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Le personnage biblique de Joseph, le fils préféré de Jacob, jouit d'une postérité universelle. Son récit vient de peuples et de textes plus anciens que lui et engendrera d'autres textes et d'autres communautés. L'étymologie de Joseph en fait plus qu'un nom: un principe d'augmentation, d'autorité, de conseil. Une foule d'individus, de phénomènes peuvent donc être décrits comme joséphiques. Dans cette narration modèle, Joseph, malgré les accusations mensongères, échappe aux processus victimaires en les comprenant et en pardonnant; cette singularité définit l'élection et fait de Joseph un éminent conseiller politique. Ce récit donne à la fois la formation de la nationalité juive et la formule du Juif parmi les Nations. Anticipant par son comportement les lois de Moïse, Joseph représente leur portée universelle et l’ambiguïté de leur universalisation. Cette universalité va favoriser l’adoption de cette figure messianique par les traditions chrétienne et musulmane.Il assume ainsi une riche postérité théologico-politique où la notion de conseil a une place cardinale: incarnation de la philosophie politique pour Philon d'Alexandrie, figure de l'élu dans la théologie et la politique de Calvin, confirmation des principes de la théorie du contrat social de Hobbes, formation de « l'humanisme de l'avenir » dans la narration mythique de Thomas Mann. Figure salvatrice qui permet d'échapper au mal, il permet aussi de penser une nouvelle institution pour les rescapés. Le conseil joséphique met alors en question le rapport entre conseil et commandement, et celui entre unité politique et unité spirituelle. Il constitue donc une matrice du conseil qui intéresse la philosophie politique. / The biblical character of Joseph, the beloved son of the patriarch Jacob, is granted a universal posterity. His story comes from more ancient peoples and texts than itself, but gives birth to more stories and communities. Joseph's etymology makes him, more than a name, a principle of increase, authority and counsel. If so, a lot of individuals and phenomena could be described as josephic. In this model narrative, Joseph, despite mendacious accusations, escapes from victimal processes by understanding them and forgiving; this singularity defines the election and makes Joseph a prominent political counsellor. This narration provides simultaneously the forming of the Jewish nationality and the epitome of the Jew among the Nations. Announcing by his behaviour the laws of Moses, Joseph represents their universal significance and the ambiguity of their universalisation. This universality will allow the adoption of this messianic figure by the Christian and Muslim traditions.Thus he assumes a rich theologico-political posterity in which the notion of counsel is capital: embodiment of the political philosophy for Philo of Alexandria, figure of the chosen one in the theology and the politics of Calvin, confirmation of the principles of the Hobbesian social contract theory, formation of “the humanism of the future” in Thomas Mann's mythical narrative. As a saving figure that enables one to escape from evil, he also enables one to conceive of a new institution for the survivors. The josephic counsel questions thus the relations between counsel and commandment, and between political unity and spiritual unity. It is therefore a matrix of counsel that concerns the political philosophy.

