Between Christianity and Islam: The Theological Turn in the Mizrahi Discourse in Theory and Criticism

This paper reviews the critical Mizrahi discourse in Theory and Criticism over the past three decades. The first part of the article outlines the Mizrahi discourse from the early 1990s to this day, introducing a rudimentary classification of the types of writing on Mizrahi identity. The paper then conceptualizes current Mizrahi critical discourse as the “theological turn” that depicts the religious post-secular world as an alternative to secular nationalism. Whereas its practitioners portray the theological turn as an act of political radicalism, I argue that, in fact, it joins the anti-feminist backlash. Despite the theoretical richness offered by the theological turn, Mizrahi criticism cannot fulfill its radical potential. It must be scrutinized by the same theoretical tools used to criticize the Israeli hegemony that Mizrahim, in more ways than one, are a part of. Furthermore, it must adopt feminist practice and analysis. And it must also forgo the romantic view that Mizrahim, just by existing, are to take the apocalyptic messianic edge off Zionism, with no resort to any political work other than revealing their cultural roots, which supposedly, by their very nature, undermine the Western modernist secular structures.

https://doi.org/10.70959/tac.50a.2018.4160