Negotiating Narratives

With this paper I aim to scrutinise the performance and negotiation of (em)powering narratives and dialogical practices in civil, educational projects between Jews and Palestinian citizens of contemporary Israel. I will discuss to which extent an Arendtian understanding of power as a plural and sharable phenomenon exercised between men/women is useful to understand the narratives challenged and produced in these settings; narratives based on heritage, traditionalism or national discourse, but also the other/new and possibly hybridized narratives that these project may create room for.

The unfolding of power as a counter-narrative of machen or making - opposed to the macht of the entity of the state or states relying on strength or violence - can be found in several forms of narratives and actions in youth and mass culture and civil/NGO work. The paper explores alternatives to what I call the ruling practices of strength, in Arendt's work (The Human Condition, 1958) interpreted as indivisible, not sharable forces relying on isolation of the tyrant, the maker, from his subjects (acc. to Montesquieu). In the case of Israel - continuing in the spirit of Montesquieu - the strength exercised, backed up by dominant media discourse, can be seen as a form of government creating mutual fear and insecurity that cripples the chances for other narratives to gain ground.

By presenting and bending theory in the context of particular empirical examples I will discuss how/if the examples drawing from research in Israel create combined forums for narratives that suggest new forms of share, or division, of power as a challenge to the grand narratives of media discourse.