Works not published in academic platforms by Marcelo Svirsky
Books by Marcelo Svirsky
How do we contribute to the decolonisation of Palestine? In what ways can we divest from settler ... more How do we contribute to the decolonisation of Palestine? In what ways can we divest from settler arrangements in the present-day? Exploring the Zionist takeover of Palestine as a settler colonial case, this book argues that in studying the elimination of native life in Palestine, the loss of Arab-Jewish shared life cannot be ignored. Muslims, Christians, and Jews, shared a life in Ottoman Palestine and in a different way during British rule. The attempt to eliminate native life involved the destruction of Arab society – its cultural hegemony and demographic superiority – but also the racial rejection of Arab-Jewish sociabilities, of shared life. Thus the settlerist process of dispossession of the Arabs was complemented with the destruction of the social and cultural infrastructure that made Arab-Jewish life a historical reality. Both operations formed Israeli polity. Can this understanding contribute to present-day Palestinian resistance and a politics of decolonisation? In this book, the authors address this question by exploring how the study of elimination of shared life can inform Arab-Jewish co-resistance as a way of defying Israel’s Zionist regime. Above and beyond opposing an unacceptable state of affairs, this book engages with past and present to discuss possible futures.
صدر حديثاً عن منشورات المتوسط كتاب ما بعد إسرائيل – نحو تحول ثقافي لمارسيليو سڤيرسكي، الذي ترجمه ... more صدر حديثاً عن منشورات المتوسط كتاب ما بعد إسرائيل – نحو تحول ثقافي لمارسيليو سڤيرسكي، الذي ترجمه إلى العربية المترجم سمير عزت نصار وقام بمراجعته حسام موصللي.
يؤكّد مارسيلو سڤيرسكي في هذه الكتاب، الجديد والفريد من نوعه، على أنّه ليس هناك حل سياسي مطروح في الوقت الراهن يمكنه أن يوفّر الماهيّة الثقافية اللازمة لإحداث تحوُّلٍ على أساليب بقاء دولة إسرائيل وسبُل الحياة فيها.
يُناقش سڤيرسكي، على نحوٍ مثير للجدل، فكرة أن المشروع السياسي الصهيوني غير قابل للإصلاح؛ أي أنّه الوحيد الذي يؤثّر سلباً على حياة المستفيدين منه كما على ضحاياه أيضاً. بالمقابل يهدف الكتاب إلى إحداث موقف معاكس، يسمح لليهود الإسرائيليين باكتشاف الآلية التي تمكنهم من تجريد أنفسهم من الهويات الصهيونية وذلك من خلال الانخراط بالأفكار والممارسات والمؤسسات المنشقّة عن تلك الهويات.
أخيراً فإن إنتاج المعدّات والتكنولوجيا العسكرية التي تُساعد إسرائيل على السيطرة على حياة الفلسطينيين، بسياسات الفصل وقوانينه والمساحات المخصصة لليهود وللفلسطينيين، ترتبطُ جميعاً بإنتاج ذوات الصهيونيّة وأنماط وجودها. إن التغلُّب على أنماط الوجود هذه هو «ما بعد إسرائيل».
وعن الكتاب يقول نور مصالحة، مدرس الدراسات الشرقية والإفريقية في جامعة لندن:
«يذهب هذا العمل الأصيل للغاية بعيداً مُتجاوزاً أحدث الكتب التي تتحدث عن فلسطين- إسرائيل والتي تركّز على حلول الدولتين أو الدولة الواحدة للصراع. وتُظهِرُ إنسانيته ومنهجيته التحررية الضرورة الحتمية لتحول ثقافي في إسرائيل لصالح جميع ضحايا الصهيونية؛ يهوداً وفلسطينيين».
أما كريس ويدون "أستاذ في النظرية النقديّة والثقافيّة، جامعة كارديف" فيقول: «يُمثّل هذا الكتاب تحليلاً ثقافياً في أفضل حالاته، حيث يُقدّم الانتقادات العميقة للطرق الرئيسية للحياة وأنماط الوجود التي تُشكّل الصهيونية الإسرائيلية؛ من خلال مزيج نادر من النظرية المتطورة والتفاصيل المُتقنة والجذابة، إلتقط سڤيرسكي تعقيدات الذوات اليهودية الإسرائيلية على مستوى ممارسات الحياة اليومية. ما بعد إسرائيل هو إسهام مهم ومُتحدٍّ بصدد إعادة التفكير بثنائية فلسطين- إسرائيل وإعادة صناعتها».
وتحتفي أريئيلا أزولاي، مؤلّفة كتاب «من فلسطين إلى إسرائيل» بجرأة الطرح الموجود في هذا الكتاب: «ما بعد إسرائيل كتابٌ علماني. إنّه يرفض القبول بالصهيونية باعتبارها عقيدة دينية؛ وبدلاً من ذلك، يجرؤ هذا الكتاب الممتاز على قراءة الصهيونية على أنّها حلقة في تاريخ فلسطين لشعبين يعيشان فيها. هذا ليس بنبوءة ولا نهاية للعالم. إنّه تحليل سياسي وثقافي جريء للعمليات التي تقوّض النظام الإسرائيلي الحالي والتي هي قيد العمل في يومنا هذا».
