Publications

Radical Atheism presents a profound new reading of the influential French philosopher Jacques Derrida. Against the prevalent notion that there was an ethical or religious “turn” in Derrida’s thinking, Hägglund argues that a radical atheism informs Derrida’s work from beginning to end. Proceeding from Derrida’s insight into the constitution of time, Hägglund demonstrates how Derrida rethinks the condition of identity, ethics, religion, and political emancipation in accordance with the logic of radical atheism. Hägglund challenges other major interpreters of Derrida’s work and offers a compelling account of Derrida’s thinking on life and death, good and evil, self and other.

This book takes a bold step in entirely overturning the most common perspective in the study of Zionist national culture. Instead of looking at the importance, centrality, conquest, and cultivation of the Land of Israel, while altogether ignoring the Mediterranean Sea, this book chooses to turn deliberate on the importance of the sea itself. Instead of putting at its center the territory, the very land of the land of Israel – the book examines the role of the sea in the imagined community of Eretz Israel and the State of Israel. Thus, the book develops an alternative analysis of the national culture even as it detects fractures and discontinuities in the imagined national community.

This book is a compilation of a selection of Hannan Hever’s essays, articles, and reviews about Hebrew poetry published over thirty years. They deal with the poetry of, among others, Yaakov Fichman; Yocheved Bat-Myriam; Nathan Alterman; Ezra Zusman; Shimon Helkin; Avraham Huss and Pinchas Sade, together with younger poets such as Nathan Zach; Meir Wiezeltier; Harold Schimel; Oded Peled; Yitzhak Laor; Maya Bezerano and Galit Hazan-Rokem.

Other articles are broader studies of, for example, the beginnings of modern Hebrew poetry; the poetry of the Lebanon War; Hebrew women’s poetry; and Israeli poetry written in the wake of the war of ‘73.

The consolidation of law and the development of legal writing during Spain’s Golden Age not only helped that country become a modern state but also affected its great literature. In this fascinating book, Roberto González Echevarría explores the works of Cervantes, showing how his representations of love were inspired by examples of human deviance and desire culled from legal discourse. González Echevarría describes Spain’s new legal policies, legislation, and institutions and explains how, at the same time, its literature became filled with love stories derived from classical and medieval sources.

How often do we think of cultural humiliation and failure as strengths? Against prevailing views on what it means to enjoy power as individuals, cultures, or nations, this provocative book looks at the making of cultural and national identities in modern China as building success on failure. It reveals the exercise of sovereign power where we least expect it and shows how this is crucial to our understanding of a modern world of conflict, violence, passionate suffering, and cultural difference.