Elliot Wolfson: The Unhomeliness of the Mystery of Being at Home: A Kabbalistic Meditation on Diasporic Wisdom
The chair in Jewish-Christian relations at the Faculty of Theology of the Humboldt University of Berlin and Das Institut für Kirche und Judentum, in cooperation with the Catholic Academy Berlin and The Berlin Center for Intellectual Diaspora, are cordially inviting you to a guest lecture:
Professor Elliot Wolfson (University of Santa Barbara)
Monday, 6 December 2021, at 20:00 (Israel time)
“Unterwegs – The Unhomeliness of the Mystery of Being at Home: A Kabbalistic Meditation on Diasporic Wisdom”
Moderation: Professor Karma Ben Johanan (Humboldt University of Berlin)
Respondent: Professor Elad Lapidot (University of Lille und The Berlin Center for Intellectual Diaspora)
The lecture is part of the conference “Diasporic Knowledge”:
The last decades have seen the rise of “diaspora” as a central category or Denkfigur for critical thinking of contemporary politics, culture and society, which calls into question dominant nation-state models. This conference seeks to examine more specifically the epistemic foundations of diaspora, by exploring conceptually and historically the meaning(s) of diasporic knowledge where “knowledge” includes not only theoretical but also practical and existential forms of knowing.
The idea of diasporic – or exilic – knowledge refers to (1) knowledge produced in conditions of socio-political dispersion; (2) knowledge that concerns issues, phenomena and practice that arise from the diasporic condition; (3) knowledge whose own epistemic structure (language, text, narratives, imagery, reasoning, categories, institutions, subject positions, intersubjective dynamics etc.) may be designated as dispersed, de-centralized, diasporic or exilic. All these aspects entail both epistemic and political dimensions, intertwined.
The conference will explore various questions, conceptual challenges and historical examples, concerning diasporic knowledge and epistemologies. We wish to think, for instance, of diaspora and/or exile as existential conditions of critical thought, which takes a distance from its own – social, cultural, political – location, in order to question it. Beyond individual parameters, what kind of collective features enable diasporization or de-territorialization of knowledge and thought? What kinds of space, of territory, allow and support the existence of diasporic cultures, what kind of language, of collective performances, of narratives, of laws? What is the relation between diaspora, exile and cosmopolitism? What configurations of universality and particularity they produce or render possible? How were and are these questions negotiated in historical and contemporary cultures of the diasporic knowledge, for instance rabbinic ones?
The event takes place on Zoom:
https://hu-berlin.zoom.us/j/68400622862?pwd=RW5YWS8zdHZTQU9rcDlMK1lSQ0hnUT09
Meeting ID: 684 0062 2862
Password: 938735
Everyone who is interested is warmly invited!