The first work to systematically investigate the potential for a dialogue between postcolonial studies and the history of Zionism.
 
There is an “unacknowledged kinship” between studies of Zionism and post-colonial studies, a kinship that deserves to be both discovered and acknowledged. Unacknowledged Kinships strives to facilitate a conversation between the historiography of Zionism and postcolonial studies by identifying and exploring possible linkages and affiliations between their subjects as well as the limits of such connections. The contributors to this volume discuss central theoretical concepts developed within the field of postcolonial studies, and they use these concepts to analyze crucial aspects of the history of Zionism while contextualizing Zionist thought, politics, and culture within colonial and postcolonial histories. This book also argues that postcolonial studies could gain from looking at the history of Zionism as an example of not only colonial domination but also the seemingly contradictory processes of national liberation and self-empowerment.
 
Unacknowledged Kinships is the first work to systematically investigate the potential for a dialogue between postcolonial studies and Zionist historiography. It is also unique in suggesting that postcolonial concepts can be applied to the history of European Zionism just as comprehensively as to the history of Zionism in Palestine and Israel or Arab countries. Most importantly, the book is an overture for a dialogue between postcolonial studies and the historiography of Zionism.
 

Stefan Vogt is Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter and research coordinator at the Martin Buber Chair for Jewish Thought and Philosophy, as well as a Privatdozent for Modern History at the History Department, both at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. He is also the editor of the volume Colonialism and the Jews in German History. Derek Penslar is the William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History at Harvard University. His books include Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader; Israel in History: The Jewish State in Comparative Perspective, The Origins of the State of Israel: A Documentary History (with Eran Kaplan), and Jews and the Military: A History. Penslar is President of the American Academy for Jewish Research, a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and an honorary fellow of St. Anne’s College, Oxford. Arieh Saposnik is associate professor at the Ben-Gurion Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism at Ben-Gurion University in the Negev. He is the author of Becoming Hebrew: The Creation of a Jewish National Culture in Ottoman Palestine and Zionism’s Redemptions: Images of the Past and Visions of the Future in Jewish Nationalism.