Yizhar’s prisoner is rendered pathetic and repulsive, not merely tragic

Evidence

The prisoner is “enveloped by dumbness, the silence of an uprooted plant-his misery so palpable that it flapped about his head in a rhythm of terror, rising and falling with the blindfold (tied to his brow with a brute twist of disdain) so that he was pathetic but also ludicrous and repulsive” (ibid.). — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 582

Categorization

• XREF: The rendering of the colonized/subjugated other as simultaneously pathetic and repulsive (rather than purely sympathetic) recalls the ambiguity Anidjar tracks throughout — connecting to the reader’s interest in how pity and revulsion intertwine in representations of the enemy.