Oded Nir
Biographic Data
| ID | 1484547 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Oded Nir |
| GIVEN NAMES | Oded |
| FAMILY NAME | Nir |
| SIGNATURE | NIR O |
| AFFILIATIONS | City University of New York |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2061-9188 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 4 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Reading Israeli culture in the aftermath of October 7, 2023
Introduction: Impasse, Interregnum, Transition
In this introduction, Brittany Murray and Oded Nir argue that the current conjuncture confronts us with two seemingly contradictory temporalities: intolerable stasis, and frantic overactivity. The authors attempt to disentangle these two by tracing their presence in three fields: political economy, politics, and culture. They address writing by Aaron Benanav to address the sense of economic impasse. They argue that the doubling down on capitalist…
Autonomy of Art, Anxieties of Transition
In this article, the authors argue that our moment of transition in the capitalist mode of production requires us to rethink the received opposition between politically committed art and autonomous art, through a reading of the recent film Anatomy of a Fall. The first part of the article examines accounts of artistic autonomy. Previous definitions of autonomy identified a two-pronged threat to art, one of political propaganda and the other of cap…
Zionism as a Failed Cultural Revolution
This article argues that Mao’s writing on contradiction and cultural revolution allows us to understand Zionism in a unique Marxist perspective, as a failed cultural revolution. The author first presents Mao’s writing on contradictions, and the historical interactions among them, and then elaborates Mao’s understanding of cultural revolution, emphasizing Fredric Jameson’s appropriation of it as the second moment of revolution: the transformation …
Regressing Sars-CoV-2 Sewage Measurements Onto Covid-19 Burden in the Population: A Proof-of-Concept for Quantitative Environmental Surveillance
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is an RNA virus, a member of the coronavirus family of respiratory viruses that includes severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 1 (SARS-CoV-1) and the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). It has had an acute and dramatic impact on health care systems, economies, and societies of affected countries during the past 8 months. Widespread testing and tracing efforts are being empl…
Finding Work in Israeli Fiction
In this article, I argue that contemporary Israeli literary criticism posits the nation as its horizon of interpretation, which has eroded Israeli literary criticism’s ability to detect newness in its objects of inquiry, and to present Israeli literary history as advancing through engagement with new social problems. I examine three literary works: A.B. Yehoshua’s 1963 novella “Facing the Forests,” Etgar Keret’s Missing Kissinger (1994), and Rutu…
Labor in Israeli culture
Special Issue of Postmodern Culture: “Speculative Fiction and Futurism in the Middle East and North Africa.”
World Reduction in Contemporary Israeli Film and TV
I argue that many contemporary Israeli films and TV shows imagine an operation of "world reduction"—an entry into social spaces that entails neutralizing social forces. The article gives three examples for this operation: in the TV show Fauda and in the films In Between and The Band's Visit. I argue that the resulting juxtaposition of different social spaces in each film or TV show is an allegory of the coexistence of different social forms under…
Rethinking wastewater risks and monitoring in light of the Covid-19 pandemic
A short history of Zionist and Israeli political Marxism
In this article, I argue that despite seemingly intractable disagreements between different Zionist and Israeli political Marxists, they share a common theoretical and political perspective, which cannot simply be summed up as the commitment to a set of universal values. Rather, I argue that common to all Zionist and Israeli political Marxists is a commitment to a particular struggle at their historical moment, only through which universal social…
Fauda and crisis
One of the more boring areas in the interpretation of Israeli culture today is the one dealing with texts that represent “the conflict.” Immediately, the sole question that guides interpretation in
Where Is the Marxist Critique of Israel/Palestine
This essay argues for the urgent necessity of developing a new Marxist analysis and political horizon for Palestine/Israel. Two factors coalesce to affirm this conclusion: the near absence from contemporary academic writing of any discernibly Marxist analyses of Palestine/Israel and the deep crisis of the 1990s leftist project of peace, whose decline has not spurred a leftist alternative to it. The authors suggest several explanations for this st…
