Page 177 - Cultural Studies Volume 11

REVIEWS 171

In fact, what Alcalay’s book evades, along with those of Lerner, Boyarin, and
Ellis, is the problem of the Jewish Question as a national question. This is a
consequence of the project all these texts share: the insertion of ‘Jewishness’ as a
recognized ‘identity’ within the framework of postmodern identity politics (and
its various theoretical and institutional levels), which requires that it can be defined
culturally and discursively. However, the national question can only be avoided
as long as one refuses to situate ‘Jewish identity’ within a materialist framework
which addresses the actual conflicts and alignments which derive from the
positions of Jews within existing economic, social, and cultural divisions of labor.
In addition, I would argue that it is precisely the problematic status of the category
of ‘nationality’ when applied to Jews (as a quasi nation within a nation, a civil
society in permanent crisis located within the crisis of civil society) that enables
Jews to arrive at a revolutionary position through a critique of Jewish identity and
Judaism. That is, the process of assimilation, coupled within the internal
fragmentation of the Jewish ‘people-class’ under the pressure of capitalist (post)
modernity aligns the ultimately unassimilable Jew (unassimilable because fixed
within the capitalist division of labor) with the revolutionary vanguard interested
in abolishing the present division of labor—and which therefore no longer wishes
to idealize or theologize ‘civil society’. It is in this sense that the Jewish condition
is symptomatic of the contradictions of (post)modern civil society, organized
through the bloc of the semi-assimilated (to the new order of global capitalism)
(post)colonial petit-bourgeoisie engaged in establishing a ‘cultural contract’ which
defers the necessity of class struggle by seeking to micro-manage it at its margins.
The critique of ‘Jewish identity’ is thus a critique of identity politics (civil society)
as such, aimed at the production of a revolutionary vanguard interested in exposing
and explaining the opposition between cultural emancipation (of the middle
classes) and economic emancipation (of the exploited working class) and thereby
capable of taking up a proletarian position within theory—which should be the
project of cultural studies.

Notes

1 See Lerner(1992b:9):
The Democrats need to forge an alliance between the interests of middle-income
people and the interests of the poor. But this can’t be an economic alliance only,
because the needs of middle-income people are also ‘meaning’ needs. In fact, the
only way middle-income people will ever be willing to provide massive support for
the poor is if they come to understand that doing so is in their interests. The Left can
help people understand that what they want and need can best be served by building
a society based on a principle of mutual caring and ethical seriousness. In making
the case for a commitment not just to self-interest but to the disadvantaged as well,
we advance the interests of the poor and those who are still victims of racial and
sexual discrimination, oppression, and harassment. Moreover, poor and oppressed
people face the same crisis in meaning as everyone else.