Parting Ways

This is an incredibly important and timely book. As always, Judith Butler generates a brilliant and rich argument through a series of readings, in this case complex and nuanced engagements with the work of Edward Said, Emmanuel Levinas, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, Primo Levi, and Mahmoud Darwish. Her book is intent on showing that one can develop from Jewish sources a perspective on Israel-Palestine that is non-Zionist, and that it might even be possible to assert resistance to Zionism as itself a 'Jewish' value. These scare quotes are Butler's, who constantly questions what it means to be Jewish. -- Amy Hollywood, Harvard University This book is the product of a deep ethical urge, a complex political sensibility, and a rigorous philosophical mind. It is also a work of extraordinary courage and personal urgency. A fascinating pair of virtually counter engagements underlies its argument. Through a dialectic that engages with Levinas, Benjamin, Levi, and Arendt, among others, Judith Butler demonstrates that there are quite sufficient resources in Jewish traditions to oppose the policies of the Israeli state and the political Zionism on which they have been based. If this were not honorable enough, she then presents a sustained reason for refusing the form of self-congratulation that would frame these resources in a renewed claim for Jewish exceptionalism, but rather claims for them, through a most touching engagement with Said and Darwish, the grounds for a dispersal of the Jewish self to a reach beyond itself to non-Jews, thus locating it in the broadest and most humane form of democratic culture. I think it is, perhaps even without our knowing it, the book on this subject that we have all been waiting for. -- Akeel Bilgrami, Columbia University This book is the product of a deep ethical urge, a complex political sensibility, and a rigorous philosophical mind. It is also a work of extraordinary courage and personal urgency. A fascinating pair of virtually counter engagements underlies its argument. Through a dialectic that engages with Levinas, Benjamin, Primo Levi, and Arendt, among others, Judith Butler demonstrates that there are quite sufficient resources in Jewish traditions to oppose the policies of the Israeli state and the political Zionism on which they have been based. If this were not honourable enough, she then presents a sustained reason for refusing the form of self-congratulation that would framework these resources in a renewed claim for Jewish exceptionalism, but rather claims for them, through a most touching engagement with Said and Darwish, the grounds for a dispersal of the Jewish self to a reach beyond itself to non-Jews, thus locating it in the broadest and most humane form of democratic culture. I think it is, perhaps even without our knowing it, the book on this subject that we have all been waiting for. -- Akeel Bilgrami Following in the footsteps of Hannah Arendt, Judith Butler offers an illuminating critique of Zionism, here developed into a general theory of cohabitation. Her compelling juxtaposition of Jewish and Palestinian intellectuals and texts (Levinas, Benjamin, Arendt, Said, and Darwish) constitutes an essential reflection on the notion of exile and diaspora, thus positioning herself against the logic of the nation state. Even those who disagree with some of her basic assumptions will find Parting Ways illuminating, challenging and thoughtprovoking. -- Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, Ben Gurion University