Last Words: Said, Freud, And Traveling Theory (Edward Said‪)‬

Said's Freud and the Non-European is an attempt to read Freud's Moses and Monotheism in the light of contemporary israeliPalestinian politics. Freud's excavation of Judaism shows its roots in Egyptian monotheism (the Aten cult of Akhenaten), and, therefore, Said argues, the impossibility of any foundationalist or essentialist view of Jewish (and therefore Israeli) identity. This article shows at length that Said projects unto Freud's book what he, himself, deems pertinent for the historical moment, embodying his very notion of "Traveling Theory." The reason for Said's projections is his profound identification with Freud, in particular, and secular Jewish thought, in general, which is at the heart of the "non-humanist humanism" he argued for in his Humanism and Democratic Criticism. **********