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Isabelle Hesse
My thesis examines how Jewish identity is defined through and against 'others', in novels published by Jewish and non-Jewish writers from the 1960s to today, with particular focus on how Jewishness defines itself in relation to the Holocaust and Israel. I am investigating how Jewish identity is situated in relation to 'self' and 'other' in German and Israeli Holocaust fiction as well as postcolonial and Palestinian literature, as it evolves from being a minority identity and thus intimately linked to Diaspora, exile and 'otherness', to becoming an Israeli identity, connected to Zionism and settler-colonialism in Israel. My project traces different models of 'self' and 'other' that emerge from particular historical moments, such as the Nazi regime in Germany, the creation of the state of Israel, the partition of India, the Gulf war and its consequences for the West Bank, the siege of Ramallah in 2002, and analyses how successful the literary responses to these events are in challenging the status quo of the self/other binary and the idea of victimhood in relation to Jewish identity.