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The State of Desire: Religion and Reproductive Politics in the Promised Land

Online ISBN:
9781479817382
Print ISBN:
9781479817351
Publisher:
NYU Press
Book

The State of Desire: Religion and Reproductive Politics in the Promised Land

Lea Taragin-Zeller
Lea Taragin-Zeller
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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Published online:
18 January 2024
Published in print:
8 August 2023
Online ISBN:
9781479817382
Print ISBN:
9781479817351
Publisher:
NYU Press

Abstract

The State of Desire offers a groundbreaking anthropological approach to the cultural study of desire. Drawing on five years of ethnographic research in Israel, this ethnography shows how demographic anxieties bring forward invasive modes of reproductive governance that affect the most basic desires of citizens, even in the most traditional settings. As neoliberal aspirations to cultivate a high-income, high-tech nation merge with particular racialized imaginations of religion, cracks have appeared in one of the most important ideals of Orthodox Jews—making a large Jewish family. On the one hand, having a large family is an important religious obligation and internalized communal norm that becomes a desire for Orthodox men and women. On the other hand, shifting forms of Israel’s reproductive governance make the process of actualizing these high-fertility ideals and pressures almost unattainable. Going beyond the tendency to attribute religious reproduction to blind adherence to biblical commands to “be fruitful and multiply,” The State of Desire demonstrates how Orthodox desires and their discontents are reshaped at the intersection of reproduction, religion, and politics. It also offers a remarkable account of the delicate balance between personal desire and the state, an ethical choreography that lives at the heart of the human condition all over the globe.

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