In spite of partition : Jews, Arabs, and the limits of separatist imagination / Gil Z. Hochberg.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [167]-183) and index.

Introduction : between "Jew" and "Arab" : probing the borders of the orient -- 1. History, memory, identity : from the Arab Jew "we were" to the Arab Jew "we may become" -- 2. The legacy of Levantinism : against national normality -- 3. Bringing Hebrew back to its (Semitic) place : on the deterritorialization of language -- 4. Too Jewish and too Arab or who is the (Israeli) subject? -- 5. Memory, forgetting, love : the limits of national memory -- Afterword : going beyond the borders of our times.

"Partition - the idea of separating Jews and Arabs along ethnic or national lines - is a legacy at least as old as the Zionist-Palestinian conflict. Challenging the widespread "separatist imagination" behind partition, Gil Hochberg demonstrates the ways in which works of contemporary Jewish and Arab literature reject simple notions of separatism and instead display complex configurations of identity that emphasize the presence of alterity within the self - the Jew within the Arab, and the Arab within the Jew. In Spite of Partition examines Hebrew, Arabic, and French works that are largely unknown to English readers to reveal how, far from being independent, the signifiers "Jew" and "Arab" are inseparable."--BOOK JACKET.