The Self and History: Hannah Arendt and the Perplexities of Jewish Identity

2017 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milen Jissov
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
The Self

scholarly journals Violently Peaceful: Tibetan Self-Immolation and the Problem of the Non/Violence Binary

Open Theology ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
John Soboslai
Keyword(s):  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Immolation ◽  
Ethical Systems

AbstractThe paper investigates the conceptual dichotomy of violence and nonviolence in reference to the self-immolations that have been taking place in Tibet for the last several years. First using the insights of Hannah Arendt to distinguish between the categories of violent, nonviolent and peaceful, I approach the question of violence as the problem of acts that transgress prohibitions against causing harm. Using that heuristic, I examine the ways multiple ethical systems are vying for recognition regarding the selfimmolations, and how a certain Buddhist ambivalence around extreme acts of devotion complicate any easy designations of the act as ‘violent’ or ‘nonviolent’. I conclude by suggesting how any such classification inculcates us into questions of power and assertions of appropriate authority.

The Question of Assimilation in French Jewish Historiography

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-45
Author(s):  
Maurice Samuels
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Historiography ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Abstract This article examines one of the defining features of French Jewish historiography: the debate over assimilation. Beginning with Jewish nationalist historians in the late nineteenth century, French Jews were accused of having gladly renounced their Jewish identity to partake of the benefits of emancipation. Twentieth-century historians writing in the wake of Hannah Arendt offered a similar condemnation of the “politics of assimilation.” At the end of the twentieth century, however, historians began to question this consensus, suggesting that French Jews sought out distinct ways of maintaining their religious and cultural identity. Ultimately, this article argues that the debate reflects a conflict over ideological frameworks used to interpret Jewish modernity. Cet article examine le débat sur l'assimilation qui traverse l'historiographie du judaïsme français. Selon les historiens nationalistes juifs de la fin du dix-neuvième siècle, les juifs français auraient renoncé volontairement à leur identité juive afin de jouir des bienfaits de leur émancipation. Les historiens du vingtième siècle écrivant dans la lignée d'Hannah Arendt ont été également prompts à critiquer cette « politique de l'assimilation ». Pourtant, à la fin du vingtième siècle, certains historiens ont commencé à mettre en doute ce consensus, soulignant les divers moyens par lesquels les juifs auraient essayé de conserver leur identité religieuse et culturelle tout en devenant des citoyens français. En fin de compte, cet article suggère que c'est le cadre idéologique qui produit les différences d'opinion dans ce débat sur la modernité juive.

scholarly journals The Breakdown of Discourse: Post-Holocaust Jewish Identity and the Scholem-Arendt Exchange

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-110
Author(s):  
Dávid Kaposi
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Rhetorical Analysis ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Moral Frameworks ◽  
State Of Affairs

This article examines the significance of the private-public exchange of letters between Gershom Scholem and Hannah Arendt in the wake of the Eichmann trial. Using rhetorical analysis, it considers the respective arguments concerning Jewish responsibility, the incompatible political-moral frameworks offered to underpin such judgments, and the extreme identities the correspondents construct for each other. In doing so, it identifies the ultimate significance of the exchange with the total breakdown of discourse it symbolically resulted in—in other words, with the consensus pertaining to the Holocaust leading to a complete incommensurability of the respective political-moral positions. Such a state of affairs is finally accounted for, paradoxically, in terms of the far-reaching agreement between Arendt and Scholem, reaching beyond politics and even identity: the total inescapability of Jewishness.

scholarly journals When Man is a Cause: The Undecidability of Belonging in Kanafani's Returning to Haifa

2021 ◽  
Vol 04 (11) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rasha Saeed Abdullah Badurais ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
The Self ◽  
Biological Father ◽  
Foreign Occupation

