ABSTRACT
The superstitions of the past, the subject is aghast to discover, have not been surmounted and conquered, merely temporarily repressed. What results is a ripe opportunity for Roachian surrogation; such anxiety can be alleviated by an embodied, repeated performance that validates the imaginary threat and generates a narrative by which this threat is addressed and overcome. Particular monsters, of course, lend themselves well to these particular surrogative performances. This chapter interrogates one of them, the Golem of Prague, in the context of its emergence in early twentieth-century European theatre, and examines how its uncanny legacy proliferated in the popular horror of today. Despite the uncanny dangers of a monster that sits disharmoniously between the living and the nonliving, the Golem is designed as an anxiety-relieving monster that fulfills the fantasy that persecuted Jews might defend themselves. The monsters of The Golem were too Jewish not only for the Soviet censors but for the theatre critics of Zion itself.
