Transnational constellations of the past

Abstract

This dissertation interrogates the political use of the past in global politics, with a focus on Israel/Palestine. Collective memory is mostly theorised in IR as determinant of national identities. Similarly, in the field of Memory Studies, collective memory is mostly confined to “Methodological Nationalism.” My main argument is that while national narratives purport to be stand-alone stories of the past, or monological narratives, they are in fact in constant negotiation with other stories of that past, they are dialogical. Furthermore, their dynamic transcends the boundaries of the nation state and of transnational institutional politics. To encapsulate these cross-narrative intertextual relationships into a framework that would enable productive analysis, I suggest the re-articulation of the dialogical relationships as transnational constellations, which focus first and foremost on the narratives themselves.

The first case study explores the memory politics around the recent unveiling of a monument in Israel honouring the victory of the Red Army in World War 2. I will demonstrate how despite the provincial location of the monument in Israel’s sixth largest city, it amounts to a challenge to the existing conflict over the interpretation of the Second World War in far-away Europe. Because the actors involved participate in the transnational constellation that encircles the Second World War. This constellation takes the form of a “Transnational Mythscape” in which three different transnational groups vie for the promotion of their narrative over the others.

The Second constellation encircles a common narrative template, rather than a narrative, and is also located in Israel but involves international actors. Afforestation in Israel is a highly symbolic and politically potent act. Trees write on the landscape, they lay claim to the plot they are on and the denote the transformation of the land and the revival of a presumed biblical bucolic past landscape that had lain in disarray in the absence of a Jewish population. Moreover, they write over the previous layer of the landscape, which is often marked by the presence and absence of Palestinians. Afforestation has been established over the years as a method of dispossession that works on a grammar of ‘redemption’, redeeming the imagined forest layer, redeeming the land for use by Jewish workers and even redeeming the environment. This deeply seeded serves as a “narrative template” that lends legitimacy to new projects. Recently, international actors have been co-opted to participate in the afforestation of land claimed by indigenous Bedouin, by extending the well-established narrative template of redemption to frame the meanings they ascribe to their forests. Thus, they participate in the constellation without being privy to the element of dispossession in their actions, simply by framing their endeavour as an act of “redemption”.

The Third case study is of a narrative economy. The Palestinian national disaster, the Nakba, is not recognised by its perpetrator, the state of Israel. However, with the Palestinian narrative in gaining acceptance and with Nakba commemoration fast becoming a global phenomenon, the Israeli state reversed its attitude of denial towards the Palestinian narrative. Recently it had made a claim that Jewish refugees from Muslim countries, many of whom fled them after the foundation of the state of Israel, have been through a “Jewish Nakba” thereby equating the two narratives. This narrative move through the new constellation is twinned with a material proposition that the two experiences cancel each other out and no repatriation is necessary in either case.

Date of Award	26 Jun 2018
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of St Andrews
Supervisor	Yoav Galai (Supervisor)