Page 170 - Cultural Studies Volume 11

164 CULTURAL STUDIES

anthropology, then, ethnography for me is a practice that grows out of the material
conditions of my life’ (p. xii). Rather than the cultural essentialism which
characterizes Lerner’s positing of a Jewish identity, then, Boyarin opts for an
‘unstable’ identity (‘I never expected to reach a final, stable identity’ (p. xiii),
which is constructed by ‘knitting together patches without obliterating seams’ (p.
xi), in particular, the ‘patches’ of ‘Jewish practice, anthropological fieldwork, and
recent ideas about how to be human at the end of the twentieth century’ (p. xi). In
this way, the ‘fragments’ of the past can be articulated in a critical relation to the
ongoing ‘catastrophe’ (p. xvi) of the present, enabling the construction of ‘strategic
cultural linkages that are chronotopically specific—that is, neither generalized nor
eternalized’ (p. xviii). Hence, the subtitle of Boyarin’s book: ‘The politics of
Jewish memory’.
In other words, Boyarin is arguing for a non-essentialized, destabilized cultural
identity for Jews which will enable their inclusion within an academic postmodern
identity politics. His argument also points to the terms of inclusion: ‘our’ respective
theories stop at the point at which identities are ‘asserted’, with ‘theory’ thus
becoming a contractual agreement regarding the distribution of cultural capital.
The political limits of this agreement emerge especially forcefully when this
Jewish post-identity (an identity which self-reflexively recognizes itself as
‘socialized’ within the regime of postmodern theory which articulates identities as
a differential series) is confronted with the pressures of contending social forces,
which cannot be negotiated away, such as those concentrated in Israel/Palestine,
or imperialist relations. Pressured by a critique by Edward Said of his and his
brother’s earlier argument that Palestinians had an obligation to incorporate into
2
their politics an understanding of Jewish anxieties, Boyarin attempts to respond
in Storm from Paradise with a more developed position on the question. He wants,
Boyarin asserts, ‘to take the intifada as an opportunity to question the strategy—
hegemonic in post-World War Two Jewish discourse—of grounding Jewish
identity primarily in a territory “we” control (not, for most Jews, even a space “we”
live in!), rather than in our nuanced collective memory’ (p. 118). Hence, the
‘politics of memory’ Boyarin proposes can operate as a critique of the essentialized
Jewish identity advanced by Zionism.
But Boyarin’s critique is not of Zionism as such (‘[I]t seems almost gratuitous
to state that my point is not to dismantle the state of Israel’ (p. 118)), but rather of
an Israeli state which, ‘once established, is implicitly understood by its own elites
as a static reality dependent on functional equilibrium.’ In this case, ‘a threat to
any of its parts (including its self-generated history) is a threat to its very
existence’ (p. 118). In other words, Boyarin is arguing for more ‘flexible’ Zionist
élites, who are capable of modifying an essentialized and territorialized Jewish
identity and giving up ‘some of its parts’ (first of all Gaza and Jericho?).
‘Ultimately,’ Boyarin declares, ‘I am in favor of the “no-state” solution. The
problem is, I also grant to Israelis and Palestinians the right to self-determination,
and neither is willing to give up claims to a state right now’ (p. 126). In his attempt
to argue for a more flexible Jewish identity, Boyarin works to deconstruct the