Thesis: Ichikawa, Minorities in Contemporary Hebrew and Japanese Literature

Ichikawa, Kimiko. Minorities, Minority Identity and Violence: The Comparison in Contemporary Hebrew and Japanese Minor Literature, Masters Thesis. Brandeis University, 2016.

 

URL: http://bir.brandeis.edu/handle/10192/32275

 

Abstract

This thesis examines how minority identities are depicted in contemporary autobiographical literature from the 1990’s to present. In this thesis, I focus my analysis on minority literatures from Israel and Japan. In spite of the extreme rarity of the literary comparison, I examine minorities of Israeli Arab and the second generation Japanese Koreans. I explore how these minorities with different histories are represented, with shared experience of oppression and violence, and analyze the phenomena or ramifications in minority identity. By analyzing famous novelists of minority literature— Israeli Arab author, Sayed Kashua and two Japanese Korean authors, Yi Yang-ji and Kazuki Kaneshiro—I concentrate on pointing out the influences and outcomes of psychological and political violence (Chapter I and II) to their minority identities. This comparison will enable a wider perspectives regarding minorities in various societies, and an analysis of issues of relating to minority as well as race identity in modern life. This unique literary comparison attempts to examine cultural and political similarities as well as differences in order to explore the phenomena of two countries with different cultures but that share certain similarities, particularly in the articulation of their minority literature. Although Israel and Japan differ very much in term of culture and history, I still find significant similarities in the minority literature. The minorities I examined in Hebrew and Japanese minor literature interact with violence in various ways each society. I focused my examination especially on psychological and political violence in addition to physical violence. My questions in researching this minority literature revolve around how these minorities relate to these kinds of violence. This thesis concentrates on presenting the ways that these the minority authors address their own political identities, and the ways that social violence and oppression influence their minority identities.

 

 

 

New Book: Shamir, The Native Foreigner; Representations of Hybridity in Modern Israeli Fiction

Shamir, Ayelet. The Native Foreigner. Representations of Hybridity in Modern Israeli Fiction. Tel Aviv: Resling, 2016 (in Hebrew).

 

 

The notion of hybridity is suppressed in the discussion over Israeli society, culture, and literature. This book deals with the concept of hybridity, its cultural genealogy, its essence and characteristics. It offers to use it as a prism for reading three works of modern Israeli prose, “Refuge” (1977) by Sami Michael; “Arabesques” (1986) by Anton Shammas and “The Liberated Bride “(2001) by A.B. Yehoshua.

These works represent the very essence of the cultural hybrid experience that exist between Jewish and Arabic, and express the social and linguistic dualism characteristic of this experience. Forces of attraction and repulsion interact between these two societies, and this dualism causes internal conflicts while allowing for mutual input. Alongside manifestations of anxiety, separatism, and rejection by the other minority, which is often perceived as a “native foreigner” within us, there is also an equally strong presence of wishes of mixture, attraction, and erotic intimacy, disruptive wishes which signify blurring and crossing of boundaries.

This book deals with various questions: who is the native foreigner? What is its voice? What is actually the hybrid “Third Israeli”? What might be the best literary expression of it?

 

AYELET SHAMIR is an author, and the chair of the Department of drama literature creative-expressive arts, at the Oranim Academic College.

 

 

 

ToC: Hebrew Studies 56 (2015)

Below are the relevant articles for Israel Studies from the latest issue of Hebrew Studies. For a full Table of Contents,click here.

 

Innovative Designation of Diminution in the Writings of Abraham Shlonsky

pp. 231-243

Bat-Zion Yemini

Memory and History in Israeli Post-Apocalyptic Theater

pp. 245-263

Zahava Caspi

Questioning Boundaries of Language and the World: Ambivalence and Disillusionment in the Writings of Shimon Adaf

pp. 265-294

Dorit Lemberger

Hebrew Neologisms in the Writings of Anton Shammas

pp. 295-314

Adel Shakour, Abdallah Tarabeih

The Pain of Two Homelands: Immigration to Israel in Twenty-First Century Hebrew Prose Fiction

pp. 315-331

Smadar Shiffman

“Our Virgin Friends and Wives”?: Female Sexual Subjectivity in Yona Wallach’s Poetry

pp. 333-356

Amalia Ziv

New Testament Jesus in Modern Jewish Literature: A Symposium

pp. 357-358

Zev Garber

Jesus and the Pharisees through the Eyes of Two Modern Hebrew Writers: A Contrarian Perspective

pp. 359-365

Neta Stahl

A Question of Truth: Form, Structure, and Character in Der man fun Natseres

pp. 367-376

Melissa Weininger

Overtones of Isaac and Jesus in Modern Hebrew Narrative

pp. 377-384

Aryeh Wineman

The Jewish Jesus: Conversation, Not Conversion

pp. 385-392

Zev Garber

Reviews

 

Compassion and Fury: On The Fiction of A. B. Yehoshua by Gilead Morahg (review)

pp. 433-436

Yael Halevi-Wise

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Periodicals

pp. 437-456

Books Received — 2015

pp. 457-460

Reviews: Levy, Poetic Trespass

Levy, Lital. Poetic Trespass: Writing between Hebrew and Arabic in Israel/Palestine. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

 

Reviews

• Irving, Sarah. “Can literature disrupt Israel’s identity?” Electronic Intifada, May 19, 2015.
• Stern, Ramon. “Review.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 47.3 (2015): 605-607.

