Walking, Walking Out, and Walking Through: Transitional Space and Traumatic Time

The act of walking is examined as a basic and initial response and reaction to trauma. This is done through various modes of the practice of walking: Within religion walking is practiced as an a-nomic action, and it is developed here in relation to theories of trauma. Ritual is the space of processing trauma, and ritual walking is thus situated on the spectrum between acting out and working through.

This chapter explores sojourns and nomadic walking, journeys to the non-existent place (ex-territorial expulsion as well as Utopia) and as a reconnecting between the ego and the self, whether this occurs through punishment of the killer; the ostracized and banished from the city; and the ecstatic self-banishment of the prophet or hermit.

This also is the dynamic of the mystic walking as identifying with the displaced divinity, universal suffering, and a mode of ecstatic epiphany. Conversely there is the mystical act of redeeming, building up reality (both personal and writ large). On this level a distinction is made between regressive and progressive modes (Cordovero and Luria).

The projection of trauma in exploring space through walking is examined through its manifestation in Jewish time-perception, particularly Messianic conceptions of time and its progression developed by the Kabbalists—born out of the Spanish Expulsion. The strong affinities between walking as dispersion, scattering and collecting, and constructing—with its ramifications for internal identity construction—illuminate the modern conceptions of Benjamin and the metropolis.