أما رونيت لينتين، "مُحاضِرة في علم الاجتماع، كليّة ترينيتي في دبلن" فتقول: «يبدو النص المثير للجدل لمارسيلو سڤيرسكي، على الصعيد النظري، مُتطوراً ومُتاحاً في آن معاً. ما بعد إسرائيل هو تحليل أصيل، مكتوب بصياغة جميلة وممتعة، للوحدة السياسية التي تُدعى إسرائيل، وكيف أنه من الممكن تجاوزها من خلال التحوُّل الثقافي».
جاء الكتاب في 285 صفحة من القطع الوسط
عن المؤلف مارسيلو سڤيرسكي:
محاضر في الدراسات الدولية في مدرسة الإنسانيات والبحث الاجتماعي في جامعة وُلونغونغ منذ عام 2012، حيث انتقل إليها قادماً من جامعة كارديف في ويلز، والتي عمل بها في مركز الدراسات النقدية والثقافية منذ 2008. يُدرّس مارسيليو مواضيع في الدراسات الدولية وأبحاثاً عن سياسات الشرق الأوسط والفلسفة القارّية الأوروبية؛ ويركّز في المقام الأول على النظريات وممارسة النشاط السياسي والعمل الثوري والتحوّل الاجتماعي.
يحاول في مواضيعه تلك الربط بين الفلسفة القارية الأوروبية - بشكل خاص أعمال جيّل دولوز وفيلكس غواتاري؛ النظرية السياسية النقدية (critical political theory)؛ ونظريات ما بعد الاستعمار. يطبق مارسيليو أعماله على الشرق الأوسط وخاصة فلسطين – إسرائيل، كما يهتم بسياسات أمريكا اللاتينية. وتتسم أبحاثه بنوعيتها وميلها إلى المنهجيات الإثنوغرافية (الناسيّة).
The book was nominated for the 'Palestinian Book Awards': http://www.palestinebookawards.com/auth... more The book was nominated for the 'Palestinian Book Awards': http://www.palestinebookawards.com/authors/item/marcelo-svirsky.
'Grounded in his own experience, Marcelo Svirsky's controversial text is both theoretically sophisticated and accessible. After Israel is an original, engaging and beautifully written analysis of the political unit called Israel and how, through cultural transformation, it is possible to move beyond it.'
Ronit Lentin, Associate Professor of Sociology, Trinity College Dublin
'After Israel is a secular book. It refuses to accept Zionism as a religious dogma; this excellent book rather dares to read Zionism as an episode in the history of Palestine, and of the two peoples that live there. This is neither an apocalypse nor a prophecy. It is a daring political and cultural analysis of the processes undermining the current Israeli regime that are at work today.'
Ariella Azoulay, author of From Palestine to Israel and (with Adi Ophir) The One State Condition
'This is engaged cultural analysis at its best, offering insightful critiques of key ways of life and modes of being that constitute Israeli Zionism. A rare combination of sophisticated theory and fascinating, incisive detail, Svirsky captures the complexity of Jewish-Israeli subjectivities at the level of the practices of everyday life. After Israel is an important and provocative contribution to rethinking and remaking Israel-Palestine.'
Chris Weedon, Professor of Critical and Cultural Theory, Cardiff University
‘Written with the fire, passion, anger and intelligence of the committed scholar, Arab-Jewish Act... more ‘Written with the fire, passion, anger and intelligence of the committed scholar, Arab-Jewish Activism in
Israel-Palestine is an important contribution to the ongoing debate concerning the nature and status of
Israel’s occupation of Palestine. But rather than simply bemoan an obviously egregious state of affairs, it
looks at what is already being done to change things for the better and seeks to identify new ways in which
this “collaborative struggle” for justice might be advanced. This is a very significant book and deserves to be
widely read.’
– Ian Buchanan, University of Wollongong, Australia
’This book deals sensitively and brilliantly with the issue of Arab-Jewish relations in Israel, as no other book
has done in the past. It integrates a deep knowledge of the theoretical world with a very informed view, born
out of personal experience, of the reality on the ground. A must read for anyone concerned about the future
of Israel and Palestine.’
– Illan Pappe, University of Exeter, UK
Edited Books and Collections by Marcelo Svirsky
This special issue gathers presentations given at the ‘Collaborative Struggle’ international conf... more This special issue gathers presentations given at the ‘Collaborative Struggle’ international conference held at the University of Wollongong on 24–25 of September 2012, together with other contributions. The conference was supported by the Institute for Social Transformation Research at UOW, which over recent years has been the base for a rich critical research culture. Though
convened to discuss different aspects of joint collective action – or ‘collaborative struggles’ – as a way of exiting not only colonial divisions and more generally oppressive relations in contemporary societies, most presentations at the conference focused on struggles for decolonisation in Australia and Israel–Palestine.
