Freud and the Non-European

Abstract

In this chapter, I concentrate on Freud and the Non-European, which is Said’s (2003) final book before losing his life to leukemia. The book is a transcription of a talk Said gave at the Freud Museum London in 2001. The talk was incidentally banned (disavowed?) by the Sigmund Freud Museum Vienna. In the book, Said (2003) pays close attention to Freud’s (1939/1967) final book, Moses and Monotheism. The crux of the book is that identity, something which most of us strongly cling to, is based upon non-identity. This is the point that Freud makes when he argues that Moses was an Egyptian; in other words, the first Jew was a non-Jew. By extension, Said argues that Freud is a non-European—and Said a non-American? In the spirit of praxis, Said elaborates this powerful theoretical reflection in an effort to apply it to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For Said, Freud’s insight has the potential for helping us envision a world not divided along the lines of identity politics—something that Freud theorized but could not himself avoid. Finally, it is worth noting the obvious: that Said’s final book deals with Freud’s final book—not mentioning that both men battled cancer. What is the significance of their late styles for both psychoanalysis and postcolonialism/decoloniality?