Ideology, the Nation and the Unsaid: Sensing the Mission in Israeli Middle East Studies

Abstract

This article examines the discursive assumptions arising from a prevalent narrative in Israeli Middle East studies, as carrying a public mission. Drawing on Foucauldian, psychosocial and cultural critical discourse analysis, it deconstructs an interview with a key individual in the field to dislodge the political unconscious layers in the pivotal power-knowledge agency, and draw conclusions about the politics of knowledge production, practices of academic elites, and the particularities of language with the specific cultural-historical conditions in which it operates. Arguably, the narration of a ‘public mission’ is a discourse fostered by political suppositions, such as inclusion and exclusion, secularised-religious morphologies, and naturalisation of interested hegemonic and academic discourse, as well as manifests a particular Zionist devotion of the individual to the nation and state.