Nadia Abu El Haj: yet more on ‘political fabrication’
At Paleojudaica, Jim Davila has a thoughtful and perceptive post on the latest in the Nadia Abu El Haj controversy, in which he discusses, among other things, the ‘pure political fabrication’ issue (see my earlier post here). He describes me as writing ‘in defense of [Paula] Stern’, which isn’t a characterization of my position I’m particularly happy with, but he is very judicious in his analysis of what Abu El Haj says, and what her critics (notably Paula Stern) have said about what she says:
She seems to be implying that although archaeologists do not regard “the modern Jewish/Israeli belief in ancient Israelite origins” as on the same level as “Arab claims of Canaanite or other ancient tribal roots,” they really ought to. This is not stated clearly (it’s a good example of the argument by innuendo for which I criticized her in my review), but I don’t see how else to read it in context. I have commented on the general question of Jewish vs. Palestinian cultural and genetic continuity with ancient Palestine here. Abu El-Haj’s phrasing is vague enough that it’s hard to be sure what she’s trying to compare, but I think the most positive thing I can say is that if she means what she seems to be implying, she’s wrong: they are not comparable. But I’m inclined to put the paragraph under Popper’s category of being “not even wrong” — not sufficiently clearly formulated to be evaluated critically. Still, I think Stern should have phrased her criticism more cautiously and carefully.
As my earlier post makes clear (I hope), I see the same meaning as Jim Davila does in this passage, and indeed can’t see how it can be read any other way, despite its lack of clarity. Richard Silverstein’s point in his comment about the possible meaning of Abu El Haj’s italics gave me pause, but in the end I don’t think his suggestion is credible. I think the italics are there to emphasize the claim that even if Israeli archaeologists are prepared to concede that to some degree ‘the modern Jewish/Israeli belief in ancient Israelite origins’ is a political fabrication, they are not prepared to accept that it is pure political fabrication, and that she thinks they should. It’s hard to tell, though, not least because Nadia Abu El Haj, as with so many postmodernist academics, is unduly fond of italics (recalling Christopher de Bellaigue’s comment on Edward Said: ‘he is constantly wringing his hands as he writes’).
To return to what Jim Davila has to say (and leaving aside the small point that his link to my post has an incorrect URL) he also notes that he has signed neither the petition in support of, nor the petition against, Nadia Abu El Haj receiving tenure: ‘I don’t think tenure decisions should be made by petition’, he writes. Absolutely right.
November 4th, 2007 at 01:43 am
“In other words, the modern Jewish/Israeli belief in ancient Israelite origins is not understood as pure political fabrication.”
I wish I could be as sceptical as you are about the intent of this sentence by el-Haj. I read it as a very straightforward observation. What it means is that Israeli society has been collectively and intentionally indoctrinated with a belief which is a pure political fabrication, and therefore the society is totally unaware of being duped by what amounts to a conspiracy between the government and the scientists who explore Jewish history in Israel.