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outcolder's review against another edition
4.0
After the escalation in Occupied Palestine this past May 2021, I was in a Vienna library and this just kind of leapt off the shelf at me. I've never read Butler before, and always thought the Palestine stuff would be sort of obvious to me... I wanted to read Gender Trouble first... but suddenly it seemed like a priority. I was anticipating a lot of nasty online arguments with friends and family but the social media experience was completely different than it was in 2014. You must have noticed as well.
I was looking forward to revisiting cats like Walter Benjamin and some of the other people Butler examines here. Years ago, I read that [a:Michael Löwy|95211|Michael Löwy|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1299072718p2/95211.jpg] book [b:Redemption And Utopia: Jewish Libertarian Thought In Central Europe: A Study In Elective Affinity|2641206|Redemption and Utopia Jewish Libertarian Thought in Central Europe A Study in Elective Affinity|Michael Lowy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1574108500l/2641206._SY75_.jpg|163108], but I didn't remember anybody's stances towards Palestine, really, except for Buber and Scholem who were already living there before the catastrophe. Walter Benjamin is as cool in Butler's retelling as I remember him, but I did not know that Levinas was such a jerk... ready to throw his whole post-Holocaust ethical project out the window when it comes to Palestine.
Hannah Arendt takes up a lot of space here as well, and not having read her yet it's hard for me to judge if Arendt was confused, or if Butler is confused, but I am definitely confused. The last two essays are the best, one about Primo Levi who comes across as so freakin' right on it hurts. I've never read his real Shoah stuff, just "lighter" fare like [b:The Monkey's Wrench|6180|The Monkey's Wrench|Primo Levi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1686902343l/6180._SY75_.jpg|9503]. Turns out he was very pro-Palestine.
Edward Said bookends the set. Butler is mainly interested in his book about Moses, and some statements he made about exile and diaspora and building a new multi-national state with the shared experience of exile at its heart. Sounds lovely. I'm a bit confused about framing Moses as an Arab, though. Surely the Copts are the indigenous Egyptians, not the Arabs? But when you're spinning academic metaphor webs why nitpick about it? As KRS-1 taught me, "Moses passed as the Pharaoh's grandson... so he must have looked just like him..." After 1300 years of Islam, "who is an Arab" gets as tricky as "who is a Jew." Still, Butler glosses over the Arab conquest of Egypt, or maybe Said does... I don't know.
I don't think Butler even comes close to answering her own question, about whether it's possible to have a Jewish state given Jewish ethics. It's too hard to define Jewish ethics... I mean... it's not that easy to define "Jewish." Butler keeps reminding us that even though they're looking at a gang of Central European thinkers, there are Sephardim and Mizrahim and lots of other kinds of Jews and ways to be Jewish. Still, if they'd just stuck with Hillel and Maimonides and cats like that, we might have come closer to a real answer, and if I had to bet, the answer would be "No." You can't just plop your state in the middle of somebody else's home. To suddenly claim that Galut is over... is not Jewish. Butler, and I'm sure it's not for lack of courage, just never really says that in stark black-and-white like that. But it's obvious that's what they're thinking. If you comment on this review, please be respectful.
I was looking forward to revisiting cats like Walter Benjamin and some of the other people Butler examines here. Years ago, I read that [a:Michael Löwy|95211|Michael Löwy|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1299072718p2/95211.jpg] book [b:Redemption And Utopia: Jewish Libertarian Thought In Central Europe: A Study In Elective Affinity|2641206|Redemption and Utopia Jewish Libertarian Thought in Central Europe A Study in Elective Affinity|Michael Lowy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1574108500l/2641206._SY75_.jpg|163108], but I didn't remember anybody's stances towards Palestine, really, except for Buber and Scholem who were already living there before the catastrophe. Walter Benjamin is as cool in Butler's retelling as I remember him, but I did not know that Levinas was such a jerk... ready to throw his whole post-Holocaust ethical project out the window when it comes to Palestine.
Hannah Arendt takes up a lot of space here as well, and not having read her yet it's hard for me to judge if Arendt was confused, or if Butler is confused, but I am definitely confused. The last two essays are the best, one about Primo Levi who comes across as so freakin' right on it hurts. I've never read his real Shoah stuff, just "lighter" fare like [b:The Monkey's Wrench|6180|The Monkey's Wrench|Primo Levi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1686902343l/6180._SY75_.jpg|9503]. Turns out he was very pro-Palestine.
Edward Said bookends the set. Butler is mainly interested in his book about Moses, and some statements he made about exile and diaspora and building a new multi-national state with the shared experience of exile at its heart. Sounds lovely. I'm a bit confused about framing Moses as an Arab, though. Surely the Copts are the indigenous Egyptians, not the Arabs? But when you're spinning academic metaphor webs why nitpick about it? As KRS-1 taught me, "Moses passed as the Pharaoh's grandson... so he must have looked just like him..." After 1300 years of Islam, "who is an Arab" gets as tricky as "who is a Jew." Still, Butler glosses over the Arab conquest of Egypt, or maybe Said does... I don't know.
