Peace Palace (1907), The Hague Seat Of The International Court Of Justice. © Velvet, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Tension between some proponents of Postcolonial Studies and Jewish Studies has been mounting for decades, notwithstanding the efforts of scholars to integrate them. The Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 and Israel’s annihilatory response have brought the simmering pot of discourse — which far transcends the academy — past the boiling point. Its hot contents are now uncontainable as the grand redemptive narratives of national liberation have led to what Hannah Arendt called a total moral collapse. Only “few were still able to tell right from wrong” she wrote of Germans during the Nazi regime. I observe we are experiencing a non-totalitarian version of conditions, in which intellectuals and organizations are similarly complicit in promoting or excusing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide —also in the name of national liberation and permanent security. In this paper, I explore the lineaments of the epistemological, political, and moral crises that marks the current moment and that signal the exhaustion of these grand narratives which have underpinned part of the disciplines analyzed at this workshop.
