Space, place and consciousness; Explorations on Jewish identity in Amos Oz’s life narrative A Tale of Love and Darkness

Abstract

ABSTRACT The notion of space is central to Jewish civilization as it evolved over complex geography. Amos Oz, the prominent Israeli writer explores the continuity of cultural and spatial experiences of Jewish populace in the land of Israel. This paper focuses on interpreting Oz’s image of Israel and the psychological multiplicity of Jewish civilization in A Tale of Love and Darkness, his memoir of family saga and national history. Oz’s arguments regarding the collective Jewish consciousness in connection with the distributed geographical space is analysed as a chronotopic discourse. The memoir deconstructs Oz’s Sabra image attributed by the Zionist ideology and offers a post-modern dynamic narrative constructed well within the notions of time and space. A spatial reading of the memoir explores the existential ties between Jews and the land of Israel.