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Affirmative weakening:Y.H. Brenner and the weakrethinking of the politics ofHebrew literatureEyal Bassana

a Center for Jewish Studies, University of California,Berkeley, CA, USAPublished online: 15 May 2014.

To cite this article: Eyal Bassan (2015) Affirmative weakening: Y.H. Brenner and theweak rethinking of the politics of Hebrew literature, Rethinking History: The Journal ofTheory and Practice, 19:1, 41-60, DOI: 10.1080/13642529.2014.913940

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13642529.2014.913940

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Affirmative weakening: Y.H. Brenner and the weak rethinkingof the politics of Hebrew literature

Eyal Bassan*

Center for Jewish Studies, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

If nihilism is a largely misunderstood concept, it is on account of both itsambivalence and its affirmative horizon. Drawing on these aspects, thisarticle reactivates the concept of nihilism in rereading one of the mostinfluential moments in the history of modern Hebrew literature: Y.H.Brenner’s novel From Here and There and his subsequent essay on ‘the genreof Eretz Israel.’ Indeed, in a central episode in the novel the limits oflegitimate political critique are traced along the lines of nihilism; but, asNietzschean-inspired theories of nihilism emphasize, nihilism, taken to thepoint of its own overcoming, can be completed into a moment of creativeaffirmation. Following the philosophy of ‘weak thought,’ I read this momentin Brenner as a moment of weak affirmation. Through it, I argue, Brennerproposes a weak political and literary paradigm as an affirmativecontinuation of the nihilistic, post-Zionist critique. Surprisingly, then,Brenner, one of the central figures in Zionist history, turns out to be a weakthinker: he thus allows for a rethinking of the relations between nationalism,literature, and historiography. Or, in other words, for a weakening of nationalpolitics, literature, and literary historiography.

Keywords: nihilism; affirmation; modern Hebrew literature; weak thought;Zionism; Yosef Haim Brenner

1. Introduction

It should be admitted from the outset: this article puts forward a weak argument.

It argues, that is, for a weakening of political and literary thought, and,

specifically, for a weakening of the way we think about Hebrew literature.

Historically, the discourse of Zionism as a national ideology has been articulated

– in its prevailing dominant versions – in ‘strong’ terms: in the form of claims,

demands, and historical objective foundations. And today, it seems, Zionist

discourse is as strong as ever – and getting stronger. At the same time, Zionism

has always been bound up, since its emergence in the nineteenth century, with

literary imagination as a central means of manifestation of the national vision.

q 2014 Taylor & Francis

*Email: bassan@berkeley.edu

Rethinking History, 2015

Vol. 19, No. 1, 41–60, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13642529.2014.913940

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Accordingly, it is easy to see how from these two characteristics ensues a strong

conception of national literature, which has, as will be demonstrated later, indeed

become a major principle of Hebrew literature’s historiography. In what follows,

I propose to weaken this sort of discourse of literary historiography, and to

rethink – that is, to rethink weakly – our approach to the politics and history of

Hebrew literature.

But not only is this article’s argumentation weak, it is also – at least in its

point of departure – nihilistic: the task of weakening will be carried out here

through a rereading, via the concept of nihilism, of one of the paradigmatic and

constitutive moments in the history of Hebrew literature – Yosef Haim Brenner’s

(1881–1921) highly influential novel From Here and There (Mi-kan u-mi-kan,

1911) and its aftermath, the equally influential essay ‘The Genre of Eretz Israel

and Its Devices’ (Ha-zhaner ha-eretz yisraeli ve-avizrayhu, 1911). To Zionism,

as to any strong doctrine of thought, nihilism – as radical criticism – constitutes a

threat that endangers its inner stability. But nihilism is a far more ambivalent

concept than the way it is usually conceived of within such political discourses;

for the nihilistic negation, in its completed form, may give rise to a moment of

affirmation. Indeed, I wish to show that Brenner’s novel not only articulates a

nihilistic critique of Zionism and exposes the threat this critique poses to the

Zionist discourse – it also suggests an alternative affirmative way to conceive of

national and literary politics.

As will be elaborated later on, this alternative could be best conceptualized

through Gianni Vattimo’s formulation of the completion of nihilism in his theory

of weak thought. The strength of Vattimo’s approach of radical hermeneutics and

reduction of claims lies precisely in the challenge it invokes in face of any strong

doctrine: the emancipatory challenge of thinking weakly. Thus, in what follows, I

argue that Brenner’s nihilism leads to a weakening of thought and that it is this

process of weakening that provides an emancipatory and affirmative political

paradigm.

Brenner, who was born in northern Ukraine in 1881 and immigrated to

Palestine in 1909, is generally regarded as one of the most influential figures in the

history of Hebrew literature: he was a prominent fiction writer who has become

much ‘more than a usual writer’ (Brinker 1990, 11).1 In his lifetime – and even

more so after his death – he was considered to be not only a central literary

authority, but also ‘the conscience of the developing Jewish society in Eretz Israel,

the spiritual mentor within the upheavals of Jewish history in the twentieth

century’ (Shapira 2008, 7). From Here and There, the first long novel he had

written in Palestine, was described by Brenner himself as a ‘national book,’ one

that vigorously voices the ‘national cry-out.’ The novel is generally regarded by

critics as the prototypical, ‘classical’ novel of the Second Aliya (the second wave

of Jewish immigration to Palestine),which lays out ‘a general panoramic picture of

the state of the nation’ in that time of upheaval (Zemach 1984, 159).

From a historical perspective, the Second Aliya (1904–1914) was indeed a

crucial period of transformation in the history of the Jews and their national

E. Bassan42

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revival. It was, as Tessler asserts, ‘a watershed in the development of the

Yishuv [the Jewish settlement in Palestine] and in the translation into reality of

Zionism’s abstract vision’ (1994, 61). This formative historical importance is

also emphasized by Benjamin Harshav, who mentions in this context Stalin’s

claim that the Jews cannot be considered a nation since they lack a territory

and a common language; the Zionist movement, says Harshav, held in fact

‘similar views but set out to remedy the situation by actively trying to supply

the lacking attributes. They denounced the present in favor of a future that

would restore the deep past, including territory, language, and political

independence’ (1993, 82). Only with the Second Aliya – and through the

language revolution that took place in Palestine – did this Zionist vision of a

remedy begin to take shape (110). In such a process, Hebrew literature

obviously played an important role, and, as we shall see later on, in From Here

and There – arguably the central novel of this crucial period – Brenner

introduces a critique of this ideological process and of the part literature plays

in it. Moreover, and more importantly, what Brenner provides here is in fact a

critical account of the very possibility and legitimacy of the critique itself.

