At the AJS annual conference last December, I was asked at the last minute to moderate a roundtable discussion of Judith Butler’s Parting Ways. The panel was organized by Larisa Reznik and included presentations by her, Peter Gordon, Sarah Hammerschlag, and Vincent Lloyd. Vincent was able to interest the editors of Political Theology in the event. They are going to run articles by us in the print journal based on the presentations. In the meantime, they are posting at their blog less formal remarks by us. My remarks went up yesterday, which you can read here. I wrote about how I sought and perhaps managed to “moderate” what it might have been a nasty floor flight. The larger questions concern civility, making room for alternative discourse, in this case within the ambit of Jewish Studies, and what it means to “moderate” a discourse, in this case about Israel and Palestine, that presents itself as radical. In creative tension with this “moderation,” the blog is graced by a photograph of Butler looking particularly “fierce.” I’ll post the entire group when they’re all up.
