“Moses and Monotheism” as History. Reading Freud through de Certau, Barthes and the Annales School

• Published in: Quest : issues in contemporary Jewish history Vol. 12; pp. 20 - 58
• Main Author: Nethanel Treves
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Fondazione Centro di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea CDEC 01.12.2017
• Subjects: Freud; Michel De Certeau; Moses; Roland Barthes
• ISSN: 2037-741X; 2037-741X

Across Psychoanalysis, Jewish Studies and History, rarely has a single essay raised a debate comparable to the one triggered by Freud’s last book Moses and Monotheism. The aim of this paper is to explore it once more from the perspective of the rhetoric of the historical discourse. In the first part we will make use of Michel de Certeau’s and Roland Barthes’ works on the writing of history in order to examine its relation to historiography. We will try to show how Freud undermined the very bases of the discipline questioning its scientific and more positivist character (rather than being questioned by it) and pointing toward trajectories that will be fully undertaken only at a later time. In the second part we will analyze the affinities and the echoes between Freud’s methodology and the historiographical revolution accomplished by the French School of the Annales in those same years, outlining a pattern of transformation of the discipline prefigured and explored, in their own way, by both Freud and the French historians.