The focus of my article is on the undecidability of Dov's/ Khaldun's identity throughout his conversations with Said X., his 'biological father', along with some significant selective semiotic referents in Ghassan Kanafani's novella Returning to Haifa. These aspects are highlighted to elicit/ trace Kanafani's implied symbolism of Palestine, the land, and the undecidability/ conflict of its belonging to critique (healthy self-criticism) the submission of the Palestinians as being guilty of ceding with their land then keep crying to restore it. The novella has been previously tackled from a variety of perspectives: parody, intertextuality, characterization, among others. However, the key parts of the novella that show the conflict between father/ son, self/other, right/loss are the conversations between Dov/Khaldun and Said X. To achieve the article's goal, Derrida's conception of undecidability is employed to indicate the inability to take a decision due to factors beyond the focal character's, Dov/Khaldun, means. This state of freeplay makes it impossible to settle to any side/identity. In Dov's/ Khaldun's case, it is the indeterminate area between the biological Palestinian identity and the acquired Jewish identity. Given that, this view of undecidability is supplemented by other related philosophical aspects such as identity of the 'I', the conception of belonging, and the symbolic reflection between the Dov/ Khaldun: the Jew/ the Palestinian: the Colonizer/ the Colonized (both Man and the land). The analyses of the novella reveal that a state of bewilderment and vortex of undecidable identity opens once Dov Iphrat Koshin, the Israeli soldier, knows he was born Khaldun Said, the Palestinian citizen. Dov's/ Khaldun's words to Said X. show a defensive attitude whereas his semiotic behavior reflects the pain of the truth, and that since that moment, he will not be able to settle; his identity is undecidable between Israel/ Palestine, Zionists/ Palestinians, Colonizer/ Colonized, Judaism/ Islam... Kanafani provides a criticism of the Self, here. As the Palestinians of 1948 escaped from their homes forsaking their land to the foreign occupation and then they (with the Arabs and Muslims) did nothing to restore it but waiting and weeping. Kanafani's self criticism is healthy as being the first step towards profoundly diagnosing the problem, the loss of Palestine, so as to find practical final solutions for the problem.

scholarly journals I Breathe, You Breathe, We Breathe: How a daily habitual movement appears as an action and grows into a gesture through listening

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-89
Author(s):  
Leonie Persyn
Keyword(s):  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
The Self ◽  
Chantal Akerman ◽  
Speak Up

In this article I wonder whether the non-breath in-between inhalation and exhalation and inherent to breathing equals what Hannah Arendt calls a space of appearance. Can the non-breath be considered as a place where human plurality and the self emerge (Arendt 2015, 160-163)? Or in other words, can a daily and habitual movement like breathing provide the space for action to appear? Can our breathing act? And if so, do we speak (up) through our breathing? Through listening to the breathing bodies in Grey (Kinga Jaczewska, 2018), Toute une nuit and Rendez-vous d’Anna (Chantal Akerman, 1982 1978) I search for answers to these questions.

scholarly journals A PROJECT OF CONSTRUCTING A CONTEMPORARY JEWISH IDENTITY IN RABINOVICI’S NOVEL SUCHE NACH M

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisda Liyanti
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Active Engagement ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Nazi Past ◽  
New Phase

Attitude to the Nazi past turns to its new phase in the 1980s, after the time of repressing, silent and mourning brings the new discourse in talking about the Holocaust. It was a tendency of "denying" the Holocaust and new anti-semitism movement. In the 90s, Jewish authors confirm their position as „self-determined agents' in the literary and political area. One of them is Doron Rabinovici, an Austrian Jewish author who wrote the novel Suche Nach M in engaging on the project of constructing a contemporary Jewish identity. In this article, the question of how Robinovici proposes the construction of contemporary Jewish identity will be answered through critical reading on Jewish myth and identity formation theory. The result shows two major strategies that he proposes in his novel: “deconstructs” the Jewish myth (by playing other possibilities to interpret them and unveil the truth) and suggests the self-referential concept (find oneself based on 'the self' instead of immersing self in 'the Other‟). These two strategies can be seen as an active engagement with one own traumatic past. It is a historical- and self-awareness approach to construct a problematic contemporary Jewish identity.

scholarly journals Plurality is a conditio per quam of all political life

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-145
Author(s):  
Sanja Bojanic
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Phenomenological Research ◽  
The Self ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Phenomenological Tradition

