Abstract
AbstractIn this article I attempt to lay out at least the bones of an argument for a shift in the terms of world Jewish life. Against the Hobson’s choice of “religion” or “state,” I offer an older paradigm of diaspora nation, the Yiddishe Folk. Because I am opposed to both the mononational state and cosmopolitanism (of the classic Appiah-like variety), I work out a description (not fully defined) of diaspora that comprises dual loyalties, to the place where I am and especially its oppressed people and to others of my nation scattered in many places (ideally!). This statement constitutes a vade mecum to a longer manifesto to be published by Yale University Press, late in 2022.
Highlights
Because I am opposed to both the mononational state and cosmopolitanism, I work out a description of diaspora that comprises dual loyalties, to the place where I am and especially its oppressed people and to others of my nation scattered in many places
I propose an argument for an ethical form of Jewish collective continuity
It rejects the theology of supersessionism, arguing that there is no reason why Jews have more or less right to collective existence than any other, what I call here, nation—a complex term whose implications I will unpack throughout this article and the book for which it is meant to be a part
Summary
It is possible for white theorists to be influenced by non-white theorists, just as it is possible for non-white theorists to be influenced by white theorists. —Reiland Rabaka. Having learned much from Fanon as well as from Césaire, that is, as a so-called White theorist having been taught by Black thinkers, I want to go into some more detail here on Négritude and especially Fanon’s response to it and to think about Judaïtude (my shameless coinage) and race. In the two pages or so, with enrapturing quotations from Senghor and Césaire, Fanon evokes (ruefully?, somewhat ironically?) the excitement of that youthful shout of Blackness from his throat as well as the depths of its dangers, “the great black hole” of which he has warned This moment concludes: Yes, we niggers are backward, naive, and free. The stage of Fanon’s ascribed self-genealogy involves the African pride of another form of Négritude, the glorying in the great Black civilizations of the past.[20] But that was contemned by the Whites:. Jews are good for thinking with for Fanon[27] and Fanon is good for thinking with for me, the Jew
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