
Examining the production and assimilation of Jews as "the nation" in the modern state of Israel, this book shows how identity is constrained through myriad struggles over the meanings and practices of being Jewish. Based on years of ethnographic engagement, the book employs Franz Kafka's writing as a theoretical lens in order to frame the seemingly bizarre and self-contradictory processes it describes. While other scholars have explained Jewish identity conflicts in Israel in terms of a dichotomy between the secular and the religious, this book suggests that such an analysis is inadequate. Instead, it traces these struggles to the definition of "religion" itself. It suggests that the problem lies in the way modern identity categories at once disarticulate "religion" from "nation" and at the same time conflate those categories in the figure of the Jew. The struggles over Jewishness that are part of the process of producing the ethnos for the ethno-national state call into question the notion that self-determination in the form of the nation-state is a liberating process. Modern democratic nation-states are meant to liberate citizens because they are understood to be ruled by "the people" and for "the people." But if "the people" exists for the state and its projects, then there is little liberating about the formula of sovereign citizenship. Instead, self-determination becomes a form of self-elimination, narrowing the possible forms of Jewishness. The case of Israel demonstrates that the classic "Jewish Question" in Europe has been transformed but not answered by political sovereignty.
This book investigates the inherent contradictions of Jewish identity within the modern Israeli nation-state, arguing that the pursuit of self-determination often functions as a mechanism for self-elimination. Joyce Dalsheim, an anthropologist, utilizes years of ethnographic research to challenge traditional secular-religious dichotomies. By applying the literary and philosophical framework of Franz Kafka, she examines how modern identity categories conflate religion and nationhood to the detriment of diverse Jewish expression.
What You Will Find
Scope Limits
Scholars in political anthropology and Jewish studies recognize this work as a rigorous challenge to conventional understandings of ethno-nationalism. Readers frequently note the dense, theoretical nature of the prose, which requires familiarity with post-structuralist critiques of the nation-state.
Page Count:
250
Publication Date:
2019-11-14
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
0190680253
ISBN-13:
9780190680251
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