The book Phenomenology of Plurality: Hannah Arendt on Political Intersubjectivity is a contribution not only to the phenomenological tradition of thought and Hannah Arendt studies, but also political science and, most importantly, political philosophy. Sophie Loidolt advances an intervention that stands in contrast to contemporary phenomenological research which in certain times have had the tendency to perform depoliticized examination of the self and sociality, actually revealing the intention of Phenomenology of Plurality to articulate the numerous elements that comprise the methodological novelty with which Arendt changes the theory of the political.

scholarly journals SEYLA BENHABIB COM HANNAH ARENDT CONTRA A FILOSOFIA DO SUJEITO

Caderno CRH ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 020016
Author(s):  
Yara Adario Frateschi
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Key Words ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Self ◽  
Major Work ◽  
Central Thesis ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Theoretical Project

<div class="trans-abstract"><p>A partir dos textos reunidos no livro <em>Situating the self: gender, community and postmodernism in contemporary ethics</em> (1992), sabe-se que Seyla Benhabib responde aos excessos racionalistas de Habermas e aos limites da tradição universalista moderna com uma releitura da concepção arendtiana de “pensamento alargado”. Neste artigo, eu me proponho a mostrar que a presença de Arendt no pensamento de Benhabib é ainda mais radical do que parece à primeira vista, pois a autora de <em>A condição humana</em> está na raiz do seu projeto teórico orientando o enfrentamento filosófico que Benhabib faz com a tradição, na sua primeira grande obra, <em>Critique, norm, and utopia: a study of the foundations of Crítical theory</em> (1986). A minha hipótese interpretativa é a de que a tese central deste livro, segundo a qual a teoria crítica é assombrada pela filosofia do sujeito, carrega as marcas da crítica arendtiana à filosofia política ocidental.</p><p><strong>Palavras-Chave: </strong>Hannah Arendt; Seyla Benhabib; Filosofia do Sujeito; Filosofia Política; Pluralidade</p></div><div class="trans-abstract"><p class="sec"><span>SEYLA BENHABIB WITH HANNAH ARENDT AGAINST THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SUBJECT</span></p><p class="sec">ABSTRACT</p><p>From <em>Situating the self: gender, community and postmodernism in contemporary ethics</em> (1992), we know that SeylaBenhabib answers Habermas’ excesses and the limits of the modern universalist tradition with a reinterpretation of the Arendtian conception of “enlarged thought”. In this article, I propose to show that Arendt’s presence in Benhabib’s thought is even more radical than it seems at first, because the author of The human condition is at the root of Benhabib’s theoretical project, guiding her in her philosophical confrontation with tradition at her first major work,<em>Critique, norm, and utopia: a study of the foundations of Crítical theory</em>(1986). My interpretive hypothesis is that the central thesis of this book, according to which Crítical theory is haunted by the philosophy of the subject, bears the marks of Arendt’s criticism to Western political philosophy.</p><p><strong>Key words: </strong>Hannah Arendt; Seyla Benhabib; Philosophy of the Subject; Political Philosophy; Plurality</p></div><div class="trans-abstract"><p class="sec"><span>SEYLA BENHABIB AVEC ARENDT CONTRE LA PHILOSOPHIE DU SUJET</span></p><p class="sec">ABSTRACT</p><p>A partir des textes rassemblés dans le livre Situating the self: gender, community and postmodernism in contemporary ethics (1992), on sait que Seyla Benhabib répond aux excès rationalistes d’Habermas et aux limites de la tradition universaliste moderne par une réinterprétation de la conception arendtienne du «mentalité élargie». Dans cet article, je propose de montrer que la présence d’Arendt dans la pensée de Benhabib est encore plus radicale qu’il n’y paraît au premier abord, car Arendt est à l’origine de son projet théorique guidant la confrontation philosophique que Benhabib fait avec tradition, dans son premier grand ouvrage, Critique, norm, and utopia: a study of the foundations of crítical theory (1986). Mon hypothèse interprétative est que la thèse centrale de ce livre, selon laquelle la théorie critique est hantée par la philosophie du sujet, porte les marques de la critique arendtienne de la philosophie politique occidentale.</p><p><strong>Key words: </strong>Hannah Arendt; Seyla Benhabib; Philosophie du sujet; Philosophie politique; Pluralité</p></div>

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