Jeremiah’s Temple Sermon as a Traumascape: Reading Jeremiah 7:1–8:3 Through the Metaphor of the Phantasmagoria

Abstract

This interdisciplinary study integrates spatial theory and trauma studies to explore Jeremiah’s Temple Sermon (7:1–8:3) as a literary landscape in the context of cultural trauma. This study reads the Temple Sermon as a traumascape: a literary landscape constructed to shape and contain trauma stemming from Babylon’s subjugation of Judah. This reading proceeds in four parts structured around the metaphor of the phantasmagoria: the first analyses how the Sermon navigates the politics of memory to legitimise its interpretation of Judah’s past; the second explores how the Sermon constructs Judah’s past as a geography of national failure culminating in divine punishment; the third examines the rhetorical techniques which position the reading community to affirm yhwh’s rejection of their past selves. The final part integrates the findings of the prior three to read the Sermon as a traumascape wherein the tension between remembering and repressing trauma is navigated in the act of reading.