This course revolves around gestures of disengagement and retreat, which, following Roland Barthes, can be described as moments of “neutrality.” We will trace the emergence of such gestures in modern Hebrew fiction and examine their paradoxical status both within the modern discourse of self-fulfillment and within a national literary discourse that is informed by an explicit imperative to take an ideological stand. Is the turn to narratives of disengagement a sign of weakness and indifference? Or does it rather embody – precisely by refusing to take a position – a more radical position of resistance? Throughout the course we will explore different figures of “the neutral” (such as silence, retirement, inactivity, androgyny, failure, shyness, passivity) and locate them in stories and novels by Gnessin, Elisheva, Agnon, Megged, Hareven, Matalon, and others; in addition, we will read critical and theoretical essays by Barthes, Blanchot, Deleuze, Agamben, François, and Sedgwick.