In Spite of Partition: Jews, Arabs, and the Limits of Separatist Imagination (review)

Much has been written—by journalists, pundits and academics—about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict of the last sixty-plus years and the Arab-Jewish tensions in Palestine that preceded it. The emphasis, here, is on the terms "tension" and "conflict" and on, in particular, the human suffering that armed conflict between Jews and Arabs has caused. Trolling through this literature, one encounters appeals on both sides to a similar rhetoric of victimization and to parallel religio-historical claims to territory. In her engaging book, In Spite of Partition: Jews, Arabs and the Limits of Separatist Imagination, Gil Hochberg upends the rhetoric of polarization, offering instead a nuanced exploration of the deeply intertwined identities "Jew" and "Arab." Hochberg's analyses also transcend superficial similarities, delving instead into literary texts that reflect on the shared history, culture, language and identity common to Jews and Arabs, both in spite of and as a result of the conflict.

The book's title is derived from a line in Edward Said's 1999 essay "What Can Separation Mean?"—indeed, Hochberg's writing sustains an ongoing dialogue with Said's oeuvre. In constructing her argument, Hochberg traces "Zionism's orientalism" to "the dubious status of the Jew within the European orientalist imagination" (10). Zionism's goal of creating a "New Jew" who could build and participate in a modern, Western state is threatened by the figures of both the Arab and the "backward Jew." The pivotal argument of the book, and indeed one of the book's most important theoretical contributions, is that "the two 'threats' [to Zionism]—that presented by the 'Jew' and that presented by the 'Arab'—are in fact one" (14).

Throughout the book, Hochberg's literary analyses are both compelling and engaging. She masterfully presents sophisticated, nuanced theoretical arguments and critical interpretations in language that is clear and accessible. The first chapter examines the possibilities offered by the figure of the "Arab Jew" through a discussion of The Pillar of Salt (1953) and One Thousand Years, One Day (1986) by Albert Memmi and Edmond Amram el Maleh respectively, both francophone, North African Jewish authors. The next three chapters explore various articulations of the Arab-Jewish nexus in Israel. Chapter 2 unpacks the notion of "levantinism" as outlined in the essays of Jacqueline Kahanoff, which were written in English and published in Hebrew translation in the Israeli press between 1958 and 1978 and revisited by Ronit Matalon in her novel The One Facing Us (1995). This chapter opens with perhaps the most lucid explanation and interpretation of the terms "levantine" and "levantimism" that I have ever encountered; Hochberg's critical analysis of these terms in their Israeli idiom is incisive and illuminating.

Hochberg's readings of Arabesques (1986) by Palestinian-Israeli novelist, essayist, poet and playwright Anton Shammas and Bound (1990), Albert Swissa, the Mizrahi Israeli novelist of Moroccan descent in chapters 3 and 4, respectively, offer a pointed, and well-deserved, critique of the questionable and sometimes downright racist assumptions evident in the (often positive) critical reception of these two works in Israel. Particularly strong is Hochberg's reading of Bound as a narrative of abjection, which relies on the theoretical formulations of Julia Kristeva and Jacques Lacan. Chapter 5 addresses two works by Arab writers that emerge out of the experience of the Lebanese civil war: Amin Maalouf's Ports of Call (1996) and Mahmoud Darwish's Memory for Forgetfulness (1987).

Certainly Hochberg's claims will raise hackles of those parties invested in a separatist ideology. In Spite of Partition both critiques the foundational assumptions of this discourse and offers examples of an array of texts by Jews and Arabs that themselves exemplify and articulate the possibilities inherent in a shared Jewish-Arab imaginary. This book offers a provocative and refreshingly new approach to the predominant, divisive discourse.

However, as compelling as I find Hochberg's underlying argument, as well...