Zionism and Revolution in European-Jewish Literature (Electronic book text)

This dissertation, "The Orient in Europe: Zionism and Revolution in European-Jewish Literature," responds to Edward Said's concept of a monolithic Christian Orientalism that justified European economic and political control of the Middle East. The project considers the role of European Jews in this discourse, since they have been participants in European culture, but have also been associated with negative images of the Oriental, and furthermore, have had their own political affiliation with the Middle East in the twentieth century through the Zionist movement. While previous criticism has suggested that Jewish authors were only complicit with Orientalism, my work recognizes a simultaneous subversive tendency in German- and French-Jewish literature of the twentieth century that resists stereotyping and promotes solidarity with other oppressed groups.Drawing on Lisa Lowe and Nina Berman's conceptions, I refer to this trend in European-Jewish writing as "Jewish orientalisms," revising Said's "Orientalism," in order to acknowledge not only the internally complex and contradictory nature of this writing, but also its diversity due to national, ethnic, gender, and sexual difference.