The Impossible Jew : Identity and the Reconstruction of Jewish American Literary History / Benjamin Schreier.

Introduction: The school of criticism I wouldn't be caught dead in: a polemic on theorizing the field -- 1. Toward a critical semitism: on not answering the Jewish question in literary studies -- 2. Against the dialectic of nation: Abraham Cahan and desire's spectral Jew -- 3. The negative desire of Jewish representation; or, why were the New York intellectuals Jewish? -- 4. Why Jews aren't normal: the unrepresentable future of Philip Roth's the counterlife -- 5. 9/11's stealthy Jews: Jonathan Safran Foer and the irrepresentation of identity.

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He destroys in order to create. In a sweeping critique of the field, Benjamin Schreier resituates Jewish Studies in order to make room for a critical study of identity and identification. Displacing the assumption that Jewish Studies is necessarily the study of Jews, this book aims to break down the walls of the academic ghetto in which the study of Jewish American literature often seems to be contained: alienated from fields like comparative ethnicity studies, American studies, and multicultural studies; suffering from the unwillingness of Jewish Studies to accept critical literary studies as.

English.

Description based on print version record.