Search results for ""Author Adi M. Ophir""
Fordham University Press In the Beginning Was the State: Divine Violence
Book SynopsisThis book explores God’s use of violence as depicted in the Hebrew Bible. Focusing on the Pentateuch, it reads biblical narratives and codes of law as documenting formations of theopolitical imagination. Ophir deciphers the logic of divine rule that these documents betray, with a special attention to the place of violence within it. The book draws from contemporary biblical scholarship, while also engaging critically with contemporary political theory and political theology, including the work of Walter Benjamin, Giorgio Agamben, Jan Assmann, Regina Schwartz, and Michael Walzer. Ophir focuses on three distinct theocratic formations: the rule of disaster, where catastrophes are used as means of governance; the biopolitical rule of the holy, where divine violence is spatially demarcated and personally targeted; and the rule of law where divine violence is vividly remembered and its return is projected, anticipated, and yet postponed, creating a prolonged lull for the text’s present. Different as these formations are, Ophir shows how they share an urform that anticipates the main outlines of the modern European state, which has monopolized the entire globe. A critique of the modern state, the book argues, must begin in revisiting the deification of the state, unpacking its mostly repressed theological dimension.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments | vii Introduction | 1 1. Staying with the Violence | 13 Divine Violence—A Trailer, 13 • A Brief Note on Counting and Explaining Away, 21 • Violence, as It Is Unfolding: A Phenomenological Sketch, 24 • Literal Reading and the Biblical Language of Violence, 36 2. Theocracy: The Persistence of an Ancient Lacuna | 45 Theocracy, with and beyond Flavius Josephus, 45 • The Blind Spot: Three Contemporary Readings of Biblical Violence, 53 • On the Attribution of Power and Authority, 74 • Kingship, Anarchy, Theocracy, 79 • Hypothesis, Method, and Stakes, 86 3. The Rule of Disaster: Extinction, Genocides, and Other Calamities | 96 Becoming Political, 96 • From Extinction to Genocide, 99 • Beyond Destruction, 105 • Separation and Disaster, 113 • Violence and Law, 124 • The Sovereign’s Moment, 130 • Scouts in the Land of the Giants: Three Theocratic Formations, 139 4. Holy Power: States of Exception, Targeted Killings, and the Logic of Substitution | 145 Holiness, 145 • Rebellions in the Wilderness, 160 • Substitution and Containment, 178 5. The Time of the Covenant and the Temporalization of Violence | 193 The Experimental Setting: Recalling Violence and Regulating It, 196 • The Covenant and the Curses, 204 • The Weight of the Present, 214 • The Subjects’ Trap, or the People’s Irony, 222 • A Midianite Utopia, 230 Afterword: The Pentateuchal State, and Ours | 241 Notes | 257 Works Cited | 317 Index | 335
£26.99
Fordham University Press In the Beginning Was the State: Divine Violence
Book SynopsisThis book explores God’s use of violence as depicted in the Hebrew Bible. Focusing on the Pentateuch, it reads biblical narratives and codes of law as documenting formations of theopolitical imagination. Ophir deciphers the logic of divine rule that these documents betray, with a special attention to the place of violence within it. The book draws from contemporary biblical scholarship, while also engaging critically with contemporary political theory and political theology, including the work of Walter Benjamin, Giorgio Agamben, Jan Assmann, Regina Schwartz, and Michael Walzer. Ophir focuses on three distinct theocratic formations: the rule of disaster, where catastrophes are used as means of governance; the biopolitical rule of the holy, where divine violence is spatially demarcated and personally targeted; and the rule of law where divine violence is vividly remembered and its return is projected, anticipated, and yet postponed, creating a prolonged lull for the text’s present. Different as these formations are, Ophir shows how they share an urform that anticipates the main outlines of the modern European state, which has monopolized the entire globe. A critique of the modern state, the book argues, must begin in revisiting the deification of the state, unpacking its mostly repressed theological dimension.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments | vii Introduction | 1 1. Staying with the Violence | 13 Divine Violence—A Trailer, 13 • A Brief Note on Counting and Explaining Away, 21 • Violence, as It Is Unfolding: A Phenomenological Sketch, 24 • Literal Reading and the Biblical Language of Violence, 36 2. Theocracy: The Persistence of an Ancient Lacuna | 45 Theocracy, with and beyond Flavius Josephus, 45 • The Blind Spot: Three Contemporary Readings of Biblical Violence, 53 • On the Attribution of Power and Authority, 74 • Kingship, Anarchy, Theocracy, 79 • Hypothesis, Method, and Stakes, 86 3. The Rule of Disaster: Extinction, Genocides, and Other Calamities | 96 Becoming Political, 96 • From Extinction to Genocide, 99 • Beyond Destruction, 105 • Separation and Disaster, 113 • Violence and Law, 124 • The Sovereign’s Moment, 130 • Scouts in the Land of the Giants: Three Theocratic Formations, 139 4. Holy Power: States of Exception, Targeted Killings, and the Logic of Substitution | 145 Holiness, 145 • Rebellions in the Wilderness, 160 • Substitution and Containment, 178 5. The Time of the Covenant and the Temporalization of Violence | 193 The Experimental Setting: Recalling Violence and Regulating It, 196 • The Covenant and the Curses, 204 • The Weight of the Present, 214 • The Subjects’ Trap, or the People’s Irony, 222 • A Midianite Utopia, 230 Afterword: The Pentateuchal State, and Ours | 241 Notes | 257 Works Cited | 317 Index | 335
£89.60
Fordham University Press Political Concepts A Critical Lexicon
Book SynopsisEssays by major contemporary figures in political philosophy, anthropology, and cultural studies presenting an original reflection on the question what is a particular concept (classic concepts in politics as well as newly politicized concepts) and asking what sort of work a rethinking of that concept can do for us now.
£27.90
Fordham University Press Political Concepts A Critical Lexicon
Book SynopsisEssays by major contemporary figures in political philosophy, anthropology, and cultural studies presenting an original reflection on the question what is a particular concept (classic concepts in politics as well as newly politicized concepts) and asking what sort of work a rethinking of that concept can do for us now.
£96.90
