Writing Nature in Hebrew Literature: an Ecofeminist Reading
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Writing Nature in Hebrew Literature: An Ecofeminist Reading. Susannah Pearce. Robinson College. March 2021. This thesis is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Declaration This thesis is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except as declared in the preface and specified in the text. I further state that no substantial part of my thesis has already been submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for any such degree, diploma or other qualification at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. It does not exceed the prescribed word limit for the Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Degree Committee. Writing Nature in Hebrew Literature: An Ecofeminist Reading. Susannah Pearce. Abstract Nature in literature is often seen as a given, either a simple backdrop, or a means to reflect back some aspect of character, plot or theme. Yet, ecofeminists show, the construction of nature put forward by the literary hegemony has an effect on the way in which we conceptualise both our relationship with the natural world, and our relationships with one another. Indeed, the oppression of the human ’other’ and the domination of the natural ‘other’ have their origins in the very same source, and work to reinforce, legitimise and naturalise one another. In this thesis, I analyse Hebrew literature, putting nature at the forefront. In doing so, I extract three competing but supposedly complementary modes of viewing nature by the Zionist hegemony: as ‘barren wilderness’, as a ‘lover’ or ‘bride’, and as a ‘mother’. Paying attention to the gendered associations implicit in all three of these modes, I use Karen Warren’s ‘Logic of Domination’ as a conceptual key to investigate the interplay between gender, nation and nature in modern Hebrew literature. In doing so, I uncover an underlying tension in the threefold Zionist reading of nature, one which threatens to undermine the very model of the man-nature relationship that it creates. The Zionists wished to rescue the land from its perceived state of abandonment, barrenness, and abuse via their mastery and cultivation of it, to redeem it through ‘conquest of the wilderness’. Yet in doing so, I argue, they did not truly redeem nature from its fallen state, but simply re-imprisoned it in new chains of their own making: those of the hegemonic Zionist discourse. Nature for and of itself was not truly seen, but merely co- opted to serve the ‘redemption’ of the Jewish nation. Reading Meir Shalev’s The Blue Mountain (Roman Rusi) and other texts through an ecofeminist lens, I investigate the workings of this layered discourse, and its implications both for nature and for Zionism’s other ‘others’. Contents 1. Nature in Hebrew literature: A Paradox .................................................................................................. 1 1.1. Scope and Tools of This Thesis .................................................................................................... 2 1.2. Ecocriticism as a Theoretical Field............................................................................................... 6 1.3. What is Ecofeminism? ................................................................................................................ 10 1.4. Relevant Scholarship in Israel Studies ....................................................................................... 20 1.4.1. Ecocriticism ........................................................................................................................ 20 1.4.2. Space and Place ................................................................................................................. 22 1.4.3. Feminism and Gender ....................................................................................................... 23 1.4.4. The Colonialism Debate ..................................................................................................... 28 1.5. The Direction of This Thesis ....................................................................................................... 29 2. Barren Wilderness .............................................................................................................................. 31 2.1. Imagination and Reality ............................................................................................................. 33 2.2. To Build and Be Built .................................................................................................................. 39 2.3. Technological Optimism ............................................................................................................ 40 2.4. The Moral Imperative ................................................................................................................ 43 2.5. The Bewitching Other ................................................................................................................ 54 2.6. Affirmation of the Wilderness ................................................................................................... 60 2.7. The ‘Barren Wilderness’ in The Blue Mountain ........................................................................ 67 3. Lover/Bride ......................................................................................................................................... 77 3.1. The Promised Bride .................................................................................................................... 81 3.2. Rebuilding the Masculine .......................................................................................................... 86 3.3. The Damsel in Distress ............................................................................................................... 97 3.4. Sublimation of Desire ............................................................................................................... 106 3.5. The Creative Feminine ............................................................................................................. 112 3.6. The ‘Lover/Bride’ in The Blue Mountain ................................................................................. 122 4. Mother Land ..................................................................................................................................... 131 4.1. The Authentic Jew of the East ................................................................................................. 133 4.2. Naturalising Nature .................................................................................................................. 146 4.3. Planted in the Soil of Their Homeland .................................................................................... 151 4.4. Always Elsewhere ..................................................................................................................... 158 4.5. Desert as Mother Land ............................................................................................................ 163 4.6. Deranged Motherhood, Estranged Land ................................................................................ 167 4.7. The ‘Mother Land’ in The Blue Mountain ............................................................................... 174 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................. 179 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................................. 187 1 1. Nature in Hebrew literature: A Paradox “We are woman and nature. And he says he cannot hear us speak.”1 Nature for the Zionist is the beloved towards whom they have longed in the centuries of diaspora, the damsel in distress calling out to be saved by her Jewish hero-knight, the blushing maiden to conquer through devoted work and songs of seduction. And yet she is also naked, angry and depraved, shrieking out of the wilderness, launching unhinged attacks on those who attempt to tame her, seductive, tricksy and manipulative, a whirlwind of chaotic passion and chasm of barrenness, death and destruction. And that is still not all: nature is also a mother, selfless, endlessly generous, belly swollen with fat fruits always ready to harvest, breast engorged with milk, and bursting with new life, a gentle riot of nurturing creation. These three feminine personifications of nature are rarely – though not never – explicit, yet they permeate Zionist conceptions of the land of Israel and the natural world contained within her from the private diaries of the early pioneers right through to works of modern literature. Each of these is familiar, comfortable, it seems almost to be a cliché, a natural, obvious way of relating to nature. And yet they also appear to be opposites: Nature is barren yet fertile, balanced yet chaotic, nurturing yet destructive. She is both an inviting, timid lover begging to be seduced and mastered, and a sexually voracious yet hostile, uncontrollable witch. So much scholarship on Zionism deals with uncovering paradoxes and tensions inherent within it, yet this great paradox of nature remains largely unexamined – is nature a nurturing mother, a seductive bride, or a barren and wanton whore? How can these three strands co-exist together? It is clear that in spite of the heavy emphasis