Affective trouble: a Jewish/Palestinian heterosexual wedding threatening the Israeli nation-state?
Roey J. Gafter (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel)
Tommaso Milani (University of Gothenburg)
The aim of this article is to analyze the reactions of some mainstream Israeli politicians to a celebrity marriage between Tzahi Halevi, a Jewish Israeli actor, and Lucy Aharish, a Palestinian Israeli TV personality. Drawing upon the notion of stance, we unveil the affective trouble generated by this heterosexual union vis-à-vis the Israeli national project. More specifically, we tease out the kaleidoscopic collage of politicians’ affective (dis)attachments in relation to Halevi, Aharish and a variety of socioculturally relevant categories such as the Israeli nation. This affective patchwork, we argue, is itself the product of a tension that is at the very heart of the Israeli nation-state, that between the policing of Jewishness as the defining principle of the Israeli national imagined community, on the one hand, and the upholding of the democratic imperative to equal treatment and recognition, on the other.
Hosted by Christian von Scheve
The lecture is taking place online. Please find the access link below.