Language:
Hebrew
Year of publication:
2013
Titel der Quelle:
תיאוריה וביקורת; במה ישראלית
Angaben zur Quelle:
41 (2013) 121-145
Keywords:
Political parties
;
Israel Social conditions
;
Israel Politics and government
Abstract:
The social protest of summer 2011 generated new options for political action, created alternative democratic spaces, and accorded partial legitimacy to parallel protests by more radical groups. Nevertheless, it did not forge a significant economic and political opposition and in fact betrayed democratic values. It is conspicuous that the protest enjoyed an unprecedented national consensus, with 85% to 90% support among Jews, including senior figures in government, private business, and industrialists. Any consensus, including that about the protest addressed by this essay, tends by its very nature to conceal and blur political, ideological, and ethnic disputes. This consensus was achieved by means of a problematic "strategic de-politization," which included: (1) Overlooking the most acute antidemocratic trends that Israel has ever known (extension of the State of Emergency, the differential Citizenship tracks for Jews and Palestinians, and additional racist legislation); (2) a colorless meritocratic republican-national discourse that rejected the political economy in Israel and its division on an ethnic, national, or ethno-gender basis; (3) a betrayal of democratic principles and basic human rights and their relegation to the status of political issues, identified with the struggles of the "Left."In practice, the protest followed the Bakhtian model of the carnival. The carnival, which incorporates subversive messages and permits temporary politicization by means of role-switching, mockery of hierarchies, and scorn for the senior echelons of government—can get out of control, too. All the same, its effectiveness is limited, because it winds down at the end of the day, when the revelers go back home. In neoliberal contexts, which are of course polyphonic, as in the Israeli case, the carnival becomes a surplus activity that, to its own detriment, accords legitimacy to the antidemocratic developments.
URL:
אתר את הפרסום בקטלוג המאוחד של ספריות ישראל
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