The Politics of Nihilism: From the Nineteenth Century to Contemporary Israel

Description

Contemporary politics is faced, on the one hand, with political stagnation and lack of a progressive vision on the side of formal, institutional politics, and, on the other, with various social movements that venture to challenge modern understandings of representation, participation,and democracy. Interestingly, both institutional and anti-institutional sides of this antagonism tend to accuse each other of "nihilism", namely, of mere oppositional destructiveness and failure to offer a constructive, positive alternative to the status quo. Nihilism seems, then, all engulfing. In order to better understand this political situation and ourselves within it,The Politics of Nihilism proposes a thorough theoretical examination of the concept of nihilism and its historical development followed by critical studies of Israeli politics and culture. The authors show that, rather than a mark of mutual opposition and despair, nihilism is a fruitful category for tracing and exploring the limits of political critique, rendering them less rigid and opening up a space of potentiality for thought, action, and creation. Cover Contents Acknowledgments Contributors Introduction 1 Nihilism as Stasis: A Plea for a New Hermeneutics of Exposure 2 Less than Nihilism 3 Doing Nothing or Nothing Doing? 4 A Concept of Nihilism for the Coming End of the World 5 Nihilism, Revolt, and the Spectacle 6 The Epistemology of Nihilism in Otto Weininger’s Sex and Character 7 In Sickness and in Health: Nietzsche, Améry, and the “Moral Difference” 8 Nihilism and Repetition: Dahlia Ravikovitch’s Reiterations as Critique 9 What is a “Manifestly Illegal” Order? Law and Politics after Yoram Kaniuk’s Nevelot 10 To Be at Home: Spaces of Citizenship in the Community Settlements of the Galilee Index