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Europe in Transition: The NYE European Studies Series
Language, Nation and State: Identity Politics in a Multilingual Age
Introduction; T.Judt & D.Lacorne PART 1: THE LIMITS OF NATIONAL MONOLINGUALISM French Jacobinism and the Challenge of Linguistic, Ethnic, and Regional Variety; A.Fenet The History of Decline; P.Martel Language Wars in the The Case of California; D.Lopez PART 2: THE FRAGILITY OF PLURILINGUAL NATIONS Nationalism versus The Belgian Case; A.von Busekist Struggling Against Language Policy in Canada; K.McRoberts Multiculturalism and The Swiss Experience; U.Windisch PART 3: NATION-MAKING AND LINGUISTIC REVIVALS The Invention of Hebrew as a Daily Language; A.Dieckhoff Acculturation and Linguistic Reconstruction in Ukraine, Lithuania, and Belorusse; D.Beauvois Unity and Plurality in the Serbo-Croatian Linguistic Domain; P.Garde The A New Babel? Languages and Language Communities in the Age of Electronic Discourses; G.Nunberg
260 pages, Paperback
First published October 15, 2004
98 people want to read
About the author
Tony Judt
55 books650 followersBorn in 1948, Tony Judt was raised in the East End of London by a mother whose parents had immigrated from Russia and a Belgian father who descended from a line of Lithuanian rabbis. Judt was educated at Emanuel School, before receiving a BA (1969) and PhD (1972) in history from the University of Cambridge.
Like many other Jewish parents living in postwar Europe, his mother and father were secular, but they sent him to Hebrew school and steeped him in the Yiddish culture of his grandparents, which Judt says he still thinks of wistfully. Urged on by his parents, Judt enthusiastically waded into the world of Israeli politics at age 15. He helped promote the migration of British Jews to Israel. In 1966, having won an exhibition to King's College Cambridge, he took a gap year and went to work on kibbutz Machanaim. When Nasser expelled UN troops from Sinai in 1967, and Israel mobilized for war, like many European Jews, he volunteered to replace kibbutz members who had been called up. During and in the aftermath of the Six-Day War, he worked as a driver and translator for the Israel Defense Forces.
But during the aftermath of the war, Judt's belief in the Zionist enterprise began to unravel. "I went with this idealistic fantasy of creating a socialist, communitarian country through work," Judt has said. The problem, he began to believe, was that this view was "remarkably unconscious of the people who had been kicked out of the country and were suffering in refugee camps to make this fantasy possible."
Career: King's College, Cambridge, England, fellow, 1972-78; University of California at Berkeley, assistant professor, 1978-80; St. Anne's College, Oxford University, Oxford, England, fellow, 1980-87; New York University, New York, NY, professor of history, 1987--, director of Remarque Institute, 1995--.
Awards: American Council of Learned Societies, fellow, 1980; British Academy Award for Research, 1984; Nuffield Foundation fellow, 1986; Guggenheim fellow, 1989; Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction finalist, 2006, for Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945.
Like many other Jewish parents living in postwar Europe, his mother and father were secular, but they sent him to Hebrew school and steeped him in the Yiddish culture of his grandparents, which Judt says he still thinks of wistfully. Urged on by his parents, Judt enthusiastically waded into the world of Israeli politics at age 15. He helped promote the migration of British Jews to Israel. In 1966, having won an exhibition to King's College Cambridge, he took a gap year and went to work on kibbutz Machanaim. When Nasser expelled UN troops from Sinai in 1967, and Israel mobilized for war, like many European Jews, he volunteered to replace kibbutz members who had been called up. During and in the aftermath of the Six-Day War, he worked as a driver and translator for the Israel Defense Forces.
But during the aftermath of the war, Judt's belief in the Zionist enterprise began to unravel. "I went with this idealistic fantasy of creating a socialist, communitarian country through work," Judt has said. The problem, he began to believe, was that this view was "remarkably unconscious of the people who had been kicked out of the country and were suffering in refugee camps to make this fantasy possible."
Career: King's College, Cambridge, England, fellow, 1972-78; University of California at Berkeley, assistant professor, 1978-80; St. Anne's College, Oxford University, Oxford, England, fellow, 1980-87; New York University, New York, NY, professor of history, 1987--, director of Remarque Institute, 1995--.
Awards: American Council of Learned Societies, fellow, 1980; British Academy Award for Research, 1984; Nuffield Foundation fellow, 1986; Guggenheim fellow, 1989; Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction finalist, 2006, for Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 1, 2017
Boring. A series of brief essays, irregular in quality but never very good, without much context. When you finish reading, you almost don't retain anything due to poor quality of the academese prose, which is not awful but it's not very clear either.
The book, which is not very long, is divided in three parts:
1. The difficulties of monolingual nations (explores linguistic policies in France and California)
2. The fragilities of multilingual nations (Canada, Switzerland)
3. Linguistic revivals (Eastern Europe, Israel)
I'll read the last part when I read some other book about that zones. It's all so out of context that is a waste of time to keep reading now.
Also, the book is outdated. I know that's my fault, for buying a book about politics from 2004, but...
The book, which is not very long, is divided in three parts:
1. The difficulties of monolingual nations (explores linguistic policies in France and California)
2. The fragilities of multilingual nations (Canada, Switzerland)
3. Linguistic revivals (Eastern Europe, Israel)
I'll read the last part when I read some other book about that zones. It's all so out of context that is a waste of time to keep reading now.
Also, the book is outdated. I know that's my fault, for buying a book about politics from 2004, but...
Displaying 1 of 1 review