Read through the Nietzschean conceptual framework of nihilism, this meta-

critical line exemplifies both the limits of the discourse of Zionism and the

radical political possibilities such critique bears.

Brenner’s familiarity with Nietzsche’s philosophy is a well-known and well

researched fact (Brinker 2002, 134, 148–156; Shapira 2008, 24–31).

Consequently, Brenner’s novels abound with references to Nietzsche’s

character, to his famous aphorisms, and to the trendiness of his philosophy

around the turn of the century; furthermore, as many critics point out, Brenner’s

work deals intensively with the meanings and implications of Nietzsche’s ideas

in general, and nihilistic worldview in particular, for the European Jewish world

of that time (see Brinker 1990, 139–149, 2002, 151–156; Kariv 1972; Sagi

2007, 104–106). Other critics, namely Boaz Arpaly, emphasize the importance

of negation in Brenner’s fiction – what Arpaly calls its ‘negative principle’ –

without necessarily attributing it to Nietzschean or nihilistic tendencies (2008,

311–398).

It is therefore not the purpose of this article to expose Nietzschean influences,

nihilistic themes, or structures of negation in From Here and There. Rather,

taking all these as given postulates, I wish to follow Bulent Diken’s suggestion in

Nihilism and ‘reactivate the concept of nihilism’ in the political and literary

contexts of Brenner’s work. For, as Diken reminds us, ‘concepts are tools to be

able to think new possibilities and connections under contingent circumstances

rather than the means of “systematic” representations and static descriptions.

What matters, therefore, is to “dramatize” the inherited concepts in a productive

way’ (2009, 7). In fact, through such reactivation of the concept of nihilism, I will

show that in From Here and There, Brenner himself ‘dramatizes’ the nihilistic

position in an ingeniously productive way that eventually enables a radically

weak rethinking of national and literary politics.

Rethinking History 43

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2. Nihilism

2.1. Nihilisms introduced

From Here and There depicts the life stories of several characters – mainly Oved

Etzot (literally ‘nonplussed’), the novel’s narrator, and his friend Arie Lapidot –

who immigrate from Europe to Palestine. Through their stories, the novel –

which comprises six chapters, called ‘notebooks,’ and an ‘addenda’ chapter –

provides a thorough account of the typical misfortunes of the Second Aliya

period. At the center of the reading presented here will be the fifth of the novel’s

notebooks, which depicts Oved Etzot’s experiences as the main publicist of the

journal The Plow (Ha-machresha), his attempts to get his articles published, and

his interactions with the editorial staff.2 Brenner himself called this scene ‘the

play in the editorial room of The Plow’ (1985, 576),3 and as such it indeed

provides a striking dramatization of the critical scene in the nascent Jewish

society in Palestine and of the political scandal and threat of nihilism.

Throughout this notebook, in a manner typical of the novel’s celebrated

fragmentary poetics, are scattered numerous excerpts from articles Oved Etzot

has written for The Plow. Those are integrated into the plot as fragments of text

quoted, read, or recited by the characters and thus serve to feature both Oved

Etzot’s views on political current affairs and their reception. They are preceded,

however, by excerpts from two unpublished articles Oved Etzot had written

earlier in his time in Palestine, which thus provide a sort of introduction to his

later, ripe, and published publicist writings. The following is a part of an article

entitled ‘On lawlessness’:

Surely, as for me, the pretty words of the warriors, of the great men of spirit, of theteachers of humanity, of the preachers of the world, of the leaders of the way, of thediscoverers of content, of the exposers of Ideas – upset me, inflame my insides,bring spit to my lips. ‘Witch doctors! Liars! Ridicules! Pursuers of aphorisms!’ –cries my raged, miserable heart, which up until this very day cannot completely freeitself from these vanities. But, in principle, what do I care? [ . . . ] And would I befaithful to that infinite and absolute zero, which will come upon me, as uponeverybody, including those speakers, including the greats of humanity – would I befaithful to the true zero inside me, which despises me at this time as I speak of it, if Itried to make a doctrine of it, of the zero itself. (1978, 1352–1353)

Along with the strikingly Nietzschean – even Zarathustrian – rhetoric of this

passage,4 its contents, so flagrantly professed by Oved Etzot, are clearly nihilistic.

Following Gilles Deleuze’s remarks in Nietzsche and Philosophy, two senses of

nihilism can be distinguished here. The first is negative nihilism, which involves

‘the idea of another world, of a supersensible world in all its forms (God, essence,

the good, truth), the idea of values superior to life.’ Such higher values are

nihilistic since they are inseparable from an effect of ‘depreciation of life, the

negation of this world’ (1983, 147). This is the nihilism that according to Oved

Etzot lies behind the pretty words of the great men, the teachers, the preachers,

the leaders, the discoverers, and exposers. They offer higher values and thus

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negate and depreciate life: ‘Existence does not exist in them [ . . . ] and the essence

of life they shall not know’ (1978, 1353).

The second is reactive nihilism, which characterizes Oved Etzot himself. This

sense of nihilism is associated with Nietzsche’s infamous ‘death of God’ notion

or, more generally, with the complete denial of values and ideas: here it is ‘no

longer the devaluation of life in the name of higher values but rather the

devaluation of higher values themselves.’ Nihilism in this second sense, then,

forms as a reaction to the first. While before life was devaluated from the height

of higher values, now ‘only life remains, but it is still a depreciated life which

now continues in a world without values, stripped of meaning and purpose,

sliding ever further towards its nothingness’ (Deleuze 1983, 148). Thus, Oved

Etzot’s reactive nihilism is articulated as a reaction to the falsehoods of higher

values; in their stead, he introduces ‘that infinite and absolute zero,’ ‘the true zero

inside me.’

What Deleuze’s approach allows for in this context is a dynamic

understanding of the relationship of reaction and confrontation between such

distinct yet closely related historical nihilistic moments. The main question,

therefore, should not be merely whether or not one is a nihilist – as has been often

asked by Brenner’s critics – but rather how is one a nihilist? In which sense and

to what extent is one’s stand nihilistic? And what are the relations between this

and other, actual or potential, nihilistic stands?

