Books
ISRAEL AND THE DAUGHTERS OF THE SHOAH
Reoccupying the Territories of Silence
Ronit Lentin
ISBN 978-1-57181-775-4 Pb ( 2000)
ISBN 978-1-57181-774-7 Hb ( 2000)
The murder of a third of Europe’s Jews by the Nazis is unquestionably the worst catastrophe in the history of contemporary Judaism and a formative event in the history of Zionism and the State of Israel. Understandably, therefore, the Shoah, written about, analyzed, and given various political interpretations, has shaped public discourse in the history of the State of Israel. The key element of Shoah in the Israeli context is victimhood and as such it has become a source of shame, shrouded in silence and subordinated to the dominant discourse which, resulting from the construction of a “new Hebrew” active subjectivity, taught the postwar generation of Israelis to reject diaspora Jewry and its alleged passivity in the face of catastrophe.
RE-PRESENTING THE SHOAH FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
Edited by Ronit Lentin
ISBN 978-1-57181-802-7 Hb ( 2004)
Despite Adorno’s famous dictum, the memory of the Shoah features prominently in the cultural legacy of the 20th century and beyond. It has led to a proliferation of works of representation and re-memorialization which have brought in their wake concerns about a ‘holocaust industry’ and banalization. This volume sheds fresh light on some of the issues, such as the question of silence and denial, of the formation of contemporary identities — German, East European, Jewish or Israeli, the consequences of the legacy of the Shoah for survivors and for the ’second generation,’ and the political, ideological, and professional implications of Shoah historiography. One of the conclusions to be drawn from this volume is that the ‘Auschwitz code,’ invoked in relation to all ‘unspeakable’ catastrophes, has impoverished our vocabulary; it does not help us remember the Shoah and its victims, but rather erases that memory.
WOMEN AND THE POLITICS OF MILITARY CONFRONTATION
Palestinian and Israeli Gendered Narratives of Dislocation
Edited by Nahla Abdo and Ronit Lentin
ISBN 978-1-57181-459-3 Pb ( 2002)
ISBN 978-1-57181-498-2 Hb (2002)
As the crisis in Israel does not show any signs of abating, this remarkable collection, edited by an Israeli and a Palestinian scholar and with contributions by Palestinian and Israeli women, offers a vivid and harrowing picture of the conflict and of its impact on daily life, especially as it affects women’s experiences that differ significantly from those of men.
RACE AND STATE
Edited by Alana Lentin & Ronit Lentin
Cambridge Scholars Press, September 2008 [June 2006]
Speaking about racism in the western political climate of the first decade of the twenty-first century is more difficult than ever before. There is a feeling in post-colonial and post-immigration societies that the blatant overt racism of the past is no longer as pressing. Admitting racism elicits discomfort because common wisdom tells us that racism opposes everything that we believe in as citizens of democratic, “civilised” modern states. Yet state racism appears to be here to stay and, in many ways, is more acceptable than ever before. Immigration detention centres, the deportation of “failed” asylum seekers and “illegal” immigrants, racial profiling and the rolling back of liberties won by the civil rights movement are all examples of how state racism impacts on our daily lives. Race and State contributes to breaking the taboo of discussing the links between “race” and state. The papers collected in this book highlight the interconnections between “race” and state, from historical, theoretical or contemporary sociological perspectives. MORE…
(RE)SEARCHING WOMEN
By Anne Byrne and Ronit Lentin
Published by Institute of Public Administration, 2000
ISBN 1902448464, 9781902448466
This is the first Irish academic text on feminist research methodologies. It brings into the public domain the debate about feminist research in Ireland as a tool for social change.
RACISM AND ANTI-RACISM IN IRELAND
Edited by Ronit Lentin and Robbie McVeigh
Published by Beyond the Pale Publications: Belfast (2002)
ISBN 1900960168 (pb)
In a context where “I’m not racist, but” is still more preface than parody, Ronit Lentin and Robbie McVeigh’s challenging volume provides a significant overview of pressing debates for Irish society, and perhaps more importantly, a critique of the terms on which some of those debates are currently being conducted. As the 1990s progressed, substantially increased yet relatively minor flows of migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers to Ireland generated both a raft of depressingly familiar institutional and individual reactions to the economic and cultural consequences of the ‘flood’, and a robust response from civil society, activists and researchers. This book aims to build on what has become a steady stream of recent publications and provide a central text for students and a wider ‘interested’ readership. In this it is largely successful, if marginally less so in negotiating a relationship between the types of writing it brings together. MORE…
GENDER & CATASTROPHE
Edited by Ronit Lentin
Zed Books: London (1997)
ISBN: 9781856494458 (hb)
ISBN: 1 85649 446 2 (pb)
This collection brings together a wide variety of feminist academics and activists to explore the gendered and gendering effects of violence against women in war and other disasters.
The contributors explore the ways in which women are targeted as ethnic subjects in extreme situations such as major wars, genocides, famines, slavery, the Holocaust, mass rape, and ethnic cleansing.
The female experience of methodical genocidal rape in the former Yugoslavia, women’s coerced participation in the Rwandan massacre, the comfort women system during World War II, the gendering of genocidal strategies during the Holocaust, nuclear testing in the Pacific and the reproduction ‘policy’ in Tibet are all subjected to in-depth analysis.
The result is a book which integrates women’s differing experiences of war and violence into a wider framework – a framework which uncovers the true consequences of identifying women as simultaneously sexual objects, transmitters of culture and symbols of the nation.
MORE…