Abstract

This essay explores one of the central issues in Ronit Matalon's writing from its inception: the home, especially as it manifests itself in her recent novel, Kol tse'adenu (2008). Matalon is known as one of the dominant voices in the Israeli literary sphere following the disintegration of Israel's hegemonic centers of power in the late 1970s. However, her position in the critical domain concerning Zionist identity in the 1980s and 1990s is extremely complex. On the basis of a philosophical analysis of the interrelated concepts of home, identity, and alterity, this essay considers the political implications of a perception of home that attends to the chaotic as an integral part of the domestic sphere, and approaches the tense inner dialectic by which Matalon puts the category of home and its necessity on one line with her incisive critique of Zionists' notions of identity.

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