| My dissertation, "The Home Front: Literary Engagement with Political Crisis in Israel, 1993-2006," examines how terror, violence and political turmoil have changed and shaped the private territories of home, family, friendship and intimate relationships in turn of the twenty-first century Israeli culture. Women novelists in particular have spearheaded this form of productive literary engagement and are thereby demonstrating how Israel's recent and current collective crises and conflicts have profoundly affected the private, interior lives of modern day Israelis, despite evidence to the contrary. To that end it focuses on the following novels in comparative context: Heat Wave and Crazy Birds [Hamsin veziporim meshugaot, 2001] and Ancient Red [Adom Atik, 2007], by Gabriela Avigur-Rotem (b. 1946); Human Parts [Halakim Enoshiyim, 2002] and Textile [2006], by Orly Castel-Bloom (b. 1960); and Bliss [Sarah Sarah, 2000], by Ronit Matalon (b. 1959). My project identifies a distinctive literary group, exemplified in the works of these novelists, which criticizes the pervasive attitude to return to routine or adhere the common adage, 'life goes on.' It thereby interrogates how this literature informs political crisis as a cultural category refracted through the lens of the domestic, or what I call, the political crisis and the domestic. My close reading of these thematically analogous but distinct contemporary novels is informed by critical theory of new war, space, domesticity and the novel, and is particularly influenced by the works of Henry Lefebvre, Marianne Hirsch, Mary Kaldor, Svetlana Boym, Cathy Davidson, Hannan Hever, and Yael Feldman.;By situating political crises within personal narratives and internalized experiences, these authors provide not only an alternative reading of crisis but, perhaps more importantly, an effective mode of literary intervention. Their creative resistance serves as a vehicle for engaging crisis, criticizing violence and affecting change in the ongoing political disputes of the Middle East. |
