Articles and Reviews by Derek Penslar
This chapter illuminates Theodor Herzl's views on racial difference and colo nial conquest. These... more This chapter illuminates Theodor Herzl's views on racial difference and colo nial conquest. These subjects have long provoked historiographical contro versy. Critics of Zionism have pored over Herzl's major writings, such as Der Judenstaat and Altneuland, as well as his diaries, to understand how Herzl con ceived the relationship between Zionism and western colonialism, and in par ticular how he viewed the Ottoman Empire and the Palestinian Arabs. Herzl's pithy proclamation in Der Judenstaat that the Zionists would create a "wall of defence for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism"1 ap pears to have made an openandshut case for Herzl's guilt by association with western colonialism. For many critics of Zionism, this case was further strengthened by a brief diary entry at the outset of Herzl's Zionist career in which he proposed expelling the natives from a future Jewish state.2 Daniel Boyarin's provocative 1997 book, Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man, presented Herzl as a wannabe colonial adventurer, fantasizing about his own masculine power as an agent of the West, and performing what Boyarin calls "colonial drag" when decked out in a khaki suit and pith helmet during his visit to Palestine in 1898.3 A decade after the appearance of Boyarin's book, Gabriel Piterberg extended this cri tique in his book The Returns of Zionism.4 These critiques are based on Herzl's Zionist writings and diaries, whose invocations of colonial governance are ad hoc and instrumental, linked to a particular negotiating partner or strategy at
This article looks to European Jewry between the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to ... more This article looks to European Jewry between the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to illuminate the role of love in a modern nationalist movement. In the third quarter of the nineteenth century, the political activist Moses Hess (1812-1875) and the historian Heinrich Graetz (1817-1891) professed a sentimental love of Jews and of the land of Israel. In the 1880s, the hovevei tsion (Lovers of Zion) movement produced poetry in which attachment to Zion and the Jewish people was more romantic than sentimental, oscillating between a passive, mournful yearning for the land and an active, muscular striving to rebuild it. With the advent of Herzlian political Zionism, the Zionist labor movement, and the Zionist-Palestinian conflict, the more dynamic variety of romanticism became dominant, and it assumed more explicitly erotic and militant dimensions than had previously been the case. Older forms of sentimental love did not disappear, however. Until the end of his life, the Zionist leader Nahum Sokolow (1859-1936) remained convinced that sentimental love was Zionism's overarching organizing principle.
This important edited volume functions on several levels. First, although it acknowledges vast di... more This important edited volume functions on several levels. First, although it acknowledges vast differences between the Holocaust and the Nakba as historical events, it explores commonalities between them, primarily in terms of impact, trauma, and remembrance. Second, it counterpoises the hegemonic status of the Holocaust in Israel and the western world with attempts to deny or efface the Nakba, and it displays a counter-discourse among some Arabs and Israeli Jews in which the Holocaust and Nakba are inseparably linked. Third, and most important for the editors, the book seeks via a process of "empathetic unsettlement" to create a "language of historical reconciliation between the two peoples"an "ethical and egalitarian binational language that carries the potential for decolonization through transforming and dismantling the existing Jewish colonial privileges, domination, and hegemony" (8).
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict commands greater attention than any other on the globe. Why? Oth... more The Israeli-Palestinian conflict commands greater attention than any other on the globe. Why? Other conflicts are just as enduring and far more violent. The Palestinians are not the world's only persecuted stateless minority and Israel is not the only country to oppress them. Israel is but one of many states that privilege one ethnic or religious community over another. So why, then, is Israel singled out?
The authority of leaders derives from the trust, admiration, and even exaltation that they inspir... more The authority of leaders derives from the trust, admiration, and even exaltation that they inspire in their followers. All the more so for political leaders upon whom people project deep-seated, unfulfilled longings, as is the case for leaders of movements for national liberation. The early Zionist movement was particularly dependent on charismatic leadership because it was so small, weak, and scattered, lacking mechanisms of patronage or means of coercion. Theodor Herzl had nothing to offer his followers but hope and nothing to maintain their support other than trust. For all that has been written on Herzl's charisma, his prepossessing persona and appearance, there has been little consideration of the cultural specificity of charisma. Had Herzl been dropped into a different era or continent he might not have been charismatic or prepossessing at all. Under different circumstances, Herzl might have been nothing more than a manic demi-intellectual, whiling away his days in cafés, scribbling feverishly in a diary that no one would ever read. To understand the secrets of Herzl's charisma we must look as closely at his Sitz im Leben as at his soul. h A recent scholarly article characterizes a certain nineteenth-century, Central European celebrity by his "dandyism, upscale hobnobbing, chivalric gestures, royal insignia, and physiognomic distinction. " This charismatic figure, possessed of mesmerizing good looks and stylistic genius, was both flamboyant and aloof, media savvy yet aristocratic, and he
Israel is a small country, but it commands vast attention, and it is an essential object of study... more Israel is a small country, but it commands vast attention, and it is an essential object of study. It is not unusual for universities to host state-specific programs, particularly for countries that have exerted a deep influence upon the world. So, for example, many universities have teaching posts in German Studies or Chinese Studies, and Oxford has a professorship of Japanese Studies. The existence of a standalone post in Israel Studies thus makes good sense, and yet given Israel's location in the heart of the Middle East and the visibility of the Israel-Palestine conflict, it is often housed within Middle Eastern Studies. At Oxford as at many other universities, Israel Studies is placed as well within a disciplinary department such as Political Science or International Relations, and it usually has some connection with Jewish Studies.
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Articles and Reviews by Derek Penslar