This thesis engages with the biblical archive and its animals, asking what it means to read the Bible after Jacques Derrida’s “question of the animal”, that is, critical questions directed at the characterisations, representations and utilisations of animals past and present which deem animals distinctly different to humans in order to demarcate their inferiority. At the same time, it is a critical response to Derrida’s Bible. Derrida – arguably one of the most important and influential thinkers of the twentieth century – provides a significant philosophical contribution to the question of the animal. In animal studies, the Bible is treated as a foundational legacy for concepts of the “human” and is frequently held up to blame for a misplaced human hubris. Derrida too draws on the Bible in implicit and explicit ways to underpin his critique of human/animal distinctions. Building on Derrida’s work on animality, I provide close and critical interpretations of four crucial texts of the biblical archive. I argue that these biblical texts are caught up in irreducible tensions: on the one hand, these texts depict and describe how humans and animals alike abide as finite, fellow creatures under God as a justice to come which calls for a radical similitude and solidarity; on the other hand, animals are portrayed as objects that are mastered by humans to demonstrate God’s power over the living. God’s power thus resides in a double bind – it both displaces power from humans to show them as animals, and it simultaneously provides a model for human power over animal others. In the first chapter I explore the significance of Derrida’s motifs of nakedness and shame over nakedness for his critique of human/animal distinctions, arising from his reading of Genesis. Critically continuing Derrida’s play on myths of origin, I tackle the question of the first carnivorous man, Noah, in Genesis 9 in order to show how this text can both be read as a license to enact the sovereignty of man over animals, and, how this text radically resists such a reading in God’s covenant with all life, human and non-human. Following my exploration of myths of origin, the second chapter grapples with Derrida’s notion of a deconstructed subject through his emphasis on response and responsibility. Derrida puts forward the biblical response “here I am”, as the mark of vulnerability in every relation with the other. I explore what this responsible response might mean in the context of the Book of Daniel that portrays encounters between human, nonhuman animals and God. Developing Derrida’s injunction to follow the nonhuman other, I argue that the double context of Daniel conveys two distinct visions of the concept of the political as animal: one, in which a fantasy for a harmonious domestication and cohabitation amongst rulers and their human and animal subjects is fostered under the only true ruler, a benign God; and, a collapse of such a fantasy, where rulers – human and divine – are portrayed as carnivorous, ferocious creatures who turn their subjects from pets to prey. The third chapter follows this collapse to Derrida’s critique of the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” as a commandment relating only to humans and thus a detrimental Judeo-Christian legacy. Derrida draws on the story of Cain and Abel to discuss the way the killing of an animal leads to the killing of a brother. To explore questions of killability I, however, turn to the negotiations of such issues in Acts 10. In the animal vision of Acts 10, questions of clean/unclean animals are suspended and hospitality is apparently opened up between Jewish and non-Jewish Christians. I demonstrate that the universalism associated with this text refers to an exclusive human fellowship which evades the actual implications of the animal vision. Yet, I posit that there are again two ways of reading the animal vision. In the first reading the analogical resemblance set up between animals and Gentiles implies that Gentiles too become killable as “clean” and thus the animal vision allows for indiscriminate killability amongst the living in general. In the second reading the cleanness of all animals is in fact a radical redemption of animal life for fellowship, in the same way that Peter accepts the fellowship and hospitality of Gentiles. Ultimately, the category of the living and the dead draws humans and non-humans together into what I call “mortability”; that is, the capacity for death shared amongst the living in the suspension of judgement until Jesus returns. In the fourth chapter, I follow up on the suspension of judgement by analysing Derrida’s thinking of sovereignty and animality in relation to Revelation 17. Crucially, Derrida’s logic of sovereignty includes Christ as lamb, in his logos or reason of the strongest, despite its ostensible weakness as a diminutive animal. I explore this further by turning to the scene of Revelation 17 in which the Lamb is at war with the Beast and the woman riding it. Developing Derrida’s allusions to sexual difference as it relates to the question of the animal, I explore how Revelation 17 denigrates both animals and women by characterising them as the figure of evil: Rome. The logic of the animal representations sets up the divine as the good on the side of the weak in the figure of the suffering Lamb. But as the Lamb becomes a beast-like indivisible sovereignty that asserts its reason of the strongest, the figures of “evil” become the vulnerable weak victims – the animal others. Another image of Rome emerges, then, as a deconstructed sovereignty in the subjects that stand as powerless figures in the political order, namely the animals of the Roman arenas and the prostitutes of the Roman Empire. The four texts I examine abide in the ambiguous tensions of an archive that can in the end neither be presented as animal-friendly nor as straightforwardly anthropocentric. The biblical archive is a complex compendium fraught with tensions that can, with its animals, only be held in abeyance. There can be no final “ownership” proclaimed of this archive and its animals, nor can any interpretive act dis-suspend them from such an ambivalent state. These very different texts do, however, provide the material and momentum to show central and crucial instances of how the biblical archive characterises its humans, animals and gods. My analysis reveals that the very same spaces in which these characterisations might be fixed as detrimental to animal life, are where the possibilities of seeing animals radically otherwise lie.

