The politics of justice for Arab Jews /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Zamkanei, Shayna Kuchay, author.
Imprint:2015.
Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2015
Description:1 electronic resource (239 pages)
Language:English
Format: E-Resource Dissertations
Local Note:School code: 0330
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/10773172
Hidden Bibliographic Details
Other authors / contributors:University of Chicago. degree granting institution.
ISBN:9781321911909
Notes:Advisors: Robert Gooding-Williams; Orit Bashkin Committee members: Julie Cooper; Michael Geyer; Jennifer Pitts.
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Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 76-12(E), Section: A.
English
Summary:How do we conceptualize the politics of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa who were displaced from geographically disparate `homelands,' and are now living in different `host' states and seeking recognition as refugees? In answering this question, I explore the identity politics of Arab Jews pursing justice many decades after their displacement. This dissertation argues that Arab Jewish refugee politics should be politically and philosophically conceptualized as a civic diasporic politics of recognition that serve the interests of Arab Jews. By investigating the politics of Arab Jewish displacement, I offer a theoretically enriching account of diasporic politics that demonstrates how the post-war international human rights regime underlies the political development of exilic communities. For integrated Arab Jews, the desire to be recognized as refugees does not signify an abnormal political condition; rather, it confirms the viability of diaspora as a political alternative to the normative nation-state polity. As unique as the circumstances may have been that have shaped, and continue to shape, the contours of Arab Jewish exile, they also highlight the limitations of current conceptual frameworks used to study the political and diasporic development of internationally displaced communities. Consequently, such communities must be philosophically conceptualized and politically analyzed differently from communities bound within a singular nation-state in order to understand the political responses that emerge from separation from a homeland, and integration into multiple new homelands. An account of an identity politics that takes into consideration the effects of multiple borders by using diaspora as the unit of analysis, rather than the nation-state, is both necessary and instructive. While diaspora in the Jewish context refers only to the migration of bodies and memories of loss, civic diaspora captures the critical role that citizenships, national loyalties and international human rights play in constructing the political community.