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Abstract
As the first foray into a larger study of conflicting Israeli and Palestinian narratives through a narratological lens, this essay focuses on a single volume, Side by Side: Parallel Histories of Israel-Palestine (2012). With recourse to classical concepts in narrative theory, the authors compare the formal practices deployed in each history, giving particular attention to questions of narrative voice, temporality – i.e. order, duration and frequency – and addressing questions of narrative agency and character formation in a collective history. They also ask how these accounts imagine possible worlds, giving rise to bifurcations between what happened and what could have happened. Their aim is to show not only how narratology can be used in a politically charged context, but also how that context can unveil gaps and limitations in narratology. They also demonstrate that the Israeli and Palestinian narratives, read through the lens of their form, diverge and converge in ways that are less predictable than the oppositions of content might suggest.
Acknowledgements
We are very grateful to Ihab Saloul for his thoughtful comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this essay.
Notes
1. We recognise that the conflict we are addressing here is so fraught that even the choice to name it as ‘Israeli-Palestinian’ or ‘Palestinian–Israeli’ may seem to constitute a political claim. We have chosen, therefore, to alternate the use of these terms.
2. See Hilal and Pappé, Across the Wall (Citation2010).
3. Certainly, many scholars have turned their attention to the narrative conflict, particularly insofar as that conflict affects political possibilities, social interactions, historical understanding and psychological well-being. And especially during the past decade, Israeli and Palestinian narratives (as well as hybrid Arab–Israeli narratives) have to some extent been studied separately for their narrative practices. But although narrative theory has a large presence in the Israeli academy, to date there has been little attempt on either ‘side’ to read Palestinian and Israeli narratives together through a narratological lens.
4. In The Narrative Act Lanser draws on Boris Uspenskii’s Poetics of Composition (1973) and distinguishes three aspects of ideological stance: ‘the way it is expressed [i.e. how explicitly and literally], how its “content” relates to the culture text [by way of agreement or opposition], and the position of power and authority held by the particular voice [i.e. structural level and relationship to other textual voices]’ (216).
5. Transliterated spellings of vary widely. Except when we are quoting other scholars, we have chosen ‘Nakba’ as our preferred transliteration.
6. This information is taken from Adwan and Bar-On (Citation2004). There is no mention in the essay of the identity of the translator(s).
7. The preliminary (pamphlet) versions of Side by Side include three columns, separating the Israeli and Palestinian narratives by a ruled blank space in which students can write their own thoughts as they come to terms with the two narratives (Adwan and Bar-On, Citation2003). Not surprisingly, the text has been highly controversial and is not regularly used in either Palestinian or Israeli schools. The blank middle column does not appear in the French edition, which is published as a formal book, not a workbook. For another dual history intended for a wide readership, see Cohn-Sherbok and El-Alami (Citation2001). For a ‘bridging’ textbook aimed at college students, see Aly, Feldman and Shikaki (Citation2013).
8. Ned Lazarus, in his review of the book, does comment on the ‘fiery oratory and elaborate apologetics’ of the Palestinian text and the ‘relatively more self-confident and self-critical’ narrative voice of the Israeli text (Citation2008: 111).
9. While maps might seem to constitute documentation, in the context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, maps are deeply contested and cannot be taken for factual documents.
10. Romagnolo distinguishes among four aspects of textual beginning: 1. Discursive beginnings: the opening lines or pages of a narrative text. 2. Chronological beginnings: the earliest events or circumstances narrated in the story. 3. Causal beginnings: the events that set the plot in motion. 4. Conceptual beginnings: the novel’s initial themes and values.
11. Rimmon-Kenan has addressed this issue in greater detail in the afterword to the Citation2002 edition of her Narrative Fiction.
12. It is fair to acknowledge that only a version of Side by Side in which the Israeli narrative is printed in Hebrew and the Palestinian in Arabic, a version that arguably would embody more fully each side’s deepest understandings – would ultimately resist the possibility of ‘unnatural’ reading. Yet such a version, as we suggested earlier, could be read only by a small minority of Israelis, Palestinians and indeed members of the international community. This, in itself, suggests both the necessity for mediation through ‘unnatural’ forms and alien languages and the limitations of such a mediation for the prospects of peace.
13. These and other works of Shimon Attie can be viewed at http://shimonattie.net and http://www.jackshainman.com/artists/shimon-attie/.