and Monotheism are Jean-Joseph Goux, "Freudet la structure religieusedu nazisme,"in his Les Iconoclastes(Paris:Seuil, 1978); and PhilippeLacoue-Labarthe et Jean-Luc Nancy,"Le Peuplejuifne ravepas,"and Jean-Pierre Winter, de "Psychanalyse l'antisdmitisme," in La Psychanalyse both est-elleune histoire juive?,ed. byAdelieet Jean-Jacques Rassiel(Paris:Seuil,1981).
"hat . . . geschaffen."

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monotheism.Afterthe pharaoh's murder, pharaoh and his sun-centered Moses became a leaderoftheHebrewsandbrought to them according Freud, the out of Egyptin orderto preserve waningmonotheistic religion.Freud thus begins his storyby changingthe veryreason forthe return:it is no the preservation Hebrew freedom, of longerprimarily but of the monoto of theisticgod; thatis, it is notso muchthereturn a freedom thepast,as a departure into a newlyestablishedfuture-the future monotheism.7 of In thisrethinking Jewish of beginnings, then,thefuture no longercontinuis ous with the past, but is unitedwith it through profound a discontinuity. The exodus fromEgypt, which shapes the meaningofthe Jewish past,is a that is both a radical break and the establishment a history. of departure The secondpartofFreud'saccountextends, and redoubles, thisrethinkFor Moses led theHebrewsfrom the ing ofthereturn. after Egyptian Egypt, him in a rebellion;repressed deed; and in Freudclaims, theymurdered the assimilated-his to a volcanogod named thepassingoftwo generations, god acts ofMoses to the acts ofanother Yahweh,and assimilatedthe liberating from the man,thepriestofYahweh(also namedMoses),who was separated momentin Jewish first time and place. The most significant in is history to not to but thus,according Freud, theliteralreturn freedom, therepression ofa murder and its effects: The godJahve attained honour when ... Moses' deedoflibundeserved was but this eration putdowntohisaccount; hehadtopayfor usurpation. The shadowofthegodwhoseplacehe had takenbecamestronger than himself; theendofthehistorical at there development arosebeyond his Mosaic god.None can doubtthatit was only beingthatoftheforgotten all theidea ofthisother thatenabledthepeopleofIsraelto surmount god untilourtime.[62; 50-5118 and their hardships to survive is to of Ifthereturn freedom theliteralstarting pointofthehistory theJews, is the and of what constitutes essence oftheir history therepression, return, is Moses. The nature of literalreturn thus displaced by the the deeds of natureof anotherkind ofreappearance: of ... To thewell-known duality [Jewish] history we add twonewones: the one of thefounding twonewreligions, first oustedbythesecondand
7. Itis interesting notethat to thisfuture also be thought in terms thedivine can of of offer a "promised of land,"and thuscan be understood terms the future-oriented in of temporality thepromise. of 8. All quotations Freudare takenfrom of Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism, set translated Katherine by Jones (New York:VintageBooks, 1939).The first of page refer thistext. to The second ofnumbers set refers James to numbers following quotations in of Edition theComplete of translation MosesandMonotheism theStandard Strachey's edited James Volume (London: 23 Works Sigmund The Psychological of Freud, by Strachey, Hogarth Press,1964).

