Gender Oriented Analysis of the Literature of Ka. Tzetnik

The article points to the contradictory trends, unbridgeable gaps and irresolvable tentions in Ka. Tzetnik's writing, especially in Beit Habubot, Pipel and Salamandra. Ka. Tzetnik's public persona - an as Auschwitz survivor, an influential Israeli author of the 1950's and 1960's, and a witness in the Eichmann trial - is likewise tense and contradictory. The article further points out the gaps in the literary criticism of Ka. Tzetnik's work throughout the decades, concentrating on the recent critique by Dan Miron and Omer Bartov.

The article describes the ubiquitous Zionist interpretation of Ka. Tzetnik, with a special emphasis on the gender bias inherent in it, and exposes its many blind spots. These invite alternative interpretations, which undermine the very premises of the mainstream interpretation.

The article's explicitly subversive reading wishes to expose the hegemony's ideological manipulation found at the center of previous interpretations of Ka Tzetnik, and to expose in order to dismantle the one-dimensional, often mechanistic, Zionist perception of Diaspora Jews. Other readings are not only possible, but, in fact, essential.