Motherhood and nation: The voice of women artists in Israel's bereavement and memorial discourse

This article offers an interpretive reading of current works of art by women that indicate the paradoxical place of the woman artist as a mother in the cycle of militarism and attitudes toward the discourse of bereavement and commemoration. My hypothesis is that the arts herald or anticipate the trauma by seeking to express something that may be called “pre- and counter-commemoration.” This interpretation of these artists' stance expands on insights arising from the notion of “counter-memory” to discuss a paradoxical form of commemoration that refuses to acquiesce in the cycle of militarism and memorialization. The article offers an integrated examination of theory and practices in the historical context of motherhood and nationalism and, specifically, of women artists in Israel in recent decades in the “discourse of bereavement” as opposed to the “discourse of the bereaved.”     

Nationalism and war commemoration – a Latin American exceptionalism?

Recent scholarship on collective memory and nationalism in Latin America argues that – in sharp contrast to Europe – war commemoration has been of little importance to the memory work of states in the region. The article challenges this claim. A comparative‐historical analysis of school textbooks and school ceremonies in twentieth‐century Mexico, Argentina and Peru reveals that the commemoration of major civil and international wars was central to official national narratives in these countries. The article further identifies important qualitative changes in war commemoration over time, especially with respect to how commemorative discourses portrayed agency and assigned responsibility for military victories and losses. These changes are situated within broader transformations of nationalism and new alignments in the politics of nationhood and memory.     

Fighting for the Unknown Soldier: The Contested Territory of the French Nation in 1934–1938

The left's triumphant appropriation of the nation in discourse and commemoration has become an important focus for studies of the Popular Front period. Yet the response of the leagues and parties of the right to this rhetorical and symbolic challenge has received very little attention, and a significant facet of the political rivalry of these years has thus remained unexplored. This article proposes a comparative study of the concepts of the nation developed by left and right in the period 1934–1938. After analysing the conflicting images of the nation that they espoused, rooted in fundamentally incompatible visions of the First World War, the article then illuminates areas of tension and ambiguity emerging from 1935 onwards, as both the Popular Front and their opponents identified the nation as a territory to be defended and as a community offering reconciliation above geographical and social divisions. In so doing, the article suggests that the concept of the nation became one of the most important centres of contention between left and right in this tumultuous period.     

The 1948 war veterans and postwar reconstruction in Israel

This article deals with the characteristics of postwar reconstruction in the State of Israel at the end of the 1948 war and during the early 1950s, focusing on the patterns and priorities of reconstruction of society as a whole and the rehabilitation of veteran soldiers in particular. The article addresses the social impact of the rehabilitation of the 1948 war veterans on the emerging Israeli society, including the creation of a social distinction between different sectors undergoing rehabilitation in terms of employment and housing. The article also discusses the social and political protests that accompanied the rehabilitation of the demobilized soldiers who campaigned for recognition and commemoration.     

Jabotinsky and Jewish autonomy in the Diaspora

This article examines the customary assumption that ultra-Orthodox memory of the Holocaust is a counter-memory, which confronts, consciously and unconsciously, the dominant secular, Zionist memory of the Holocaust. However, in the early postwar period, the memory of the Holocaust in ultra-Orthodox society was variegated and multifaceted. The article shows that not only did some members of ultra-Orthodox society adopt part of the Zionist narrative on issues such as the lessons of the Holocaust and the centrality of the Land of Israel but that they even took part in its creation and consolidation. During the 1960s some of the ultra-Orthodox spokesmen shifted their commemoration efforts to within their own community for a variety of reasons. Nonetheless, the sectorial barriers between the secular majority and the ultra-Orthodoxy minority in Israel in the first decades were not as high or as rigid as they appear to be today.     

‘Independence is not given,it is taken’: the Ivorian cinquantenaire and competing history/ies of independence

This article explores competing histories of independence in Côte d'Ivoire. The 2010 commemoration of fifty years of independence led to competing histories about how and if the nation achieved independence in 1960. The postelectoral crisis of 2010–2011 that followed soon afterwards has been interpreted by supporters of the outgoing president Laurent Gbagbo as an attempt by France and the international community to re‐colonise Côte d'Ivoire. The article asks how different versions of this history are connected to different political projects and how they have changed through time. The article will analyse these processes of meaning‐making in a historiology of Ivorian independence, thus contributing to constructivist accounts of nationhood, collective memory and historiography. The paper thus argues that different media of recalling the past in the present, such as commemoration and historiography, should be studied in a complementary manner to understand how (joint) remembering and forgetting are tools and mirrors of nations at work.     

The power of precision air strikes and social media feeds in the 2012 Israel–Hamas conflict: ‘targeting transparency’

This article analyses the evolving uses of social media during wartime through the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) Spokesperson Facebook and Twitter accounts. The conflict between Israel and Hamas-affiliated groups in November 2012 has generated interesting data about social media use by a sovereign power in wartime and the resultant networked discourse. Facebook data is examined for effective patterns of dissemination through both content analysis and discourse analysis. Twitter data is explored through connected concept analysis to map the construction of meaning in social media texts shared by the IDF. The systematic examination of this social media data allows the authors’ analysis to comment on the evolving modes, methods and expectations for state public diplomacy, propaganda and transparency during wartime.     

