The Politics of Purim The Politics of Purim
The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies

The Politics of Purim

Law, Sovereignty and Hospitality in the Aesthetic Afterlives of Esther

    • €35.99
    • €35.99

Publisher Description

This book approaches the holiday of Purim as profane, freed to human use and ends, in order to consider the political legacy of the biblical story of Esther in festival and art works. Jo Carruthers explores carnival and synagogue practices, the purimshpil (Purim's own dramatic genre), illuminated Esther scrolls, as well as artworks by Botticelli, Millais and Jan Steen. The complex and astute interrogation of political life in such festival and artworks is analysed through theories of sovereignty, law, precarity and hospitality by key political thinkers such as Giorgio Agamben, Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, and Jacques Rancière.



Carruthers considers different motifs of boundary conservation and dissolution, as a means of contemplating the political implications of Purim and the Esther story for diaspora politics. How is sovereignty aspired to and attained by marginalized and threatened communities? How can one respond to the ethical call of hospitality to relax sovereign boundaries whilst protecting and celebrating that which is exceptional? The practice of giving gifts, mishloach manos, offers a model of hospitality that together with Purim's profane impulse is epitomized in the final chapter's discussion of a 2018 Brooklyn purimshpil, that offers a riotous ridiculing of white supremacist rhetoric, norms of domination, capitalist inequalities, modern slavery and ablest identities and assumptions.

GENRE
Religion & Spirituality
RELEASED
2020
6 February
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
224
Pages
PUBLISHER
T&T Clark
SIZE
8.4
MB

More Books by Jo Carruthers

Sandscapes Sandscapes
2020
Esther Through the Centuries Esther Through the Centuries
2020
Anticipatory Materialisms in Literature and Philosophy, 1790–1930 Anticipatory Materialisms in Literature and Philosophy, 1790–1930
2020
England's Secular Scripture England's Secular Scripture
2011

Other Books in This Series

Introducing a Hermeneutics of Cispicion Introducing a Hermeneutics of Cispicion
2024
The Bible and Comics The Bible and Comics
2023
Transgression and Transformation Transgression and Transformation
2021
Bertolt Brecht and the David Fragments (1919-1921) Bertolt Brecht and the David Fragments (1919-1921)
2020
Storytelling the Bible at the Creation Museum, Ark Encounter, and Museum of the Bible Storytelling the Bible at the Creation Museum, Ark Encounter, and Museum of the Bible
2020
And He Will Take Your Daughters...' And He Will Take Your Daughters...'
2015