Overview

A provocative manifesto arguing for a new understanding of the Jews' peoplehood Today there are two seemingly mutually exclusive notions of what the Jews are: either a religion or a nation/ethnicity. The widespread conception is that the Jews were formerly either a religious community in exile or a nation based on Jewish ethnicity. The latter position is commonly known as Zionism, and all articulations of a political theory of Zionism are taken to be variations of that view. In this provocative audiobook, based on his decades of study of the history of the Jews, Daniel Boyarin lays out the problematic aspects of this binary opposition and offers the outlines of a different--and very old--answer to the question of the identity of a diaspora nation. He aims to drive a wedge between the nation and the state, only very recently conjoined, and recover a robust sense of nationalism that does not involve sovereignty.

Full Product Details

9798212258692

Table of Contents

Reviews

Daniel Boyarin's book delves into the very heart of what it means to be Jewish in the world today not as an assertion of exclusiveness, but rather as the starting point for a universalist idea about Jewishness drawn from its complicated multifaceted history. The manifesto is thus a provocation to think anew about what constitutes nation, society, culture, and the ultimate goals of cosmopolitan humanistic enquiry. A masterpiece! -- Ato Quayson, author of Tragedy and Postcolonial Literature Daniel Boyarin's stirring manifesto for a Jewish diaspora nation proposes an expansive anti-statist argument that makes common cause with the freedom of Palestinians and the rights of Black Lives...Read this daring essay that invites your argument, not your agreement. -- Homi Bhabha, Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University In his intrepid manifesto, Daniel Boyarin calls for a Jewish nationalism not sited in a nation-state. Far beyond the Jewish case, it provokes both those who see no more need for national identity and those who insist on a territorial home for each. As unexpected in his arguments as he is witty in his prose, Boyarin is in characteristically good form in this essential new statement. -- Samuel Moyn, Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence at Yale Law School and Professor of History at Yale University

Daniel Boyarin's book delves into the very heart of what it means to be Jewish in the world today not as an assertion of exclusiveness, but rather as the starting point for a universalist idea about Jewishness drawn from its complicated multifaceted history. The manifesto is thus a provocation to think anew about what constitutes nation, society, culture, and the ultimate goals of cosmopolitan humanistic enquiry. A masterpiece! -- Ato Quayson, author of Tragedy and Postcolonial Literature Daniel Boyarin's stirring manifesto for a Jewish diaspora nation proposes an expansive anti-statist argument that makes common cause with the freedom of Palestinians and the rights of Black Lives...Read this daring essay that invites your argument, not your agreement. -- Homi Bhabha, Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University In his intrepid manifesto, Daniel Boyarin calls for a Jewish nationalism not sited in a nation-state. Far beyond the Jewish case, it provokes both those who see no more need for national identity and those who insist on a territorial home for each. As unexpected in his arguments as he is witty in his prose, Boyarin is in characteristically good form in this essential new statement. -- Samuel Moyn, Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence at Yale Law School and Professor of History at Yale University

Daniel Boyarin's stirring manifesto for a Jewish diaspora nation proposes an expansive anti-statist argument that makes common cause with the freedom of Palestinians and the rights of Black Lives. His rousing call for subaltern solidarity provokes me to ask: how does the 'no-state' solution address the claims for an independent nation-state or a bi-national state as articulated by the Palestinian people whose sovereignty has been repeatedly subverted and whose dignity is daily disfigured? Read this daring essay that invites your argument, not your agreement. -- Homi Bhabha, Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University Trenchant, plangent, and courageous, Daniel Boyarin's polemic rewrites the ground rules of what has been known for centuries as 'the Jewish question.' Any future discussion must take his 'no-state solution' into account. -- Haun Saussy, University of Chicago A self-consciously radical statement that is both astute and joyous. -- Kirkus Reviews In his intrepid manifesto, Daniel Boyarin calls for a Jewish nationalism not sited in a nation-state. Far beyond the Jewish case, it provokes both those who see no more need for national identity and those who insist on a territorial home for each. As unexpected in his arguments as he is witty in his prose, Boyarin is in characteristically good form in this essential new statement. -- Samuel Moyn, Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence at Yale Law School and professor of history at Yale University Daniel Boyarin's book delves into the very heart of what it means to be Jewish in the world today not as an assertion of exclusiveness, but rather as the starting point for a universalist idea about Jewishness drawn from its complicated multifaceted history. The manifesto is thus a provocation to think anew about what constitutes nation, society, culture, and the ultimate goals of cosmopolitan humanistic enquiry. A masterpiece! -- Ato Quayson, author of Tragedy and Postcolonial Literature

Author Information

Daniel Boyarin is the Hermann P. and Sophia Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture Emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley, where he held joint appointments in the Department of Near Eastern Studies and the Department of Rhetoric. Patrick Cullen (a.k.a. John Lescault), a native of Massachusetts, is a graduate of the Catholic University of America. He lives in Washington, DC, where he works in theater.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available