Tools slippage and the Tel Dan inscription

Two extreme views exist as to the structure of Lam 1: one is that there is no structure at all, while the other is that we have a very sophisticated and intricate structure. The author of this article, in rejecting - as would many scholars - both extremes, underlines the unique occasion of the poem - the aftermath of 586 BCE - and the traumatic experiences that are being commemorated, and argues for a dramatic composition involving role-play in the annual commemoration of the greatest tragedy in the history of Israel.     

“Everybody is Centennializing”: White Southerners and the 1876 Centennial

The one hundredth anniversary of American independence was celebrated with a huge world’s fair or “International Exhibition” in Philadelphia, commonly referred to as “The Centennial,” a central theme of which was post-bellum reconciliation. This article argues that the Centennial served as a catalyst for reflection about sectional distinctiveness. It examines the highly politicized discourse around the commemoration, the ways in which white southerners’ self-definition was bound up in perceived differences from their Northern counterparts and the extent to which exaggerated or re-affirmed southerness in reaction to the Centennial detracted from post-war affirmations of renewed American nationalism.     

Review articles La justice comme nouvelle scène de la démocratie

Over 50 years have passed since the 17 October 1961 massacre and, though the event has gained wider recognition, it still occupies a tenuous place in French history. Scholars have turned to fictional literary and filmic representations of the massacre that have appeared since the 1980s, but have largely overlooked its commemoration in music. In this essay, the author analyses two works: French rapper Médine's song ‘17 octobre’ (2006), which reimagines the massacre from the perspective of a witness who dies, and an Internet montage video (2008) which sets Médine's song to archival and non-archival video clips. Both the song and montage highlight the limits of official historical discourse through a variety of practices, including manipulating perspective, sampling and putting 17 October into dialogue with other obscured histories. The historical and historiographical work these texts accomplish illustrates the potential of such media to construct a postmemorial archive that blurs boundaries between archive and fiction, creative works and history.     

Enlightenment,Haskalah, and the State of Israel

ABSTRACT

This article charts the broad and transforming effects of the European Enlightenment and the Jewish Haskalah on Zionism and on modern Israel’s government, judiciary, and political discourse. It traces this complex legacy using a semantic distinction between two Modern Hebrew terms for the Enlightenment, haskalah and ne’orut, that illustrates their importance in the political and discursive legacies of the State of Israel. The article then explores the recent populist and nationalist assaults against some of these legacies.     

Rabin’s road: The politics of toponymic commemoration of Yitzhak Rabin in Israel

Embedded into the language of the landscape and integrated into the routines of everyday life, toponymic commemorations belong to the political geography of public memory. The impact of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination on Israeli society and culture was made apparent in a space-time matrix of public commemorations, which introduced remembrance of the slain Prime Minister into the public sphere. This article focuses on the politics of Rabin’s toponymic commemoration, evinced in decision-making procedures at local and national levels of government in various stages of the commemoration project. It expands on toponymic commemoration as a measure of conciliation for a politically divided nation and as an arena where political struggles between Left and Right were waged. The article further elaborates on public criticism of the commemoration project, which was mainly directed against what seemed excessive commemoration and inappropriate naming practices. Focused on the extraordinary circumstances of the political assassination of a head of government, this paper offers insights into how toponymic commemoration in a politically divided society unfolds between a demonstration of national consensus and expression of political conflict. It also directs attention to the question of appropriateness of commemorative naming practices in a democratic society.     

Rome’s Uncomfortable Heritage: Dealing with History in the Aftermath of WWII

Rome is a city famed for its outstanding cultural heritage stretching back two and a half thousand years. However, the events of the Second World War raise particular problems in dealing with this patrimony. This article examines the issues raises by the monuments built during the Fascist period and the Roman remains excavated by the Fascists. It also examines how commemoration throughout the city since 1945 reflects the changing attitudes to the war. The article argues that Rome has not yet come to terms with its Fascist past and that this constitutes a barrier to a sustainable heritage plan.     

Belonging,memory and the politics of planning in Israel

This paper focuses on contradictory expressions of memory and belonging of Jews and Palestinians in Israel. It examines the conflicts over planning procedures, which engage such contradictory memories, and belonging at the national and local scales of planning. It explores how the dynamics of power relations can operate differently at each level and can result in planning resolutions, which link in different ways to the constructions of memory and belonging of Jews and Palestinians. The paper begins with an overview of the expressions of belonging and commemoration at the national scale of planning; in the agenda of the Council for the Restoration and Preservation of Historic Sites (CRPHS) in Israel and the rhetoric of the government National Master Plan of Israel (TAMA/35). It challenges this rhetoric in two local planning events: ‘the road and the graveyard’ and the ‘new Jewish neighbourhood and the old Palestinian village’.     