This excellent collection mobilizes Agamben’s provocative account of biopolitics to reckon with t... more This excellent collection mobilizes Agamben’s provocative account of biopolitics to reckon with the history and present of colonial subjectivation, as well as the possibilities for postcolonial transformation. It is an important addition to contemporary political analysis of the centrality of colonialism in the formation of the modern Western state.
Catherine Mills, University of Sydney
When Deleuze and Guattari wrote Anti-Oedipus they hoped it would be a call to arms for dissidents... more When Deleuze and Guattari wrote Anti-Oedipus they hoped it would be a call to arms for dissidents and political activists. Rather than set out a program of change, they tried to isolate the political, cultural and economic factors that inhibit change. In so doing they created a work that was instantly recognised as a philosophical watershed. It changed the landscape of political theory in a single sweep. In this volume, both critical theorists and activists analyse Deleuze and Guattari's critical tools on radical politics. The essays integrate theoretical elaborations and case-study problematisations on different political spaces and times, offering new ways to reflect on, and experiment with transformative politics.
Journal Articles by Marcelo Svirsky
Journal of Palestine Studies, 2023
This article investigates the institutional attitudes of the Histadrut (the
General Organization ... more This article investigates the institutional attitudes of the Histadrut (the
General Organization of Workers in the Land of Israel) toward Palestine’s
Middle Eastern Jews (Mizrahim) between 1920 and the late 1940s. Based
on archival evidence and secondary sources, it argues that what Mizrahi
workers experienced in their dealings with the Histadrut was not the
result of random or unintended abuse but of a political culture that promoted social fragmentation and inequality. The corollary of this argument is that the Mizrahim who arrived immediately after 1948 found
themselves thrown into a racial binary mold that had been in the making
for about fifty years, beginning with the first waves of Zionist immigration
to Palestine.
Deleuze and Guattari Studies
The question of Palestine has remained the ultimate test for intellectual and political consisten... more The question of Palestine has remained the ultimate test for intellectual and political consistency. In this article we canvass the discrepancies between two opposing French intellectual traditions in relation to Palestine, and scrutinise them in relation to Israel's investments in political languages designed for external constituencies. The article concludes with an observation on how French feminist voices are today shaping the conversation about the Palestine question in progressive ways.
Postcolonial Studies, 2022
This article presents a rationale to expand settler-colonial studies so as to conceptually fuse i... more This article presents a rationale to expand settler-colonial studies so as to conceptually fuse in the same proposition the question of settler-colonial permanence with that of the settler subject. Arguments are elaborated based on one particular case study, Palestine. This gap in the research in relation to Palestine not only has left unresolved the problem of how to explain the continuation of the Israeli settler regime beyond its unequivocal overt and superior mechanisms of legal and brute power but has also kept the concrete perpetrators in the shadows, away from public accountability. The article also lays out a number of potential dimensions to lead research into the conceptual nexus suggested here, for the specific case of Palestine. These dimensions, which I suggest form the emotional economy of Israeli settler-colonial subjectivity, comprise (1) the compensatory distributions of settler-colonial capture, (2) the historical formation of strata of subjectivation, (3) the avenues of socialization that cement the commitment to a militarized society, and (4) the ways by which settler learning and settler practice are conjoined in everyday training.
Ethnicities, 2021
This paper concerns Let me tell you a story about Israel, a theatrical play tasked with influenci... more This paper concerns Let me tell you a story about Israel, a theatrical play tasked with influencing existing perceptions of the Palestine/Israel conflict amongst international audiences. Drawing on the work of philosopher Baruch Spinoza, I explore the complex issue of how to address the need to change people's political perceptions by using theatre as a form of activist persuasion. The play attempts to create an image of the conflict mostly absent in the commentaries of international observers who are unaware of the full implications of the conflict's settler colonial character. Typically, they understand it in terms of two sides competing over land, frontiers and recognition. The sense of balance that this perception conveys preempts coming to grips with the colonial history of Palestine beginning with the advent of Zionism from late 19th century. Such a view also obscures the nature of current forms of Israeli domination and fails to take into account a major historical factor: that the settler colonial dynamic in Palestine rests on the ways social life in Israel is organised and reproduced. Hence, the play aims to make perceptible the relation between the social mechanisms of subjectivity formation in the Israeli society on the one hand, and the everyday performance of settler colonial power on the other. Making this relation observable is a necessary step towards rethinking where change could possibly come from.
Journal of Perpetrator Research, 2021
Critical scholarship on Palestine/Israel tends to focus on conceptualising the settler colonial p... more Critical scholarship on Palestine/Israel tends to focus on conceptualising the settler colonial practices that characterise this conflict but have failed to account for how these practices are reproduced and sustained over time. To address this gap, rather than focusing on Israel' s quantifiable strengths such as military might, the use of law, the economy, and diplomacy, this article investigates the reciprocal relations between the formation of Israeli modes of being or subjectivities, on the one hand, and the generation and distribution of settler colonial surplus, on the other. The examination of the processes of subjectivity formation in their settler colonial register on the side of the coloniser allows understating how the circuits of settler colonial power endure.