The image of 'the Jew' in nineteenth-century Russian literary texts is traditionally viewed as a paradigm of anti-Semitic discourse. Critics have typically accentuated the presence and continuity of negative stereotypes of the Jews. Yet anti-Semitic discourse is not the only approach to the representation of the Jews in Russian literature. This study explores the manifold nature of the portrayal of 'the Jew' in the works of three Russian writers of the highest calibre: Gogol, Dostoevsky and Turgenev. Literature at the time was highly politicized and a writer was expected to examine the issues of the day from an ideological stance. This meant that a writer's fictional representation of 'the Jew' was treated by many as an illustration of Jews' qualities in real life. After the partitions of Poland in the eighteenth century, Russia acquired a large Jewish population. These new Jewish subjects were confined to the Pale of Settlement, which restricted their rights of residence in Russia proper. That in itself meant that the majority of Jews were invisible to Russian society. Writers mainly used Western literary patterns in describing 'the Jew'. Nevertheless, in using traditional mythic stereotypes of the Jews they not only applied the familiar framework of Western authors but also created images based on specifically Russian culture. Moreover, at different periods of the century 'the Jew' was endowed with traits uncharacteristic of previous myths. The writers' constructions of 'the Jew' thus became complex and flexible. In order to investigate the complex constructions of 'the Jew' the following matters are discussed: (1) the depiction of 'the Jew' by these three writers in conjunction with their understanding of their own identity, events occurring during their lifetime, and stereotypical frames of reference for the Jews; (2) the degree of controversy in their representations; (3) their use of the image of 'the Jew' to define the essential qualities of the Russian.

Jewish and national histories have been interwoven in this study to probe the collision between perceptions of Jewish identity and the legacy of an imperial hierarchy of martial masculinity, conditioned by the pressures of war. It was to create significant dislocation, both in the traditional relationship between Jews and the State, and within the Jewish community. The negative stereotype of the Jewish male, which emerged in fin de siècle, is examined from three inter-connected perspectives; Jewish responses to the evolution of a masculine cult in the prelude to 1914, the changing dynamics of Jewish interaction with State officialdom in the war years, and issues of integration and separation which contributed to the multi-faceted profile of the Jewish soldier. The results of archival research suggest that vested interests concerning the question of Jewish military service created tensions between Government Departments and within the community, where patriotism clashed with nationalism, both concepts being anathema to a large number of immigrant Jews. The consequences divided Jews in Britain, challenging the authority of the Anglo-Jewish elite, and revealing to the State its misconception of a Jewish corporate entity. Despite the Jews’ military record, and the incipient demise of ‘imperial man’, negative perceptions of the Jewish male were diminished but not eliminated.

This thesis traces cultural and socio-political responses to the alien Jew in Britain through the prism of genre, space and time. Beginning with the reports of persecution of Jews in Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century, it examines how representations of these foreign Jews changed and developed as sympathy for their plight turned to anxiety at the prospect of their arrival in Britain. It shows how a Semitic discourse evolved alongside, and in response to, wider debates about the state of the self, nation and empire at the fin de siècle, arguing that the vocabulary and mentality of imperialism was a crucial tool for deciphering the nature of Jewish „difference‟. However, this thesis also enables fresh perspectives by considering the gender and spatial dynamics of Semitic representations in Britain during and beyond the period of mass immigration, from the end of the nineteenth century until the beginning of the twenty first. This extended view of the Jewish 'other', which follows the 'typical' Jewish migrant journey from the shtetl of Eastern Europe to the North London suburb of the present-day, considers how Jewish spatial and cultural practices have been interpreted and articulated by the British and the British-Jewish onlooker. The thesis' opening section, divided into three chapters, adopts an original approach to the aliens question by exploring how perspectives on the alien Jew were shaped and expressed within different mediums, or 'genres' at the fin de siècle. Through an assessment of newspapers, political debates, and fiction, this section offers a comparative analysis of how the particular dynamics and agendas of each of these genres operated to produce different textual and visual images of 'the Jew'. Building upon Bryan Cheyette's seminal work in relation to fiction, each of these chapters demonstrates not only the inherently ambivalent nature of Semitic representations but also reveal that, crucially, gender was an important moderator of Jewish „difference‟. This reading extends into the second section which, across four chapters, explores how gender functioned in conjunction with space to construct ideas in Britain about alien Jews as they traversed time and space from shtetl to suburb. Beginning with the point of departure, the opening chapter of the section reviews the long tradition of representing Eastern Europe by „the West‟, arguing that this tradition laid the foundation for a paradoxical view of the Jew in Eastern Europe as both territorialized and territorializing. This perceived struggle for spatial ownership amongst Jews also featured in narratives of the migrant journey – the topic of the second chapter. That perception generated the notion that migrating Jews were staging an alien invasion of Britain. Thus the prolonged fascination with London's Jewish 'ghetto' and its interior – 'alien' territory par excellence – provides the focus for the third chapter which, in turn, lays the foundation for the final chapter‟s exploration of the replacement of the urban with the suburban as the alien Jew's 'territory' of choice.

