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Books by Fiona Wright
In 'The Israeli Radical Left' (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), Fiona Wright traces the d... more In 'The Israeli Radical Left' (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), Fiona Wright traces the dramatic as well as the mundane paths taken by radical Jewish Israeli leftwing activists, whose critique of the Israeli state has left them uneasily navigating an increasingly polarized public atmosphere. This activism is manifested in direct action solidarity movements, the critical stances of some Israeli human rights and humanitarian NGOs, and less well-known initiatives that promote social justice within Jewish Israel as a means of undermining the overwhelming support for militarism and nationalism that characterizes Israeli domestic politics. In chronicling these attempts at solidarity with those most injured by Israeli policy, Wright reveals dissent to be a fraught negotiation of activists' own citizenship in which they feel simultaneously repulsed and responsible.
Papers by Fiona Wright
Medical Anthropology, 2022
A paradoxical concept of crisis has come to dominate contemporary understandings of suffering and... more A paradoxical concept of crisis has come to dominate contemporary understandings of suffering and care: as that which will reach a critical turning point, while also being chronic and enduring. I analyze this temporal enigma through an ethnography of mental health care practitioners in the UK who see themselves as embedded in a crisis-stricken care system, yet attempt to reformulate their therapeutic approach to crisis in productive ways: to make “good” of crisis. I argue that their efforts to make good in and of the temporal interstices of crisis disclose care as temporally unstable as well as ethically ambivalent.
http://www.anthroencyclopedia.com/entry/resistance With images of protest and dissent widespread... more http://www.anthroencyclopedia.com/entry/resistance
With images of protest and dissent widespread and frequently circulated in news broadcasts and social media posts, resistance to prevailing power structures seems to be an expected and regular feature of contemporary life. This entry explores how anthropology has linked these spectacular moments of resistance to broader social questions. It further explains how identifying a particular practice or process as a form of resistance is not always straightforward when broader context is thus taken into consideration. I do this by considering how resistance has appeared (or has been neglected) as a topic of study through the history of anthropology until the present day, and how prevailing theoretical frameworks and political contexts shaped what anthropologists made of resistance in different periods.
The entry begins from early political anthropology’s avoidance of questions of conflict and social inequality and moves through paradigm-shifting moments in the discipline – in particular, post-colonial and Marxist analyses – whereby resistance and social change became central concerns. It then examines how anthropologists began to study ‘everyday resistance’ and to emphasize how ethnography can reveal many small and subtle acts as forms of resistance, and as linked to more obvious and public forms of protest. Questions of consciousness and intentionality in political practice that are raised by everyday struggles are then considered in connection to the problem of defining resistance. In light of a focus on unconscious practices or acts that simultaneously challenge certain power structures and reinforce or create different ones, resistance is framed as that which constitutes a subversive relationship to forms of domination or systems that reproduce inequality, but that is not necessarily intentional or outside of prevailing political structures. Additionally, I consider anthropologists’ changing relation to resistance – from one of neglect to the position of activist or engaged researcher – as shifting forms of media and communication highlight researchers’ involvement in shaping perceptions of more and less organized forms of political struggle.
American Ethnologist Vol. 43 No. 1, pp.130-143. February 2016. Jewish Israeli left-wing activ... more American Ethnologist Vol. 43 No. 1, pp.130-143. February 2016.
Jewish Israeli left-wing activists engage in a subversive affective politics when they express love for, and mourn the loss of, Palestinian life. But the affects of love and mourning also bind these solidarity activists to Israeli state violence and sovereignty in various ways, entangling them in the very forms of power they aim to challenge. Loving and mourning the Palestinian Other involves an ambivalent ethics in which the activist subject objectifies the Other, and this objectification is a kind of violence that emerges in the affective becomings of solidarity activism. Activist loving and mourning thus call into question the nature of solidarity and alert us to the difficulty of ethics as troubled relations enmeshed in the violence of politics.
In this essay I interrogate the place of the ‘Jewish Question’ in contemporary anthropology, base... more In this essay I interrogate the place of the ‘Jewish Question’ in contemporary anthropology, based on ethnographic research conducted with Jewish Israeli non- and anti-Zionist left-wing activists. I engage with Jonathan Boyarin’s proposal for ‘Jewish ethnography’ (Boyarin 1996b) via reflections on the ways in which anthropology has failed to incorporate ‘Jewish theory’ as a theoretical other of its disciplinary premises. Exploring the irony of Israeli activists’ artistic and leisure practices, I argue that there is am ambivalent self-mockery at the heart of their attachments to Jewishness. I analyse this with reference to the theories of Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, and Emmanuel Levinas, who have similarly placed in question the stability of ‘Jewish identity’, and thus what it might mean to do ‘Jewish theory’, in relation to histories of European racism and colonialism. Ultimately I place in question the ideas of both ‘Jewish ethnography’ and ‘Jewish theory’ with a critical perspective on how Jews are seen to present a problematic otherness for anthropology not similarly conceptualised vis-à-vis other ‘Others’.