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of yetreappearing two who arebothcalled victorious, founders religion, bythesame name,Moses,and whosepersonalities have to separate we from each other. And thesedualitiesarenecessary of consequences the first: sectionof the people passed through one what mayproperly be termed traumatic whichtheother was spared. a experience [64-65; 52] while the beginning the history the Jews, of The captivity and return, of is the of precisely available to themonlythrough experience a trauma.It is the of trauma,the forgetting return) the deeds ofMoses, thatconstitutes (and thelink unitingthe old withthenew god,thepeople thatleave Egypt, with the people that ultimatelymake up the nation of the Jews.Centering his storyin the nature of the leaving,and returning, constitutedby trauma, in of Freudresituatesthe verypossibility history the natureofa traumatic departure. mightsay,then,that the centralquestion,by which Freud We finally inquiresinto therelationbetweenhistory its politicaloutcome, and for is: what does it mean, precisely, history be the history a trauma? to of the of Formanyreaders, significance Freud'squestioning history-his of displacementofthe storyofa liberating return, the storyofa traumaby has seemed to be a tacitdenial ofhistory. replacing factualhistory with By curious dynamicsoftrauma,Freudwould seem to have doublydenied the the possibilityof historicalreference: first, himselfactuallyreplacing by historicalfactwith his own speculations;and secondly, suggesting that by or historicalmemory, Jewish historicalmemory least, is alwaysa matter at of distortion, filtering the originaleventthrough fictionsof traua of the whichmakes theeventavailableat bestindirectly. maticrepression, Indeed, when Freudgoes on, laterin his work,to comparethe Hebrews'traumatic experienceto the traumasof the Oedipal boy,repressing desireforthe his the of motherthrough threat castration, thisleads manyreadersto assume truth thatthe onlypossible referential containedin Freud'stextcan be its reference his own unconscious life, a kind of self-referential to history whichmanyhave readas thestory Freud's"unresolved of father complex."9 And this analysishas itselfreinterpreted figure departure return the of and in a very as straightforward fashion, Freud'sdeparture from father, his his or departurefromJudaism.For many criticsthe cost of Freud's apparently
9. See EdwinR. Wallace,"The Psychodynamic of Determinants Moses and Monotheism, Psychiatry 40:(1977).Thereis a longhistory psychoanalytic of of interpretations Freud's writings Moses.Among more on the interesting include Marthe Robert, d'Oedipe a Moise:Freud la conscience et juive(Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1974), appearing English in as FromOedipus to Moses: Freud'sJewish trans. RalphManheim(London:RouIdentity, and tledge Kegan Paul,1977);MarieBalmary, Psychoanalyzing Psychoanalysis, trans. Ned Luckacher (Baltimore: Johns The HopkinsPress,1982).A review critique theapand of pliedpsychoanalytic tradition thiscontext tobefound Yerushalmi, in is in Psychoanalysis Terminable Interminable: Exploration MosesandMonotheism, and An of Lectures given at Yale University 1989), (Fall forthcoming.

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of makinghistory unconscious,or ofdepriving history its referential literis the ality, finally factthatthe textremainsat best a predictable dramaof a of Freud'sunconscious,andmoreover dramawhichtellsthestory political and culturaldisengagement.'0 to When we attendcloselyhowever Freud'sown attemptto explainthe of trauma,we finda somewhatdifferent understanding what it means to leave and to return.While the analogywith the Oedipal individual constitutesmuch ofhis explanation, Freudopens thisdiscussionwithanother examplethatis strangely unlikelyas a comparison a humanhistory for and yet resonates curiouslywith the particularhistoryhe has told. It is the example ofan accident: It mayhappenthatsomeonegetsaway, from apparently unharmed, the a he for a collispotwhere has sufferedshocking accident, instance train he a sion.In thecourseofthefollowing of weeks, however, develops series whichcan be ascribed and grave psychical motor symptoms, onlyto his else happenedat the time of the accident.He has shock or whatever neurosis." This appears a developed "traumatic quiteincomprehensible The timethatelapsedbetween accident and is thereforenovelfact. a the and the firstappearanceof the symptoms called the "incubation is a disease.As period," transparent allusionto thepathology infectious of in us difit an afterthought,muststrike that, spiteofthefundamental of neurosis that and ference thetwocases,theproblem thetraumatic in in is there a correspondence one point.It is the ofJewish monotheism, for whichone mightterm feature latency Thereare thebest grounds there a longperiod, of is thinking in thehistory theJewish that religion is the whichno trace after breaking the awayfrom Mosesreligion, during idea of tobe found themonotheistic ... thusthesolution ourproblem of is to be sought a specialpsychological in situation. 67-68] [84; the which the effects theexperience of In the term"latency," periodduring are not apparent,Freud seems to comparethe accidentto the successive in the to Yet movement Jewish from eventtoitsrepression itsreturn. history what is trulystriking about the accidentvictim'sexperienceof the event, and whatin factconstitutes central the enigmarevealed Freud'sexample, by
to interpretation. Among 10. Thereareofcourse number exceptions thisstandard a of Winter, Yerushalmi, and cited themaretheworks Goux,Lacoue-Labarthe Nancy, by and Moses and Monotheism," in above,as well as RitchieRobertson, "Freud's Testament: TimmsandNaomi Segal(NewHaven:Yale University Freudin Exile,editedbyEdward of and include The Useful treatments Freud Judaism PhilipRieff, Mindofthe Press, 1988). and S. "MosesandtheEvolution of Moralist (NewYork: Anchor, 1961), Martin Bergmann, 14 and Freud's Jewish Identity," IsraelAnnalsofPsychiatry RelatedDisciplines, (March can in A Freud: LifeforOur Time(New Gay, 1976).A useful bibliography be found Peter in of and Jewish identity York: Doubleday, 1988).Gay'sowndiscussion thiswork Freud's of is of illuminating. generally thewriting Moses and Monotheism highly

