Description
Book SynopsisIt argues that during the postcolonial and post-Holocaust era, Jewish thinkers in different parts of the world were influenced by Global South thought and mobilized this rich set of intellectual resources to confront the assimilation of normative Judaism by various incipient neo-colonial powers.
Trade Review“Decolonial Judaism is both an intellectual tour-de-force and a pointed critique of the Jewish historical story presented primarily as a Western European event … . In the contemporary moment where colonialism still hovers in the background and decolonialism continues to chart a new and richer redirection in Western thought, Slabodsky’s Decolonial Judaism is an important contribution to this project.” (Steven Leonard Jacobs, Religious Studies Review, Vol. 43 (04), December, 2017)
“This is an extraordinary book. It’s perhaps even ironic and poignant, given the rising antisemitism under a turn to the right in the USA, the UK, and France … . Slabodsky takes such problems head on through a creative and provocative synthesis of theories from the global south. … as this book shows, it should also do so at methodological levels, as the sources, approach, and modes of argumentation are fine exemplars of … the creolization of theory.” (Caribbean Philosophical Association Frantz Fanon Prize 2017 recipients, caribbeanphilosophicalassociation.org, January, 2017)
Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Past Was Worse (and We Miss It) 1. Jewish Thought, Postcolonialism, and Decoloniality: The Geo-Politics of a Barbaric Encounter 2. The Narrative of Barbarism: Western Designs for a Globalized North 3. Negative Barbarism: Marxist Counter-Narrative in the Provincial North 4. Transitional Barbarism: Levinas's Counter-Narrative and the Global South 5. Positive Barbarism: Memmi's Counter-Narrative in a Southern Network 6. Barbaric Paradoxes: Zionism from the Standpoint of the Borderlands 7. After 9/11: New Barbarism and the Legacies in the Global South Epilogue: Duped by Jewish Suffering (Analectical Interjections)