Levine;
[email protected] draft: cite only with permission “Yes, but how should we feel about this?” Diasporic Love, Political Radicalism and the Sustainably Critical Study of the Israeli- Palestinian Conflict Daniel J. Levine The University of Alabama Abstract: This paper explores Gershom Scholem’s notion of the ‘apocalyptic sting’ – a messianic political theology which, he feared, haunted Jewish and Israeli politics through the Hebrew language. The paper makes three key moves: first, I connect this notion to contemporary political radicalism in Israel. Second, I suggest how that ‘sting’ might be chastened and contained, even as the belief structures to which it gives rise are not fundamentally repudiated. Third, I suggest ways in which the social-scientific study of world politics – International Relations, broadly conceived – might contribute to that chastening and containment. To that end, I develop the notion of diasporic love, connecting the writings of novelists Ghassan Kanafani and Sami Michael to the work of Jonathan and Daniel Boyarin. I argue that while the social-scientific study of world politics cannot define or rationalize that love, it can work to support it: by thinking through its conditions of possibility, and by helping to translate it into practical programs of political action and affiliation. Keywords: Emotions; International Relations theory; Israel-Palestine conflict; diasporic love; apocalyptic sting; sustainable critique; Scholem, Gershom; Michael, Sami; Kanafani, Ghassan; Ravitzky, Aviezer; Boyarin, Jonathan; Boyarin, Daniel 1 Levine;
[email protected] draft: cite only with permission I. Introduction Can Jewish religious thought now acknowledge an intermediate or hybrid model that is neither exile nor redemption? Can it make room for a notion of Jewish historical existence that hovers somewhere between these two poles, without clearly belonging to either? - Ravitzky (1996)1 How could one not seethe and bubble? How could one in silence toil? Peace drives the mind unto delusion, Peace sets the blood to boil.