The ‘new historians’ and the origins of the Arab/Israeli conflict

This article traces the debate surrounding the ‘new historians’ which has continued in Israel since the release of Simha Flapan's work The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities in 1987. Since this time numerous Israeli scholars have entered the discussion around the birth of the State of Israel, representing a large array of viewpoints, factual findings and conclusions. The paper investigates the wider implications of this debate within Israel and how it has profoundly affected not only the way Israelis view their past but, just as importantly, how they look to their future.     

From ‘flight and expulsion’ to migration: contextualizing German victims of forced migration

Abstract

The forced migration of twelve million Germans was central to German memory after 1945, and reflects fundamental changes in remembering the Second World War, that is, refocusing from German victims, such as expellees, to the victims of Germany in the Holocaust. Within this discourse, ‘flight and expulsion’ demonstrates Germany’s entangledness with her eastern neighbours and is turned into a European and transnational mnemonic discourse with the debates over a ‘Centre against Expulsions’ in the 2000s. This article studies ‘flight and expulsion’ between two mnemonic patterns, that is, the loss of the homeland against migration. After the collective imagination of a lost homeland in the east, the emerging Holocaust memory both marginalized ‘flight and expulsion’ in the late 1970s and introduced new patterns of commemoration. These patterns enabled a turn toward individual victimhood and the decontextualization of ‘flight and expulsion’ from the Second World War. The ‘Centre against Expulsions’ project demonstrates the coordination of the German example with other cases of forced migration and the claim for a universal commemoration of past expulsion and the condemnation of any future attempts. The case of Syrian civil-war refugees, however, reveals that such forms of decontextualization only in part transfer into humanitarian imperatives.     

The Millennial of Castile (1943): the historical culture of Spanish Fascism

The creation of new symbols and historical myths were common practices of nationalist politics, especially in Fascist regimes. In 1943 the Franco regime organized the most impressive historical commemoration celebrated in post-war Spain: the Milenario of Castile. With its heterogeneous mixture of history and spectacle, the Milenario of Castile was by far the greatest historical commemoration promoted by the State during the 1940s. Taking the commemoration of the Milenario as a case study, this article examines the historical culture of Spanish Fascism, as well as the attempts of the Falangist intellectual elite to impose a concrete national narrative in post-war Spain. At the same time, the article analyses the historical discourses and aesthetics displayed throughout the commemoration, underlining its Fascist character, and consequently the transnational dimension of the Fascist politics of the past. Finally, the article reflects on the scope and limits of the process of Fascistisation in Franco's dictatorship, especially in its commemorative culture.     

Anti-Zionism in Britain, 1922–2002: Continuities and Discontinuities

Since 1902 Britain has been engaged with Zionism. This prolonged involvement offers a case study of diachronically shifting patterns of anti-Zionism and their relationship with patterns of anti-Jewish discourse in a specific national context. This article begins with an account of political anti-Zionism in the 1920s, a model for all subsequent anti-Zionism and a benchmark of virulence. It surveys political discourse concerning Zionism during the conflict between Britain and the Zionist movement in 1930–31 and 1945–48, while Britain held the Mandate for Palestine. It then examines left-wing anti-Zionism in Britain in the 1960s and 1980s. It concludes with an analysis of rhetorical attacks on Israel, mainly from the left, since the second Intifada, and in the wake of 9/11.     

Occupying the Past: Colonial Rule and Archaeological Practice in Israel/Palestine

Scholars working on issues of cultural heritage politics have repeatedly argued that archaeological sites in Israel/Palestine serve as grounds for the creation of a nation-state narrative that erases other histories. Expanding on this view, my paper first explores a set of spatio-political strategies that Israeli settlers use to carve out a national space within a larger colonial landscape. Second, as I trace those strategies into the realm of archaeological work, it is my goal to highlight how practices of heritage management and colonial rule in Israel/Palestine are co-constitutive. In this context, I also consider how the occupation, confiscation, and demolition of archaeological sites take place before the background of a modernist discourse that references a universal or global heritage.     

Nativist-populism,the internet and the geopolitics of indigenous diaspora

The increasing influence of nativist-populism across Europe has provoked public and scholarly debate in recent years, to which political geographers are well placed to contribute. This article synthesises recent work on popular geopolitics and the geopolitics of diaspora to analyse the ways that the MAK-Anavad (the Kabyle government-in-exile) positions itself politically through both reactionary nativism and progressive indigenism. The politics of diaspora, indigeneity and nativism share some common discursive traits relating to territory and belonging, though their starting points and political effects are different. This article outlines and explains the ways the MAK-Anavad's discourse articulates with the nativist-populism of the French Right, arguing that this is possible because of its diasporic situation, colonial history, and a common discourse of anti-Islamism. Online social media, an important new field for the study of popular geopolitics, is argued to offer a key political opportunity structure for the MAK-Anavad and to privilege a populist communication style.