This dynamic dimension of the concept of nihilism lies at the heart of

Deleuze’s claim that for Nietzsche

nihilism is not an event in history but the motor of the history of man as universalhistory. Negative, reactive and passive nihilism: for Nietzsche one and the samehistory is marked out by Judaism, Christianity, the reformation, free thought,democratic and socialist ideology etc. Up until the last man. (1983, 152)

And, as we will see later on, in Brenner’s early twentieth century modernist

novel, just as in Diken’s Nietzschean–Deleuzian analysis of today’s postmodern

society, ‘nihilism illustrates a paradoxical logic, which is simultaneously

destructive to and constitutive of the social’ (2009, 8).

2.2. National nihilism and the drama of exclusion

Contrary to his earlier, unpublished articles quoted above, in his later essays for

The Plow – entitled ‘Gleanings’ and ‘The small question’ – Oved Etzot turns to

deal directly with political issues. Yet, the nihilistic view remains – the false

higher values and the false ideas are now the values of Zionism:

It was therefore said: not only is the political and economic solution of the problemof the Jews hanging in mid-air by a widespread colonization in Eretz Israel a vainidea, but also the idea of the revival of the people of Israel by creating a smallHebrew spiritual center in the historic land of the fathers is nothing but an idea.[ . . . ] The truth has been said, then, openly: The Zionist movement has never been –and could not have been – a true public movement, a movement of conquerors, but

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a sort of twitch by aimless wanderers and poor-doers [ . . . .] The unprecedentedhistorical vision of a people expelled from its land returning to it after two thousandyears – the unprecedented vision that was to be carried out, so to speak, in the livesof the people of Israel – will necessarily remain in the future an unprecedentedvision. (1393–1394)

All the major principles and slogans of Zionism – of both Herzl’s ‘political

Zionism’ and Ahad Ha’am’s ‘cultural Zionism’ (see Shapira 2008, 223) – are

devaluated in this short passage: the solution of the problem of the Jews by

colonization in Eretz Israel, the establishment of a Hebrew spiritual center in the

land of the fathers, the revival of the people of Israel, and its return to its

homeland after 2000 years. The existential nihilistic view expressed in Oved

Etzot’s earlier ‘On lawlessness’ is translated here into national terms. We are

presented with a nationalistic version of the reactive nihilism; or, in other words,

with a nihilistic reaction to a nationalistic negative nihilism.

How are these critical views accepted? What place do they have within the

public discourse of those times? As it turns out, they have no place at all, even in a

journal such as The Plow, which defines itself as ‘an oppositional Zionist Hebrew

journal published in Eretz Israel.’ In fact, more than anything, the fifth notebook

of From Here and There dramatizes the process of exclusion of the threatening

critical position out of the sphere of legitimate political debate. When the main

editor Tomarkin arrives at the editorial room, he informs Oved Etzot that he

decided not to print ‘The small question’:

The Plow, published in Eretz Israel, cannot, regretfully, hold . . . hold such adamaging tendency, even if it is expressed by a writer who is also settled in EretzIsrael. [ . . . ] My opinion is that a journal published here should speak onlyfavorably, encourage the spirit, or not come out at all. These things are merely saltin the wounds. In any case, one cannot reach such a negative sentence based on thescarce material of a one hundred lines article. The Plow is indeed oppositional, free,and accepts the truth from whoever expresses it, but such an article, such things, asthose I read before me, it cannot, regretfully, set in print in any way. (1978, 1395–1396)

Oved Etzot’s views are rendered here too critical for the allegedly critical Plow;

too oppositional for this ‘oppositional Zionist Hebrew journal.’ And the drama of

censorship continues throughout the episode in the form of an ongoing

negotiation over the right to publish these articles – that is, the right to voice a

critical stand. Thus, for instance, when Oved Etzot hopes to receive a small

advance payment for his work, the editorial administrator harshly informs him

that ‘advances are not the custom of The Plow . . . especially not for those who

undermine completely the foundations of our journal’ (1401). Later on, trying to

reconcile Oved Etzot, Tomarkin agrees to reconsider printing ‘The small

question’; he starts rereading it, but suddenly erupts in anger: ‘No, I will not print

this . . . our readers need a different type of diet . . . you are not right!’ (1404).

Finally, it is the editorial assistant who suggests a compromise: ‘The small

question’ will be printed in the upcoming issue, but only as a ‘letter to the editor’

– not as a regular article – and only after it is shortened drastically, while the

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second chapter of ‘Gleanings’ will not be published at all. This agreement – to

which Oved Etzot, having no other choice, eventually agrees – concludes the

drama of censorship portrayed in this episode.

At this point, Oved Etzot reaches his own interesting conclusion: ‘These

people! – Oved Etzot kept thinking – to them I am too much of a man of

negation. And really . . . to me . . . indeed I affirm too much . . . affirm without any

foundation . . . disgusting!’ (1405–6, my italics). In other words, what Oved

Etzot thinks is: ‘to them I am too much of a nihilist; to me I am not nihilist

enough.’ As a political publicist, Oved Etzot is too much of a nihilist, too much of

a ‘man of negation’ for the critical political discourse. This scene of exclusion, in

which, to use Nitzan Lebovic’s words in his introduction to this issue, the critic

faces ‘the “nihilism” accusation,’ can thus be read as a striking precursor of the

contemporary political discourse in Israel, ‘where the validity of democratic

critique itself is under attack, or where a strong requirement for conformity of

public opinion meets with opposition to its authority’ (Lebovic 2015). The

exchange that takes place in the editorial room of The Plow, written more than a

hundred years ago, captures precisely the same discoursive dynamics that

underlies the contemporary attacks against the right to practice political critique

that, as Lebovic shows, have been accepted in recent decades by large segments

of Israeli public and media. Importantly, the episode of The Plow outlines the

limits of political critique along the lines of nihilism: The nihilistic position is

denounced, excluded from the sphere of acceptable critical discourse, and

rendered threatening, destructive, and illegitimate.

2.3. Territorialization

The main political question that arises from Oved Etzot’s articles is the question

of the relation to the territory, or, in Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s terms, that of

territorialization. This concept in fact introduces three kinds of movements –

formation of territories, deterritorialization, and reterritorialization – which,

according to Deleuze and Guattari, can be used to account for the forces at work

in social fields (1994, 68). For the Jewish society in Europe and in Palestine at the

turn of the twentieth century, the question of territorialization is evidently one of

the most important political questions. That is precisely why Oved Etzot’s

articles provoke such a harsh reproving response on the part of The Plow’s

editors. For what ‘The small question’ and ‘Gleanings’ criticize is primarily the

dominant Zionist ideology of reterritorialization – the call for the return of the

Jewish people to its promised and inherited territory, which is exposed here not

only as unrealizable, but more importantly also as ideologically biased, as a

doctrine that is based on false, misleading, higher values. Thus, these articles

undermine The Plow’s raison d’etre as ‘an oppositional Zionist Hebrew journal

published in Eretz Israel’ – the fundamental connection between national

identity, language, and territory, which, as we have seen above, is the Zionist

remedy for the problem of the Jews.