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that the is not so much the periodof forgetting occurs after accident,but rather factthatthevictimofthe crashwas never the fullyconscious during the accident itself: the person gets away, Freud says, "apparentlyunof harmed."The experience trauma,thefactoflatency, would thusseem to consist, not in the forgetting a realitythat can hence never be fully of 1 itself. 1The historknown;butin an inherent latencywithintheexperience its ical powerofthe traumais not just thatthe experience repeatedafter is its that forgetting, thatit is onlyin and through inherent but forgetting it is firstexperiencedat all. And it is this inherentlatencyof the event that paradoxically explainsthe peculiar,temporalstructure, belatedness,of the the Jews'historicalexperience:since the murderis not experiencedas it occurs, it is fullyevidentonly in connectionwith anotherplace, and in is in anothertime.Ifreturn displacedbytrauma,then,thisis significant so far as its leaving-the space of unconsciousness-is paradoxicallywhat For of preciselypreserves eventin its literality. history be a history the to to traumameans thatit is referential precisely theextentthatit is notfully can perceived it occurs;orto putit somewhatdifferently, a history be as that graspedonlyin the veryinaccessibility its occurrence. of is of The indirect referentiality history also, I would argue,at the coreof in of Freud'sunderstanding thepoliticalshapeofJewish culture, itsrepeated withantisemitism. themurder Moses, as Freudargues, For of confrontation of of is in facta repetition an earliermurderin the history mankind,the murderof the primal fatherby his rebellious sons, which occurredin and it is theunconsciousrepetition acknowledgment and primeval history; and ofthisfactthatexplainsbothJudaism its Christian Indeed, antagonists. for the Freudsays,when Paul interprets deathofChristas theatonement an the of originalsin,he is belatedlyand unconsciouslyremembering murder remains buriedin unconMoses which still, in the historyof the Jews, Christians sciousness.In belatedlyatoning, sons,forthefather's as murder, a feelOedipal rivalry with theirJewish olderbrothers, lingering castration and finallya complaintthat anxiety, brought out by Jewish circumcision, in the Jews will not admittheguiltwhichthe Christians, theirrecognition of Christ's death, have admitted.By appearingonly belatedly, then, the its of of in is historicaleffect trauma, Freud'stext, ultimately inscription the Jews in a historyalways bound to the historyof the Christians. The
11. Itis also interesting thetwovehicles, that seemtoresemble coming together, the twomennamed"Moses"andthetwopeoplescoming in together, a missing meeting, at this also as a kindofgap: "I think arejustified separatdescribes event we Qades. Freud in ingthetwopersons from eachother inassuming theEgyptian and that Mosesnever in was heard nameofJahve, the the whereas Midianite Qades andhadnever Mosesnever foot set in Egypt knewnothing Aton.In order makethetwopeopleintoone,tradition and of to or the Moses to Midian;andwe haveseenthatmorethanone legend had to bring Egyptian for explanation given it" (49; 41). was