Deleuze and Guattari Studies, 2020
The question of Palestine has remained the ultimate test for intellectual and political consisten... more The question of Palestine has remained the ultimate test for intellectual and political consistency. In this article we canvass the discrepancies between two opposing French intellectual traditions in relation to Palestine, and scrutinise them in relation to Israel's investments in political languages designed for external constituencies. The article concludes with an observation on how French feminist voices are today shaping the conversation about the Palestine question in progressive ways.
Interventions International: Journal of Postcolonial Studies , 2018
According to the logic of elimination that subtends settler colonial projects, native populations... more According to the logic of elimination that subtends settler colonial projects, native populations are displaced in order to replace their systems of life, a process that structures invasion in its initial stages as in the present. By looking into the case of modern Palestine in an integrative fashion, in this essay we suggest that settler colonialism targets native populations along with social formations – established ways of life – that nurture native life in various ways. We define this settler specificity as the “logic of double elimination.” Our story shows that in Palestine, Zionism developed and the Israeli state was eventually established by means of (a) the continuing elimination of the Arab-Palestinians and their sovereignty, and (b) the destruction of the social infrastructure and identities that fostered Arab–Jewish shared life and forms of cooperation as they flourished in Ottoman times, and the prevention of these forms as they survived into the British Mandate era. These operations of erasure cannot be understood, as Patrick Wolfe persuasively suggested, but as mediated by race. By expanding the conceptualization of the settler logic of elimination we aim at contributing to a broader understanding of the settler colonial phenomena and of decolonization.
By looking into the case of Palestine, this article has two goals: the first is to provide philos... more By looking into the case of Palestine, this article has two goals: the first is to provide philosophical scaffolding to the theme of
resistance in settler colonial theory, and in so doing to argue that resistance need to be regarded as part of the structure in settler social formations. Secondly, the article rereads ‘the logic of elimination’ upon which settler colonialism is founded in order to suggest that as a settler colonial project Zionism historically evolved via a process of ‘double elimination’ – of indigenous life and of shared life. The aim of this article is then to fold the second conclusion into the first: alongside with indigenous resistance, shared life need be conceived as part of the structural struggle against settler colonialism. The article has three sections. In the first section, the state of the art in the field of settler colonial studies is presented in order to identify strengths and weaknesses. The second section offers a conceptualisation of the idea/practice of resistance by drawing from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s works. The last section reframes the logic of elimination concluding with a political vision that expands on the notion of resistance.
The Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement is a global political campaign led by Pales... more The Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement is a global political campaign led by Palestinian civil society since 2005. Its official aim is to put pressure on Israel to radically change its policies towards Palestinians. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s political philosophy, this paper discusses the BDS movement by looking into its affective powers. In particular, it claims that, above all else, acting as a political mediator BDS weakens the predominance of the current assemblage of public discourses on Israel-Palestine.
This paper problematises the ways in which the passions of ‘identity’ constrain the collaborative... more This paper problematises the ways in which the passions of ‘identity’ constrain the collaborative aspects of the struggle for decolonisation in settler-colonial societies. The discussion will focus on Israel–Palestine, where the idea of collaborative struggle has attracted significant criticism. As a corollary of the discussion of this particular case study, an alternative reading of the idea of the collaborative struggle will be offered.
In Giorgio Agamben’s call to profane the sacred in the most desacralized forms, the specific mech... more In Giorgio Agamben’s call to profane the sacred in the most desacralized forms, the specific mechanics through which the sacred and the profane connect and become indistinctive remains undertheorized. This article, then, aims at adding a further layer of practical articulation to Agamben’s notion of profanation as it was elaborated in his book Profanations. The article does so by discussing
the ways Zionist subjectivities and divides are interconnected and expressed in Israeli society. To be practiced as a process of becoming, profanation, I argue, needs to be understood as a process of cultural transformation by which new forms of subjectivity are offered.
This article offers a critical appraisal of the role played by cultural identity in
intercultural... more This article offers a critical appraisal of the role played by cultural identity in
intercultural bilingual Arabic–Hebrew schools in Israel. While engineered as
oases of interculturalism amidst a life of ethnic segregation, such schools ultimately confront serious difficulties in escaping the constraints of identity politics and representation. This is expressed by the leading part that group identity plays in the schools’ everyday life. By drawing on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, we argue that this state of affairs diminishes the potential of the
intercultural encounter to overcome emotional and conceptual inhibitions reigning in larger society. Interculturalism, in order to distance itself from a politics of ressentiment that can only restrict its capacity to flourish, needs to place itself before representation.
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Works not published in academic platforms by Marcelo Svirsky
Books by Marcelo Svirsky
يؤكّد مارسيلو سڤيرسكي في هذه الكتاب، الجديد والفريد من نوعه، على أنّه ليس هناك حل سياسي مطروح في الوقت الراهن يمكنه أن يوفّر الماهيّة الثقافية اللازمة لإحداث تحوُّلٍ على أساليب بقاء دولة إسرائيل وسبُل الحياة فيها.