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Of special importance in this regard is Tomarkin’s emphasis, when rejecting

Oved Etzot’s articles, on the territory in which they are written – that is, on the

fact that they are written in Eretz Israel for a journal published in Eretz Israel (see

quotation above); this insistence exposes – while trying to exclude – the threat of

the internal critique of territorialization. What Tomarkin thus establishes is a

strict model of criticism whereby writing done from within the territory is

necessarily engaged with – and cannot negate – the process of territorialization.

It is a conception of a critical discourse whose imaginative horizons are limited:

itself territorialized, it cannot but comply with the task of imagining the

reterritorialized national community.

Similar yet more complex problematics are pertinent to the relationship

between literary and national-historical imagination at that period. As Gluzman

convincingly asserts, ‘Hebrew literature became instrumental in imagining a

Jewish national revival,’ and Zionism emerged in the first place as a literary

utopia: ‘The naturalized triad of nation, territory, and language [ . . . ] first had to

be created by literary imagination’ (2003, 3). On the other hand, the absence of a

national territory, along with the remarkable fact that it was written in an

unspoken language, one that had not been spoken for thousands of years, makes

Hebrew literature of the time an exceptional example of ‘a deterritorialized

language, appropriate for strange and minor uses’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1986,

17). As his essayistic writings suggest, Brenner is extremely aware of this

deterritorialized situation: while he generally refrains from a Deleuzian-

Guattarian ‘minor’ embrace of this situation, he nevertheless refuses to accept

Zionism’s simplistic vision of a reterritorialized national literature.5 In ‘The

Genre of Eretz Israel and Its Devices,’ he examines this problem directly:

A situation that is bitter and ridiculous at the same time, I tell you, everybody iseager for “nice works over which hovers the spirit of Eretz Israel.” But – wherefrom? [ . . . ] the Hebrew writer in Russia and in other places knows, as his readersknow, that he writes “from life of the Diaspora” and in an unspoken language. Anunpleasant situation, yet clear. But here [in Eretz Israel] – it is different. Here thereis a formulaic demand from stories that both their signature and their language willbe of “revival.” Whatever may be, as long as there is an atmosphere of revival.(1985, 572)

Contrary to Hebrew literature written in the Diaspora with its evident ‘high

coefficient of deterritorialization’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1986, 16), the works

written in Palestine were expected to represent in a harmonic and positivistic

manner the successful national revival achieved through reterritorialization.

Literary imagination, in other words, was expected to be engaged and comply

with the national project of imagining the reterritorialized community. Brenner

sharply rejects – and pungently ridicules – this literary demand, which is in fact

analogous to the publicistic demand imposed upon Oved Etzot in the novel; in

both cases, the writer is demanded to forge a compliance of territory, language,

and national-Zionist contents: just as Oved Etzot’s articles, as articles written in

Eretz Israel, are expected to ‘speak only favorably, encourage the spirit,’ the

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literary genre of Eretz Israel is expected to represent the atmosphere of revival in

‘nice works over which hovers the spirit of Eretz Israel.’ Both Oved Etzot and

Brenner negate this model and both suggest a political alternative to it – that

emerges out of the nihilistic position.

3. Affirmation

3.1. The completion of nihilism and the moment of ‘in spite of that’

Where, then, does Oved Etzot’s nihilism lead? And, theoretically, where can

nihilism lead? The crucial aspect in nihilism, according to Nietzschean philosophy,

and the one that is most often disregarded [thus making it ‘perhaps the most

misunderstood concept in history’ (Diken 2009, 3)], is its affirmative horizon. As

discussed earlier, according to Deleuze, history is marked by a succession of

nihilisms ‘up until the last man.’ But for Nietzsche, says Deleuze, all those forms of

nihilism ‘constitute an unfinished, incomplete nihilism’ (1983, 172). The last man,

then, is not really the last one; after the last man comes the manwhowants to perish,

and through him nihilism may be completed and affirmation reached:

This is the ‘decisive point’ of Dionysian philosophy: the point at which negationexpresses an affirmation of life, destroys reactive forces and restores the rights ofactivity. The negative becomes the thunderbolt and lightning of a power ofaffirming. [ . . . ] Nihilism reaches its completion by passing through the last man,but going beyond him to the man who wants to perish. In the man who wants toperish, to be overcome, negation has broken everything which still held it back, ithas defeated itself, it has become of affirming. (174–175)

Deleuze’s pathos in this passage echoes Nietzsche’s own, signaling the

uniqueness and magnitude of this decisive moment. Diken, on his part, terms this

moment ‘anti-nihilism’ or ‘perfect nihilism’ – ‘a nihilism that, paradoxically,

turns back against itself, destroys and overcomes itself, to create immanent

values, a new way of life’ (2009, 6). He then goes on to provide a very suggestive

account of the character of nihilism as a theoretical concept:

Nihilism is an ambivalent concept with more than one meaning. It is, in one guise, apromise of creative destruction. In another, it can work to the opposite end; turn tosheer destruction, annihilating the very context of creativity. The two-in-one natureof nihilism moves it, in a way, “beyond good and evil”. Like the pharmakon in theclassical Greek sense, nihilism is both poison and remedy at the same time, capableof doing the best and the worst. And as I will argue, this paradoxical, contradictorycharacter is the strength, not weakness, of the concept of nihilism. (6–7)

This often misunderstood conceptual ambivalence is indeed what makes nihilism

such an adequate concept for an analysis of the politics of critique in Brenner’s

novel. The question that arises is therefore what comes after Oved Etzot’s political

nihilism? Is his negation ultimately a creative one? Is his nihilism a completed one,

one that is perfected into affirmation of life, of a new way of life?

