Rhetoric and Nation: The Formation of Hebrew National Culture, 1880-1990

Conclusion

372 Conclusion Rethinking the Hebrew Discourse of the Nation There is no destruction which is not, also, reconstruction; . . . historically, nothing is dismantled without also attempting to put something new in its place; every form of power not only excludes but produces something (Hall 1988, 164–65). in the cour se of this book, I sought to examine the language of the Hebrew discourse of the nation, highlighting the uncertainty and anxiety that haunt it. I sought to expose the ways in which this uncertainty informs the positions, narratives, and identities produced in and through this discourse. At the same time, I attempted to avoid making constructive claims about this discourse. Would it not be my responsibility, by way of conclusion, to state positively what my study ultimately suggests, if only tentatively? Following Antonio Gramsci, Stuart Hall counters the naïve contention of the Left that in view of the disintegrating effects of capitalism imagines it could simply step in and occupy the place that was previously the site of capitalist power. This contention, Hall claims, fails to realize that “the disruption of the normal functioning of the old economic , social, cultural order provides the opportunity to reorganize it in new ways” (165). Such reorganization need not necessarily lead to a socialist transformation of society. On the contrary, it might reinforce the grasp of the political right over power. Within the context of this book, Hall’s words might serve as a reminder that, politically, a critical discourse should end with a constructive moment that would contextualize criticism within an alternative Rethinking the Hebrew Discourse of the Nation ✦ 373 narrative. If thus far I have focused on the internal gaps and fissures within the Hebrew discourse of the nation, now seems the time to offer an alternative narrative that would reorganize the elements examined and embed them within a narrative that would—necessarily—serve a political end. In contemporary debates over the Hebrew discourse of the nation (and of “Zionism” in general) such narratives are often designated as counterhistories, countering the historical narratives of that discourse. The term counterhistory merits attention.1 Amos Funkenstein writes: “[c]ounterhistories form a specific genre of history written since antiquity. . . . Their function is polemical. Their method consists of the systematic exploitation of the adversary’s most trusted sources against their grain. . . . Their aim is the distortion of the adversary’s self-image, of his identity, through the deconstruction of his memory” (1993, 36). Funkenstein’s examples, from antiquity to contemporary historical debates, focus by and large on instances of anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic utterances, which disastrously culminate in the Holocaust. The cases he considers to be more positive instances of counterhistories—those of Augustine, Gottfried Arnold, and Karl Marx—cannot offset the overall negative impact of his narrative and are, ultimately, framed and implicated by the other counterhistories. Funkenstein consequently ends his essay with a warning: “every serious counterhistory that will try to become reality turns at the end to destroy not only the identity of the other, but also the self-identity of the destroyer. And it is selfdestructive of necessity, if only because the forger of counteridentity of the other renders his own identity dependent on it.”2 Even if one does 1. The debate over history and counterhistory was epitomized in the renewed interest in Sigmund Freud’s 1939 retelling of the story of Moses in Moses and Monotheism (1953, 23:1–138), spurred by Yerushalmi’s book and Said’s and Derrida’s reactions to Yerushalmi’s thesis (Yerushalmi 1991; Derrida 1996; Said, Bollas and Rose 2003; see also Jan Assmann 1997). 2. Funkenstein 1993, 48–49. Funkenstein aims his critique not so much at “post-” and “anti-” Zionist attempts to revise Israeli historiography as at attempts to deny Palestinians their identity and political rights (80–81). 374 ✦ Rhetoric and Nation not share Funkenstein’s hostility toward counterhistory, his criticism should be minded. The problem thus becomes how to mediate between Hall’s insights and Funkenstein’s warning, how to construct alternative narratives while avoiding the pitfall of constructing destructive counteridentities. One could begin by pointing at the incoherence and anxiety that narratives evoke within the context of the Hebrew discourse of the nation, whether affirming that discourse, dissenting from it, condemning it altogether, or being indifferent to it. If narratives, whether straight or counter, indeed evolve out of a “dialectic of memory and history, self-identity...