1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910159460403321

Autore

Cairns Lucille

Titolo

Francophone Jewish writers : imagining Israel / / Lucille Cairns

Pubbl/distr/stampa

London, [England] : , : Liverpool University Press, , 2015

©2015

ISBN

1-78694-527-4

1-78138-435-5

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (320 pages)

Collana

Contemporary French and francophone cultures ; ; 40

Disciplina

840.9352

Soggetti

French literature - Jewish authors - History and criticism

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 11 Aug 2017).

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Historical foundations of Israeli nationhood -- Modern Israeli paradigms of identity -- Intra-Israeli conflict -- Arab-Israeli conflict -- Arab-Israeli conflict turned Franco-Israeli conflict -- The metaphysics and poesis of Israel -- Supplement.

Sommario/riassunto

This book considers the differing emotional investments in Israel of, on the one hand, Jews physically domiciled in Israel and, on the other hand, diasporic Jews living outside Israel for whom the country nonetheless forms a central point of affect. The book’s purpose is to trace how these two types of investment are represented by francophone Jewish writers. Israel is at once a problematic geopolitical reality in international politics and a salient topos within Jewish cultural imaginaries that transcend national boundaries. However, it has often been claimed that Israel has a “special” relationship with France, which until 1967 was its greatest ally. Israel has a large francophone community (some 800,000), while France has the largest Jewish community in Europe (some 600,000). But Franco-Israeli relations have undergone radical, largely negative transformations under the Fifth Republic (1958- ). The scope of the book is wide, addressing the following questions. How do francophone Jewish writers represent Israel in their literary works? What responses to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict do they express both in these works and in non-literary



discourse (interviews and journalistic articles)? What is the role in those responses of emotion, affect, cognition, and ethics? To answer these questions, the book examines 44 different autobiographies, memoirs and novels published between 1965 and 2012 by 27 different authors, both male and female, covering the full cultural spectrum of Jews: Ashkenazic, Sephardic, and Mizrahi. The approach of the book is interdisciplinary, combining literary analysis with insights from the domains of history, journalism, philosophy, politics, psychoanalysis, and sociology.