Memories of Revolt: The 1936-1939 Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past / Edition 1

by Ted Swedenburg

Overview

THE PALESTINIAN PAST ISN'T DEAD. IT ISN'T EVEN PAST.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781557287632
Publisher:	University of Arkansas Press
Publication date:	07/01/2003
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	259
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Ted Swedenburg is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Arkansas. With Smadar Lavie, he is the co-editor of Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity (Duke, 1996).

Table of Contents

	Glossary	ix
	Acknowledgments	xi
	Introduction: Memories of Revolt	xv
1	Popular Memory and the Palestinian National Past	1
2	Scenes of Erasure	38
3	Popular Nationalism	76
4	Memory as Resistance	107
5	(Un)popular Memories: Accommodation and Collaboration	138
6	Memory Recoded: Intifada/Thawra	171
	Epilogue: Fabulous Images	202
	Afterword	211
	Notes	217
	Bibliography	241
	Index	259

Editorial Reviews

This wonderful monograph treats a subject that resonates with anyone who studies the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and particularly Palestinian nationalism: that how Palestinian history is remembered and constructed is as meaningful to our understanding of the current struggle as arriving as some sort of ‘complete empirical understanding’ of its history. Swedenburg . . . studies how a major anti-colonial insurrection, the 1936–38 strike and revolt in Palestine [against the British], is remembered in Palestinian nationalist historiography, western and Israeli ‘official’ historical discourse, and Palestinian popular memory. Using primarily oral history interviews, supplemented by archival material and national monuments, he presents multiple, complex, contradictory, and alternative interpretations of historical events. . . . The book is thematically divided into explorations of Palestinian nationalist symbols, stereotypes, and myths; Israeli national monuments that simultaneously act as historical ‘injunctions against forgetting’ Jewish history and efforts to ‘marginalize, vilify, and obliterate’ the Arab history of Palestine; Palestine subaltern memories as resistance to official narratives, including unpopular and controversial recollections of collaboration and assassination; and finally, how the recodification and revival of memories of the revolt informed the Palestinian intifada that erupted in 1987.” —MESA Bulletin

From the Publisher

Swedenburg (anthropology, American U., Cairo) contributes to an understanding of present Palestinian ideology with this history of the 1936 revolt against the British. He interviews veterans, and checks oral accounts against extensive academic research to construct a thesis of historical memory as symbolic idealization, finding that the discrepancies in historical accuracy help to feed Palestinian nationalism, tradition, and antagonism toward the Israelis. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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