New Article: Rosen, The Poetry of 1.5 and Second-Generation Israelis of Hungarian Origin

Rosen, Ilana. “The Poetry of 1.5 and Second-Generation Israelis of Hungarian Origin.” Hungarian Cultural Studies 8 (2015): 46-62.

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URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5195/ahea.2015.218

 

Abstract

This article continues my 2014 article in this journal, in which I presented a beginning of work on contemporary Israeli prose writers of Hungarian origin. My analysis of those works showed that they are governed by recurring concerns, or literary themes, such as: the memory or post-memory of the Holocaust; Hungarian-to-Hebrew language and translation peculiarities; preoccupation with the family’s past, including that of remote relatives; and fascination with home objects, dishes, and recipes representing the family’s Hungarian past. Following my work on those prose works, in this article I focus on the works and worlds of 1.5 and second-generation Hungarian-Israeli poets and explore, first, the presence of the concerns or themes governing this group’s prose works, and, second, issues of identity through the poets’ depictions of experiences such as persecution, displacement, emigration, and re-settlement in Israel. My present discussion of the 1.5 and second-generation Hungarian-Israeli poets is divided into four themes: the Holocaust as an epitome of catastrophe, the Holocaust as memory and post-memory, co-fusion of languages and cultures, and the eternal mental displacement of the poets’ parents.

 

 

 

New Article: Kallius et al, Politics of the ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Hungary

Kallius, Annastiina, Daniel Monterescu, and Prem Kumar Rajaram. “Immobilizing Mobility: Border Ethnography, Illiberal Democracy, and the Politics of the ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Hungary.” American Ethnologist (early view; online first).

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URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/amet.12260

 

Abstract

In the summer of 2015, more than 350,000 migrants moved through Hungarian territory. Almost immediately there emerged in response a dialectic between, on the one hand, depoliticizing narratives of crisis that sought to immobilize the migrants and, on the other, concrete political mobilization that sought to facilitate their mobility. While state institutions and humanitarian volunteer groups framed mobility in terms that emphasized a vertical form of politics, a horizontal counterpolitics arose by the summer’s end, one that challenged hegemonic territorial politics. The state’s efforts to immobilize resulted only in more radical forms of mobility. Outlining an ethnography of mobility, immobilization, and cross-border activism, we follow the dramatic yet momentary presence, and subsequent absence, of migrants in an evanescent rebel city marked by novel political solidarities.

 

 

 

New Article: Geva, The Image of Hansi Brand in Israeli Public Discourse

Geva, Sharon. “Wife, Lover, Woman: The Image of Hansi Brand in Israeli Public Discourse.” Nashim 27 (2014): 97-119.

 

 

URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/nashim/v027/27.geva.html

 

 

Abstract

This gender-oriented historical study analyzes the image of Hansi Brand (Budapest, 1912—Tel Aviv, 2000), a member of the Jewish Relief and Rescue Committee in Budapest during World War II. After the Nazi occupation of Hungary, Brand—together with Rezsö Kasztner and Joel Brand—took part in the negotiations with Adolf Eichmann and other Nazi officials for halting the deportation of Hungarian Jews. In the 1950s, these negotiations were at the center of a major public controversy that became known as the Kasztner Affair. Despite the central role she played in these events, Hansi Brand was marginalized in the Israeli public discourse. She was described as depending on men—her husband, Joel Brand, and her so-called lover, Kasztner. I explore the reasons for this dissonance and demonstrate that Hansi Brand’s public image corresponded to and engaged with the gender roles prevailing in Israeli society and with its memory of the Holocaust.