ABSTRACT
Who controls the past … controls the future: [and] who controls the present controls the past.
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
This chapter sets out the theoretical foundations on which this book is based. It covers fi ve main themes that are relevant to this work. The fi rst theme is nationalism, which is addressed in order to present a model of the hegemonic form of Jewish nationalism in Israel – Zionism. The second is hegemony, which asks what strategies were utilized by Zionist leaders to establish their hegemony and to forge a ‘new’ Jewish nation? The third theme is a deeper discussion of a crucial facet of hegemony – a coherent national identity. This section highlights the fl uidity of identity and argues that because the boundaries of identity are in effect porous, identity maintains a dialectical relationship with socio-political reality. The fourth section of this chapter explores the role of the intellectual in the nationalist project and focuses on the politicized nature of certain areas of knowledge (in this case history and the social sciences). It illustrates that national identity – the necessary cohesive in any national project – is reliant on history and the social sciences to augment its claim of the unity of the nation. It shows that identity and areas of knowledge pertaining to the ‘nation’ are subject to change as the nation’s social, political, and economic reality changes.
