New Book: Natanel, Sustaining Conflict

Natanel, Katherine. Sustaining Conflict. Apathy and Domination in Israel-Palestine. Oakland: University of California Press, 2016.

 

 

Sustaining Conflict develops a groundbreaking theory of political apathy, using a combination of ethnographic material, narrative, and political, cultural, and feminist theory. It examines how the status quo is maintained in Israel-Palestine, even by the activities of Jewish Israelis who are working against the occupation of Palestinian territories. The book shows how hierarchies and fault lines in Israeli politics lead to fragmentation, and how even oppositional power becomes routine over time. Most importantly, the book exposes how the occupation is sustained through a carefully crafted system that allows sympathetic Israelis to “knowingly not know,” further disconnecting them from the plight of Palestinians. While focusing on Israel, this is a book that has lessons for how any authoritarian regime is sustained through apathy.

 

Table of Contents

• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 The Everyday of Occupation
• 2 Bordered Communities
• 3 Normalcy, Ruptured and Repaired
• 4 Embedded (In)action
• 5 Protesting Politics
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

 

KATHERINE NATANEL is a Lecturer in Gender Studies at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter.

New Article: Wright, The Ethico-Politics of Love and Mourning in Jewish Israeli Solidarity Activism

Wright, Fiona. “Palestine, My Love: The Ethico-Politics of Love and Mourning in Jewish Israeli Solidarity Activism.” American Ethnologist 43.1 (2016): 130-43.
 
URL: dx.doi.org/10.1111/amet.12268
 
Abstract

Jewish Israeli left-wing activists engage in a subversive affective politics when they express love for, and mourn the loss of, Palestinian life. But the affects of love and mourning also bind these solidarity activists to Israeli state violence and sovereignty in various ways, entangling them in the very forms of power they aim to challenge. Loving and mourning the Palestinian Other involves an ambivalent ethics in which the activist subject objectifies the Other, and this objectification is a kind of violence that emerges in the affective becomings of solidarity activism. Activist loving and mourning thus call into question the nature of solidarity and alert us to the difficulty of ethics as troubled relations enmeshed in the violence of politics.

 

 

 

Reviews: Shemer, Identity, Place, and Subversion in Contemporary Mizrahi Cinema

Shemer, Yaron. Identity, Place, and Subversion in Contemporary Mizrahi Cinema in Israel. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 2013.

 

 

Reviews

• Belinfante, Randall C. “Review.” Jewish Book Council, n.d.
• Sokoloff, Naomi. “Cinema Studies/Jewish Studies, 2011-2013.” AJS Review 38.1 (2014): 153-4.
• Bashkin, Orit. “Review.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 47.2 (2015): 395-7.