Philistine imaginings and the naissance of a world other

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study traces the figure of the Philistine, its symbolic afterlife, in general, and its transatlantic circulatory logics, in specific. It follows the figure's ruptures and passages since it first emerged in Late Egyptian as P-r-s-t (transliterated: Peleset) and later on in Hebrew as פלשתי (transliterated: P'lishti) to signify an ancient people dating back to the twelfth century BCE, bearing the anthropological traces of the inhabitants of historical Palestine, and the biblical adversaries of the Israelites in the Old Testament (ca. 450 BCE). The study also examines the modern theological appearance of the Philistine in enlightenment philosophy – set in motion by way of Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy, following the German Romantic tradition – which subsequently shaped the theological epistemological foundations of the modern secular world, with serious effects on the rise of twentieth-century humanism, its racial logics, and on the postmodern constructions of the Palestinian question.