ToC: World Literature Today 89.3-4 (2015); special section: New Voices in Contemporary Hebrew Literature

Cohen, Jessica, Adriana X. Jacobs, and Adam Rovner, eds. World Literature Today 89.3-4 (2015). Special Section: New Hebrew Writing

Prose, Poetry, and the Heresy of Normalcy: New Voices in Contemporary Hebrew Literature (pp. 60-63)
Jessica Cohen , Adriana X. Jacobs and Adam Rovner

Alas, Baghdad Sits Solitary (pp. 64-65)
Almog Behar and Translated by Lisa Katz

Rock, Paper (pp. 66-72)
Tomer Gardi and Translated by Jessica Cohen

To Jaffa (pp. 73-75)
Ayman Sikseck and Translated by Evan Fallenberg

Four Poems (pp. 76-77)
Mei-Tal Nadler and Translated by Rachel Tzvia Back

Helping Young Writers Find Their Voice: A Conversation with Dory Manor (pp. 78-81)
Adriana X. Jacobs, Translated by Adam Rovner and Adriana X. Jacobs

Nine Fictions (pp. 82-83)
Daniel Oz and Translated by Jessica Cohen

Screw You, Zamenhof (pp. 84-85)
Yiftach Ashkenazi and Translated by Adam Rovner

Book Week (p. 86)
Raveh Sagie and Translated by Daniella Zamir

Four Poems (p. 87)
Yaakov Biton and Translated by Yosefa Raz and Translated by Shaul Setter

Three Poems (pp. 88-89)
Tahel Frosh and Translated by Adriana X. Jacobs

The Sounds of Memory in Writing: A Conversation with Ronit Matalon (pp. 90-93)
Dinah Assouline Stillman and Translated by Dinah Assouline Stillman

Five Poems (pp. 94-95)
Saar Yachin and Translated by Alexandra Zelman-Doring

Mosquito (pp. 96-98)
Roy Chen and Translated by Jessica Cohen

Master of the Short Story (an excerpt) (pp. 99-101)
Maya Arad and Translated by Jessica Cohen

Readers’ Reports (pp. 102-105)
Yael Neeman and Translated by Jessica Cohen

New Book: Mendelson-Maoz, Multiculturalism in Israel

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia. Multiculturalism in Israel: Literary Perspectives, Shofar Supplements in Jewish Studies. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 2015.

 

 

URL: http://www.thepress.purdue.edu/titles/format/9781557536808

 

Abstract

By analyzing its position within the struggles for recognition and reception of different national and ethnic cultural groups, this book offers a bold new picture of Israeli literature. Through comparative discussion of the literatures of Palestinian citizens of Israel, of Mizrahim, of migrants from the former Soviet Union, and of Ethiopian-Israelis, the author demonstrates an unexpected richness and diversity in the Israeli literary scene, a reality very different from the monocultural image that Zionism aspired to create.

Drawing on a wide body of social and literary theory, Mendelson-Maoz compares and contrasts the literatures of the four communities she profiles. In her discussion of the literature of the Palestinian citizens of Israel, she presents the question of language and translation, and she provides three case studies of particular authors and their reception. Her study of Mizrahi literature adopts a chronological approach, starting in the 1950s and proceeding toward contemporary Mizrahi writing, while discussing questions of authenticity and self-determination. The discussion of Israeli literature written by immigrants from the former Soviet Union focuses both on authors who write Israeli literature in Russian and of Russian immigrants writing in Hebrew. The final section of the book provides a valuable new discussion of the work of Ethiopian-Israeli writers, a group whose contributions have seldom been previously acknowledged.

The picture that emerges from this groundbreaking book replaces the traditional, homogeneous historical narrative of Israeli literature with a diversity of voices, a multiplicity of origins, and a wide range of different perspectives. In doing so, it will provoke researchers in a wide range of cultural fields to look at the rich traditions that underlie it in new and fresh ways.

