Critically engages with Israeli settler colonialism in Palestine, through race and gender theory, and a critique of Agamben.

Positioning race front and centre, this book theorizes that political violence, in the form of a socio-political process that differentiates between human and less-than-human populations, is used by the state of Israel in racializing and ruling the citizens of occupied Palestine. Lentin argues that Israel’s rule over Palestine is an example of Agamben’s state of exception, Goldberg’s racial state and Wolfe’s settler colony; the Israeli racial settler colony employs its laws to rule besieged Palestine, while excluding itself and its Jewish citizen-colonists from legal instruments and governmental technologies. Governing through emergency legislation and through practices of exception, emergency, necessity and security, Israel positions itself outside domestic and international law. Deconstructing Agamben’s Eurocentric theoretical position Lentin shows that it occludes colonialism, settler colonialism and anti-colonialism and fails to specifically foreground race; instead she combines the work of Wolfe, who proposes race as a trace of settler colonialism, and Weheliye, who argues that Agamben’s western-centric understanding of exception fail to speak from explicitly racialized and gendered standpoints. Employing existing media, activist, and academic accounts of racialization this book deliberately breaks from white, Western theorizations of biopolitics, exception, and bare life, and instead foregrounds race and gender in analysing settler colonial conditions in Israel.

"[A] scholarly text that provides new ways of thinking about Israel and Palestine and the dynamics of Israeli state crime. It is written in accessible, clear, and concise language, which makes the most complex information straightforward and easy to understand. Therefore, it is suitable for academics and non-academics, students and activists alike." - State Crime Journal

"Lentin’s in-depth and engaging work gives one a deeper understanding of the role race plays in Israel and Israel’s relationship to the Palestinians." - H-Judaic

"This book is a timely intervention, given contemporary pushes by Western politicians to insulate Israel from criticism by conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism." - Reading Religion

"Lentin’s emphasis of race opens new ways of seeing the processes informing Israel’s colonial project. It is, ultimately, the same bowl of fruit, but painted in a way that is simultaneously innovative and provocative." - Irish Journal of Sociology

"Academically, [Traces of Racial Exception] provides an extensive list of theorists and titles on concepts such as settler-colonialism, decolonisation and state of exception that are accompanied with the author's critique of and comments on them. This form of bibliography represents general guidelines and starting points for graduate and advanced undergraduate researchers who seek an in-depth understanding of and an insightful opinion on the Israel occupation of the Palestinians' land. Existentially, this book gives a chance for the general reader to go beyond the biased mainstream news outlets." - Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies

"The empirical richness of the book makes it an extremely timely and compelling read … An important insight of this book is that we cannot think and act ‘decolonization’ without taking race and de-racialization seriously." - British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies

"The author’s logic, analysis, and methodology in identifying settler colonialism as a process, not an event, carries her argument throughout the book. The result is a cutting-edge look at settler colonialism and racialization that is deeply concerned with the human suffering of its victims. I strongly recommend this book for academics and students of settler colonialism, race and racialization, and Palestine and Israel studies." - Journal of Palestine Studies