The Postzionism Debates

Knowledge and Power in Israeli Culture

Laurence J. Silberstein

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415913157
• eBook ISBN: 9781136663864
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The struggle for postzionism is a conflict over national memory and the control of cultural and physical space. Laurence J. Silberstein analyzes the phenomenon of postzionism and provides an intervention into this debate.

CHAPTER 1

MAPPING ZIONISM/ZIONIST MAPPING

The development of a given into a question, this transformation of a group of difficulties and obstacles into problems to which the diverse solutions will attempt to produce a response, this is what constitutes the point of problematization and the specific work of thought…. It is a question of critical analysis in which one tries to see how the different solutions to a problem have been constructed; but also how these different solutions result from a specific form of problematization. (Foucault 1984a, 389)

A living civilization is a drama of struggle between interpretations, outside influences, and emphases, an unrelenting struggle over what is the wheat and what is the chaff, rebellion for the sake of innovation, dismantling for the purpose of reassembling differently, and even putting things in storage to clear the stage for experiment and new creativity. And it is permissible to seek inspiration from and be fertilized by other civilizations as well. This implies a realization that struggle and pluralism are not just an eclipse or a temporary aberration but, rather, the natural climate for a living culture. And the rebel, the dismantler, is not necessarily perverted or trying to assimilate. And the heretic and the prober are, sometimes, the harbingers of the creator and the innovator. (Oz 1984, 137)

To write about postzionism, it is useful to first write about zionism, the object of the postzionist critique. However, as Nietzsche, among others, has taught us, there simply are no innocent readings. To write about zionism is to step into an already flowing stream of diverse, often conflicting representations. To paraphrase Deleuze and Guattari (1989), we begin “in the middle.” My discussion of zionism begins in the middle, that is, in the middle of a critical debate over how best to represent zionism. In this debate, as I show in chapters 4–6, the ways in which zionism is usually discussed and analyzed have been rendered problematic, and alternative ways have been developed.

My goal in this chapter is not to add to an existing body of knowledge about zionism, which presumes a conception of knowledge that I find problematic. Instead, I wish to reframe the discourse through which zionism is discussed. Thus, my analysis is already a “post” analysis, that is, I already take for granted many of the problems and criticisms raised by discourses such as postmodernism, postcolonialism, and postzionism.

Most historical studies seek to locate the origins of zionism, trace its development, describe the various forms it assumed, and detail its realization in the establishment of the nation state of Israel. Such studies, while acknowledging the conflicts that emerged within the zionist movement, usually regard zionism as a coherent, logically consistent, rational system of ideas and values or sociopolitical movement.¹ With few exceptions, historical representations of zionism take for granted zionist representations of space, time, and subjectivity. Although using tools of historical criticism, Israeli scholars rarely, if ever, problematize zionist discourse. Taking basic zionist claims at face value, they pay little attention to the contested social and cultural processes by means of which zionist discourse is produced and disseminated. We learn little from these studies about the cultural processes that create the politically charged norms of zionism—for example, the processes whereby spaces such as the homeland and exile or concepts such as “Jewish state” or “ingathering of the exiles” are produced and imbued with particular meanings.

Historians tend to accept uncritically such zionist assumptions as (1) the Jews are first and foremost a national body; (2) the normal location for that nation is its own homeland; (3) the spaces outside the land are inimical to Jewish life and culture; and (4) the Jewish claim to that land is legitimate, and all other claims are not. Moreover, many historical studies of zionism assume that the “return” of the nation to its homeland and the subsequent establishment of a state were the natural culmination of Jewish historical development. These studies tend to confirm Eric Hobsbawm’s (1990) claim that “no serious historian of nations and nationalism can be a committed political nationalist…. Nationalism requires too much belief in what is patently not so” (p. 12).

When viewed from the perspective of current critical theory, these representations do not do justice to the multiple layers and planes subsumed under the concept of zionism. For example, zionism is used to refer alternately to individuals, collectivities, places, institutions, narratives, actions, events, and subjectivities. It includes what can be seen, what can be read, what can be thought about, and what can be imagined.

In recent years, writers such as Foucault, Deleuze, and Guattari have sought to address these issues by formulating alternative discourses to those conventionally used by historians and social scientists. It is not at all unusual for one encountering their writings for the first time to find them confusing, disorientating, and disconcerting. Nevertheless, I would argue, the rewards are worth the effort. They, more than most other writers, have succeeded in revealing or bringing to the surface the complex, multidimensional, heterogeneous, conflicted, dynamic character of social and cultural processes.²

Accordingly, in approaching zionism I find such terms as discourse, apparatus, assemblage, and subjectivities to be extremely useful. To speak of zionism as a discourse is to emphasize the dynamic processes and mechanisms through which zionism produced and disseminated contested representations of Jewish history, Jewish culture, Jewish community, and Jewish subjectivity or identity. As explained by British cultural critic Stuart Hall (1997):

The discursive approach is more concerned with the effects and consequences of representation—its “politics.” It examines not only how language and representation produce meaning, but how the knowledge which a particular discourse produces connects with power, regulates conduct, makes up or constructs identities and subjectivities, and defines the way certain things are represented, thought about, practiced, and studied. (p. 6)

As a discourse, zionism involves both language and practice, what one says and what one does. Zionist discourse is produced and disseminated through an apparatus, that is, an assemblage of institutions, spatial arrangements, laws, administrative organizations, and philanthropic activities.³ Zionism also produces particular kinds of subjectivities or subject positions that position people who identify with it as well as those who resist it. Accordingly, zionism generates and legitimates specific power relations.

