Episode 17: The Stranger Inside of Us: David Naimon

Mar 8

In episode 17, I talk with writer and podcast host David Naimon about his vexed relationship with listening, his childhood experiences of antisemitism, and his decision to leave medical practice behind. Digging into three episodes of his acclaimed literary podcast, Between the Covers, that have deeply affected me—his conversations with Isabella Hammad, Anne de Marcken, and Daniel Mendelsohn—we talk about the ethics of encounter, the stranger within the self, the “others” at the heart of Judaism, and language itself as an other that makes us and is not ours. Along the way we wind ourselves through many writers and topics, from Derrida to Pádraig Ó Tuama, from Edward Said to Judith Butler, from Hélène Cixous to Lyn Hejinian. What Jewish stories might guide us toward an ethical response to Palestine now? What is it to face our own wrongness? Is there such thing as a radical humanism? How are our wounds also our genius? And how might we find ourselves less alone?

Texts, interviews and events mentioned and discussed (the list was too long to include everything!)

Martin Buber, I and Thou and on Martin Buber’s cultural Zionism

Judith Butler, “Violence, Mourning, Politics,” in Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence

Julie Carr, Real Life: An Installation

Hélène Cixous and David Naimon, “Rêvoir” in Between the Covers podcast

Anne de Marcken, It Last Forever and then it’s Over

Jacques Derrida, The Ear of the Other: Otobiography, Transference, Translation and “Tympan” in Margins of Philosophy

Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism

Natasha Gill, “The Original “No”: Why the Arabs Rejected Zionism and Why it Matters”

Isabella Hammad, Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative

Isabella Hammad and David Naimon, “Recognizing the Stranger” on Between the Covers podcast

Edmond Jabès, in Rosemary Waldrop’s Lavish Absence: Recalling and Rereading Edmond Jabès

Naomi Klein and David Naimon, “Doppelganger: Part Two” on Between the Covers podcast

Ursula K. Le Guin, “Telling is Listening”

Emmanuel Levinas, “Ethics and Politics” in The Levinas Reader, edited by Sean Hand

Daniel Mendelsohn, Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate

David Naimon, “Let’s Feel the Pain Together”

Pádraig Ó Tuama and Glenn Jordan, Border and Belonging: The Book of Ruth: A Story for Our Times

Pádraig Ó Tuama and David Naimon, “In the Shelter * Borders and Belonging” on Between the Covers podcast

Alicia Jo Rabins and David Naimon, “Fruit Geode” on Between the Covers podcast

Edward Said, Freud and the Non-European

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“A Middle East Mediator’s Murder in Palestine 1948” video from UN Story

Operation Cast Thy Bread (Wikipedia)

“Israel Poisoned Palestinian Land To Build West Bank Settlement in 1970s” in Haaretz

Martin Buber’s cultural Zionism

David Naimon is a writer in Portland, Oregon and host of the literature podcast Between the Covers. His own writing has been anthologized in Best Spiritual Literature, the Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses anthology, Best Small Fictions and cited in Best American Essays, Best American Travel Writing and Best American Mystery & Suspense. He is also the co-author, with Ursula K. Le Guin, of Ursula K. Le Guin: Conversations on Writing. Two of his essays are available at these links: May your Memory be a Blessing and Sambatyon.