local domination & the arts of resistance

Torah as Hidden Transcript

The discourses
of dominated populations
fall into four categories.
The first is the "public,"
within which they are actually working
within the terms of the discourse of the dominators.
The second is the "hidden,
offstage, where subordinates may gather outside the intimidating gaze of power"
and "where a sharply dissonant political culture is possible."
A third is the realm of the trickster tale,
within which the "hidden transcript" is encoded in a public one.
Finally there is the speech of open rebellion,
the martyr's speech.

We rarely have access
to the hidden transcript itself and most often must determine it from suspicious readings of the trickster material!

The talmudic discourse,
however, gives us direct access to the "hidden transcript," frequently thematizing the doubleness of its own trickster language, as in the story of Rabbi Eli'ezer discussed in previous stories,
where the Talmud openly relates what the Rabbi said and what the hegemon
understood/was meant
to understand.

This literature,
composed in a language
that the conquerors did not know,
provided a safe and private space within which to elaborate the transcript hidden away from the colonizer.
A very excellent example from ancient Egypt:
"Until the Late Period, cryptography is a very rare variant of hieroglyphic, used predominantly for aesthetic purposes, to arouse the curiosity of passers-by.
But in the Greco-Roman period, an age of foreign domination,
the methods of cryptography were integrated into the monumental script of hieroglyphics;
this created enormous complexity and turned the whole writing system
into a kind of cryptography. Clement & Pophyry
reflect this latest stage
of hieroglyphics."
{Assman, Moses the Egyptian}

This was less true in the Middle Ages,
when for a variety of historical reasons, the Talmud became available to non-Jews and a violent sort of delayed-reaction responxe was indeed generated, producing finally a self-directed censorship of the Talmud on the part of early modern Jews.

Thus in the apocryphal Christian story,
the conflict between the hidden and the public transcript,
between tricksterism and martyrdom,
is implicit.

A text
from the Palestinian Talmud,
however, explicitly thematizes open resistance versus accomodation as the appropriate response to oppressive power.

Two different interpretations
of a verse in Deuteronomy lead to two alomst directly opposed interpretations vis-a-vis the Roman overlords (or more likely, vice versa: two different practices with respect to Rome
lead to two readingd of the verse), one of direct alienation
and one of (seeming) accomodation.

The terms "alienation" and "accomodation"
are those in 'The Making of a Heretic', where they functiom as the basic oppositional terms in the {...} controversy. Our use of them here is slightly different from before, but after all they fit well enough,
and the analogies are close enough to be of utmost interest and quite worth evoking in their own right?!
The verse itself is explicitly about Esau {i.o.w. "Adam, 'the red swine', stupidly & haughtily
blaming 'nature' and/or 'his wife', 'g d' & 'circumstances' for his 'fall'
& subsequent 'ejection from paradise' a.s.o.},
who (through his alternative name, Edom)
is always an eponym for Rome
{or Babylon},
(and then for Rome as Christendom)
in rabbinic literature.

Seeing the verse in its immediate context
will illuminate the interpretative controversy and its political/cultural meanings:
"And He commanded the people, saying, 'You are passing within the border of the Children of Esau who dwell in Se'ir {Petra/haSela haAdom}, and they will be [very] afraid of you, so be very careful!
Do not provoke them, for I will not give you their land, not even to stand on, for I have given the Mount of Se'ir to Esau as an inheritance. You shall buy food from them for mney, and eat, and also buy water from them for money, and drink!'"

Shabbat 1:3, 3c
~ They said to Rabbi Hiyya the Great:
Rabbi Shim'on bar Yohai teaches,
"'You shall buy food from them {Edom = Rome} for money, and eat, and also buy water from them for money, and drink' [Deut. 2:6]: Just as water [is that] which has not been modified from its original state [lit. its creation], so also everything that has not been modified from its original state."
Rabbi Shim'on bar Yohai, whose opposition to any rapprochement whatever with Rome was proverbial, pulls the verse completely out of its context ~ well-respected midrashic practice ~ and accordingly reads it formalistically and technically as a limitation on the possible forms of interaction between Jews and gentiles.

You can only acquire certain types of foodstuffs from them, he says,
those that have a characterictic of water, namely, that they are unprocessed.
One can see immediately that such a regulation would have two powerfull effects:
a restraint on trade between Jews and gentiles, as well as a powerfull chill on eating together or sharing food, commensality, in addition to the chill that the kosher rules
already prescribe.

In
de oertijd
kon een groep mensen eeuwenlang leven
op hun eigen territorium: een diepe afgelegen vallei, een verre hoge bergrug, omringd door woestijn en/of water, muren, kloven, spelonken, grenzen & afsluitingen via natuur & wapens of wat voor afscheiding dan ook, en doen wat ze wilden
volgens hun tradities,
regels & wetten.

Sinds
mensen in aantal
zijn toegenomen en andere werelddelen [opnieuw] hebben veroverd met superieure wapens & 'foefjes',
is contact tussen vijandelijke groepen, volken, religies, rituelen & gewoonten onvermijdelijk.
De vraag is nu: wat te doen [en te laten]!
Hoe ga je met elkaar om
[of juist niet]?

Alle
Hebreeuwse {Aramese,
Griekse, Latijnse/Romeinse e.d. geschriften}
gaan over die ontmoetingen tussen 'vreemde' volkeren,
dominante culturen, wapengeweld & 'gedrag':
hoe ga je wel of niet met elkaar om,
hoe kunnen mensen samenleven
zonder elkaar
uit te roeien
& te haten?!

Vandaar ook
al die verhaaltjes,
gelijkenissen, interpretaties,
definities & variaties
op thema's.

Om onszelf
en elk ander
beter te kunnen begrijpen:
om samen te leven
zonder geweld, ellende,
leed, haat
& pijn.

Wat
men schrijft
in myDiary is
daar ook 'n weergave van:
we doen verslag van ons 'ego'
& dat van 'de anderen' ~
met vallen & opstaan,
horten en
stoten.

Letterlijk
& figuurlijk:
lokaal in gezin & buurt,
tussen provincies & steden,
landen, volkeren en ook
hele generaties door
alle eeuwen
heen.