Most studies of zionism, while acknowledging that the early zionists faced opposition within the Jewish community, convey a sense that zionism’s success was a seemingly natural historical outcome, the result of inner historical forces. In light of this, it is important to note that zionism has not always dominated modern Jewish discourse on identity and that it was, and still is, but one of several options available to Jews in their quest for self-definition. In its efforts to impose particular mappings of Jewish space, history, culture, and identity, zionism conflicted with a number of competing Jewish discourses. These included liberal political discourse, religious discourse (traditional as well as liberal), socialist discourse, nonterritorial Jewish nationalist discourses, and haskalah, the secular humanistic discourse of the Eastern European Enlightenment. In the late nineteenth century these discourses struggled with one another to position Jews through conflicting conceptual frameworks grounded in differing conceptions of community, history, culture, and identity.

In its struggle for hegemony, zionism sought to position Jews to identify with and attach themselves to its representations of Judaism, Jewish history, and Jewish identity. In the process, zionism, like all nationalist discourses, struggled to impose unity in place of multiplicity, consensus in place of conflict, and homogeneity in place of heterogeneity.⁴

At different points, zionist discourse came into contact with numerous other discourses. Among these were European liberalism, Marxist and non-Marxist socialism; a Tolstoyan ideology of labor as spiritual and redemptive (Gordon); Nietzschean philosophy; organic social evolutionism; romantic nationalism; and religious messianism. Within the space of zionist discourse, these articulations with other discourses produced sites in which key zionist concepts acquired different, often conflicting meanings. At such sites, conflicting representations of Jewish culture, Jewish identity, and Jewish history were produced. Thus, zionism has been marked by ongoing “internal” conflicts over the meaning and significance of its foundational concepts.⁵

One of the ways that power operates positively is to produce, through discursive practices, knowledge. For Foucault, to speak of discourse and knowledge is to speak simultaneously of power.⁶ Imposing a new direction in Jewish life and thought, zionist discourse produced a new knowledge of Jewish history, Jewish culture, and Jewish identity. This, in turn, entailed new hierarchies of power and new subject positions. Zionist discourse represented this knowledge as true, natural, and commonsensical. The subject positions produced by zionism, a function of efforts to position Jews so that they would identify with this knowledge and these power relations, were represented in terms of fixed, essential identities.

Zionism defined its basic subject positions in opposition to those of Jews living in exile. At different points, the new subjects were referred to as new Hebrews, new Jews, pioneers [halutzim], sabras, or Israelis. Although most studies of zionism discuss these types, they pay little, if any, attention to the discursive practices and power relations that produced and sustain them.

Despite efforts by scholars to represent an essential, fixed, constant core of zionist teachings, discourses such as zionism are inherently conflicted and heterogeneous. As with any discourse, zionism is in constant flux, marked by ongoing, often conflicting efforts to apply its concepts to a range of questions and problems. Notwithstanding the efforts of scholars to represent zionism as an essential body of ideas and values, I find it more useful to treat it as “diverse sets of conjoint positions in contention with each other at a variety of sites” (Grossberg 1993, 30–31). Recognizing the dynamic, contingent, contested character of zionism and the identities and power relations that it has produced allows us to see possibilities of change and multiplicity that conventional approaches tend to conceal.

ZIONISM’S REGIME OF TRUTH

Like other discourses, zionism produces what Foucault calls a “regime of truth,” a set of codes, practices, apparatuses, and discursive processes that have the effect of rendering the knowledge that it produces true. Through its regime of truth, zionism seeks to govern the ways about which reality is talked and reasoned. It thus attempts to regulate what can and cannot be said about these topics. This entails imposing limits so as to control the ways in which Jewish history, the relationship of the Jewish homeland and exile, Jewish culture, and Jewish identity are represented and discussed. Moreover, zionist discourse seeks to position subjects so that they accept these representations as “natural” or “commonsensical.”⁷

In the modernist discourse used in most studies of zionism, its concepts are taken as describing or mirroring actual preexisting political, social, cultural objects and conditions. Accordingly, concepts such as homeland and exile are taken to reflect ontological realities. In contrast, I regard “home-land” and “exile,” together with zionism’s other categories, as products of discursive processes. Far from simply describing or reflecting objective conditions, these categories participate in the construction of these conditions. While undoubtedly there are actual physical spaces to which these representations are applied, the grids and categories used to produce the meanings of such spaces are the product of human imagination and presuppose specific relations or hierarchies of power.⁸

