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The Figural Jew

Politics and Identity in Postwar French Thought

Sarah Hammerschlag author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:The University of Chicago Press

Published:25th May '10

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The Figural Jew cover

The rootless Jew, wandering disconnected from history, homeland, and nature, was often the target of early twentieth-century nationalist rhetoric aimed against modern culture. But after World War II, a number of prominent French philosophers recast this maligned figure in positive terms and in so doing transformed postwar conceptions of politics and identity. Sarah Hammerschlag explores this figure of the Jew from its prewar usage to its resuscitation by Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Blanchot, and Jacques Derrida. Sartre and Levinas idealized the Jew's rootlessness in order to rethink the foundations of political identity. Blanchot and Derrida, in turn, used the figure of the Jew to call into question the very nature of group identification. By chronicling this evolution in thinking, Hammerschlag ultimately reveals how the figural Jew can function as a critical mechanism that exposes the political dangers of mythic allegiance, whether couched in universalizing or particularizing terms. Both an intellectual history and a philosophical argument, "The Figural Jew" will set the agenda for all further consideration of Jewish identity, modern Jewish thought, and continental philosophy.

"In The Figural Jew, Sarah Hammerschlag deftly brings together intellectual history, literary analysis, and philosophical argument in a wonderfully insightful and engaging account of the role the figure of the Jew plays within twentieth-century French philosophy. She also makes a vital philosophical contribution to contemporary debates about ethics, alterity, and politics." - Amy Hollywood, Harvard Divinity School"

ISBN: 9780226315126

Dimensions: 23mm x 17mm x 2mm

Weight: 454g

312 pages