IN NETWORK: THE CASE FOR DECOLONIAL JEWISH THOUGHT

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.54561/prj1002151s

Keywords:

Jewish thought, decolonialism, postcolonialism, revolution, eurocentric

Abstract

In this article II contend that this innovative approach illuminates the existential condition that became the driving force behind the articulation of Jewish subversions of modernity. While most liberal interpreters situate these as a result of the development of the nation-state, I show that this presumption of nineteenth/twentieth centuries (European) Jews leading the critical process ignores centuries of struggles and reproduces Eurocentric liberating qualities. As such it limits critical thought to the same spatial context where oppressive discourses emerged. As an alternative I contend that the critical thrust of Jewish thought is the outcome of a more long-standing process known as coloniality and encompassing the patterns of domination that developed in colonial contexts but exceeded their temporal and spatial dimensions. This process is traced back to the sixteenth century, when Jewish intellectuals became one group among other racialized collectives to attack the core of a 500 years-long process. I conclude by claiming that this framework can offer an invigoration of the field by re-evaluating disciplinary alliances, methodological frames, and geopolitical sensitivities.

References

Alcalay Ammiel, After Jews and Arabs: Remaking Levantine Culture, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1993.

Ashcroft Bill and Griffiths Gareth, Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts, Routledge, Oxon and New York, 2013.

Baron Salo, Changing Patterns of Anti- Semitism, Jewish Social Studies, v. xxxviii, 1976.

Benjamin Walter, Über den Begriff der Geschichte, in Walter Benjamin Erzählen, Frankfurt Au Main, Shurkamp, 2007. Arendt Hannah, ed., Theses on the Philosophy of History, in Illuminations, New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968.

Bhabha Homi, Joking Aside: The Idea of a Self-Critical Community, Modernity, Culture and the Jew, Brian Cheyette and Marcus, eds., Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998.

Césaire Aimé, Discours sur le colonialism, Dakar, Présence africaine, 1955.

Chakravorty Spivak Gayatri, In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics, London and New York, Routledge, 1998.

Cuddihy John Murray, The Ordeal of Civility: Freud, Marx, Levi-Strauss and the Jewish Struggle with Modernity, Boston, Beacon Press, 1974.

Deutscher Isaac, The Non-Jewish Jew: The Non-Jewish Jew and Other Essays, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1968.

Dussel Enrique, Ética de la liberación en la edad de la globalización y exclusion, Madrid, Trotta, 1998.

Gilman Sander L., ‘We’re not Jews’: Imagining Jewish History and Jewish Bodies in Contemporary Multicultural Literature, Orientalism and the Jews, Kalmar and Penslar, eds.

Gordon Lewis, Existencia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential Thought, New York, Routledge, 2000, and Maldonado-Torres Nelson, Against War, Durham, Duke University Press, 2008.

Goshen-Gottstein Alon and Badie Bertrand, The Sinner and The Amnesiac: The Rabbinic Invention of Elisha Ben Abuya and Eleazar Ben Arch, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2000.

Grosfoguel Ramon, The Structure of Knowledge in Westernized Universities: Epistemic Racism/Sexism and the Four Genocides/ Epistemicides of the Long 16th Century, Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge 11.1, 2013.

Hess Jonathan, Germans, Jews, and the Claims of Modernity, New Heaven, Yale University Press, 2002.

Levinas Emmanuel, Une religion d’adultes, 26. Hand, trans. A Religion for Adults.

Löwy Michael, Rédemption et Utopie: Le Judaisme libértaire? en Europe central, Paris, Presses Universitaries de France, 1988. Heaney Hope, trans., Redemption and Utopia: Jewish Libertarian Thought in Central Europe: A Study in Elective Affinity, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1992.

Marx Karl, Das Kapital, Berlin, Dietz Verlag, 1961, I, p. 791. Folken Ben, trans., The Capital, Penguin Books, London, 1976.

Marx Karl, Zur Judenfrage (Braunschweigh, 1843). O’Malley Josep and Davis Richard, trans. & ed. The Jewish Question, Marx Early Political Writings, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Massad Joseph, The Post-Colonial: Time, Space, and Bodies in Israel/Palestine, The Pre-Occupation of Postcolonial Studies, Afzal-Khan Fawzia et al., eds., Durham, Duke University Press, 2000.

Memmi Albert, Qu’est-ce qu’un Juif-Arabe, Juifs et Arabs, Paris, Gallimard, 1974. Levieux, trans., What is an Arab Jew, Jews and Arab, Chicago, J. Phillip O’Hara, 1975.

Mignolo Walter, Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2000.

Nadler Steven, Spinoza’s Heresy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002.

Quijano Anibal, Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America, Nepantla: Views from the South, 1.3, 2000.

Sand Shlomo, Matai, ve’ekh humtza ha’am hyedhudi, Tel Aviv, Resling, 2008. Lotan Yael, trans., The Invention of the Jewish People, London, Verso, 2009.

Shohat Ella, Sepharadim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Jewish Victims, Social Text 19/20, 1988.

Silverblatt Irene, Modern Inquisitions, Durham, Duke University Press, 2004.

Slabodsky Santiago, Decolonial Judaism, New York: Palgrave, 2015.

Suttclife Adam, Judaism and Enlightenment, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Wallerstein Immanuel, World-Systems Analysis, Durham, Duke University Press, 2004.

Downloads

Published

2022-12-06

How to Cite

Slabodsky, S. (2022). IN NETWORK: THE CASE FOR DECOLONIAL JEWISH THOUGHT. Politics and Religion Journal, 10(2), 151–171. https://doi.org/10.54561/prj1002151s