Palestine and Jewish History: Criticism at the Borders of Ethnography - Softcover

Boyarin, Jonathan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0816627657 ISBN 13: 9780816627653

Publisher: University of Minnesota Press, 1996

Synopsis

Palestine and Jewish History was first published in 1996. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.This provocative and personal series of meditations on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict argues that it represents a struggle not as much about land and history as about space, time, and memory. Juxtaposing entries from Jonathan Boyarin's field diary with critical and theoretical articulations, Palestine and Jewish History shows not only the unfinished nature of anthropological endeavor, but also the author's personal stake in the ethical predicament of being a Jew at this point in history.Boyarin comes to Israel as a specialist in modern Jewish studies, an individual who has kin, friends, and colleagues there, a scholar with a long history of peace activism. He interweaves fascinating descriptions of ordinary life-parties, walks, classes, visits to homes-with a selection of his related writings on cultural studies and anthropology. Some sections are polemical; others are witty analyses of bumper stickers, slogans, the ambiguities in conversations. Boyarin foregrounds the messiness and lack of closure inherent in this process, presenting "raw materials" (field notes) in some sections of the book that reappear in other sections as various kinds of "finished" products (conference papers, published articles).In the process, we learn a good deal about the Middle East and its debates and connections to other places. Boyarin addresses two fundamental issues: the difficulty of linking different sorts of memories and memorializations, and the importance of moving beyond objectivity and multiculturalism into a situated, engaged, and nontotalizing framework for fieldwork and ethnography.Palestine and Jewish History enacts rather than reports on Boyarin's process of error, pain, impatience, uncertainty, discovery, embarrassment, self-criticism, intellectual struggle, and dawning awareness, challenging and engaging us in the process of discovery. Ultimately, it gives the lie, as the Palestinian presence does in Israel, to any concept of a "finishedness" that successfully conceals its unruly and painful multiple processes. Jonathan Boyarin is the Leonard and Tobee Kaplan Distinguished Professor of Modern Jewish Thought in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of Storm from Paradise, co-author of Powers of Diaspora, and the co-editor of Remapping Memory and Jews and Other Differences, all available from Minnesota.

About this title

Synopsis:

This series of meditations on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict argues that it represents a struggle not as much about land and history as about space, time and memory. Juxtaposing entries from Jonathan Boyarin's diary wi th critical and theoretical articulations, this text shows not only the unfinished nature of anthropological endeavour, but also the author's personal stake in the ethical predicament of being a Jew at this point in history. It enacts rather than reports on Boyarin' process of error, pain, impatience, uncertainty, discovery, embarrassment, self-criticism, intellectual struggle, and dawning awareness. Ultimately, it gives the lie, as the Palestinian presence does in Israel, to any concept of a "finishedness" that successfully conceals its unruly and painful multiple process.

From the Back Cover:

Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible to scholars, students, researchers, and general readers. Rich with historical and cultural value, these works are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The books offered through Minnesota Archive Editions are produced in limited quantities according to customer demand and are available through select distribution partners.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0816627657
• ISBN 13: 9780816627653
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272