Wicked Aporetics: Liminal Loyalties in Homicide

This article develops the theme of Jewish aporia and its implications of impossible interpretative "closure" in an analysis of David Mamet's auteur-film Homicide (1991). Embedded within discussions of the artist's more recent prose pieces on Judaism, Five Cities of Refuge (with Lawrence Kushner) and The Wicked Son (2006), the central argument here seeks to demonstrate how the aporia of Judaism has proven a lasting influence on Mamet's thinking that is expressed both in his highly crafted dramas, as well in his markedly more militant essayistic works.