Politicizing Memory

An Ethnographical Study of a Remembrance Ceremony

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2164236
AutoresGal Hermoni, U Lebel (0000-0002-0964-019X, Russian State Agrarian Correspondence University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2012
Volumen26
Número4
Páginas469-491
Fecha de publicación2012-07-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaCultural Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0950-2386 • E-ISSN: 1466-4348
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09502386.2011.622779
OpenAlexW2329115163
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas36

This paper argues that hegemonic memorial ceremonies are typically based on the practice and discourse of de-politicization of the 'Israeli condition'. Three mechanisms serve such de-politicization: rendering death meaningful; idealizing the fallen and focusing on their transcendental as opposed to their corporeal side and the sanctification of time. Ceremonies featuring these mechanisms are paradigmatic events that perpetuate the hegemonic model of bereavement in Israel. Ceremonies deviating from these practices function as an opposition to static collective memory by acting as extra-paradigmatic sites of memory (Lieux de mémoire). This paper analyzes the Hallal (Hebrew for both 'fallen' and 'void') ceremony (Tzavta Theatre, Tel Aviv, 2009), that serves as an 'alternative' Remembrance Day ceremony. Drawing on the ethnography of ceremonies, we claim that this ceremony is an extra-paradigmatic event on account of its subversion of the de-politicizing mechanisms. Keywords: bereavementmemorypoliticizationperformanceceremonyritual Acknowledgements We wish to thank the editorial board of the Journal and the anonymous judges for their useful and enlightening comments that helped us to improve the article, to Miriam Kraus for her fruitful editing comments and especially to Avishai Matia for sharing his visions, concepts and ideas with us. This research examines cultural and ideological consequences of Avishai Matia's cultural initiative. Notes 1. A day destined to commemorate the victims of the holocaust. Another day of commemoration in the Israeli calendar is 'Holocaust Day' designed to commemorate the holocust of the Jews of Europe murdered by the Nazis. This day has a victimologic character, commemorating the 'Old Jews' of the Diaspora. The Remembrance Day for the fallen soldiers as an instrument of the Zionist narrative, strives to celebrate the 'new Jew' who is the exact opposite of the passsive victims from the pre-state era (Bilu and Witztum 2000). The Zionist contribution to the Hebrew calendar is full of ceremonies shaping identity and memory. For ceremonies as a practice for shaping memory and identity, see Bloch (Citation1980). 2. In recent decades, some ceremonies self-defined as 'alternative' have emerged in the public sphere which expressed voices and identities in the discourse of bereavement and memory that formerly were excluded. Although this article is not intended to be comparative, we note that researchers of those events maintain that they are not alternatives to the national paradigm, since they draw on the canonic Remembrance Day (Ben-Amos and Beit-El 1999, Lomsky-Feder 2003). 3. See, in particular, Eyal Sivan's film 'Yizkor: Slaves of Memory,' that for the first time engages with the politics of Israeli memory as producing an interface between the Exodus from Egypt, the Holocaust, the wars of Israel and the independence of the state, defining them, as a teleological ploy to shape hegemonic-establishment memory (Sivan Citation1991). 4. On Matia's work, see: http://bidur.index.co.il/siteFiles/1/23/324117.asp?gate_id = 239893 5. On irony that generates tension between different discursive positions in a text (such as between that of the narrator and that of the text's object), see the discussion of Perry and Sternberg (1968–1969). 6. Irony likely to create a division between the literal statement and the context in which it is spoken (Gibbs 2002, pp. 357–486). 7. This attitude to the dead can be positioned according to Freud's distinction between 'mourning,' melancholy, 'working through' and 'acting out'. While 'mourning' and 'working through' acknowledge the finite and total absence of the lost object, 'melancholy' and 'acting out' insist on seeing it as if it still exists (Freud Citation1909). In this sense, Remembrance Day for the Fallen in Israel's Wars acts out melancholy via a ritual of commemoration and memory. Originally it was meant to be an anti-mourning practice, although melancholy has taken over the representations of the bereavement in the past three decades (Bilu and Witztum 2000). 8. See also representations of the wounded body of the Israeli soldier in film, in Yossef (2001); he notes that representing that body on the screen undermines the hegemonic Zionist narrative that sought to imbue the 'New Jew' with new body: stronger and invulnerable, appropriated by the national project (particularly in the physical imaging of the Zionist pioneers). 9. Both David Byrne, lead singer of Talking Heads and Johnny ('Rotten') Lydon, lead singer of The Sex Pistols, often performed onstage dressed in similar style. 10. On punk as a sub-counter-culture, and its distinctive semiotics, see Hebdige (Citation1988) and Laing (1985). 11. A process resembling the 'Tosefet HaShabbat', intended to add sanctifying indicators that distinguish 'Sabbath time' in Judaism (Farbstein 2006). 12. A concept aimed at structuring and sanctifying shared time for parents and children that becomes rare with adolescence, and social careerism (Shalit-Avni Citation2003). 13. In this, civil Zionist religion imitated Judaism. See for example, the day of Moses' death (Ephraim 2005) and in comparison, Herzl Day (Floersheim 1994). 14. On the distinction between national esthetics that preserve a pro-hegemonic social structure and civil esthetics, striving to reduce the presence of the state in the public space, see Harrington (2004). 15. In Israeli media discourse, it is commonly stated 'You can't argue with bereaved parents' and that 'bereavement is not a place for politics', resembling the proverb 'when the guns roar, the muses are silent'. 16. And some have defined it as 'post-Zionist' (Hazony 2000b)

Aesthetics · Art · Ceremony · Collective memory · Cultural memory · Hegemony · Ideology · Literature · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Ritualization · Sociology · Subversion · The Holocaust · Anthropology · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Middle East Politics and Society