يُناقش سڤيرسكي، على نحوٍ مثير للجدل، فكرة أن المشروع السياسي الصهيوني غير قابل للإصلاح؛ أي أنّه الوحيد الذي يؤثّر سلباً على حياة المستفيدين منه كما على ضحاياه أيضاً. بالمقابل يهدف الكتاب إلى إحداث موقف معاكس، يسمح لليهود الإسرائيليين باكتشاف الآلية التي تمكنهم من تجريد أنفسهم من الهويات الصهيونية وذلك من خلال الانخراط بالأفكار والممارسات والمؤسسات المنشقّة عن تلك الهويات.
أخيراً فإن إنتاج المعدّات والتكنولوجيا العسكرية التي تُساعد إسرائيل على السيطرة على حياة الفلسطينيين، بسياسات الفصل وقوانينه والمساحات المخصصة لليهود وللفلسطينيين، ترتبطُ جميعاً بإنتاج ذوات الصهيونيّة وأنماط وجودها. إن التغلُّب على أنماط الوجود هذه هو «ما بعد إسرائيل».
وعن الكتاب يقول نور مصالحة، مدرس الدراسات الشرقية والإفريقية في جامعة لندن:
«يذهب هذا العمل الأصيل للغاية بعيداً مُتجاوزاً أحدث الكتب التي تتحدث عن فلسطين- إسرائيل والتي تركّز على حلول الدولتين أو الدولة الواحدة للصراع. وتُظهِرُ إنسانيته ومنهجيته التحررية الضرورة الحتمية لتحول ثقافي في إسرائيل لصالح جميع ضحايا الصهيونية؛ يهوداً وفلسطينيين».
أما كريس ويدون "أستاذ في النظرية النقديّة والثقافيّة، جامعة كارديف" فيقول: «يُمثّل هذا الكتاب تحليلاً ثقافياً في أفضل حالاته، حيث يُقدّم الانتقادات العميقة للطرق الرئيسية للحياة وأنماط الوجود التي تُشكّل الصهيونية الإسرائيلية؛ من خلال مزيج نادر من النظرية المتطورة والتفاصيل المُتقنة والجذابة، إلتقط سڤيرسكي تعقيدات الذوات اليهودية الإسرائيلية على مستوى ممارسات الحياة اليومية. ما بعد إسرائيل هو إسهام مهم ومُتحدٍّ بصدد إعادة التفكير بثنائية فلسطين- إسرائيل وإعادة صناعتها».
وتحتفي أريئيلا أزولاي، مؤلّفة كتاب «من فلسطين إلى إسرائيل» بجرأة الطرح الموجود في هذا الكتاب: «ما بعد إسرائيل كتابٌ علماني. إنّه يرفض القبول بالصهيونية باعتبارها عقيدة دينية؛ وبدلاً من ذلك، يجرؤ هذا الكتاب الممتاز على قراءة الصهيونية على أنّها حلقة في تاريخ فلسطين لشعبين يعيشان فيها. هذا ليس بنبوءة ولا نهاية للعالم. إنّه تحليل سياسي وثقافي جريء للعمليات التي تقوّض النظام الإسرائيلي الحالي والتي هي قيد العمل في يومنا هذا».
أما رونيت لينتين، "مُحاضِرة في علم الاجتماع، كليّة ترينيتي في دبلن" فتقول: «يبدو النص المثير للجدل لمارسيلو سڤيرسكي، على الصعيد النظري، مُتطوراً ومُتاحاً في آن معاً. ما بعد إسرائيل هو تحليل أصيل، مكتوب بصياغة جميلة وممتعة، للوحدة السياسية التي تُدعى إسرائيل، وكيف أنه من الممكن تجاوزها من خلال التحوُّل الثقافي».
جاء الكتاب في 285 صفحة من القطع الوسط
عن المؤلف مارسيلو سڤيرسكي:
محاضر في الدراسات الدولية في مدرسة الإنسانيات والبحث الاجتماعي في جامعة وُلونغونغ منذ عام 2012، حيث انتقل إليها قادماً من جامعة كارديف في ويلز، والتي عمل بها في مركز الدراسات النقدية والثقافية منذ 2008. يُدرّس مارسيليو مواضيع في الدراسات الدولية وأبحاثاً عن سياسات الشرق الأوسط والفلسفة القارّية الأوروبية؛ ويركّز في المقام الأول على النظريات وممارسة النشاط السياسي والعمل الثوري والتحوّل الاجتماعي.
يحاول في مواضيعه تلك الربط بين الفلسفة القارية الأوروبية - بشكل خاص أعمال جيّل دولوز وفيلكس غواتاري؛ النظرية السياسية النقدية (critical political theory)؛ ونظريات ما بعد الاستعمار. يطبق مارسيليو أعماله على الشرق الأوسط وخاصة فلسطين – إسرائيل، كما يهتم بسياسات أمريكا اللاتينية. وتتسم أبحاثه بنوعيتها وميلها إلى المنهجيات الإثنوغرافية (الناسيّة).
'Grounded in his own experience, Marcelo Svirsky's controversial text is both theoretically sophisticated and accessible. After Israel is an original, engaging and beautifully written analysis of the political unit called Israel and how, through cultural transformation, it is possible to move beyond it.'
