Ariel Dorfman: The Trajectory of a Transnational Jewish Intellectual

• Published in: Contemporary Jewry 2021-12, Vol.41 (4), p.859-872
• Main Author: Lindstrom, Naomi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Analysis; Anthropology; Armed forces; Careers; Dictatorship; English language; Forecasts and trends; Hispanic Americans; Religious Studies; Social criticism & satire; Social Sciences; Sociology of Religion; Transnationalism
• ISSN: 0147-1694; 1876-5165
• DOI: 10.1007/s12397-021-09407-w

Over the course of his lengthy career, Dorfman (1942) has pursued a transnational intellectual path, participating in Spanish American social criticism, cultural analysis, and literature while also becoming increasingly a part of English-language U.S. culture. Until well into middle age, he refrained from discussing his Jewish family background and current identity, attempting to remain within an ethnically unmarked tradition of progressive social thought. In the latter part of the 1990s he grew more forthcoming on these topics and his work and person began to circulate in intellectual venues marked as Jewish. While Dorfman's ability to move in and out of diverse cultural spaces is impressive, it has not been unlimited. As the author observes, his plan to end his exile and reintegrate himself into Chilean cultural life following the end of the military dictatorship in 1990 met with frustration. Though he maintains a residence in Chile and visits the country, Dorfman's English-language career has continued to outpace the more limited success of his recent work in Spanish American countries. Dorfman has only inserted himself into Jewish intellectual life to a modest extent, apparently by choice, since his custom is to discuss matters of which he possesses significant knowledge, particularly expertise gained through first-hand experience.