Decolonial Judaism

Decolonial Judaism: Triumphal Failures of Barbaric Thinking explores the relationship among geopolitics, religion, and social theory. It argues that during the postcolonial and post-Holocaust era, Jewish thinkers in different parts of the world were influenced by Global South thought and mobilized this rich set of intellectual resources to confront the assimilation of normative Judaism by various incipient neo-colonial powers. By tracing the historical and conceptual lineage of this overlooked conversation, this book explores not only its epistemological opportunities, but also the internal contradictions that led to its ultimate unraveling, especially in the post-9/11 world.

“Decolonial Judaism is both an intellectual tour-de-force and a pointed critique of the Jewish historical story presented primarily as a Western European event … . In the contemporary moment where colonialism still hovers in the background and decolonialism continues to chart a new and richer redirection in Western thought, Slabodsky’s Decolonial Judaism is an important contribution to this project.” (Steven Leonard Jacobs, Religious Studies Review, Vol. 43 (04), December, 2017)“This is an extraordinary book. It’s perhaps even ironic and poignant, given the rising antisemitism under a turn to the right in the USA, the UK, and France … . Slabodsky takes such problems head on through a creative and provocative synthesis of theories from the global south. … as this book shows, it should also do so at methodological levels, as the sources, approach, and modes of argumentation are fine exemplars of … the creolization of theory.” (Caribbean Philosophical Association Frantz Fanon Prize 2017 recipients, caribbeanphilosophicalassociation.org, January, 2017)

Santiago Slabodsky is The Florence and Robert Kaufmann Chair in Jewish Studies and Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion at Hofstra University, USA. He has been a visiting professor at institutions in Spain, Costa Rica, the Netherlands, Macedonia, Argentina, Canada, and the United States and has published widely in Jewish thought and culture, sociology of knowledge, global south social movements, liberation theology, and decolonial theory.