Disenthralling Ourselves

Disenthralling Ourselves portrays contemporary Israel in a process of transition. Jewish-Israeli and Palestinian-Israeli communities share a nation-state divided by the separate truths of its conflicting fundamental narratives. This book considers ways of converting those separate and antagonistic narratives from fuel for conflict to seeds of change. Its purpose is to undo the convenient coherence of collective memory and master narratives through fostering a capacious moral imagination able to apprehend diverse, even contentious, stories and truths. Contemporary Israel functions as a case study in an in-depth and interdisciplinary exploration of conflict resolution, viewing Jewish-Israeli and Palestinian-Israeli documentary film, poetry, fiction, essays, memoir, peace initiatives, and other elements of collective narrative-building through a prism of three analogously themed Shakespearean plays. This comparative methodology is integrated with theoretical perspectives on reconciliation, resilience, critical reflection, and peace education in presenting concrete alternatives to the convenient comforts of the inimical master narratives that perpetuate what can now be seen as a hundred-year war. The readings offered in this book generate perspectives that can be adopted and adapted in relation to each other in the process of moving from a single static narrative of incessant warfare. The first section, ''Seeing in the Dark,'' considers rhetoric and identity formation of cultures in transition. Its first half focuses on revenge cultures and reads Shakespeare''s Merchant of Venice and Juliano Mer Khamis''s documentary ''Arna''s Children'' in a fictive and documentary pairing of people stripped of all but revenge. Its second half considers rhetoric and Israeli identities in transition through the prism of Hamlet. Three genre-challenging authors represent Jewish-Israeli and Palestinian-Israeli narrative identity formation; Yaron Ezrahi, Emile Habiby,and Anton Shammas reflect a hybridity that emphasi