In Brenner’s writing in general – and in From Here and There in particular –

the affirmative movement is emblematized in his characteristic use of the phrase

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‘In spite of that’ (af al pi khen). With this famous gesture of his, Brenner

allegedly proposes time and again a movement beyond and in spite of negation

and toward affirmation. Indeed, the conventional view of Brenner’s usage of this

phrase conceives of it as an expression of the conviction

that still and despite it all one must continue with life, keep trying in whatever one isdoing, although there is no chance of succeeding. This is the productive despair, outof which the great deeds emerged, this is the Brennerian truth which spoke topeople’s hearts and stimulated them, in spite of the fact that his work ostensiblyspread despair. (Govrin 1985, 104)

The ‘in spite of that’ thus became – especially after Brenner’s death – one of the

singular traits of the legendary ‘modern saint’ Brenner: a symbol of heroic

insistence, of overcoming pessimism and despair (Govrin 1991, 7; Shapira 2008,

372–373).

In the fifth notebook of From Here and There, the ‘in spite of that’ first

appears when Oved Etzot explains that

just as there is no great hope for the Jews in all the lands of Diaspora, and in spite ofthat they should work, so there is no hope here, but we should work. [ . . . ] acommunity of Jews as any other community . . . that should, therefore, work foritself with its own powers. (1978, 1393, my italics)

In the second chapter of ‘Gleanings,’ which was rejected for publication in The

Plow without even being read, he further articulates his ‘in spite of that’ political

stand:6

Settlers of Eretz Israel build today the future Eretz Israeli settlement as settlers ofArgentina build the future Argentinean settlement and as we are committed tostrengthen and reinforce our situation any place we can.

[ . . . ]

The spirit of my article is this: we are all doomed to extinction, our whole earth isdoomed to extinction, and in spite of that we are alive. We are alive and trying thatour lives will be, as much as possible, better. And the same is true for the collectivelives. For therefore I say in my article: we do not know what will happen in ahundred years to that which is called “the people of Israel” – a reality that canalready be doubted. Right now, I, one of the people of Israel – an undoubted reality– stand after Zionism, and what now? And I say: I, anyway, want to and have to liveas a Jew. So? So I want this picture: a Jewish settlement in Eretz Israel as any othersettlement. (1431–1434)

The ‘in spite of that’ gesture indeed appears here as an affirmative gesture that

follows the nihilistic negation; but this affirmation turns out to be a feeble, limp

affirmation. It is certainly not the affirmation of life in the Nietzschean or

Deleuzian sense – ‘the thunderbolt and lightning of a power of affirming,’ which

creates immanent values and a new way of life – but a disillusioned affirmation

of life as it is, of current, narrow, limited, ordinary life.7

The moment of the ‘in spite of that’ that comes after the negation, that

potentially decisive and revolutionary moment, is portrayed by Brenner as a

restrained, moderate affirmation that does not go all the way. And the affirmation

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does not go all the way because the nihilistic negation does not: one value is kept

– the value of Jewishness as an identity characteristic; ‘I want to and have to live

as a Jew.’8 The nihilistic stand, which exceeded the limits of political critique in

Eretz Israel, is revealed here to remain nonetheless within the limits of a more

general Jewish discourse. Most strikingly, Oved Etzot defines himself in this

passage as one who ‘stands after Zionism’ – that is, in contemporary

terminology, as a post-Zionist (see Shekhter 2004, 163); yet, his position is by no

means post-Jewish, as he insists on maintaining his identity as a Jew. That is what

enables him, in spite of the devaluation of all other higher values, to (feebly)

affirm ‘a Jewish settlement in Eretz Israel as any other settlement.’

3.2. Weak affirmation

One may thus come to the conclusion that not only does Oved Etzot fall short of

completing his nihilism into anti-nihilism, he also abandons his critical nihilistic

stand and regresses into some sort of a passive attitude of weak acceptance.

However, there might be strength in such weakness: reading Oved Etzot’s

affirmation as weak affirmation – in the sense of Vattimo’s concept of weak

thought – I propose to conceive of it not as an abandonment of both nihilism and

anti-nihilism, but as a constructive continuation of nihilism.

For Vattimo, ‘weak thought’ ( pensiero debole), a concept he first introduced

in 1983, is the kind of thinking that arises as we come to understand that there are

no stable, definitive, normative foundations. In a recent book co-authored with

Zabala, Vattimo provides a concise survey of this strand of thought:

Initially, ‘weak’ primarily denoted the abandonment of pretensions to absolutes thathad characterized the metaphysical traditions. But the weakness of thought couldnot halt this critical-negative characteristic, just as Nietzsche’s nihilism could not beonly negative and reactive. Together with Heidegger we consider the vicissitudes ofmetaphysics as the history of Being, which has to be interpreted as a process ofweakening absolutes, truths, and foundations. In sum, weak thought becomes a(strong) theory of weakening as an interpretative sense of history. (2011, 96)

Obviously, then, weak thought is in some sense nihilistic; it is, however, a

uniquely – and constructively – defined nihilism:

“God is dead!” is an announcement, not a claim. It means, not that God does not exist,but that our experience has been transformed such that we no longer conceiveultimate objective truths, and now respond only to appeals, announcements. WhenNietzsche calls for a multitude of gods, we can understand him as calling for apolytheism of values. The call is thus not for a society with no values but for a societywithout supreme and exclusive values. (Vattimo and Zabala 2002, 453–454)

This process of nihilistic weakening is embraced by Vattimo, who sees in it a

possibility of emancipation. The emancipatory potential relies on the conceptual

proximity of nihilism and hermeneutics (2004, xxv):

The critical tools of negative nihilism remain decisive for the constructive project ofhermeneutics. The attempt to base laws, constitutions, and ordinary political

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decisions on the idea that we should gradually be setting our norms and rules freefrom the limits of what is supposedly “natural” [ . . . ] can become a positive projectin itself. (xxviii)

Vattimo, then, implicitly suggests another way of conceptualizing the completion

of nihilism into an affirmative moment, a way that differs considerably from the

decisive descriptions we have seen earlier. His is a moment of weak affirmation, a

weakening moment; and that is, in fact, its theoretical strength.9

In light of this understanding of nihilism, I wish to read Oved Etzot’s ‘in spite

of that’ as a gesture of weak affirmation. Of course, to this an immediate

objection may arise: such as, while weak thought involves the realization that

there is no foundation and no objective structure, Oved Etzot does maintain a

central identity foundation – that of Jewishness – and his nihilism does not go all

the way. That is certainly correct; we must remember, however, Vattimo’s

explication of Nietzsche’s ‘God is dead’ announcement according to which the

call is not for a society with no values at all, but for one without supreme and

exclusive values. It is a question, in other words, of weakening values. As Rorty

notes, weak thought propels us ‘to admit that we are at the mercy of the

contingencies of history’ (2004, xii). And precisely in this sense, Oved Etzot – in

his political thought – thinks weakly: he does affirm his Jewish identity with his

assertion ‘I want to and have to live as a Jew,’ but at the same time he exposes this

identity as contingent; and it is its contingency – that is, the fact that it does not

imply any rigid categorization or ordering – that makes his affirmation weak.