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Hebrews' departure, that is, or theirarrivalas a Jewish nation,is also an arrivalwithina history longersimplytheirown. It is therefore,would no I like to suggest,preciselyin the veryconstitutive functionof latency,in thatFreuddiscoverstheindissoluble, history, politicalbond to otherhistones. To put it somewhatdifferently, could saythatthe traumatic we nature of historymeans that events are only historicalto the extentthat they implicateothers.And it is thusthatJewish history also been the sufferhas ing of others'trauma.12 can The fullimpactofthisnotionofhistory onlybe grasped, however, when we turnto the question ofwhat it would mean,in thiscontext, consider to Freud's own writingas a historicalact. In the various prefaceswhich he appendsto his work,Freudhimself imposes thisquestionupon us bydrawof ing our attentionto the history the text'sown writing and publication. of The processofthe actual writing the book took place between1934 and 1938, during periodofFreud'slast yearsin Vienna,and his first the yearin of London,to which he movedin June 1938 because ofNazi persecution of The first partsofthebook,containing two his family and ofpsychoanalysis. of he the history Moses, werepublishedbefore leftAustria,in 1937,while the in the third part,containing moreextensive analysisofreligion general, Freudhad moved to Lonwas withheldfrompublicationuntil 1938, after Freudinserts whathe calls a "Summary don.In themiddleofthisthird part, in and Recapitulation"(or Wiederholung, literally"repetition"), which he tells the storyofhis book in his own way: of The following ofthisessay[thesecondsection Part Threel cannot part without and be sentforth theworld into lengthy explanations apologies. oftenliteralrepetition the first of For it is no otherthan a faithful, part.... Why have I not avoided it? The answer to this question
12. It is important notethatFreud to doesnotimply necessity anyparticular the for kindofpersecution; is,whilehe insists whatappears be a kindofuniversality that on to of trauma, doesnotsuggest theresponse trauma he that to mustnecessarily themistreatbe mentoftheother. fact, distinguishes In he Christian hatred theJews of from Nazi persecuhe tion,describing former determined an Oedipalstructure, the as by whileofthelatter of says: "We mustnot forget thatall the peopleswho now excel in the practice antiSemitism becameChristians onlyin relatively recent times, sometimes forced it by to bloodycompulsion. One might thatthey are "badlychristened"; say all underthethin veneer Christianity haveremained of they whattheir ancestors were, barbarically polywhichwas theistic. Theyhave not yetovercome their grudge againstthenew religion on came forced them, they and haveprojected on tothesource it from whichChristianity is for and to them.... The hatred Judaism at bottom for hatred Christianity, it is not of surprising in theGerman that NationalSocialistrevolution close connection the this of twomonotheistic in religions finds suchclearexpression thehostiletreatment both" in of and (117; 91-92). A brilliant exploration therelation between Judaism Christianity from question return thestory Abraham, be of in of can five authors, whichtakesoff the found Jill in Robbins, Prodigal and ElderBrother: Son Augustine, Petrarch, Kierkegaard,
Kafka, Levinas (Universityof Chicago Press, 1991).

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I hardto admit. havenotbeenable to efface traces the the of is ... rather In it unusualwayin whichthisbookcameto be written. truth has been written twiceover. The first timewas a fewyearsago in ViennawhereI didnotbelieve possibility publishing I decided putitaway, the of it. to but ithaunted likean unlaidghost, I compromised publishing me and by two
parts ofthe book....

me me Invasion. forced toleavemyhome,butalso freed ofthefear It lest to the cause psychoanalysis be forbidden a in mypublishing bookmight whereits practice was stillallowed.No soonerhad I arrived in country of thanI found temptation making withheld the England my knowledge
accessible to the world irresistible.... I could not make up my mind to

