Arab Jews' after structuralism

Zionist discourse and the (de)formation of an ethnic identity

Bibliographic Data

ID2979331
AuthorsYehouda Shenhav (Tel Aviv University, corresponding author), Hannan Hever (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Year2012
Volume18
Issue1
Pages101-118
Publication date2012-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Identities (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1350-4630 • E-ISSN: 1363-0296
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13504630.2011.629517
OpenAlexW2051840043
LanguageEN
Citations received19
References cited27

We revisit the term ‘Arab Jews’, which has been widely used in the past to depict Jews living in Arab countries, but was extirpated from the political lexicon upon their arrival in Israel in the 1950s and 1960s. We follow first the demise of this discourse and then its political reawakening in the 1990s, which was carried out mostly by second-generation Mizrahi intellectuals and activists. We review this surge of the 1990s, distinguishing between structural and post-structural interpretations of the concept, although we also show that they are often interwoven. According to the structural interpretation, the term ‘Arab Jew’ was founded on a binary logic wherein Jews and Arabs are posed as cultural and political antagonisms. The post-structural interpretation rejects the bifurcated form in lieu of a hybrid epistemology, which tolerates and enables a dynamic movement between the two facets of ‘Arabs’ and ‘Jews’. We spell out the differences between these two heuristic modes of interpretation and speculate about their relevance to the political conditions in the Middle East today

Aesthetics · Demise · Diaspora · Epistemology · Ethnic group · Identity (music) · Interpretation (philosophy) · Lexicon · Linguistics · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Spell · Structuralism (philosophy of science) · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Jewish Identity and Society · Law · Middle East Politics and Society · Philosophy