Ronit Lentin, Associate Professor of Sociology, Trinity College Dublin
'After Israel is a secular book. It refuses to accept Zionism as a religious dogma; this excellent book rather dares to read Zionism as an episode in the history of Palestine, and of the two peoples that live there. This is neither an apocalypse nor a prophecy. It is a daring political and cultural analysis of the processes undermining the current Israeli regime that are at work today.'
Ariella Azoulay, author of From Palestine to Israel and (with Adi Ophir) The One State Condition
'This is engaged cultural analysis at its best, offering insightful critiques of key ways of life and modes of being that constitute Israeli Zionism. A rare combination of sophisticated theory and fascinating, incisive detail, Svirsky captures the complexity of Jewish-Israeli subjectivities at the level of the practices of everyday life. After Israel is an important and provocative contribution to rethinking and remaking Israel-Palestine.'
Chris Weedon, Professor of Critical and Cultural Theory, Cardiff University
Israel-Palestine is an important contribution to the ongoing debate concerning the nature and status of
Israel’s occupation of Palestine. But rather than simply bemoan an obviously egregious state of affairs, it
looks at what is already being done to change things for the better and seeks to identify new ways in which
this “collaborative struggle” for justice might be advanced. This is a very significant book and deserves to be
widely read.’
– Ian Buchanan, University of Wollongong, Australia
’This book deals sensitively and brilliantly with the issue of Arab-Jewish relations in Israel, as no other book
has done in the past. It integrates a deep knowledge of the theoretical world with a very informed view, born
out of personal experience, of the reality on the ground. A must read for anyone concerned about the future
of Israel and Palestine.’
– Illan Pappe, University of Exeter, UK
Edited Books and Collections by Marcelo Svirsky
convened to discuss different aspects of joint collective action – or ‘collaborative struggles’ – as a way of exiting not only colonial divisions and more generally oppressive relations in contemporary societies, most presentations at the conference focused on struggles for decolonisation in Australia and Israel–Palestine.
Catherine Mills, University of Sydney
Journal Articles by Marcelo Svirsky
General Organization of Workers in the Land of Israel) toward Palestine’s
Middle Eastern Jews (Mizrahim) between 1920 and the late 1940s. Based
on archival evidence and secondary sources, it argues that what Mizrahi
workers experienced in their dealings with the Histadrut was not the
result of random or unintended abuse but of a political culture that promoted social fragmentation and inequality. The corollary of this argument is that the Mizrahim who arrived immediately after 1948 found
themselves thrown into a racial binary mold that had been in the making
for about fifty years, beginning with the first waves of Zionist immigration
to Palestine.
resistance in settler colonial theory, and in so doing to argue that resistance need to be regarded as part of the structure in settler social formations. Secondly, the article rereads ‘the logic of elimination’ upon which settler colonialism is founded in order to suggest that as a settler colonial project Zionism historically evolved via a process of ‘double elimination’ – of indigenous life and of shared life. The aim of this article is then to fold the second conclusion into the first: alongside with indigenous resistance, shared life need be conceived as part of the structural struggle against settler colonialism. The article has three sections. In the first section, the state of the art in the field of settler colonial studies is presented in order to identify strengths and weaknesses. The second section offers a conceptualisation of the idea/practice of resistance by drawing from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s works. The last section reframes the logic of elimination concluding with a political vision that expands on the notion of resistance.
the ways Zionist subjectivities and divides are interconnected and expressed in Israeli society. To be practiced as a process of becoming, profanation, I argue, needs to be understood as a process of cultural transformation by which new forms of subjectivity are offered.
intercultural bilingual Arabic–Hebrew schools in Israel. While engineered as
oases of interculturalism amidst a life of ethnic segregation, such schools ultimately confront serious difficulties in escaping the constraints of identity politics and representation. This is expressed by the leading part that group identity plays in the schools’ everyday life. By drawing on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, we argue that this state of affairs diminishes the potential of the
intercultural encounter to overcome emotional and conceptual inhibitions reigning in larger society. Interculturalism, in order to distance itself from a politics of ressentiment that can only restrict its capacity to flourish, needs to place itself before representation.
يؤكّد مارسيلو سڤيرسكي في هذه الكتاب، الجديد والفريد من نوعه، على أنّه ليس هناك حل سياسي مطروح في الوقت الراهن يمكنه أن يوفّر الماهيّة الثقافية اللازمة لإحداث تحوُّلٍ على أساليب بقاء دولة إسرائيل وسبُل الحياة فيها.
يُناقش سڤيرسكي، على نحوٍ مثير للجدل، فكرة أن المشروع السياسي الصهيوني غير قابل للإصلاح؛ أي أنّه الوحيد الذي يؤثّر سلباً على حياة المستفيدين منه كما على ضحاياه أيضاً. بالمقابل يهدف الكتاب إلى إحداث موقف معاكس، يسمح لليهود الإسرائيليين باكتشاف الآلية التي تمكنهم من تجريد أنفسهم من الهويات الصهيونية وذلك من خلال الانخراط بالأفكار والممارسات والمؤسسات المنشقّة عن تلك الهويات.