New Book: Levy, Poetic Trespass. Writing between Hebrew and Arabic in Israel/Palestine

Levy, Lital. Poetic Trespass: Writing between Hebrew and Arabic in Israel/Palestine. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

 

URL: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10389.html

 

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A Palestinian-Israeli poet declares a new state whose language, “Homelandic,” is a combination of Arabic and Hebrew. A Jewish-Israeli author imagines a “language plague” that infects young Hebrew speakers with old world accents, and sends the narrator in search of his Arabic heritage. In Poetic Trespass, Lital Levy brings together such startling visions to offer the first in-depth study of the relationship between Hebrew and Arabic in the literature and culture of Israel/Palestine.

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Table of Contents

Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Note on Transliteration and Translation xv

Introduction: The No-Man’s-Land of Language 1

PART I. HISTORICAL VISIONS AND ELISIONS
Chapter 1. From the “Hebrew Bedouin” to “Israeli Arabic”: Arabic, Hebrew, and the Creation of Israeli Culture 21
Chapter 2. Bialik and the Sephardim: The Ethnic Encoding of Modern Hebrew Literature 60

PART II. BILINGUAL ENTANGLEMENTS
Chapter 3. Exchanging Words: Arabic Writing in Israel and the Poetics of Misunderstanding 105
Chapter 4. Palestinian Midrash: Toward a Postnational Poetics of Hebrew Verse 141

PART III. AFTERLIVES OF LANGUAGE
Chapter 5. “Along Came the Knife of Hebrew and Cut Us in Two”: Language in Mizrahi Fiction, 1964-2010 189
Chapter 6. “So You Won’t Understand a Word”: Secret Languages, Pseudo-languages, and the Presence of Absence 238
Conclusion. Bloody Hope: The Intertextual Afterword of Salman Masalha and Saul Tchernichowsky 285

Bibliography 299
Index 329

 

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Lecture: Sayed Kashua at University of Michigan, Sep 30, 2014

Jean and Samuel Frankel Center for Judaic Studies

University of Michigan

Sayed Kashua will speak on

The Foreign Mother Tongue: Living and Writing as a Palestinian in Israel

September 30, 2014, 7pm

Alumni Center Founders Room

 

New Article: Harris, Language and Identity in Sikseck and Kashua

Harris, Rachel S. “Hebraizing the Arab-Israeli: Language and Identity in Ayman Sikseck’s To Jaffa and Sayed Kashua’s Second Person Singular.” Journal of Jewish Identities 7.2 (2014): 35-58.

 

URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_jewish_identities/v007/7.2.harris.html

 

Excerpt

Hebrew unified Jews from disparate countries and ethnic backgrounds as part of Israel’s nation-building process; consequently, linguistic mastery of the Jewish language served as the sine qua non of social mobility. Arab citizens living within the new state were caught in this wide net; knowing Hebrew and becoming familiar with secular Jewish Israeli culture was a precondition for advancement and integration. In time, Arab writers, such as Emile Habiby, would write in Hebrew, which like Jewish writers in Israel who continued to write in their mother-tongue Arabic, confronts what Lital Levy has described as the conventional binaries of Israel: “Hebrew Arabic, Arab and Jew.” By disrupting these traditional dichotomies, writers “engage translation inside their texts as a creative alternative to barking, as a mode of resistance to the authority that has displaced them from their pasts and their homes.” This binary division has traditionally assumed that Arab means Palestinian, and is separate from Israeli, which implies Jewish; but two young writers, the prolific and widely known Sayed Kashua, and the first-time novelist Ayman Sikseck, offer a new hybrid identity in which the Arab-Israeli (non-Jewish Arab citizens of Israel) casts off the polar division the two options represent, and instead these writers present a third path. Rejecting the isolated position of the Arab within Israel, and arguing his increasing assimilation in the twenty-first century through mastery of language, integration within the education system, changing social values and economic status, as well as a radical reformulation of political values, the hybrid identity offers ways in which a generation of Arabs coming of age within Israel have staked out a cultural and intellectual space that confounds previous categorizations.

The history of Arab writers using Hebrew has been viewed within a framework of post-colonial criticism in which writing in Hebrew is deemed an act of protest. Arab-Israeli writers are considered to produce minor literature: literature by a minority in the language of a majority. This position assumes, as Hanan Hever has shown in his study of Anton Shammas’s novel Arabesques, that Arab-Israeli authors de-familiarize and de-territorialize Hebrew by separating it from its Jewish identity while simultaneously opening up space within Hebrew for the Arab-Israeli.Writers such as Shammas and Habiby satisfy the criteria of writing minor literature that Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari consider an act of dissent by the colonised protesting against established hierarchies of power. Arab-Israeli writers, moving between Hebrew and Arabic in poetry, prose, political writing, and journalism have established Hebrew as a space of “otherness,” creating a distance in representations of self. In an Israeli context, Hever has argued that Arab minor literature, in Hebrew, “invades and subverts the majority culture,” whereby Arab writers, as Lawrence Silberstein elucidates, “problematize and subvert the dominant Zionist/Israeli conception of Hebrew literature as Jewish literature and Israeli culture as Jewish culture.”