Language:
English
Year of publication:
2019
Titel der Quelle:
In Geveb; a Journal of Yiddish Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2019) pp 21
Keywords:
Hirschbein, Peretz, Travel
;
Travel writing History and criticism
;
Yiddish prose literature History and criticism
;
Jews Intellectual life
;
Jews Social conditions
;
Imperialism
;
Orientalism
;
India Social conditions 19th century
Abstract:
This article inscribes Eastern European Jews into the study of (anti)colonialism and Orientalism by analyzing the 1929 India travelogue by Yiddish writer Perets Hirshbeyn. I show how the context of Jewish modernization movements affected the portrayal of "oriental" Asia in Hirshbeyn's travel writing. I approach Hirshbeyn's narrative from the perspective of Cultural Studies and critically explore his self-placement between belonging to the West and identifying with the Orient. Hirshbeyn's narrative includes a strong anti-colonialist tone, which is often juxtaposed with his Orientalist argumentation. At the same time, Hirshbeyn traffics in paternalistic, orientalizing language and mobilizes it to draw analogies between oppressed Jews and oppressed Indians. Hirshbeyn's perception of the social situation in colonized India was, I argue, conditioned by the Jewish context in Eastern Europe. I suggest that Hirshbeyn, a progressive Eastern European Jew who spent several years in the United States, was an ambivalent actor who transgresses the binary power relations between British colonizers and subordinated native Indians. As a whole, this article deepens our understanding of the relations between colonialism, Orientalism, and Jewishness in Yiddish literary culture.
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