أخيراً فإن إنتاج المعدّات والتكنولوجيا العسكرية التي تُساعد إسرائيل على السيطرة على حياة الفلسطينيين، بسياسات الفصل وقوانينه والمساحات المخصصة لليهود وللفلسطينيين، ترتبطُ جميعاً بإنتاج ذوات الصهيونيّة وأنماط وجودها. إن التغلُّب على أنماط الوجود هذه هو «ما بعد إسرائيل».
وعن الكتاب يقول نور مصالحة، مدرس الدراسات الشرقية والإفريقية في جامعة لندن:
«يذهب هذا العمل الأصيل للغاية بعيداً مُتجاوزاً أحدث الكتب التي تتحدث عن فلسطين- إسرائيل والتي تركّز على حلول الدولتين أو الدولة الواحدة للصراع. وتُظهِرُ إنسانيته ومنهجيته التحررية الضرورة الحتمية لتحول ثقافي في إسرائيل لصالح جميع ضحايا الصهيونية؛ يهوداً وفلسطينيين».
أما كريس ويدون "أستاذ في النظرية النقديّة والثقافيّة، جامعة كارديف" فيقول: «يُمثّل هذا الكتاب تحليلاً ثقافياً في أفضل حالاته، حيث يُقدّم الانتقادات العميقة للطرق الرئيسية للحياة وأنماط الوجود التي تُشكّل الصهيونية الإسرائيلية؛ من خلال مزيج نادر من النظرية المتطورة والتفاصيل المُتقنة والجذابة، إلتقط سڤيرسكي تعقيدات الذوات اليهودية الإسرائيلية على مستوى ممارسات الحياة اليومية. ما بعد إسرائيل هو إسهام مهم ومُتحدٍّ بصدد إعادة التفكير بثنائية فلسطين- إسرائيل وإعادة صناعتها».
وتحتفي أريئيلا أزولاي، مؤلّفة كتاب «من فلسطين إلى إسرائيل» بجرأة الطرح الموجود في هذا الكتاب: «ما بعد إسرائيل كتابٌ علماني. إنّه يرفض القبول بالصهيونية باعتبارها عقيدة دينية؛ وبدلاً من ذلك، يجرؤ هذا الكتاب الممتاز على قراءة الصهيونية على أنّها حلقة في تاريخ فلسطين لشعبين يعيشان فيها. هذا ليس بنبوءة ولا نهاية للعالم. إنّه تحليل سياسي وثقافي جريء للعمليات التي تقوّض النظام الإسرائيلي الحالي والتي هي قيد العمل في يومنا هذا».
أما رونيت لينتين، "مُحاضِرة في علم الاجتماع، كليّة ترينيتي في دبلن" فتقول: «يبدو النص المثير للجدل لمارسيلو سڤيرسكي، على الصعيد النظري، مُتطوراً ومُتاحاً في آن معاً. ما بعد إسرائيل هو تحليل أصيل، مكتوب بصياغة جميلة وممتعة، للوحدة السياسية التي تُدعى إسرائيل، وكيف أنه من الممكن تجاوزها من خلال التحوُّل الثقافي».
جاء الكتاب في 285 صفحة من القطع الوسط
عن المؤلف مارسيلو سڤيرسكي:
محاضر في الدراسات الدولية في مدرسة الإنسانيات والبحث الاجتماعي في جامعة وُلونغونغ منذ عام 2012، حيث انتقل إليها قادماً من جامعة كارديف في ويلز، والتي عمل بها في مركز الدراسات النقدية والثقافية منذ 2008. يُدرّس مارسيليو مواضيع في الدراسات الدولية وأبحاثاً عن سياسات الشرق الأوسط والفلسفة القارّية الأوروبية؛ ويركّز في المقام الأول على النظريات وممارسة النشاط السياسي والعمل الثوري والتحوّل الاجتماعي.
يحاول في مواضيعه تلك الربط بين الفلسفة القارية الأوروبية - بشكل خاص أعمال جيّل دولوز وفيلكس غواتاري؛ النظرية السياسية النقدية (critical political theory)؛ ونظريات ما بعد الاستعمار. يطبق مارسيليو أعماله على الشرق الأوسط وخاصة فلسطين – إسرائيل، كما يهتم بسياسات أمريكا اللاتينية. وتتسم أبحاثه بنوعيتها وميلها إلى المنهجيات الإثنوغرافية (الناسيّة).
'Grounded in his own experience, Marcelo Svirsky's controversial text is both theoretically sophisticated and accessible. After Israel is an original, engaging and beautifully written analysis of the political unit called Israel and how, through cultural transformation, it is possible to move beyond it.'
Ronit Lentin, Associate Professor of Sociology, Trinity College Dublin
'After Israel is a secular book. It refuses to accept Zionism as a religious dogma; this excellent book rather dares to read Zionism as an episode in the history of Palestine, and of the two peoples that live there. This is neither an apocalypse nor a prophecy. It is a daring political and cultural analysis of the processes undermining the current Israeli regime that are at work today.'