The thesis is a study in child institutionalism focussed on the Jewish orphanage at Norwood. The chronology of institutionalism is divided into three phases. The phases correspond to periods of growth, consolidation and decline. The introductory chapter provides a brief history of Norwood as a background to the study. The sources available - archives, recollections and published works - are reviewed to reveal a significant gap in Anglo-Jewish history. A Study in Institutionalism is outlined in chapter 1 as a prelude to the analysis undertaken in the following chapters. The institutional theme is initially examined by analysing the names used for Norwood in chapter 2. It is argued names are not merely external labels but are also linked with ‘internal forces’ that make the institution’s ‘personality’. This connection provides the basis for the linguistic study of name changing covering the years 1807 to 1961. In chapter 3 the expansion phase is examined as a Jewish template of institutionalism at Norwood. In chapter 4 the template of the institution is broadened to include national and international developments. The wider perspective include the new continental ideas on residential care, the parallel institution of the Poor Law system, the residential solutions of the evangelical charities sceptical of the large institution, and in America the institution’s progressive transformation into one that was more child-centred. The second phase of institutionalism during the inter-war period is studied in chapter 5. At Norwood, on the one hand, liberal reforms were introduced to improve the lives of the children and, on the other hand, there was structural stagnation. It was a phase marked by institutional self-doubt that in American Jewish orphanages saw a movement towards the ‘child developing institution’ in which the child rather than the institution took precedence, whereas this was less developed in Britain. The theme of counter- institutionalism is examined in chapter 6. The focus is on the children and the way they adapted to institutional life. Rebelliousness was one extreme form and expressed itself in the exceptional Norwood Rebellion of 1921 as well as ongoing resistance to corporal punishment. The penultimate chapter concludes the historical trajectory of the child institution at Norwood with its downfall and closure. The post-war period was marked by the findings of the Curtis Committee on the workings of such institutions. At Norwood the impact was seen in the structural reforms of the 1950s carried out under Edward Conway leading ultimately to the closure of the orphanage in 1961 and its replacement by family homes. The ideological transformation from institutionalism to one based on the paramount importance of the child concludes the study relating to the third phase of institutionalism. The concluding chapter provides a judgment on institutionalism – whether Norwood was a ‘good enough’ institution for the children, and more broadly whether Norwood was ahead or behind in its outlook compared with other examples in Britain and beyond.

