Orientalismo e stile profetico nell’espressionismo ebraico-tedesco

Edward Said argues that the construction of a dichotomy between Orient and Occident leads to a vision of the Orient as a negative inversion of the West. This inversion is reversed in some of the most prominent German-Jewish expressionist authors whose phantasmatic depictions of the Orient function as a means of subverting the political, cultural and symbolic order of their own place and time. In my talk I will show how Else Lasker-Schüler and Mynona (Salomo Friedländer) invoke an oriental scenery in conjunction with references to the Jewish tradition in ways that are neither merely ornamental nor exploitative of the exotic flair in the colonialist manner criticized by Said. Their “oriëntalist” stories are rather the manifestation of a modernist mode of writing that takes the idea of defamilarization seriously: In confusing, undermining and dissolving established boundaries, they criticize the exclusionary and homogenizing practices of their immediate environment with literary means derived from Jewish Scriptures and Avant-Garde literary practices alike.