Ways of Forgetting: Israel and the Obliterated Memory of the Palestinian Nakba

Abstract

Abstract This study analyses national ways of forgetting. Following the eminent British Anthropologists Mary Douglas, I relate here to “forgetting” as “selective remembering, misremembering and disremembering” ( Douglas 2007 : 13). The case study offered here is that of the Israeli‐Jewish forgetting of the uprooting of the Palestinians in the war of 1948. This paper discusses three facets of the collective forgetting: Inthe first subchapterI analyze the foundations of the Israeli regime of forgetting and discern three mechanisms of removing from memory of selected events:narrative forgetting:the formation and dissemination of an historical narrative;physical forgetting:the destruction of physical remains; andsymbolic forgetting:the creation of a new symbolic geography of new places and street names. Inthe second subchapter, I look at the tenacious ambiguity that lies in the regime of forgetting, as it does not completely erase all the traces of the past. And finally, inthe third subchapter, I discuss the growth of subversive memory and counter‐memory that at least indicates the option of a future revision of the Israeli regime of forgetting.

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