Thumbnail Image
Publication

History’s Wound: Collective Trauma and the Israel/Palestine conflict

Ottman, Esta T.
Publication Date
End of Embargo
Supervisor
Whitman, Jim R.
Hughes, Caroline
Shahi, Afshin
Thorsten, Marie
Keywords
Israel, Palestine, Collective memory, Collective trauma, Cultural trauma, Political trauma
Rights
Creative Commons License
The University of Bradford theses are licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.
Peer-Reviewed
Open Access status
Accepted for publication
Institution
University of Bradford
Department
Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities
Awarded
2018
Embargo end date
Collections
Theses
Show all metadata
Files
Thumbnail Image
ottman, e.t.pdf
Adobe PDF, 3.15 MB
Additional title
Abstract
In considering the Israel-Palestine conflict, focus has remained on conventional major issues: borders, settlements, Jerusalem, Palestinian refugee rights and water. Should there be one binational state, or two states for two peoples? Yet this is a conflict that is sustained by factors more profound than the dispute over limited resources or competing nationalisms. The parties’ narratives, continually rehearsed, speak of a cataclysmic event or chain of events, a collective trauma, which has created such deep suffering and disruption that the rehearsers remain ‘frozen’ amid the overarching context of political violence. This study offers a critical analysis of the concept of collective trauma together with the role of commemorative practices, including core contemporary canonical days of memory, and asks to what extent they may hinder progress in the resolution of an intractable conflict, such as the Israel/Palestine conflict. Without addressing the powerful traumatic current that underpins a chronic conflict, no amount of top-down formal peace-making is likely to be sustainable.
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10454/17398
Version
Citation
Link to publisher’s version
Link to published version
Link to Version of Record
Type
Thesis
Qualification name
PhD
Notes