This may all become clearer if we take into account Vattimo’s reading of a

strikingly similar assertion – Benedetto Croce’s ‘we cannot not call ourselves

Christians.’ This line of thought, Vattimo suggests, entails an ‘acceptance of the

world now as mixture, crossbreeding, a site of weak identities and evanescent and

“liberal” dogmatisms’ (2004, 33; my italics). In other words, weak thought does

not wish to negate identity qua identity, but to weaken strong identities.

Moreover, when he considers more specifically the issue of national identities,

Vattimo again emphasizes that ‘the concept of contingency is pertinent: I belong

to a specific group historically, and not absolutely’ (Vattimo and Zabala 2002,

461); he then goes on to describe what would best be termed weak national

identity: he acknowledges his own historical Italian identity, but adds that ‘on the

other hand, if it seemed necessary, for the benefit of my country and its citizens,

that Italy become the fifty-first American state, despite all the respect I have for

my tradition and language, I would have no problem with that’ (462).

Surprisingly, this vivid example also captures quite accurately the principle of

Oved Etzot’s stance. Indeed, that contingency is pertinent to the question of

identity, Oved Etzot seems to understand very well. That is why his insistence on

his Jewishness does not serve him as a ground for laying any strong national

claims. On the contrary, it provides for what Vattimo calls ‘a reduction of claims’

(2004, 35). Like Vattimo’s Italian identity, Oved Etzot’s Jewish identity does not

entail any strong connection to territory or nationality. It proposes, rather, a weak

territorialization and a weakening of the imagined national community: ‘a

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community of Jews as any other community’ without illusions of a national

center in Eretz Israel – ‘a Jewish settlement in Eretz Israel as any other

settlement.’

The ‘in spite of that’ gesture should not be understood, therefore, as a figure

of a strong, empowering affirmation. This strong approach, exemplified in the

above quotation from Govrin, is also manifested in Gershon Shaked’s influential

and authoritative five-volume historiographical study Hebrew Narrative Fiction

1880–1980. Shaked entitles the literature of the period ‘a literature of “in spite of

that”’ (sifrut shel ‘af-al-pi-khen’) and describes it explicitly as ‘heroic literature’

(1977, 32). This literature, he concludes, has had to face many various

difficulties, but ‘in spite of it all has always kept going in its own way as a

literature of “in spite of that”’ (34). Brenner’s phrase is thus not only endowed

with heroism in itself, it also serves to emblematize Hebrew literature’s general

heroic revival against all odds.10

Contrary to this understanding of the ‘in spite of that’ as a positivistic gesture

of overcoming doubts and criticism, it actually turns out to be, in the thought of

From Here and There’s proto-post-Zionist protagonist, a figure of weakness. It

introduces a unique political paradigm: one that is not merely a reactive nihilistic

stand; nor an attempt to achieve an unrealizable Nietzschean transmutation; nor

an obedient yes-saying, as the braying of the ass that ‘always says Yaw and never

No’ (Nietzsche 2006, 254); and certainly not a heroic affirmation that dismisses

the negative criticism and eventually re-embraces the old national values. It is an

accomplishment of nihilism in the figure of a weak affirmation of nationality, in

its contingent, weak connection to its territory, Eretz Israel. In this sense,

Brenner, writing in 1911, has already taken up the radical challenge that Lebovic

posits today in his introduction to this issue: ‘If the present political climate leads

to the labeling of critics as “nihilists” whenever the critique outs the central

norms of consensus, why not rethink things from the perspective of nihil?’

(Lebovic 2015). Indeed, what Brenner dramatizes here is a paradigmatic critical

moment: he does provide an exceptional dramatization of the discoursive

dynamics whereby the post-Zionist critical views – understood as nihilistic – are

excluded and banned from the order of political discourse; and he then goes on to

inspiringly put forward a paradigm that carries this sort of post-Zionism, perhaps

any sort of post-Zionism, toward its emancipatory horizon. ‘I stand after

Zionism,’ says Oved Etzot, ‘and what now?’ Now, after Zionism’s nihilistic

negation, comes weak affirmation – not by giving up the nihilistic critique, but by

pursuing it further – as weak politics.

3.3. The genre of Eretz Israel

In order to exemplify how this weak political paradigm works, I wish to turn to –

and conclude with – a brief discussion of the ways in which it informs both Oved

Etzot’s and Brenner’s literary thought. In a letter to Lapidot, Oved Etzot presents

his weak conception of national literature:

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Furthermore I want: speaking in the Jewish language (Hebrew, as much as possible,in Eretz Israel); Hebrew literature that unites us all, but without fanaticism towardthat which does not unite if only it stems from the essence of our lives. In general,without fanaticism of dismissal and oppression. (1978, 1434)

This weak attitude toward the triad that connects, through literature, national

identity with language and territory, so modestly introduced in Oved Etzot’s

letter, is further elaborated in Brenner’s own intriguing essay regarding the genre

of Eretz Israel.

‘The Genre of Eretz Israel and Its Devices’ is considered to be one of the most

influential essays in the history of Hebrew literature. According to Govrin, the

historical progress of Hebrew fiction can be divided into two periods: before and

after the publication of this essay, which ‘stands at the crossroad of Hebrew

literature’ (1991, 179). Brenner’s attack on what he calls the genre of Eretz Israel

had posited, claims Govrin, a ‘temporary prohibition’ of depicting the life in

Eretz Israel in works of fiction, and – thus understood by Brenner’s

contemporaries – had a vast restraining influence for decades (179–200). The

essay’s historical importance is further underscored by Shaked’s use of Brenner’s

terminology as a basis for a generalized historiographical distinction pertaining to

the entire literature of the second and third Aliyas: on one side Shaked places

‘genre’ literature, with its pseudo-realistic, simplistic, and naıve stories, and on

the other ‘anti-genre’ literature, such as Brenner’s, which produced disillusioned

works, completely aware of the gap between the ideological visions and life’s

reality (1983, 34–36).

