Joyce Dalsheim - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Joyce Dalsheim

Israel Has a Jewish Problem

Hannah Arendt wrote that “emancipation” of the European Jews should have been their admission int... more Hannah Arendt wrote that “emancipation” of the European Jews should have been their admission into humanity as Jews. But attempts at assimilation actually made their future more precarious. They seemed to become part of European society but were neither admitted into society nor, indeed, into humanity. This chapter argues that assimilation does not end when Jews become sovereign citizens of their own state. Expanding on Patrick Wolfe’s theorizing on assimilation, it argues that self-determination in the Jewish state is also a form of self-elimination. Zionism is the ultimate Kafkaesque attempt at assimilation, an attempt to gain acceptance by mimicking those by whom one has been oppressed. The modern state was supposed to create the conditions in which Jews could flourish “as Jews.” Yet, because of the conflation of “religion” and “nation” in the figure of the Jew, the modern state actually limits the possible ways of being Jewish.

Anthropology Today, 2019

Recent public protests against right‐wing politics in the United States have often demonstrated a... more Recent public protests against right‐wing politics in the United States have often demonstrated a sense of surprise at the recurrence of racist, anti‐Semitic and fascist ideologies and movements which ought to belong to the past. Using insights from Walter Benjamin, Johannes Fabian and Jacques Derrida, the authors analyze the recent gathering of thousands of counter‐demonstrators at the ‘Unite the Right 2’ rally in Washington, DC and discuss how political and moral enemies are rhetorically consigned to another time. The temporality on display at this demonstration was more complex than linear, progressive time. Instead, it consolidated events from the past, present and future into a sense of eternal and recurrent victory. They argue that this temporality is an expression both of Derrida’s ideas about spectrality and Tanya Luhrmann’s analysis of the moral psychology of faith.

Israel Has a Jewish Problem, 2019

This chapter opens with an ethnographic vignette in which an ultra-Orthodox man explains the dang... more This chapter opens with an ethnographic vignette in which an ultra-Orthodox man explains the dangers of Zionism. He says the founding father of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, “actually wanted to convert all the Jews to Christianity.” This opens a discussion about the character of the Jewish state, building on the previous chapter about assimilation. It focuses on government efforts to change the ultra-Orthodox and to integrate them into Israeli society. It deals with conflicts over “freedom,” which has often come to mean self-realization and individual autonomy, but should not be limited to this Western liberal definition. While anthropologists have long argued that such normative terms like freedom do not have a universal definition, in this case, we find that the secular state interprets freedom in a way that does not coincide with the understanding of at least some of those it intends to make free.

This book examines the struggles over Jewishness in Israel. Although the state was founded to lib... more This book examines the struggles over Jewishness in Israel. Although the state was founded to liberate the Jews, some Israelis must leave the country to get married, while others are denigrated for trying to live the Torah life. The Kafkaesque nature of such struggles illustrates how modern democratic nation-states, meant to liberate citizens through rule by “the people” and for “the people,” instead create “a people” for the state and its projects. The book argues that self-determination becomes a form of self-elimination as it produces the ethnos for the nation, inevitably narrowing the possible forms of personal and cultural identity.

The Everyday Lives of Sovereignty, 2021

Choice Reviews Online, 2011

1. Fundamentally Settlers? 2. Disturbing Doubling: Antagonizing Settlers and History in the Prese... more 1. Fundamentally Settlers? 2. Disturbing Doubling: Antagonizing Settlers and History in the Present 3. Producing Absence and Habits of Blinding Vision 4. Disciplining Doubt: Expressing Uncertainty in Gush Katif 5. Twice Removed: Mizrahim in Gush Katif 6. The Danger of Redemption: Messianic Visions and the Potential for Nonviolence 7. Unimaginable Futures: Hospitality, Sovereignty and Thinking Past Territorial Nationalism 8. On Disturbing Categories 9. On Demonized Muslims and Vilified Jews NOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX

Review of Middle East Studies, 2009

S the late 1980s scholars have often represented religious settlers in Israeli occupied territori... more S the late 1980s scholars have often represented religious settlers in Israeli occupied territories as irrational, violent, dangerous to Israeli democracy, and threatening to the future of peace in the region. Most striking, though, is a rupture that runs through much of this literature: on the one hand, the beliefs of religious settlers have been depicted as a break from Judaism, and on the other hand, their political project portrayed as a perversion of Zionism. These representations of settlers not only portray religious settlers as categorically different from "ordinary" or "mainstream" Israelis, they also project a sense of moral legitimacy for those writing against the settlers. They reaffirm a moral high ground for Israelis by inscribing a deep division between Israel inside its internationally recognized borders and its settlements in the post-1967 occupied territories. Scholarly representations echo those found in popular media. They help construct hegemonic categories of difference, marginalizing religiously motivated settlers while creating a sense of moral legitimacy for broader state projects through denouncing religiously motivated settlers and the settlement project as a whole. This review considers the importance of representation in the case of religiously motivated settlers. While it does not purport to be an encompassing review of all the literature, it will take a historical perspective, including some of the most influential writings in the field. We begin with some of the older ground breaking work by Ian Lustick and Emmanuel Sivan, which established a framework for representing

Anthropological Quarterly, Jul 1, 2011

International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2014

Journal of Historical Sociology, 2008

Since the late 1980s there has been a growing scholarly concern with speaking silences of the p... more Since the late 1980s there has been a growing scholarly concern with speaking silences of the past and recognizing the voices and perspectives of those “others” who have been written out of hegemonic historical narratives, especially in areas of intense conflict like Israel/Palestine. This study is concerned with the ways in which hegemonic national history can be re‐inscribed even as attempts are made to tell an alternative narrative. This article is based on three years of ethnographic research in an Israeli Jewish high school at the height of debates among historians about the Israeli national past. It examines the motivation to teach an alternative narrative that would recognize Palestinian perspectives and reveals the micro‐processes involved that ultimately undermine such recognition.