AustLit

'Dead Europe (2005) is a book about the harrowing of Isaac. The anti-Semitic logics of the novel inflect the familial curse that proceeds in the wake of Elias’s death, and the curse that haunts Isaac offers a re-emergence of a murderous anti-Semitic past. Yet this moment also confronts the critical reader with a choice: to embrace this supernatural motif of the curse or to shun it as psychopathology. Favouring the former, this article draws on the resources of Lacanian psychoanalysis and post-Marxist theory to analyse how this curse remains an exemplary trope. The argument will trace how Isaac is harrowed by the curse and, therein, ask what it means for Isaac to be harrowed. By looking again at the construction of the curse in Dead Europe, this article will examine some of the critical ideas that are uncovered by the novel’s supernaturalism.' (Publication abstract)