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Inextricably
Bonded
Israeli Arab and Jewish
Writers Re-Visioning Culture
Rachel Brenner
"Rachel Brenner presents a brilliant comparison of texts,
but more important, she suggests a model of interpretation and
interrelation that can be applied to other literatures and other
conflicts."
—Nili Gold, University of Pennsylvania
Despite the tragic reality of the continuing Israeli-Arab conflict
and deep-rooted beliefs that the chasm between Israeli Jews and
Israeli Arabs is unbridgeable, this book affirms the bonds between
the two communities. Rachel Feldhay Brenner demonstrates that
the literatures of both ethnic groups defy the ideologies that
have obstructed dialogue between the two peoples.
Brenner argues that literary critics have ignored the variety
and the dissent in the novels of both Arab and Jewish writers
in Israel, giving them interpretations that embrace the politics
of exclusion and conform with Zionist ideology. Brenner offers
insightful new readings that compare fiction by Jewish writers
Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua, David Grossman, and others with fiction
written in Hebrew by such Arab-Israeli writers as Atallah Mansour,
Emile Habiby, and Anton Shammas. This parallel analysis highlights
the moral and psychological dilemmas faced by both the Jewish
victors and the Arab vanquished, and Brenner suggests that the
hope for release from the historical trauma lies-on both sides-in
reaching an understanding with and of the adversary.
Drawing upon the theories of Walter Benjamin, Jacques Lacan,
Sigmund Freud, Emanuel Levinas, and others, Inextricably Bonded
is an innovative and illuminating examination of literary dissent
from dominant ideology.
"By comparing Arab writers whose literary
language is Hebrew with Jewish Hebrew writers, Brenner helps
establish a balance and rebuts the exclusionary definition of
Israeli literature. Her original analysis ties the Zionist rejection
of the Jewish Diaspora to the denial of the presence, and subsequently,
of the rights, of Palestine's Arabs. The book's scope and structure
provide a fresh perspective on one hundred years of cultural
and political conflict."—Gershon Shafir, University
of California, San Diego
 Rachel
Feldhay Brenner is professor of Hebrew and Semitic studies
at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is the author
of Writing as Resistance, Assimilation and Assertion,
and A.M. Klein, The Father of Canadian Jewish Literature.
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December 2003
LC: 2003007695 PJ
272 pp. 6 x 9
ISBN 0-299-18960-0 Cloth $35.00 s
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