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Abstract
It is practically impossible to imagine a Palestinian writer who discusses national consciousness without relating its formulation and re-formulation to the Israeli state. The same goes for Israeli thinkers when they discuss national identity, since the Other constitutes an essential component of the national narrative. This dissertation puts the cultural productions of two world-renowned narrators side by side, Mahmud Darwish from Palestine and Amos Oz from Israel. The two authors depict the anxieties of their respective societies as the conflict unravels.
I explore the transformations in national memory as they become manifest in political and literary discourses at key historical moments: the 1948 and 1967 wars; the 1982 Lebanon War; and the 1993 peace initiatives. At such moments, cultural anxieties surface on both sides. I focus primarily on the latter period, using the earlier two as points of reference. In the 1990s, tension appears over confronting earlier narratives formulated at one point in the nation's past.
By analyzing discontinuities in the production of national consciousness, I offer one explanation for the reversals that take place every time peace efforts move forward. The current stagnation can be attributed to the nation's encounter with its own early narratives. For the Israelis, the nation's character was drawn in the culture preceding immigration to Mandate Palestine while the Palestinians constructed their own national identity following their first exile. At this early stage, each side refuses the presentational legitimacy of the Other.
Memory struggle culminates in a memory crisis as each side confronts the legitimizing original narratives in the II 990S. A parallel change is taking place in both societies. From remembering as a construction of new national identities in the early years, the cultural debate progresses to recoding those initial structures. At this juncture, the writers present the reconstruction of earlier nationalist thought as both continuity and rupture. To ease the tension between present and ancient histories, Darwish explores the liminal space between myth and history offered—“clay and light”—a space that allows for rupture and continuity, at once inside and outside history. Oz offers inconsistency as the only strategy that can heal the rift between competing secular and religious forces inside the nation.
As they probe what could and could not be done, the writers always simultaneously appeal to nationalism, either because of internal or external threats. They share one master-narrative: the continuity of the nation by finding a solution to the conflict. The two are not mutually exclusive endeavors. The subtext is “we” must find a practical solution if “we” want to survive.