There Are Always Grounds for Seeking a World That Is More Free and More Just”: An Interview with Noam Chomsky on Israel, Palestine, and Zionism
In this dialogue, Joel Wainwright and Oded Nir interview one of the most influential commentators on Israel and Palestine, Noam Chomsky. Their wide-ranging discussion examines key controversies surrounding the issue: Israeli aggression, the paradigms for potential solutions to the conflict, early Zionism, the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign, and the analogy between Israel/Palestine to apartheid South Africa
Literature at work: Zionist literary realism between utopia and “Khirbet Khizeh”
Zionist Hebrew literary realism from the 1920s and 1930s is usually considered to be nothing but propagandistic literature, working in the service of national ideological imperatives. Challenging this literary-historical narrative, this essay argues that Zionist realist writers attempted to imagine radical collective transformation, which cannot be reduced to (and was at times at odds with) the subsequent establishment of the State of Israel. Emp…
Lukács Today: Totality, Labor, and Fantasies of Revenge
Georg Lukács’s notion of totality and its relation to the formation of revolutionary subjectivity has been heavily criticized by both Marxists and non-Marxists. Interrogating the critiques of totality elaborated by Lyotard, Althusser, Deleuze, and others, this essay aims to show that rather than constituting rejections of Lukácsian totality, these critiques elaborate a moment in the process of totalization as it is conceived by Lukács. Contrastin…
World Reduction in Contemporary Israeli Film and TV
I argue that many contemporary Israeli films and TV shows imagine an operation of "world reduction"—an entry into social spaces that entails neutralizing social forces. The article gives three examples for this operation: in the TV show Fauda and in the films In Between and The Band's Visit. I argue that the resulting juxtaposition of different social spaces in each film or TV show is an allegory of the coexistence of different social forms under…
A short history of Zionist and Israeli political Marxism
In this article, I argue that despite seemingly intractable disagreements between different Zionist and Israeli political Marxists, they share a common theoretical and political perspective, which cannot simply be summed up as the commitment to a set of universal values. Rather, I argue that common to all Zionist and Israeli political Marxists is a commitment to a particular struggle at their historical moment, only through which universal social…
Where Is the Marxist Critique of Israel/Palestine
This essay argues for the urgent necessity of developing a new Marxist analysis and political horizon for Palestine/Israel. Two factors coalesce to affirm this conclusion: the near absence from contemporary academic writing of any discernibly Marxist analyses of Palestine/Israel and the deep crisis of the 1990s leftist project of peace, whose decline has not spurred a leftist alternative to it. The authors suggest several explanations for this st…
There Are Always Grounds for Seeking a World That Is More Free and More Just”: An Interview with Noam Chomsky on Israel, Palestine, and Zionism
In this dialogue, Joel Wainwright and Oded Nir interview one of the most influential commentators on Israel and Palestine, Noam Chomsky. Their wide-ranging discussion examines key controversies surrounding the issue: Israeli aggression, the paradigms for potential solutions to the conflict, early Zionism, the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign, and the analogy between Israel/Palestine to apartheid South Africa
Literature at work: Zionist literary realism between utopia and “Khirbet Khizeh”
Zionist Hebrew literary realism from the 1920s and 1930s is usually considered to be nothing but propagandistic literature, working in the service of national ideological imperatives. Challenging this literary-historical narrative, this essay argues that Zionist realist writers attempted to imagine radical collective transformation, which cannot be reduced to (and was at times at odds with) the subsequent establishment of the State of Israel. Emp…
Lukács Today: Totality, Labor, and Fantasies of Revenge
Georg Lukács’s notion of totality and its relation to the formation of revolutionary subjectivity has been heavily criticized by both Marxists and non-Marxists. Interrogating the critiques of totality elaborated by Lyotard, Althusser, Deleuze, and others, this essay aims to show that rather than constituting rejections of Lukácsian totality, these critiques elaborate a moment in the process of totalization as it is conceived by Lukács. Contrastin…
Fauda and crisis
One of the more boring areas in the interpretation of Israeli culture today is the one dealing with texts that represent “the conflict.” Immediately, the sole question that guides interpretation in
Where Is the Marxist Critique of Israel/Palestine