Conferences by Fiona Wright
Media by Fiona Wright
Contribution for 'After Gaza' section of 'Jewish Quarterly', Autumn/Winter 2014
Eid is a Palestinian Bedouin living under Israeli occupation. Ever since he can remember, Eid has... more Eid is a Palestinian Bedouin living under Israeli occupation. Ever since he can remember, Eid has picked up scrap materials and turned them into art. By following Eid's creative process, this film celebrates the optimism and integrity which enables him to transform the machinery of occupation into an artistic expression of individuality and hope.
עיד הוא בדואי פלסטיני, שחי תחת הכיבוש. מאז שהוא זוכר את עצמו, הוא אוסף פסולת והופך אותה לאמנות. הסרטון עוקב אחרי תהליך היצירה שלו ומעלה על נס את האופטימיות והכבוד העצמי המאפשרים לעיד להפוך את מכונת הכיבוש לביטוי אמנותי של אינדבידואליזם ותקווה.
Book Reviews by Fiona Wright
Ethnos, 2019
This is Fiona Wright's review of my book Disappointment: Toward a Critical Hermeneutics of Worldb... more This is Fiona Wright's review of my book Disappointment: Toward a Critical Hermeneutics of Worldbuilding
Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology , 2019
Social Anthropology, 2018
Athanasiou, Athena. 2017. Agonistic mourning: political dissidence and the women in black. Edinbu... more Athanasiou, Athena. 2017. Agonistic mourning: political dissidence and the women in black. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 360 pp. Pb.: £13.99. ISBN: 9781474420150.
Book review, 'Apartheid Israel: the politics of an analogy' edited by Jon Soske and Sean Jacobs, ... more Book review, 'Apartheid Israel: the politics of an analogy' edited by Jon Soske and Sean Jacobs, Chicago, IL, Haymarket Books, 2015, 212 pp. Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies, Vol. 17 , Iss. 4, 2016.
American Ethnologist, 43: 395–396. doi: 10.1111/amet.12328
In 'The Israeli Radical Left' (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), Fiona Wright traces the d... more In 'The Israeli Radical Left' (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), Fiona Wright traces the dramatic as well as the mundane paths taken by radical Jewish Israeli leftwing activists, whose critique of the Israeli state has left them uneasily navigating an increasingly polarized public atmosphere. This activism is manifested in direct action solidarity movements, the critical stances of some Israeli human rights and humanitarian NGOs, and less well-known initiatives that promote social justice within Jewish Israel as a means of undermining the overwhelming support for militarism and nationalism that characterizes Israeli domestic politics. In chronicling these attempts at solidarity with those most injured by Israeli policy, Wright reveals dissent to be a fraught negotiation of activists' own citizenship in which they feel simultaneously repulsed and responsible.
Medical Anthropology, 2022
A paradoxical concept of crisis has come to dominate contemporary understandings of suffering and... more A paradoxical concept of crisis has come to dominate contemporary understandings of suffering and care: as that which will reach a critical turning point, while also being chronic and enduring. I analyze this temporal enigma through an ethnography of mental health care practitioners in the UK who see themselves as embedded in a crisis-stricken care system, yet attempt to reformulate their therapeutic approach to crisis in productive ways: to make “good” of crisis. I argue that their efforts to make good in and of the temporal interstices of crisis disclose care as temporally unstable as well as ethically ambivalent.
http://www.anthroencyclopedia.com/entry/resistance With images of protest and dissent widespread... more http://www.anthroencyclopedia.com/entry/resistance
With images of protest and dissent widespread and frequently circulated in news broadcasts and social media posts, resistance to prevailing power structures seems to be an expected and regular feature of contemporary life. This entry explores how anthropology has linked these spectacular moments of resistance to broader social questions. It further explains how identifying a particular practice or process as a form of resistance is not always straightforward when broader context is thus taken into consideration. I do this by considering how resistance has appeared (or has been neglected) as a topic of study through the history of anthropology until the present day, and how prevailing theoretical frameworks and political contexts shaped what anthropologists made of resistance in different periods.
