Beyond Conflict: The Non-Adversarial Aspect of Yitzhak Averbuch Orpaz's Prose Fiction

Abstract:This paper explores the non-adversarial aspect of two major works by Israeli author Yitzhak Averbuch Orpaz (1921–2015): the novella [inline-graphic 01] (Ants) (1968) and the novel [inline-graphic 02] (Daniel's Voyage) (1969). Both Ants and Daniel's Voyage were written and published over the two years following the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and can be read in light of political issues associated with militarism, territorial occupation, and demarcation of borders. Against this background, Orpaz's works present alternative existential modes and a range of unique interactions that deviate from the binary logic characteristic of confrontational situations and breach the hierarchal and patronizing relationship between "Self" and "Other" (both human and non-human). To illuminate the non-adversarial aspects in these works, I draw on three core terms coined by French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari: Becoming, War Machine, and Nomadism.