Transnational constellations of the past

Abstract

This dissertation interrogates the political use of the past in global politics, with a focus on Israel/Palestine. Collective memory is mostly theorised in IR as determinant of national identities. Similarly, in the field of Memory Studies, collective memory is mostly confined to “Methodological Nationalism.” My main argument is that while national narratives purport to be stand-alone stories of the past, or monological narratives, they are in fact in constant negotiation with other stories of that past, they are dialogical. Furthermore, their dynamic transcends the boundaries of the nation state and of transnational institutional politics. To encapsulate these cross-narrative intertextual relationships into a framework that would enable productive analysis, I suggest the re-articulation of the dialogical relationships as transnational constellations, which focus first and foremost on the narratives themselves.