Proust Among the Nations: From Dreyfus to the Middle East (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780226725789)

Known for her far-reaching examinations of psychoanalysis, literature, and politics, Jacqueline Rose has in recent years turned her attention to the Israel-Palestine conflict, one of the most enduring and apparently intractable conflicts of our time. In Proust among the Nations, she takes the development of her thought on this crisis a stage further, revealing it as a distinctly Western problem.

In a radical rereading of the Dreyfus affair through the lens of Marcel Proust in dialogue with Freud, Rose offers a fresh and nuanced account of the rise of Jewish nationalism and the subsequent creation of Israel. Following Proust's heirs, Beckett and Genet, and a host of Middle Eastern writers, artists, and filmmakers, Rose traces the shifting dynamic of memory and identity across the crucial and ongoing cultural links between Europe and Palestine. A powerful and elegant analysis of the responsibility of writing, Proust among the Nations makes the case for literature as a unique resource for understanding political struggle and gives us new ways to think creatively about the violence in the Middle East.

Author: Jacqueline Rose
ISBN-10: 0226725782
ISBN-13: 9780226725789
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Language: English
Published: 02/01/2012
Pages: 256
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.88lbs
Size: 8.60h x 5.70w x 1.00d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 05/01/2012