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The Last Resistance Hardcover – May 17, 2007

by Jacqueline Rose (Author)
4.9 4.9 out of 5 stars 4 ratings
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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 to their 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.
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  1. Print length
    237 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Verso
  4. Publication date
    May 17, 2007
  5. Dimensions
    6.41 x 1 x 9.53 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1844671240
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1844671243
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Jacqueline Rose has written what can only be called a masterpiece of scholarship and thought. The Last Resistance, exploring the role of literature in the Zionist imagination and Jewish memory, is a work of stunning insight and moral courage. Destined to become a standard in the field, it will have a profound and lasting impact.”—Sara Roy, Harvard University

“In The Last Resistance, Jacqueline Rose uses her knowledge of literature, psychoanalysis, and politics to brilliantly illuminating effect. The volume will greatly enhance Professor Rose’s reputation as a literary critic and public intellectual. Stimulating and thought-provoking, it deserves to be read widely.”—Avi Shlaim, University of Oxford

“The miracle of Jacqueline Rose is that she combines textual criticism with concrete political struggles in a brilliant way. In this book, 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 Žižek

About the Author

Jacqueline Rose is Professor of English at Queen Mary University of London. Her books include Sexuality in the Field of Vision; The Question of Zion ; and the novel Albertine.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Verso; First Edition (May 17, 2007)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 237 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1844671240
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1844671243
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.17 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.41 x 1 x 9.53 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.9 4.9 out of 5 stars 4 ratings

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Jacqueline Rose

Jacqueline Rose

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Customer reviews

4.9 out of 5 stars
4.9 out of 5
4 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

AJ
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on November 21, 2017
Verified Purchase
Excellent writing on interesting ideas - some counterintuitive. Verso Books are always reasonably priced.
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Theo Horesh
5.0 out of 5 stars A Masterful and Moving Deconstruction of Israeli National Myths
Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2021
The last resistance is a probing psychoanalysis of the Israeli unconscious. It explores the way national myths and meanings took shape and were used to subjugate the native Palestinians. It looks at how events like the Nakba in which 700,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from the new State of Israel have been occluded from Israeli memory and how the experience of disappearing another people who live side-by-side with you shapes your own identity.

In this sense, it is an important compliment to the history of Israel and Palestine. But it is also an essential work on Israeli national identity. Along with Shlomo Sand's "The Invention of the Jewish People" and Baruch Kimmerling's "The Invention and Decline of Israeliness," it explores the precarious conceptual structures sustaining Israeli identity. Every nation creates myths to hold itself together, but the ephemera on which Israeli national identity has been built makes it peculiarly precarious. However. Rose's work is at one and the same time deeper and more personal, probing the unconscious, interrogating the myths that sustain Israel's abuses, and exploring the meaning of the victim becoming the perpetrator.

"The last resistance" of the title is a play on words. Palestinians are carrying out the last resistance against colonialism while Israel must grapple with its own resistance to self understanding, what Freud described as "the last resistance" before psychoanalysis leads to breakthrough. Israel needs this breakthrough in self-understanding if it is to ever resolve its core contradictions and live in peace and justice with Palestinians, and Rose helps contribute to it through penetrating the unconscious of its foremost thinkers.

It has now been almost a decade since reading this masterpiece, which exercised a major influence on my own work on the topic, The Holocausts We All Deny: Collective Trauma in the World Today. So, my memory of it may be a little fuzzy, but it is a book that will linger long after you have set it down, and it will change the way you think about not simply Israeli but also Jewish identity more generally. I cannot recommend it strongly enough.

~ Theo Horesh, author of The Fascism This Time: and the Global Future of Democracy
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JZ52
4.0 out of 5 stars Rare Insight Into Zionism's Fascism
Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2008
"The Last Resistance" provides an excellent insight into the plight of the Palestinians and the fascist tendencies of Israel's Zionists. God is not a real estate agent and to use the bible as escrow papers claiming a chunk of real estate defies all logic in the 21st century. Especially when taken into consideration that the bible was written by Jews and as such carries an extremely biased view of all outsiders, this arguement is one made of sand. The partioning of Palestine in 1947 was one of the greatest acts of hubris in the 20th century. Rose's exploration of a people who have suffered 60 years of ethnic cleansing and occupation is incitful and well written. It is a breath of fresh air to get an unbiased account of a people who have suffered untold privations at the hands of a brutal victimizer who falsely claims to be the victim in this equation.
13 people found this helpful
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