Book reviews

Isfahan Is Half the World; Memories of a Persian Boyhood. By Sayyed Mohammad ‘Ali Jamalzadeh. Translated by W. L. Heston. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983.

Sorayya dar Eghma [Sorayya in a Coma]. By Esma'il Fasih. Tehran: Nashr‐e No, 1983. 321 pp.

Klidar. 5 volumes. By Mahmud Dowlatabadi. Tehran: Nashr‐e Parsi, 1978–1983.

False Dawn: Selected Poems. By Nader Naderpur. In Literature East and West 22 (1985).     

A nation destroyed: an existential approach to the distinctive harm of genocide

In this article, I present a critique of existing approaches to the distinctive harm of genocide and offer an alternative approach. I draw on Hannah Arendt’s unique conception of genocide, to suggest an ‘existential’ account of the harm of genocide. For Arendt, the distinctive loss in genocide was not a moral loss, strictly speaking, but rather an existential loss to humanity. By destroying a nation in whole or in part, genocide robs us of a variety of possible ways of experiencing and understanding the world. This approach, I argue, is original and valuable, and merits further consideration by anyone who is interested in the problem of genocide.     

Making the Desert Bloom: Hannah Arendt and Zionist Discourse

This article discusses an aspect of Hannah Arendt’s treatment of the conflict between the Zionists and the Palestinians that has thus far been overlooked in scholarship: her justification of Zionism through the achievements of the Jewish pioneers in cultivating the land, in contrast to the Palestinians’ failure to do so. The inability of natives to cultivate their land was a familiar argument in the history of colonialism, used to legitimize the colonialists’ right to settle a land and often to displace the natives. How should we understand Arendt’s use of this argument? I show that Arendt’s argument should be understood in the context of, first, the recurrence of this argument in Western political thought and practices. Second, the Zionists’—Arendt included—need of legitimizing Jewish settlements in Palestine. And third, the influence of Arendt’s own political philosophy on her understanding of culture in general, and Palestinian culture in particular.