One way to reveal the power effects of zionist discourse is to view it not in terms of meaning, but in terms of its functions and effects. Rather than ask “What do the terms mean?” one asks “How do they function?” and “What do they do?” (cf. Deleuze 1995, 21–22). From this perspective, basic terms of zionist discourse are seen as “order words” [mots d’ordre] that codify, direct, order, prescribe, and limit. Thus, terms such as galut [exile], moledet [homeland], aliyah [ascent to the land], yeridah [descent from the land], and kibbush haaretz [conquest of the land] are used not only to describe or represent reality, but also to prescribe particular sets of practices and relations. For example, while on one level terms such as aliyah and yeridah refer to processes of immigration/emigration, they also imbue these processes with specific meaning and value, privileging immigration and those who immigrate, while deprivileging emigration and those who emigrate. In zionist discourse, the act of immigrating to Israel is viewed positively, a sign of loyalty to the Jewish people. On the other hand, the act of emigrating from Israel is regarded as an act of betrayal, and the one who emigrates is viewed as a traitor.⁹

These and other such concepts form part of a body of knowledge produced and disseminated by zionism. Basic to this knowledge are such “subjects/objects” as the Jewish people, the land of Israel as the Jewish homeland, and exile.¹⁰ Those whom zionist discourse effectively positions regard them not as cultural constructs, but as taken-for-granted givens. This, in turn, conceals or occludes their culturally constructed character.

The binarism of homeland/exile is central to zionism. Zionists imagine a homeland in which the Jewish people can find security, both physical and psychic. Freed from the trials of living as aliens in exile, Jews, according to zionism, will find rest and fulfillment in their true home. Through common endeavors, common values, and shared practices, they will come to experience genuine community. Space and territory thus form an essential part of the fantasies, desires, dreams, yearnings, and aesthetic practices produced by zionism.

The fulfillment of the zionist dream depends upon acts of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. On one hand, Jews and Jewish culture must be deterritorialized from diaspora spaces and reterritorialized in the spaces of the homeland. Thus, beyond imposing grids and boundaries on symbolic and imaginative spaces, zionism also imposes them on physical spaces. Zionist mappings of physical spaces produced concrete effects on Jews and Palestinian Arabs alike. Although not anticipated by early zionists, these effects included the deterritorializing and reterritorializing of large numbers of Palestinian Arabs, particularly during the 1948 War.¹¹ Holding the historical and moral right of Jews to settle the contested territory and inscribe its own culture on it to be unquestionable, zionism silenced the voices of the existing population and delegitimated the historical narratives that it produced. As we shall see, a basic postzionist concern is to problematize zionist historical narratives, thereby bringing to light the effects of zionist discourse on the Palestinians.

Among Jews, zionism set up distinct hierarchies of power and grids of inclusion and exclusion that privilege the space of the homeland over all other spaces and Jews living in the “homeland” over Jews living outside of it. In its efforts to concentrate decisionmaking power of the Jewish nation in the hands of Jews living in the homeland, zionism disempowered Jews living outside the homeland. For the most part, zionist discourse valued diaspora Jews primarily for their contribution, actual and potential, to the process of building the homeland. Moreover, in privileging the culture of European Jews and making it the dominant Israeli culture, zionism marginalized Jews from Middle Eastern countries as well as their cultures.¹²

ZIONIST DISCOURSE AND ITS BINARY FOUNDATIONS

While most scholars and zionist spokespeople represent zionism as a coherent discourse resting upon essential axioms, it is neither closed, fixed, nor unified. Within zionist discourse, however, the prevailing tendency is to gloss over conflicting positions, minimize their significance, or subsume these differences under an overall sense of cohesion.¹³ In contrast, I focus on

the multiplicity and diversity of its possible meanings, its incompleteness, the omissions which it displays but cannot describe… and the collisions between its divergent meanings. (Belsey 1980, 107)

Although zionist discourse is essentially contested, it is possible to identify within its spaces shared premises that all who identify with it accept. Like all nationalist discourse, zionism takes as a given that humanity is divided into natural social and cultural units called nations. These nations are held to be distinguished from one another by such factors as origins, history, language, culture, and ethnic kinship, or a combination thereof. Zionism al...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• CHAPTER 1 Mapping Zionism/Zionist Mapping
• CHAPTER 2 Critique of Zionism: Critics from Within
• CHAPTER 3 Critique of Zionism: Critics from Without
• CHAPTER 4 Postzionism: The Academic Debates
• CHAPTER 5 Palestinian Critics and Postzionist Discourse: Anton Shammas and Emile Habiby
• CHAPTER 6 Postzionism, Postmodernism, and Postcolonial Theory: A Radical Postzionist Critique
• Concluding Reflections
• Endnotes
• References
• Index