I don't think Butler even comes close to answering her own question, about whether it's possible to have a Jewish state given Jewish ethics. It's too hard to define Jewish ethics... I mean... it's not that easy to define "Jewish." Butler keeps reminding us that even though they're looking at a gang of Central European thinkers, there are Sephardim and Mizrahim and lots of other kinds of Jews and ways to be Jewish. Still, if they'd just stuck with Hillel and Maimonides and cats like that, we might have come closer to a real answer, and if I had to bet, the answer would be "No." You can't just plop your state in the middle of somebody else's home. To suddenly claim that Galut is over... is not Jewish. Butler, and I'm sure it's not for lack of courage, just never really says that in stark black-and-white like that. But it's obvious that's what they're thinking. If you comment on this review, please be respectful.
ralowe's review
4.0
judith butler's usage of hanna arendt and emanuel levinas produces a theory of the incipient ethical moment of unwilled proximity as something fundamentally incompatible with the passionate anticolonialism of frantz fanon and half a dozen others. i'm reading steven salaita after this to really try to ground myself because i'm seriously thinking in my airheaded secular humanist mind, "why can't we figure out how to be together,"ќ and it's because of the unmitigated force of intrusion and its violent displacing effects that render any wistful and vague cosmopolitics unworkable, mostly because i'm not there, i'm no subject, body parts scattered, no shadow or substance or residence, long gone. this is precisely the kind of book that someone with butler's stature must write, because someone has to do"У"У or someone is often caught imagining of someone else somewhere who wind up having to do"У"У the work to get the colonizer off our backs. butler is up there, next to maybe rabab abdelhadi, in terms of academics who are brutally targeted by zionists. butler's work paves the way for the peculiar moment where we have elected officials who can make criticism of israel a talking point, and there goes my optimism again. fanon's anticoloniality oughta be easy, right? butler lets her hair down a little in the last chapter involving edward said and mahmoud darwish in the game. butler avoids mentioning the bund, or other jewish anti-zionist moments: the focus is just on the philosophy's most recognizable critics of israel's founding. hopefully the unfamiliar will glean that the state of israel is not coterminous with jewish people. but butler also sort of puts the good will behind all these endeavors in question by looking at hayden white's study of primo levi: is it possible to reason with trauma? has authoritarianism effectively and cynically weaponized the holocaust to label all its critics as anti-semitic? is the public capable of telling the difference between anti-zionism and anti-semitism?
aimiller's review
challenging
emotional
medium-paced
5.0
Honestly the best book Butler has written. The Arendt chapters are great, the Primo Levi chapter is powerful, and the Said chapter is incredible. (I'm sure if I understand Levinas and/or Benjamin, I'd like those chapters too.) Is it still Butler? Yes, with all the baggage of that. But it's the most ethically clear and cogent Butler I've read.
burstona's review
2.0
After really enjoying Butler's op eds on the Israel/Palestine conflict, I thought I'd give this book a go. I have found more joy in reading the original theorists they cite. Her writing is so full of philosophical postulates and so devoid of facts that I just can't get into it. I rarely give up on books, but I think my time would be better spent elsewhere.
0hn0myt0rah's review against another edition
4.0
Often incredibly insightful anti-Zionist critique drawing from histories of Jewish and Palestinian thought. Useful, focussed, relevant
garberdog's review
5.0
An unorthodox approach to the Israel-Palestine "conflict" (better described as a colonial occupation), Butler draws from Jewish resources (conceived broadly) to establish grounds for a non-antisemitic critique of Zionism, and an anti-Zionist Judaism. Readers looking for an introduction to and/or history of the occupation might prefer to start elsewhere; this text is excellent, but it's not a primer to the situation.
Butler begins the text working with Levinas, moves on to Benjamin, and continues on through Arendt and Levi. She ends with Darwish and Said, two Palestinian thinkers who complement Butler's overall theme of drawing from the diasporic experience of both Jews and Palestinians to craft a future beyond Zionism.
This book is in many ways the capstone of Butler's oeuvre. One can find everything from her theories of gender (performativity, citationality, abjection) through her work on the (in)ability of the subject to fully account for itself and on the precarity of human life at play here. Moreover, many of the criticisms for which Butler has become infamous (that she is too hard to read, that she fails to give concrete examples, that one needs to have read an extensive list of texts before one can even begin to comprehend what she is saying) are largely absent from this book. Written in clear, if at times poetic, language, and grounded in concrete political struggles, this book de facto serves as a good introduction to some of the major works of Levinas, Benjamin, and Arendt. Butler works with the reader in a way that I have not noticed in her other work that I have read. To be sure, she is brilliant, and it really comes across here.
Centering the ethical, Parting Ways is an excellent resource in challenging Zionism and Israeli settler colonialism, and in imagining a binationalist, one-state for the region.
Butler begins the text working with Levinas, moves on to Benjamin, and continues on through Arendt and Levi. She ends with Darwish and Said, two Palestinian thinkers who complement Butler's overall theme of drawing from the diasporic experience of both Jews and Palestinians to craft a future beyond Zionism.
This book is in many ways the capstone of Butler's oeuvre. One can find everything from her theories of gender (performativity, citationality, abjection) through her work on the (in)ability of the subject to fully account for itself and on the precarity of human life at play here. Moreover, many of the criticisms for which Butler has become infamous (that she is too hard to read, that she fails to give concrete examples, that one needs to have read an extensive list of texts before one can even begin to comprehend what she is saying) are largely absent from this book. Written in clear, if at times poetic, language, and grounded in concrete political struggles, this book de facto serves as a good introduction to some of the major works of Levinas, Benjamin, and Arendt. Butler works with the reader in a way that I have not noticed in her other work that I have read. To be sure, she is brilliant, and it really comes across here.
Centering the ethical, Parting Ways is an excellent resource in challenging Zionism and Israeli settler colonialism, and in imagining a binationalist, one-state for the region.
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