Then in March 1938 came the unexpected German

and the relinquish twoformer contributions altogether, thatis how the a came aboutofaddingunaltered whole piece ofthefirst compromise to of version thesecond,a devicewhichhas thedisadvantage extensive repetition.... [131-32; 103-041 whose traces Readingthis storyFreudtells of his own work-of a history which haunts Freudlike a ghost,and finally cannotbe effaced, emergesin not several publications involvingextensiverepetition-it is difficult to its and ofthe Hebrews-of Moses' murder, effacement, recognizethe story The book itself, Freudseems to be tellingus, is its unconscious repetition. the site of a trauma; a traumawhich in this case moreoverappearsto be markedby the eventswhich,Freudsays,dividethe book into historically of the two halves: first, infiltration Nazism into Austria,causing Freudto withhold or repressthe thirdpart,and then the invasion of Austria by Germany, causing Freudto leave, and ultimatelyto bringthe thirdpartto of and form represof light.The structure history thebook,in its traumatic thusmarkit as theverybearerofa historsion and repetitive reappearance, of ical truththat is itselfinvolvedin the political entanglement Jewsand theirpersecutors. But significantly, spite ofthe temptation lend an immediatereferin to entialmeaningto Freud'straumain theGermaninvasionandNazi persecution,it is not,in fact, precisely direct the reference the Germaninvasion to that can be said to locate the actual trauma in Freud'spassage. For the not in termsof its attendantpersecutionsand invasion is characterized, did of havetheir threats, whichtheFreudfamily in fact share,butin termsof the somewhatdifferent me emphasisofa simplephrase: "it forced to leave
my home, but it also freed me . . ." [(sie) zwang mich, die Heimat zu vermich aber ... ].13 The traumain Freud'stext, first all a is of lassen, befreite

trauma of leaving,the traumaof verlassen.Indeed,it is this wordwhich actually ties this "Summaryand Recapitulation"itselfto the traumatic
13. Germanquotations Moses and Monotheism takenfrom of are Sigmund Freud, Band9, Frankfort Main: (1982). on Studienausgabe

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structuring the book, in its implicitreferral two earlierprefaces, of to appended to the beginning PartIII. These two prefaces, of subtitled"Before March 1938" (while Freudwas still in Vienna),and "In June1938" (after Freudhad resettledin London),describe,respectively, reasons fornot his publishingthe book, and his decision finallyto let it come to light,announced as following the second preface: in The exceptionally great difficulties which haveweighed meduring on the withMoses ... arethereason of composition thisessaydealing whythis whichcontrathird and finalpartcomes to havetwo different prefaces For interval between two the dict-even cancel-each other. in theshort of haveradically Forprefaces outerconditions theauthor the changed. of I the and that merly livedunder protection theCatholicchurch feared bypublishing essayI shouldlose that the protection.... Then,suddenly, the German invasion.... In the certainty persecution I left of ... the earlychildhood, [verliess ich],withmanyfriends, citywhichfrom had through seventy-eight years, beena hometo me. [69-70; 571 The "intervalbetween the prefaces"which Freud explicitlynotes, and March 1938" and "In June which is also the literalspace between "Before 1938," also marks,implicitly, space of a trauma,a traumanot simply the denoted by the words "German Invasion,"but ratherborneby the words "verliessIch," "I left."Freud'swriting preserves history preciselywithin thisgap in his text;and withinthewordsofhis leaving,wordswhichdo not in their but and simplyrefer, which,through repetition thelater"Summary as Recapitulation," conveytheimpactofa history precisely whatcannot be graspedabout leaving. Indeed,in Freud'sown theoretical of in explanation trauma, theexample ofthe accident,it is, finally, act ofleavingwhichconstitutes central the its and enigmaticcore: It mayhappenthatsomeonegetsaway[literally, "leavesthesite,""die from spotwherehe has sufthe Stddte verlisstl, apparently unharmed, a a for collision. fered shocking accident, instance train The traumaofthe accident,its very unconsciousness,is bornebyan act of of remains It departure. is a departure which,in thefullforce itshistoricity, at the same time in some sense absolutelyopaque, both to the one who linkedto the sufferer his attemptto in leaves, and also to the theoretician, bringthe experienceto light.Yet at the same time,thisveryopacitygenerfor forceof a knowledge, it is the accident,in German, ates the surprising in Unfall,which reverberates Freud'sown theoretical insightdrawnfrom the example,which is laced in the Germanwith otherforms fallen,"to of fall":

