Secularizing Exodus

Resistance to oppression and exploitation is incited by disgust, objection and, in no small part by myths about a possible liberation. The Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt is one of the oldest known reports of a successful overcoming of slavery and genocide. Regardless of whether the liberation actually happened as told in the Pentateuch, the narrative of these mythical events has encouraged generations of people to resist repression and to seek a more just life. Since the age of Enlightenment, this myth has been secularized to make its charisma visible to people of all faith and unbelief. The secularization of the Exodus explores why, and how in the last hundred years the Exodus has been disenchanted, rationalized, and also remystified to understand people and promote humanist values. The Exodus has been reread as a model of psychoanalysis, as a material of art, as a strategy of politics and as a narrative of philosophy. By comparing Sigmund Freud`s speculation about the repressed causes of religion, Thomas Mann`s disenchanted appropriation of the exodus as an anti-fascist parable, Michael Walzer`s analysis of revolutionary and national imitations of the exodus, and Paolo Virno`s Fragments of an Exodus Strategy of Social Change the polyvalence of the Exodus as well as connections and ruptures which exist between these skeptical, ironic, historicizing and fragmentary approaches become visible. The investigation of the transformation of Exodus explains its punctuality and shows why this biblical myth still inspires to work for a more just and freer society, and why it not only provides the narrative basis to reformulate the ideas of freedom and justice but also warns against purported rescuers as well as a resacralization of collective identities.