Introduction

From the acknowledgements, Anya Topolski:

"I first began researching the contents of this book in 2004. In its original form as my doctoral dissertation, it was successfully defended at the end of 2008. By now it is 2014, a decade has passed, and in this time much has changed in the shared world as well as in my own personal life. Let me tell my own story and the story of this work by interweaving them into the changing political context within which they took place.

Born into a nonpracticing Jewish family of Eastern European descent, my world was one of survivors and refugees. The former the generation of my grandparents, the latter the generation of my parents, who were forced to leave Poland in March 1968 during a less known history of Jewish persecution behind the Iron Curtain. Questions of identity, inclusion and exclusion, anti- Semitism and prejudice were never foreign to my thinking, even though as a resident of Canada, they were foreign to my lived experience. All this changed when I moved to Europe to study philosophy. Having lived in many parts of the globe, I never expected culture shock to manifest itself so strongly in the continent my parents had never ceased to speak about as our home, in terms of beings both Jews and Poles.

In post- 9/11, 7/7, and 11- M Europe, and most evidently in the decade in which this work has been written, there has been a resurgence of support for politicians, and their ideas, that I would define in Levinasian terms as espousing the ‘same hatred of the other man’, a form of racism often connected to religion, race or economics. While Europeans, and certainly those caught up in the project of the European Union, talk a great deal about having founded a Europe that will never repeat the wars and genocide that disgrace the history of the twentieth century, what I have observed greatly concerns me. The gap between rhetoric and reality is immense. I have seen Muslim women violently disrobed and shamed much like Jews were in the 1930s. I have seen mosques burning. These images differ only from those I have seen of synagogues burning in the 1930s because they are in colour, digital and often taken by cameras on cell phones of observers. Worst of all, I have seen too many bystanders keep walking and remain silent.

While there are undoubtedly many differences between the histories of Jews and Muslims in Europe, the inspiration for my dissertation and my further research is motivated by a need to signal the alarm bells. In this vein, I see a politics of relationality as a contribution towards an alternative model of politics in which plurality and inclusion are prioritized over economics, control and unity. Arendt and Levinas are, in my esteem, the best guides for this endeavour, having both survived the Shoah and reflected upon its relation to European philosophy. While this research has never been purely theoretical, its importance grew beyond what I could have previously imagined as my family grew. In 2006 I had my first child, who was exposed to philosophy at the wee age of one month when I dragged him (sleeping) to a conference on Levinas. It was during his first few years of life that I realized how much I wanted him, and all other children, to grow up in a world without this ‘hatred of the other man’. My second son, born three weeks after I defended my PhD, inspired me to transform my academic endeavour into a book to be shared beyond the ivory tower. As anyone who has engaged in such an academic endeavour knows, this is a slow and difficult process. In my case, finding a means to juggle further research and a growing family significantly decelerated this process.

When my daughter Hannah was born in 2011 the book was almost complete. When she died tragically and unexpectedly, I fell apart. While I had felt that we were all living in politically dark times for quite some time, I had never personally experienced such despair and loneliness. A changed person, it took a long time for me to come back to this project and to the world. This agonizing journey has been my own, but would have not been possible without the immense support of my family, my friends, my faith and my profession. The life of an academic, for all its barriers, is a treasure for those who love to think and talk, listen and learn."

Politics of Relationality

Introduction

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