ABSTRACT
Palestinian nationalism like other nationalisms is influenced in its philosophy by Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment Romantic thought. Enlightenment philosophy underlies a variety of nationalisms in Europe and, through European colonialism, the rest of the world. In an embattled situation, the colonized view European Enlightenment thought as the only available discourse (under the time constraints of anti-colonial resistance) for mobilizing people against colonial hostility and onslaughts. This extension of nationalist thought to the colonial world, however, was an enterprise fraught with contradictions. One of the most obvious underpinnings of anti-colonial nationalisms is the combining of modernization and tradition. While one of anti-colonial nationalism’s dual goals is the achievement of technological modernization in the Western sense, its other goal is the assertion of a traditional national culture.
