This essay contributes to the Judaic conceptualization of peace by bringing Walter Benjamin's essay "Critique of Violence" into conversation with the nonviolent practice of the Israeli NGO, Rabbis for Human Rights. It analyzes critically Benjamin's critique of liberal peace and legal instrumentality by questioning his distinction between pure, divine violence and instrumental violence by focusing on the story of Korah's rebellion. Moving to Benjamin's equation of pure violence with nonviolent conflict resolution, I argue that the latter is the appropriate means to achieve "justpeace." Rabbis for Human Rights' scriptural interpretation indicates that nonviolent peacebuilding can be modeled on the agonistic struggle between divine law and human intercession. They use legal means to challenge the state violence of occupation in pursuit of justice and peace.

One might wish that the author of this book had better news for us. It is an extensive, diligent and productive study of versions of the children’s show Sesame Street, produced in Israel, Palestine...

Guides you through the key figures in 'The Tradition of Critique' – critical post-Enlightenment European thinking Introduces 15 key figures in modern Western philosophy Enables students to study individual thinkers from one handy reference resource Explains the relevance of philosophical tradition to contemporary thought Accessible to beginners and non-philosophers Explains the main ideas and concepts which contemporary thinkers address Oriented to the philosophical, social and political aspects of the critical tradition The intellectual tradition covered by the book is broadly the Continental philosophy and theory which has had a significant impact on many theoretical innovations in the humanities and social sciences. Yet many students and non-philosophers have little understanding of the tradition on which such thinking draws. The book therefore covers those thinkers whose work serves as the background for many contemporary thinkers such as Derrida, Foucault and Habermas. There are individual chapters on: Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Weber, Freud, Lukacs, Adorno and Horkheimer, Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer, Wittgenstein, Arendt and Levi-Strauss. Each chapter offers some contextualisation, presents and explains key concepts, explains the thinker's relevance to an ongoing tradition and offers suggestions for further reading. The volume provides readers with sufficient background knowledge to study more contemporary theorists whose work draws on, or assumes knowledge of, these earlier or more foundational thinkers. Thus the book is aimed specifically at students and scholars who do not have a philosophical training and who study literary, cultural, social or political theorists who engage with this European intellectual tradition.

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Israeli peace activism has increasingly taken place on new media, as in the case of the grassroots anti-Occupation group, Ta’ayush. What is the significance of Ta’ayush’s work on the ground and online for peace? This article considers the former in the light of social movement scholarship on peacebuilding, and the latter in light of new media scholarship on social movements. Each of those approaches suggest that Ta’ayush has very limited success in achieving its strategic goals or generating outrage about the Occupation in the virtual/public sphere. Yet, Ta’ayush’s apparent “failure” according to standard criteria of success misses the significance of Ta’ayush’s work. Its combination of grassroots activism and online documentation of its work in confronting the Occupation in partnership with Palestinians has assembled an impressive archive. Through the lens of Walter Benjamin’s philosophy of history, Ta’ayush can be seen to enact a “future perfect” peace that will have come.

Recent interest in communism as an idea prompts reconsideration of Walter Benjamin's conception of a "communist'' aesthetic politics. In spite of Benjamin's categorical condemnation of aestheticized politics, his "artwork essay'' is better read as both explicit condemnation of a particular (regressive fascist) type of aestheticized politics and implicit commendation of another (progressive communist) type. Under the modern conditions of the technological reproducibility of art, and mass politics, the character of and relationship between the cultural value spheres of politics and aesthetics also changes. Benjamin analyzes dialectically the actuality of the fascist response to modern mass arts and politics in which technology and society are misaligned, and the potentiality of a communist response that would bring about a collective interplay of humanity and technology.

In spite of its continuing popularity since its release in 1964, the film Mary Poppins has attracted little scholarly interest. Perhaps the absence of interpretative effort directed at the film can be explained by the obviousness of its message of family values that is so typical of Disney productions, so that ideological unmasking is superfluous for an adult audience. Or perhaps we are enthralled by the Disney magic that makes political readings of the apolitical world of Mary Poppins and other Disney films seem sacrilegious and theoretical readings seem inappropriate (Bell, Haas and Sells: 2-3). The editors of a volume of essays about Disney films report that their students resisted critical readings and pardoned their enjoyment of Disney films for four reasons: "it's only for children, it's only fantasy, it's only a cartoon, and it's just good business" (Bell, Haas and Sells: 4). This paper risks similar dismissals by challenging the innocence of the Disney magic. Yet it also goes one step further by suggesting that Mary Poppins' ideological message of family values and personal fulfilment in the capitalist system is haunted by moments that prevent ideological closure and open up a space for the exercise of critical faculties.

This paper argues that democracy is universalisable as a theory and practice that fails to be identical with itself. Firstly, the paradox that democracy's universality can be put into practice only in particular terms and contexts is discussed. Then four models of democratic universality are presented and assessed: (i) empirical or actual universality; (ii) hybrid universality; (iii) cosmopolitan universality; (iv) impossible universality. The final argument is that democracy can be universalised because of the impossibility of making the demos identical with political authority, which is akin to the impossibility of being identical to ourselves.

Abstract Ernesto Laclau is an Argentinian‐born political theorist whose main contributions are in the fields of discourse theory, radical democracy, and populism. His key insight is that social order is a discourse, meaning a symbolic system structured analogously to language, as understood in poststructuralist terms. Discourse refers to the practices and meanings that constitute social order as an effect of the differences between social elements (classes, groups) that have no positive meaning other than through the differential relations between them. “Society” is a structured totality formed by the discursive relations that articulate social elements, modifying them in the process. Society is never entirely closed or fixed as its discursive formation requires an excluded element, conceived in psychoanalytical terms as a “lack.” Laclau is anti‐essentialist, holding that the identities of social groups and meanings of political terms are all contingent on their articulation in discourse. Yet, there are certain elements of discourse, called empty or floating signifiers, that provisionally fix social meanings in hegemonic relations.

How should a leftist Israeli citizen in the US Mid-West conceive of peace during Operation Protective Edge? The legalistic critiques of the violence of the war are ineffective in that each side condemns the violence of the other in the terms in which it justifies its own violence. Turning to Walter Benjamin's critique of legal violence, the paper figures military violence as mythical violence, a fate that befalls Israelis and Palestinians who visit retribution on each other. As an alternative to mythical violence, Benjamin offers messianic, divine violence. In light of his comments about nonviolence, divine violence equates to divine peace. During the current Gaza war (2014) the Israeli-Palestinian Parents Circle Families Forum practices divine peace.