The entry begins from early political anthropology’s avoidance of questions of conflict and social inequality and moves through paradigm-shifting moments in the discipline – in particular, post-colonial and Marxist analyses – whereby resistance and social change became central concerns. It then examines how anthropologists began to study ‘everyday resistance’ and to emphasize how ethnography can reveal many small and subtle acts as forms of resistance, and as linked to more obvious and public forms of protest. Questions of consciousness and intentionality in political practice that are raised by everyday struggles are then considered in connection to the problem of defining resistance. In light of a focus on unconscious practices or acts that simultaneously challenge certain power structures and reinforce or create different ones, resistance is framed as that which constitutes a subversive relationship to forms of domination or systems that reproduce inequality, but that is not necessarily intentional or outside of prevailing political structures. Additionally, I consider anthropologists’ changing relation to resistance – from one of neglect to the position of activist or engaged researcher – as shifting forms of media and communication highlight researchers’ involvement in shaping perceptions of more and less organized forms of political struggle.
American Ethnologist Vol. 43 No. 1, pp.130-143. February 2016. Jewish Israeli left-wing activ... more American Ethnologist Vol. 43 No. 1, pp.130-143. February 2016.
Jewish Israeli left-wing activists engage in a subversive affective politics when they express love for, and mourn the loss of, Palestinian life. But the affects of love and mourning also bind these solidarity activists to Israeli state violence and sovereignty in various ways, entangling them in the very forms of power they aim to challenge. Loving and mourning the Palestinian Other involves an ambivalent ethics in which the activist subject objectifies the Other, and this objectification is a kind of violence that emerges in the affective becomings of solidarity activism. Activist loving and mourning thus call into question the nature of solidarity and alert us to the difficulty of ethics as troubled relations enmeshed in the violence of politics.
In this essay I interrogate the place of the ‘Jewish Question’ in contemporary anthropology, base... more In this essay I interrogate the place of the ‘Jewish Question’ in contemporary anthropology, based on ethnographic research conducted with Jewish Israeli non- and anti-Zionist left-wing activists. I engage with Jonathan Boyarin’s proposal for ‘Jewish ethnography’ (Boyarin 1996b) via reflections on the ways in which anthropology has failed to incorporate ‘Jewish theory’ as a theoretical other of its disciplinary premises. Exploring the irony of Israeli activists’ artistic and leisure practices, I argue that there is am ambivalent self-mockery at the heart of their attachments to Jewishness. I analyse this with reference to the theories of Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, and Emmanuel Levinas, who have similarly placed in question the stability of ‘Jewish identity’, and thus what it might mean to do ‘Jewish theory’, in relation to histories of European racism and colonialism. Ultimately I place in question the ideas of both ‘Jewish ethnography’ and ‘Jewish theory’ with a critical perspective on how Jews are seen to present a problematic otherness for anthropology not similarly conceptualised vis-à-vis other ‘Others’.
Contribution for 'After Gaza' section of 'Jewish Quarterly', Autumn/Winter 2014
Eid is a Palestinian Bedouin living under Israeli occupation. Ever since he can remember, Eid has... more Eid is a Palestinian Bedouin living under Israeli occupation. Ever since he can remember, Eid has picked up scrap materials and turned them into art. By following Eid's creative process, this film celebrates the optimism and integrity which enables him to transform the machinery of occupation into an artistic expression of individuality and hope.
עיד הוא בדואי פלסטיני, שחי תחת הכיבוש. מאז שהוא זוכר את עצמו, הוא אוסף פסולת והופך אותה לאמנות. הסרטון עוקב אחרי תהליך היצירה שלו ומעלה על נס את האופטימיות והכבוד העצמי המאפשרים לעיד להפוך את מכונת הכיבוש לביטוי אמנותי של אינדבידואליזם ותקווה.
Ethnos, 2019
This is Fiona Wright's review of my book Disappointment: Toward a Critical Hermeneutics of Worldb... more This is Fiona Wright's review of my book Disappointment: Toward a Critical Hermeneutics of Worldbuilding
Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology , 2019
Social Anthropology, 2018
Athanasiou, Athena. 2017. Agonistic mourning: political dissidence and the women in black. Edinbu... more Athanasiou, Athena. 2017. Agonistic mourning: political dissidence and the women in black. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 360 pp. Pb.: £13.99. ISBN: 9781474420150.
Book review, 'Apartheid Israel: the politics of an analogy' edited by Jon Soske and Sean Jacobs, ... more Book review, 'Apartheid Israel: the politics of an analogy' edited by Jon Soske and Sean Jacobs, Chicago, IL, Haymarket Books, 2015, 212 pp. Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies, Vol. 17 , Iss. 4, 2016.
American Ethnologist, 43: 395–396. doi: 10.1111/amet.12328