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tradition, he returns to the Jewish theologian Franz Rosenzweig to
arrive at the hypothesis that this event of “inner conversion” occurs
“under the impact of divine love” (2001: 124). He then goes on to
draw upon Sigmund Freud’s exploration of the “superego” as well
as Badiou and Agamben’s discussions of Pauline love to make the
claim that “divine love,” which is distinct from the command of the
sovereign, is that which cuts into, “enters into and transforms the
closed particularities of cultural, ethnic, social, and sexual identity”
(2001: 128). What Santner means here is that the divine love is that
which “divides both sides of the identitarian division such that
neither side can any longer enjoy stable self-coincidence” (2001:
129); something else that emerges out of this “cut” or division is
what matters here. It is due to this understanding of the “neither
identical to . . . nor different from” logic “of the noncoincidence of
every identity with itself” that, Santner claims, may eventually help
the self escape the fantasy of exception. With this “not-all logic,”
one then does not see oneself as a “part” to a “whole,” an “exception”
to the “norm.” Given that the fantasy of exceptionalism finds its
expression in and is sustained by seemingly transgressive acts; the
“divine love” is that which interrupts and suspends this fantasy of
exception which valorizes violence and transgression. To translate
this into psychoanalytic terms, to cut into the fantasy of exception
is to stop fantasizing that one “can except myself from the midst of
life” (Santner, 2005: 130) and, instead, accept an ethics of exposure,
whereby one is “exposed to the proximity of the neighbor” (Santner,
2005: 131).
This shift of perspectives is what Chabon is also trying to
articulate through the figure of Landsman, who is prompted by
Mendel’s murder to read differently and think about an impossible
future which can disrupt the traumatic repetition of the past,
disguised as a future possibility. Rather, Landsman learns through
his encounter with, and reading of, Mendel’s death to see his
statelessness as both a blessing and a curse. In between both
possibilities
—
a blessing and a curse, something “more” emanates