Ariella Azoulay, author of From Palestine to Israel and (with Adi Ophir) The One State Condition
'This is engaged cultural analysis at its best, offering insightful critiques of key ways of life and modes of being that constitute Israeli Zionism. A rare combination of sophisticated theory and fascinating, incisive detail, Svirsky captures the complexity of Jewish-Israeli subjectivities at the level of the practices of everyday life. After Israel is an important and provocative contribution to rethinking and remaking Israel-Palestine.'
Chris Weedon, Professor of Critical and Cultural Theory, Cardiff University
Israel-Palestine is an important contribution to the ongoing debate concerning the nature and status of
Israel’s occupation of Palestine. But rather than simply bemoan an obviously egregious state of affairs, it
looks at what is already being done to change things for the better and seeks to identify new ways in which
this “collaborative struggle” for justice might be advanced. This is a very significant book and deserves to be
widely read.’
– Ian Buchanan, University of Wollongong, Australia
’This book deals sensitively and brilliantly with the issue of Arab-Jewish relations in Israel, as no other book
has done in the past. It integrates a deep knowledge of the theoretical world with a very informed view, born
out of personal experience, of the reality on the ground. A must read for anyone concerned about the future
of Israel and Palestine.’
– Illan Pappe, University of Exeter, UK
convened to discuss different aspects of joint collective action – or ‘collaborative struggles’ – as a way of exiting not only colonial divisions and more generally oppressive relations in contemporary societies, most presentations at the conference focused on struggles for decolonisation in Australia and Israel–Palestine.
Catherine Mills, University of Sydney
General Organization of Workers in the Land of Israel) toward Palestine’s
Middle Eastern Jews (Mizrahim) between 1920 and the late 1940s. Based
on archival evidence and secondary sources, it argues that what Mizrahi
workers experienced in their dealings with the Histadrut was not the
result of random or unintended abuse but of a political culture that promoted social fragmentation and inequality. The corollary of this argument is that the Mizrahim who arrived immediately after 1948 found
themselves thrown into a racial binary mold that had been in the making
for about fifty years, beginning with the first waves of Zionist immigration
to Palestine.
resistance in settler colonial theory, and in so doing to argue that resistance need to be regarded as part of the structure in settler social formations. Secondly, the article rereads ‘the logic of elimination’ upon which settler colonialism is founded in order to suggest that as a settler colonial project Zionism historically evolved via a process of ‘double elimination’ – of indigenous life and of shared life. The aim of this article is then to fold the second conclusion into the first: alongside with indigenous resistance, shared life need be conceived as part of the structural struggle against settler colonialism. The article has three sections. In the first section, the state of the art in the field of settler colonial studies is presented in order to identify strengths and weaknesses. The second section offers a conceptualisation of the idea/practice of resistance by drawing from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s works. The last section reframes the logic of elimination concluding with a political vision that expands on the notion of resistance.
the ways Zionist subjectivities and divides are interconnected and expressed in Israeli society. To be practiced as a process of becoming, profanation, I argue, needs to be understood as a process of cultural transformation by which new forms of subjectivity are offered.
intercultural bilingual Arabic–Hebrew schools in Israel. While engineered as
oases of interculturalism amidst a life of ethnic segregation, such schools ultimately confront serious difficulties in escaping the constraints of identity politics and representation. This is expressed by the leading part that group identity plays in the schools’ everyday life. By drawing on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, we argue that this state of affairs diminishes the potential of the
intercultural encounter to overcome emotional and conceptual inhibitions reigning in larger society. Interculturalism, in order to distance itself from a politics of ressentiment that can only restrict its capacity to flourish, needs to place itself before representation.
imperatives of this either/or belonging.
Protestant and so on. Accordingly, we face the choice of claiming identity either as opponents or as partners in conflict – other ways are ruled out. From a Deleuzian perspective, this means abandoning new lifestyles by resurrecting strata based on dominant identities. Such, I submit, is the case with Galilee – the Arab–Jewish Bilingual School established in 1998 as a radical form of cooperation in Israel/Palestine. By applying Deleuzian tools – in particular, the role Deleuze bestows upon infinitive verbs – I examine unrealised potentials for continuing transformation.
בין הים לנהר ) 1967 — (, תל–אביב: רסלינג, 2008 , 499 עמ'.
and stresses the role of investigation in relation to practices within the social situations to which activism addresses itself.
and Democratic Theory (1970), together with Robert Dahl’s and Seymor Martin Lipset’s works on democratic theory, are just a few of the most prominent names and different works that have become the pillars of a very influential clergy, which has helped circumscribe contemporary understandings of politics. The paradigm introduced by such thinkers (and supported more effervescently by republicans than by liberals) did not seek to replace or challenge the privileged political form that is ‘representative democracy’; rather, it assumed that ‘mass participation is the lifeblood of representative democracy’ (Norris 2002: 5), and identified elitism as that which impedes the reinvigoration of democratic regimes (see Schumpeter 1950)....