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us that itmuststrike [esmussunsauffallen], in spite As an afterthought, the between between twocases [Fille], the difference ofthefundamental there a and neurosis thatofJudaic monotheism, is of problem traumatic in one in describe namely, thecharacter might correspondence onepoint, of for that Therearethebestgrounds thinking in thehistory as latency. the after breaking away[AbfallI there a longperiod, is religion theJewish whichno traceis to be foundof the the during from Moses religion, idea.... 14 monotheistic Between the Unfall, the accident,and the "striking"of the insight,its in whichis transmitted of precisely the is auffallen, theforce a fall,a falling unconsciousactofleaving.It is thisunconsciousnessofleavingwhichbears of And it is likewisefirst all in theunconsciousnessof theimpactofhistory. in we to Freud'sreference his departure his own textthat,I would suggest, first have access to its historicaltruth. in The full impact of this historyoccurs forus, however, yet another In in aspectoftheact ofleaving, whatFreudcalls "freedom." the "Summary and Recapitulation"Freudsays: me me It forced to leave myhome,but it also freed ofthefearlest my to in the publishing book mightcause psychoanalysis be forbidden a whereits practice stillallowed. is country the to forth is Freud, also a kindoffreedom, freedom bring Leavinghome,for thatis, to bring voice to another his place. the his book in England, freedom, in which resonateswith these The meaningofthis act is suggested a letter a written Freudto his son Ernstin May by lines from "Summary," letter the to 1938, while Freudwas waitingforfinalarrangements leave Vienna: in times:torejoin youall andTwoprospects keepme going thesegrim to die in freedom. the not to Freud'sfreedom leave is paradoxically freedom, to live,butto die: in his voice to others dying. Freud'svoice emerges, thatis, as a forth to bring And it is this departure addressesus. In the which,moreover, departure.'5
hereas "As an afterthought" 14. It is also worth notingthatwhatis translated is in Freud uses elsewhere describe "deferred to the nachtraglich German, word the action" in of events psychic or retroactive meaning traumatic life;herewhatis nachtraglich is in whichthusalso participates thetraumatic Freud's theoretical insight, structure. An of in and of Freud befound can discussion thestructure temporality trauma early excellent in in Cynthia Chase,"OedipalTextuality," Decomposing Figures: Rhetorical Readings in Tradition The and theRomantic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press,1986), Jean Laplanche, trans.Jeffrey "Sexualityand the Vital Order,in Life and Death in Psychoanalysis, The Mehlman(Baltimore: Johns HopkinsPress,1976). of to with MosesandMonotheism also apparent is 15. The resonance theletter Ernst in thelineswhichfollow thosequotedabove:"I sometimes compare myself withtheold

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line he writesto his son,thelast four words- "to die in freedom"-are not, in like therestofthe sentence,written German,butrather English.The in and announcementofhis freedom, ofhis dying, givenin a languagethat is can be heardby those in the new place to whichhe brings voice, to us, his is upon whom thelegacyofpsychoanalysis bestowed. is significant It morenot in overthatthismessageis conveyed merely thenew language, English, but preciselyin the movementbetweenGermanand English,betweenthe of languagesofthereaders his homelandand ofhis departure.would like to I in the movementfromGerman to English,in the suggestthat it is here, of within the languages of Freud's text,that we rewriting the departure in mostfully Freud'scentral in participate insight, Moses and Monotheism, like the trauma,is never simply one's own, that historyis that history, preciselythe way we are implicated in each other's traumas. For wewhetheras German-or as English-speaking readers-cannot read thissenIn tencewithout,ourselves, in departing. thisdeparture, theleave-taking of we ourhearing, are first in fullyaddressedbyFreud'stext, wayswe perhaps understand. cannotyetfully as And,I would proposetoday, we considerthe possibilitiesof culturaland political analysis,thatthe impactof this,not fullyconscious address,may be not only a valid, but indeed a necessary point of departure.16

old Jacob who,whena very man,wastaken hischildren Egypt, ThomasMannis to to as by describe his nextnovel.Let us hopethatit won'talso be followed an exodusfrom in by cameto restsomewhere." Egypt. is hightimethatAhasuerus It of marvelous treatment trauma Freud, "Survivor in in 16. Robert Lifton's Jay Experibetween laterdevelopment the ence andTraumatic Syndrome," pointsto therelation of of and of War thenotion trauma theoccurrence World I. Itwouldbe interesting explore to inscribes impact warin Freud's the of thewayin whichthenotionoftrauma theoretical work.