"In this, his most personal and unsettling work, Esposito asks us a question that haunts the contemporary moment. What is my relation to my adversary? What do I owe them and they me? Beginning with the enigmatic encounter between Jacob and the adversary at the Jabbok river, and then across an astounding number of literary, artistic and cultural interpretations, Esposito theorizes a productive relation between adversaries to warn us against thinking that our struggle with the enemy, god, angel ‒ whatever or whoever is other ‒ can ever end in either’s complete victory. We are the Adversary and the Adversary is us. Our contemporary failure to understand this results in the same barren end: the destruction of both self and other."Timothy Campbell, Cornell University"Esposito reads Jacob’s mysterious struggle as a primal scene of politics, theology and selfhood, where conflict and blessing are inseparably entangled. This daring meditation unsettles easy distinctions and compels us to rethink the adversary as a structural feature of communal, historical and even psychic life."Devin Singh, Dartmouth College
