Israeli Culture and Emergency Routine

The essays in this volume provide for the first time a glimpse into the cultural representations of and about the emergency routine that informs life in the Israeli Gaza Envelope. Nuanced, insightful, and politically aware, they provide a nuanced and illuminative perspective into the ongoing what civilian life looks like during a protracted ‘low-intensity’ war. This is a crucial reading not only for those who are interested in contemporary Israeli culture and society, but also to anyone who studies civilian life in war zones in general. -- Shai Ginsburg, Duke University
‘Emergency routine’ merges two seemingly incompatible terms into an analytical tool to describe the situation of Israelis living along the Gazan border—and, by extension, in Israel. A group of scholars teaching at a college near the Gaza strip combine personal experiences with the critical skills of their profession to illuminate in compelling chapters how enduring stress and trauma are refracted and reflected in contemporary Israeli literature, film, theology, poetry, and comics. Aware of missing voices of Palestinian Gazans, the contributors bring to light the contestations of multiple cultural responses to an intractable conflict. -- Björn Krondorfer, Director of the Martin-Springer Institute at Northern Arizona University