Both Govrin and Shaked, however, rely on rather narrow readings of

Brenner’s essay, which they then develop into rather broad historiographical

observations. They thus both miss not only the essay’s theoretical complexity, but

also its radical political potential and its alternative conception of national

literature. Evidently, this is due to the fact that they both exercise strong

historiographical thinking, whereby the importance of Brenner’s essay is bound

up with its function as a strong model of national writing and its canonical broad

influence. But in order to fully grasp the weak position Brenner manifests in this

paradigmatic essay – that is, in order to grasp the way it is paradigmatic in a

radically different way – what is needed is precisely a weakening of such strong

historiographical hermeneutics.

As discussed earlier, in this essay Brenner rejects the demand to represent the

‘atmosphere of revival’ through a naturalized literary synthesis of Zionist

nationality, Hebrew language, and the territory of Eretz Israel. This is the

problem with the genre works:

Most of the other writings from Eretz Israel, of which we have quite a lot already,are written from one single perspective: that of the national hope. [ . . . ] the commonside is that they are all ‘Zionist,’ in the narrow sense of the word; that they all havethis one criterion: the social. (1985, 572–573)

The consequence, according to Brenner, is a suffocation of ‘the flowers of any

true genre while they are still in the bud’ (572).

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What exactly this ‘true genre’ is, the genre that constitutes an alternative to

the genre of Eretz Israel, has been the concern of an ongoing critical debate. In a

recent article that marks a new interest in this question, Hever provides a

thorough analysis of Brenner’s call for a true genre, which Hever describes as

Zionist in a ‘broad sense’ since it employs an individual and psychological –

rather than social – criterion and thus portrays the national subject as a universal

man (2007, 55). Relying on Brenner’s comment about the impossibility of

statically depicting a still unstable reality, Hever invokes the concept of ‘concrete

utopia’ and claims that

the norm that Brenner posits in order to recruit the fictional text to the Zionistproject is a writing norm of utopian tension – a utopian reality that does not yetexist, and which the text constantly maintains a desire for its realization. (52)

This view, however, clearly depends on an understanding of Brenner’s approach

in this essay as a strong one: one that posits writing ‘norms’ and normative

literary ‘claims’ (see also Hever 2007, 49–52, 57). But, in fact, Brenner’s

position here is anything but strong: he does not speak at all about the

characteristics of a proper national literature, and refrains from putting forward

any writing norms, positive normative claims, or imperative prescriptions

regarding the kind of literature that should be written in Eretz Israel. Moreover,

he does not even oppose the genre – which he does indeed negate and criticize

wholeheartedly – with an anti-genre; he merely describes his own way of

writing:

I am not a genre-ist. In everything I write from time to time [ . . . ] not only do I notintend to teach my truths, but also I do not intend to describe life as it really is, as itappears to the objective and lucid observer. What then? I will tell you straight:letters, simply, I write to my close friends about the life of a man like me and hisfeelings (in recent years: in the land of Yehuda). [ . . . ] For I, as said, do not wish toprove anything [ . . . ]: I only write letters, in which I tell whoever is interested whatkind of impressions I pick up and how I spend my hours and days in this land. (1985,573–574)

Brenner’s position in this passage is evidently a weak position: the model posited

here in place of the devaluated genre is not a strong and objective writing model,

but a weak and contingent one. Just as for weak thought there are no objective

foundations, only interpretations, the purpose of Brenner’s model of writing is

not to give a true, objective account of life in Eretz Israel, but to provide one

account, one interpretation of it. Thus, the ambiguous, elusive signifier ‘true’ (in

‘true genre’) – which is not endowed with any positive, strong content

throughout the entire essay – remains, if not a completely empty signifier,

certainly a weak one.

‘The Genre of Eretz Israel and Its Devices’ is therefore not a prescriptive

essay that posits literary claims; it is rather an essay that constitutes an alternative

to this very kind of literary thought and proposes instead a reduction of claims. To

read it as a call for an allegorical representation of the national subject would be

to employ a strong reading on an instance of weak thought. For when it is read

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against the background of From Here and There, as a continuation of Oved

Etzot’s nihilism and weak affirmation, Brenner’s reduction of claims in this essay

cannot be dismissed as a mere literary fac�ade, as another instance of Brenner’s

rhetoric of sincerity camouflaging prescriptive aspirations; rather, taken

seriously, this reduction, if not relinquishment, of the logic of claims constitutes

a strong proposal of weak literary thought.

In a comprehensive article that both follows and counters Hever’s position,

Ginsburg convincingly claims that Brenner eventually does not support an

allegorical model of writing (2007, 45). According to Ginsburg, Brenner’s usage

of epistolary rhetoric, which is exemplified in the above quotation, introduces an

‘oscillation between fiction and non-fiction, between the private and the public,

between the particular and the universal’ (51) and thus deconstructs the basic

distinctions upon which Brenner’s argument relies: ‘When the epistolary rhetoric

of the essay undermines the genre distinctions between his letters, essays, and

stories, it also undermines the distinction between the texts he himself produces

and the texts of the genre writers’ (51). However, as discussed earlier, Brenner’s

turn to epistolary rhetoric here does not merely involve an oscillation between the

public and the private, but also entails a limitation of the authority to lay claims

regarding truth or reality. Therefore, with this turn to the epistolary, while on one

hand the distinction between the genre and the anti-genre is indeed subverted, on

the other hand a new distinction is formed: between a strong genre and a weak

genre. All this allows for a reformulation of Ginsburg’s challenging concluding

suggestion, according to which ‘Brenner’s essay implies that at the center of

national Hebrew culture there is not a desire to represent national compliance and

correlation, but the contrary: it has a desire to represent an undermining and

subversion of such compliance’ (57). Indeed, the politics of literature is generally

conceived of along the lines of a binary opposition of normative claims and

demands, on one hand, to their subversion and undermining, on the other; even

Ginsburg’s deconstruction, which exposes the subversiveness of the cultural

center, remains bound up with this binarism. But, as discussed earlier, along with

the subversive gesture arises a proposal of a different order, one that positions

itself beyond – or rather, beside – the binarism of the hegemonic and the

subversive: the order of weak thought. Brenner, in other words, implies the

possibility of placing at the center a model whose principle is neither a

hegemonic claim nor subversion thereof, but a weakening of national literature.

Interestingly, Brenner himself does not oppose the genre of Eretz Israel to an

anti-genre. Following the negation of the conventional genre of Eretz Israel, the

weakly affirmed ‘true genre’ is still a genre of Eretz Israel. This emphasis on the

territory of writing echoes Tomarkin’s similar emphasis in the novel, but, since

the two are articulated within different levels of nihilism, Brenner’s insistence on

the territory of the genre works in the opposite political direction. It maintains at

the heart of his proposal an affirmative moment of weak territorialization. In

other words, in spite of the negation of the genre, Brenner proposes a genre.

Indeed, that is the theoretical strength of this proposal: the weak genre is the true

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‘literature of in spite of that’: unheroic, its claims reduced, it is the literature of

weak affirmation – the literary thought that supplements Oved Etzot’s weak

political thought.

In Brenner, allegedly positioned at the strong center of Zionist national

culture, we find a persistent, suggestive, and constructive weakness of thought.

And while it may be rightly concluded that this article aims to weaken Brenner, it

is in fact through weak Brenner that a series of weakenings, in various domains –

the political, the historiographical, the literary – is made possible. Brenner’s

moment is therefore paradigmatic not in its national heroism and insistence

against all odds, but in its weakening of precisely these strong perspectives. It is a

paradigmatic weak moment, and it thus suggests a paradigm much needed today.

With regard to a politics, a history, and a literature that have been constantly,

systematically, and consistently read and thought in strong terms, weak thought

can constitute, in itself, an emancipatory alternative. Weak thought is certainly

not easy to pursue and could be all too easily dismissed; the temptations of strong

thought – with its foundations and norms, claims and demands, conclusions and

exclusions – are, indeed, ever strong. But precisely here lies the importance and

urgency of weak thought. To weaken. In spite of it all.

Notes

1. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.2. This section has come to be one of the most famous and controversial parts of the

novel, on account of the public scandal it gave rise to when it was first published: atthat time, Brenner himself had been writing as a publicist for the journal The YoungWorker (Ha-po’el ha-tza’ir), which many readers thus identified with the fictionaljournal The Plow; Yosef Aharonowich, The Young Worker’s main editor, and hisfiance Dvora Baron were so offended by the way they – and their journal – had beendepicted in Brenner’s novel that they decided to sever their relations with him.Following this, Brenner wrote his important article ‘The Genre of Eretz Israel and ItsDevices,’ in which, among other things, he tried to clarify his intentions and appeaseAharonowich while criticizing fiercely the sort of referential reading that had led tothis scandal in the first place (see Shapira 2008, 223–226; Hever 2007, 47–49).

3. Interestingly, the plot of the fifth notebook takes place in one place, the editorialroom of The Plow, spans over a few hours in one morning, and includes fivecharacters that keep exiting and entering the room. This theatrical setting, with itsloose employment of the three Aristotelian unities of drama, endows the notebookboth with a drama-like feeling and with a sense of an autonomous literary structure.Even the characters themselves are aware of the dramatic nature of the situation (see1400, 1401, 1406). As Brinker shrewdly shows, the impression of the novel’sextreme overall fragmentariness is dependent upon the autonomous structure andinternal coherence of many of its fragments and sections, such as The Plow scene(1990, 79–81).

4. Compare, for example, Oved Etzot’s style and temperament to those of the followingiconoclastic warning by Zarathustra: ‘do not believe those who speak to you ofextraterrestrial hopes! They are mixers of poisons whether they know it or not. Theyare despisers of life, dying off and self-poisoned, of whom the earth is weary: so letthem fade away!’ (Nietzsche 2006, 6)

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5. See, for example, his 1912 article ‘Pages from an open notebook’ (1985, 606). For abroader discussion of the concepts of minor literature and deterritorialization in thecontext of Hebrew literature, see my ‘The Thousand Plateaus of Uri Nissan Gnessin’(Bassan 2012).

6. Typically to Brenner’s poetics of fragmentarity, the contents of that article –revealed to the reader only in the ‘Addenda’ chapter, in the very last pages of thenovel – are presented partly via a short direct quotation from it, but mostlyindirectly, through a lengthy five page excerpt from Oved Etzot’s polemic letter toLapidot, in which he replies to the latter’s response to the article. The followingquotation is from that letter.

7. My argument here is thus in line with Arpaly’s description of the novel’s ‘structureof meaning’ as ‘a negation that negates itself’ (2008, 326). According to Arpaly’sstructural analysis, a pattern of a series of negations that does not lead to an entirelypositive conclusion informs all the thematic centers of novel (the existential, theJewish, the individual, and the poetic). Thus, with regard to the Jewish-politicalquestion in the novel, Arpaly claims that ‘what is revealed from the negation ofnegation surely cannot be described as if it were a complete affirmation and itcertainly is not a simple ideological-Zionistic affirmation (“only here”), but itobviously exceeded the boundaries of the negative (“also here”)’ (347).

8. For a discussion of this embrace of Jewish existence from the perspective ofexistentialist philosophy, see Avi Sagi’s analysis of Brenner as ‘an existentialist Jew’(2007, esp. 136–213).

9. Vattimo stresses time and again the theoretical strength of his approach: ‘“Weakthought” is by no means a weakness of thinking as such’ (Vattimo and Zabala 2002,452), but rather ‘a very strong theory of weakness, where the philosopher’sachievements do not derive from enforcing the objective world but rather fromweakening its structures’ (2011, 97).

10. Tellingly, in the English translation of Shaked’s book (2000) the phrase ‘sifrut shel“af-al-pi-khen”’ is rendered as ‘a literature “against all odds”’ emphasizing itsheroic character. For an alternative, less heroic description of Brenner’s ‘in spite ofthat,’ see Brinker 1990, 103–105. Brinker’s account is in many respects close tomine, but as he tends to emphasize the differences between the views of Brenner andOved Etzot, he misses, to my opinion, the affirmative moment in the latter’s thought.In this context, two additional points should be made: first, it must be admitted thatamong the dozens of times Brenner uses the phrase ‘in spite of that,’ there are indeedstatements that might be read as ‘heroic,’ in accordance with Govrin’s and Shaked’sdescriptions. But – and that is the second point – the correlation between Brenner’sviews and Oved Etozt’s is of secondary relevance to the argument I try to presenthere: the main issue at stake is the kind of analysis of the nihilistic position and the‘in spite of that’ affirmation that is made possible through their dramatization andunfolding in the framed setting of the novel. Trying to synthesize Oved Etzot’s viewswith the views Brenner professes in his numerous essays and stories will only makevague and indistinct – or miss completely – the potential of the position unfoldedhere.

Notes on contributor

Eyal Bassan is a Ph.D. candidate in the Jewish Studies Program at the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley. His dissertation focuses on the concept of non-conflictuality andexplores the paradoxes of non-conflictual gestures and affects throughout the history ofmodern Hebrew literature.

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