This essay argues for the urgent necessity of developing a new Marxist analysis and political horizon for Palestine/Israel. Two factors coalesce to affirm this conclusion: the near absence from contemporary academic writing of any discernibly Marxist analyses of Palestine/Israel and the deep crisis of the 1990s leftist project of peace, whose decline has not spurred a leftist alternative to it. The authors suggest several explanations for this st…
There Are Always Grounds for Seeking a World That Is More Free and More Just”: An Interview with Noam Chomsky on Israel, Palestine, and Zionism
In this dialogue, Joel Wainwright and Oded Nir interview one of the most influential commentators on Israel and Palestine, Noam Chomsky. Their wide-ranging discussion examines key controversies surrounding the issue: Israeli aggression, the paradigms for potential solutions to the conflict, early Zionism, the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign, and the analogy between Israel/Palestine to apartheid South Africa
Rethinking wastewater risks and monitoring in light of the Covid-19 pandemic
A short history of Zionist and Israeli political Marxism
In this article, I argue that despite seemingly intractable disagreements between different Zionist and Israeli political Marxists, they share a common theoretical and political perspective, which cannot simply be summed up as the commitment to a set of universal values. Rather, I argue that common to all Zionist and Israeli political Marxists is a commitment to a particular struggle at their historical moment, only through which universal social…
World Reduction in Contemporary Israeli Film and TV
I argue that many contemporary Israeli films and TV shows imagine an operation of "world reduction"—an entry into social spaces that entails neutralizing social forces. The article gives three examples for this operation: in the TV show Fauda and in the films In Between and The Band's Visit. I argue that the resulting juxtaposition of different social spaces in each film or TV show is an allegory of the coexistence of different social forms under…
Regressing Sars-CoV-2 Sewage Measurements Onto Covid-19 Burden in the Population: A Proof-of-Concept for Quantitative Environmental Surveillance
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is an RNA virus, a member of the coronavirus family of respiratory viruses that includes severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 1 (SARS-CoV-1) and the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). It has had an acute and dramatic impact on health care systems, economies, and societies of affected countries during the past 8 months. Widespread testing and tracing efforts are being empl…
Finding Work in Israeli Fiction
In this article, I argue that contemporary Israeli literary criticism posits the nation as its horizon of interpretation, which has eroded Israeli literary criticism’s ability to detect newness in its objects of inquiry, and to present Israeli literary history as advancing through engagement with new social problems. I examine three literary works: A.B. Yehoshua’s 1963 novella “Facing the Forests,” Etgar Keret’s Missing Kissinger (1994), and Rutu…
Labor in Israeli culture
Special Issue of Postmodern Culture: “Speculative Fiction and Futurism in the Middle East and North Africa.”
Zionism as a Failed Cultural Revolution
This article argues that Mao’s writing on contradiction and cultural revolution allows us to understand Zionism in a unique Marxist perspective, as a failed cultural revolution. The author first presents Mao’s writing on contradictions, and the historical interactions among them, and then elaborates Mao’s understanding of cultural revolution, emphasizing Fredric Jameson’s appropriation of it as the second moment of revolution: the transformation …
Reading Israeli culture in the aftermath of October 7, 2023
Introduction: Impasse, Interregnum, Transition
In this introduction, Brittany Murray and Oded Nir argue that the current conjuncture confronts us with two seemingly contradictory temporalities: intolerable stasis, and frantic overactivity. The authors attempt to disentangle these two by tracing their presence in three fields: political economy, politics, and culture. They address writing by Aaron Benanav to address the sense of economic impasse. They argue that the doubling down on capitalist…
Autonomy of Art, Anxieties of Transition
In this article, the authors argue that our moment of transition in the capitalist mode of production requires us to rethink the received opposition between politically committed art and autonomous art, through a reading of the recent film Anatomy of a Fall. The first part of the article examines accounts of artistic autonomy. Previous definitions of autonomy identified a two-pronged threat to art, one of political propaganda and the other of cap…
Political science (12 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies (9 works) · Law (8 works) · History (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Aesthetics (5 works) · Art (5 works) · History (5 works)