ABSTRACT
For many decades the books and essays of Edward Said have had enormous influence on the writing and teaching of the Middle East conflict. Said's narrative of the Palestinians as victims of Zionism may have worked a powerful effect across university campuses and been fully metabolized by much of the media around the world, but it has done little to explain to Palestinians how they have become trapped in cycles of violence that perhaps give genuine expression to what they want but not to what they can achieve. Instead of issuing a call for an ‘auto-emancipation’12 that might force a critical and painful introspection, Said proclaims a Palestinian nation still inhabiting the totalizing rigidity of postcolonial exploitation and subordination, leaving it no option but a kind of ineffective Foucauldian resistance. The analysis of Said’s approach is followed by one on Daniel Boyarin, Professor of Rabbinics at University of California-Berkeley and a scholar of Jewish history and of its sacred texts.
