Jacqueline Rose - The Last Resistance

These essays were all written post-11 September and in the shadow of the worsening conflict in IsraelPalestine. They are published in the year that Israels occupation of the West Bank and Gaza reaches its fortieth anniversary, an occupation that has now lasted longer in Israels history than the period between the Declaration of Independence of 1948 that founded the state and the 1967 war which was when it begun. This has also been the time when Americas plans for a new century have led to the maelstrom of Iraq. An illegal war, to which Great Britain is shamefully a party, and one of the longest occupations of modern history form the sombre backdrop to this book.

In this context two discourses or ways of thought make their mark, as they always have for me, against the darkness of the times. One is psychoanalysis, in its ability to uncover truths that would remain hidden, and to unsettle the most rigid forms of identity as they play themselves out across the stage of political life. The other is literature whose power to subvert the status quo receives new urgency when the dominant clichs and deceptions of statehood, whether here and in the US or in Israel, have reached such new and mind-numbing heights. Both psychoanalysis and literature appear in these essays as forms of resistance, which is the term that gives its title to the book. Resistance has of course another history, most famously in the struggle against the Nazis, whose genocide of European Jewry was the prelude to the founding of the Jewish state. It is one of the tragedies of the history examined in these pages that the nation intended to protect the Jewish people has become the agent of state violence against another people, the Palestinians, who find themselves engaged today in a resistance of their own. These forms of resistance are not the same, any more than what, or whom, they are fighting against. Across the world, resistance shifts its meanings and location. Whole destinies, only some of them touched on here, are contained in the mutations of this word.

The writers who people these essays my travelling companions as I like to think of them all open up the space of critical thought. They allow me, as I hope they will allow the reader, to think against the grim orthodoxies of our times.

Originally, these pieces had different audiences and destinations. The less formal, non-academic essays I have chosen to keep to their original format without notes.

I am enormously grateful to the London Review of Books, where a number of the essays were originally published, in particular, once again, to Mary-Kay Wilmers. Thanks also to Adam Shatz at The Nation, to Alex Scrimgeour at Harpers magazine, to Derek Johns, and to Tom Penn at Verso where I am delighted to be published once again. Other people have been of immense importance over the period the essays were written. I cannot now imagine writing without the support and insights of Sally Alexander and Marina Warner. Avi Shlaim brings his exemplary scholarship and clarity to everything he reads. I owe a special debt to the thoughts of scholar of Tibetan culture Ronit Tlalim, and to the dynamic creativity of filmmaker Asher Tlalim, new friends to whom, with much appreciation, I dedicate this book. And to Jonathan Sklar who reads me with such profound care. Queen Mary, University of London has continued to provide a free space of intellectual enquiry and unfailing support. The students of the course I have been teaching there over the past two years PalestineIsrael, IsraelPalestine: Politics and the Literary Imagination have played a crucial role. I thank them. Finally, the strongest thanks are due to my daughter, Mia Rose, who continues to be the most vital presence of all, and the source of much joy.