The selected writings in Ella Shohat’s book, “On the Arab-Jew, Palestine, and Other Displacements” span a period of more than 30 years, and offer a richly rewarding panorama of the famed postcolonial scholar and cultural theorist’s work. This collection, as the publisher Pluto Press puts it, “gathers together her most influential political essays, interviews, speeches, testimonies and memoirs, as well as previously unpublished material”. It is thus suitable for anyone approaching Shohat’s work for the first time, as a kind of primer, as well as for those already familiar with the New York University based academic’s paradigm shifting scholarship.
The book is divided into four parts: ‘The Question of the Arab-Jew,’ ‘Between Palestine and Israel,’ ‘Cultural Politics of the Middle East,’ and ‘Muslims, Jews, and Diasporic Readings’. The chapters address a wide range of topics, from ‘Mizrahi Feminism: The Politics of Gender, Race, and Multiculturalism’ and ‘In Defence of Mordechai Vanunu: Nuclear Threat in the Middle East,’ to ‘On Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation’ and ‘Reflections on September 11’.
This book has been shortlisted for the Palestine Book awards 2017, please click here to read the full review on the Palestine book awards site.