The Figural Jew: Politics and Identity in Postwar French Thought (Religion and Postmodernism Series)
By
Sarah Hammerschlag (Author)
Hardback
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Description
The rootless Jew, wandering disconnected from history, homeland, and nature, was often the target of early twentieth-century nationalist rhetoric aimed against modern culture. But after World War II, a number of prominent French philosophers recast this maligned figure in positive terms and in so doing transformed postwar conceptions of politics and identity. Sarah Hammerschlag explores this figure of the Jew from its prewar usage to its resuscitation by Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Blanchot, and Jacques Derrida. Sartre and Levinas idealized the Jew's rootlessness in order to rethink the foundations of political identity. Blanchot and Derrida, in turn, used the figure of the Jew to call into question the very nature of group identification. By chronicling this evolution in thinking, Hammerschlag ultimately reveals how the figural Jew can function as a critical mechanism that exposes the political dangers of mythic allegiance, whether couched in universalizing or particularizing terms.
Both an intellectual history and a philosophical argument, "The Figural Jew" will set the agenda for all further consideration of Jewish identity, modern Jewish thought, and continental philosophy.
About the Author
Sarah Hammerschlag is assistant professor of Jewish thought in the Department of Religion at Williams College.
More Details
- Contributor: Sarah Hammerschlag
- Imprint: University of Chicago Press
- ISBN13: 9780226315119
- Number of Pages: 312
- Packaged Dimensions: 16x24x2mm
- Packaged Weight: 539
- Format: Hardback
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Release Date: 2010-05-25
- Series: Religion and Postmodernism Series
- Binding: Hardback
- Biography: Sarah Hammerschlag is assistant professor of Jewish thought in the Department of Religion at Williams College.
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