So, if we buy Butler’s expansive reading of Arendt–and that’s a big “if”–we are left with an ethical starting point, rooted in Jewish thought (not just Jewish history), from which to build a thoroughgoing critique of Zionism. Second, it is precisely the right to choose with whom to cohabit that constitutes Zionism. First, Arendt’s ethics does not apply only to Jews the obligation to cohabit emerges out of Jewishness but is incumbent on all people. Leveraging this point–the obligation to cohabitation–provides Butler with two resources. We are bound to one another prior to contract and prior to any volitional act. In her view, cohabitation is not a choice, but a condition of our political life. That Eichmann thought he could choose with whom to cohabit the earth. One of Arendt’s charges against Eichmann was To underscore this point and move toward the more ambitious goals of the book, Butler reads Arendt and Levinas (the latter “against himself” ). The second, and more interesting, argument is that an important strain of Jewish thought and culture requires “cohabitation”, derived from the point that Jews are quintessentially diasporic. Now, I am not comfortable with singling out Zionism as ‘exemplifying’ state violence, for reasons I’ll outline below but Butler is certainly correct on the historical point that Judaism and Zionism are by no means coterminous. It is not anti-Semitic or, indeed, self-hating to criticize the state violence exemplified by Zionism” (116). “Jewish opposition to Zionism accompanied the founding proposals made by Herzl at the International Zionist Congress in 1897 in Basel, and it has never ceased since that time. The first move is historical in character: throughout the 20th century and before, there have been Jewish thinkers opposed to the very founding of Israel. The arguments Butler pursues for this first step are two-fold, and foreshadow the moves she makes later on. Unfortunately, though, the foreclosure isn’t commonly dismissed as self-evidently illegitimate, so the book’s first task is to establish an authentically Jewish grounds for resisting that foreclosure. Ironically - and I’ll return to this point later - it’s not just wrong but it’s wrong in an authoritarian way: a way that insists upon a set of a priori symbolic commitments as the tickets for admission to the conversation. The idea that criticism of Israeli policy, and even of the wisdom of forming, maintaining, and defending a nation-state on ethno-religious grounds, is in itself anti-Semitic and therefore out of bounds ought to be simply and obviously wrong. It should not be necessary even to enter into this debate. …It has become necessary to reiterate this argument over and against a public discourse that assumes any criticism of the Israeli occupation, of internal inequalities within Israel, of land confiscations, and of violent bombardments of trapped populations…is anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish, not in the service of the Jewish people, or in no way in line with what we might generally call Jewish values. This critique has been foreclosed by the practice–common among defenders of Israeli policies–of defining critique of Israel and Zionism as prima facie anti-Semitism. In this case, the goal is to develop a Jewish ethics of “cohabitation” (speaking ethnically, not in terms of households) that allows for a critique of Israel: to “‘apprehend’ a Jewish left, non-Zionist, and so a Jewish/non-Jewish left that might qualify as a ‘partner for peace'” (p. The book falls squarely in the genre of political theory, which is to say: reading texts of normative theory as ways of approaching a matter of moral or political concern. So my post will start with my thoughts on the book, then circle around to discuss the controversy over the Prize. Then, as I was preparing to write these thoughts about it, I ran across the Jerusalem Post’s attack on Butler’s receipt of the Adorno Prize and Butler’s response to that attack. Toward the end of the summer I read Judith Butler‘s Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism (Columbia UP, 2012). This is another in a series of notes on things I read this summer.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |