The Last Resistance

Description

In The Last Resistance, Jacqueline Rose explores the power of writing to create and transform our political lives. In particular, she examines the role of literature in the Zionist imagination: here, literature is presented as a unique form of dissidence, with the power to expose the unconscious of nations, and often proposing radical alternatives totheir dominant pathways and beliefs. While Israel-Palestine is the repeated focus, The Last Resistance also turns to post-apartheid South Africa, to American national fantasy post-9/11, and to key moments for the understanding of Jewish culture and memory. Rose also underscores the importance of psychoanalysis, both historically in relation to the unfolding of world events, and as a tool of political understanding. Examining topics ranging from David Grossman, through W.G. Sebald, Freud, Nadine Gordimer, the concept of evil, and suicide bombers, The Last Resistance offers a unique way of responding to the crises of the times.

Jacqueline Rose is internationally known for her writing on feminism, psychoanalysis, literature and the politics and ideology of Israel-Palestine. Her books include Sexuality in the Field of Vision, The Haunting of Sylvia Plath, States of Fantasy, The Question of Zion, The Last Resistance, the novel Albertine, and most recently Women in Dark Times. Conversations with Jacqueline Rose came out in 2010, and The Jacqueline Rose Reader in 2011. A regular writer for The London Review of Books, she wrote and presented the Channel 4 TV Documentary, Dangerous Liaison - Israel and the United States. She is a co-founder of Independent Jewish Voices in the UK and a Fellow of the British Academy.

A breathtakingly refined textual analysis sustains a passionate, ethical and political engagement in the ongoing Near East crisis.This alone makes her a model of what a public intellectual should be. -- Slavoj Zizek In The Last Resistance, Jacqueline Rose uses her knowledge of literature, psychoanalysis, and politics to brilliantly illuminating effect ... Stimulating and thought-provoking, it deserves to be read widely. -- Avi Shlaim, University of Oxford Deeply absorbing. * Times Literary Supplement * Hard-hitting. * Independent * A passionate celebration of Jewish thought and writing... an original, innovative survey of some of the deeper dynamics at playwithin Zionism. * Tribune * It takes a fierce shell of courage to speak out, as Jacqueline Rose does here ... She is a fine, original scholar. -- Peter Preston * Observer *