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There is no stop, there is no interval between dreaming and waking. In this sense, it is possible to say: never, dreamer, can you awake . . . -- Maurice Blanchot
About Me
- Monica
- Studio City, California, United States
- I am a writer, storyteller, and former professor (UCLA, Pepperdine, LMU, Purdue) with expertise in representations of trauma, multi-ethnic literatures, Christianity and Judaism, immigrant narratives, and Critical Theory (I'm a graduate of the Cornell School of Criticism and Theory). I love to create stories. I adore books, wine, traveling, and shoes. I wrote a book called THE MIDRASHIC IMPULSE AND THE CONTEMPORARY LITERARY RESPONSE TO TRAUMA and have published pieces in Newsweek, The New Republic, The Jewish Journal, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Forward, and other places.
Places I Visit
- Monica Osborne at The Jewish Journal
- StrangledSleep on TWITTER
- Jewcy
- A Novel Blog
- Both Wearing Black Masks
- Hebrew Language Detective
- Postcards from Bedlam
- EV Comics
- Fido the Yak
- Fractal Ontology
- Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic
- Jewish and Other Media Links
- Jewschool
- Luke Ford
- Mxrk
- North American Levinas Society
- On Being Impermissible
- Rhetoricat.Com
- Side-effects
- Perverse Egalitarianism
- A Chair and Two Apples
- SOMA
- That Celestial Thought
- Third Guy Ducks
- Trauma and Philosophy
- Wishydig
- Perverse Egalitarianism
Posts
3 comments:
Awesome, Monica... Next time you see me, tell me more about the Messianic Gap.
Casey,
Yeah, the Messianic Gap is a really cool idea. I'd be happy to share . . .
Nedric,
Glad you also appreciate the intellectual appeal of midrash and midrashic thinking. Regarding your first question, yes, indeed, as a critic I am performing midrash -- or, to be more appropriate, and less offensive I suppose, it might be best to say that I am thinking midrashically, extending an already existing body of work. Midrash is multi-layered . . . it's the same idea as the notion that "Torah" is not just the Hebrew Bible, but all of the classical Midrash and Talmudic discussions that surround (extend) it. It's what keeps Torah from becoming a cultural artifact -- the potential to grow and expand infinitely.
And, no, I don't think doubt is the only thing we can depend on, though it often feels that way -- perhaps this is where philosophy/theology have failed??
Hmmm . . . that's a really interesting thought, Nedric. But if the Hebrew Bible is dangerous, I would argue that responding to its gaps (and revealing what is, really, ALREADY contained in it) is what makes it less so. I don't actually think we want to create gaps between us and it . . . the point of midrash (or midrashic thinking) is to close those gaps as much as possible -- never really filling them, but only responding to them.
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