Search Results

This chapter analyzes the political outlook of Asher Ginsberg (Ahad Ha'am, 1856–1927), the founder of spiritual–cultural Zionism. The approach to Ahad Ha'am in this historiography, however, is another instructive example of the distortion that the nation-state paradigm creates in the study of the history of Zionist national thought, and any reevaluation of the ideological history of Zionism must contend with this distortion as well. Here, it will also become clear that the nation-state methodology creates a somewhat artificial dichotomy in its representation of the Jewish national vision held by Zionism's founders. This time, the dichotomy to be overcome is between the Herzlian “Jews' state” and the Ahad Ha'amian so-called spiritual center.

This chapter considers what it calls the “national vision,” or the political regimes that define how the nation is to be rendered in visual form, by focusing on the national irruption of panic surrounding the Stars of David saga that inundated Berlin in the fall of 2005. At stake in this event is the so-called “regimes of visibility”: discourses and practices that govern the politics of visualization. The chapter examines the tactical operations on which the young right-wing extremists draw to manage their own political visibility and to confront dominant visibility regimes, and the ways that they contest dominant visual idioms of commemoration and mourning. Finally, it discusses the sixtieth anniversary of the Reich's surrender to the Allies, an event that illustrated not only the paradoxical logic of visualization that marks the governance of the national vision but also the dimensions of the panic triggered by attempts to challenge it.

Maharashtra possesses a regional history that most of its inhabitants consider as a patriotic narrative about the nation. Because India is a relatively young nation and establishing its modern identity and national vision is still under construction, it is likely that nation builders would count on the regional golden age for reliable material. Therefore, writers should compare the accounts of the already colonized Maharashtra with accounts wherein Muslims were still at reign and Shivaji was perceived as a liberator. There could be many ways of construing Shivaji's story as there may be parts that can be modified by the narrator, or portions of the story are possibly unreported and made known to the public. What this chapter attempts to point out is that authors incorporate ideas about themselves and their dreams in their narratives.

This book examines the affective management of German nationalism, or what it calls “the management of hate,” in Germany after reunification, taking as its point of departure the daily realities of young right-wing extremist groups in the East Berlin district of Treptow-Köpenick. It explores the governance of right-wing extremism within a project of German nationhood and how the troubled enterprise of the country's national question proceeds under the sign of broader contemporary processes. Topics include the ways that young right-wing extremists articulate their relations to cultural and ethnicized difference; the juridical production of the so-called “political delinquency”; how the management of hate seeks to inoculate and fortify broader affective publics against illicit forms of nationalism; and “national vision.” This chapter reviews the relevant historical background and provides an overview of some of the crucial theoretical frameworks that guide the study as well as the fieldwork and research methods.