The present study argues that a series of programmatic additions were made to the oracles concerning the nations in Isa 13-23 during the late-exilic period by the same circle of writers who were responsible for Isa 40-55. These additions were made to create continuity between the ancient oracles against the nations from the Isaiah tradition and the future fate of the same nations as the late-exilic redactor(s) foresaw. The additions portray a two-sided vision concerning the nations. One group of passages (14:1-2; 14:32b; 16:1-4a; 18:7) depicts a positive turn for certain nations while the other group of passages (14:26-27; 19:16-17; 23:8-9, 11) continues to pronounce doom against the remaining nations. This double-sided vision is set out first in Isa 14 surrounding the famous taunt against the fallen tyrant. 14:1-2, before the taunt, paints the broad picture of the future return of the exiles and the attachment of the gentiles to the people of Israel. After the taunt and other sayings of YHWH against his enemies, 14:26-27 extends the sphere of the underlying theme of 14:4b-25a, namely YHWH's judgement against boastful and tyrannical power(s), to all nations and the whole earth. The two sides of this vision are then applied accordingly to the rest of the oracles concerning nations in chs 13-23. To the nations that have experienced similar disasters as the people of Israel, words of hope in line with 14:1-2 were given. To the nations that still possessed some prominence and reasons to be proud, words of doom in line with 14:26-27 were decreed. Only later in the post-exilic period, for whatever reason, be it changed international political climate or further spread of the Jewish diaspora, was the inclusive vision of 14:1-2 extended even to the nations that were not so favourably viewed by our late-exilic redactor (19:18-25; 23:15-18).

This thesis explores how women in different religious communities relate to the concept of Salvation. Focusing on Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism, this short experimental film, and supplement paper, seek to provide an alternative point of view that translates this unique experience for women in religions that use heavily gendered language and that are rooted in traditional patriarchal cultures. By using the experimental film medium, viewers are able to perceive religion and film in a new way that pushes the viewer to give their own interpretation of the imagery on screen. It also allows viewers to give the imagery meaning and to be submerged in the content of the film. This thesis is an exploration so it does not provide a concrete answer but it encourages a viewer to reevaluate their own spiritual beliefs and to take into consideration an alternative perspective.

132f. / Submitted by Suelen Reis (suziy.ellen@gmail.com) on 2013-04-16T19:04:37Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Ricardo Cruzseg.pdf: 726808 bytes, checksum: 64d77dcbfe39e391ee8140dd45dd14ad (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Rodrigo Meirelles(rodrigomei@ufba.br) on 2013-05-11T15:29:07Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Ricardo Cruzseg.pdf: 726808 bytes, checksum: 64d77dcbfe39e391ee8140dd45dd14ad (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-05-11T15:29:07Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Ricardo Cruzseg.pdf: 726808 bytes, checksum: 64d77dcbfe39e391ee8140dd45dd14ad (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007 / O trabalho analisa alguns aspectos do pensamento metafísico do filósofo Walter Benjamin, assim como a importância da narração oral para a formação do sujeito, e o valor da alegoria em seus escritos. Para isso recorro à figura de Rabi Nakhman, um dos últimos representantes do Hassidismo. Seus relatos são originariamente orais que mais tarde foram transpostos à forma escrita. Estes possuem uma profundidade filosófica, mas é sua obra ficcional que influenciou um dos maiores narradores do século XX, Franz Kafka. Recorro a estas duas figuras por reconhecer em suas respectivas obras os atributos do verdadeiro narrador tão importante para o pensamento de Benjamin. Uma das principais características do movimento hassidico é ter transformado a mística judaica (Cabala) numa ética. É a experiência ética do individuo na história que no pensamento de Benjamin se transforma em responsabilidade histórica, responsabilidade essa que converge num messianismo muito particular. É a expectativa messiânica que se transforma na figura do Anjo da História. Os textos selecionados como base para a pesquisa são O Narrador, Experiência e pobreza, Franz Kafka: A propósito do décimo aniversario de sua morte, Sobre a linguagem em geral, sobre a linguagem humana, A tarefa do tradutor, Sobre o conceito da história. A metodologia utilizada na dissertação se realiza por meio da análise hermenêutica dos textos. A pesquisa conclui que o pensamento de Benjamin tem as características de uma obra aberta, onde essa abertura possibilita ao leitor o exercício do comentário. O valor espiritual que Benjamin atribui ao comentário, na história se torna uma experiência ética de caráter libertário. A tensão dialética entre metafísica e materialismo histórico nos confunde sobre o caminho tomado por nosso pensador, mas nos leva a pensar a lucidez de sua obra. / Salvador