Teaching Contested Narratives: Identity, Memory and Reconciliation in Peace Education and Beyond

Teaching Contested Narratives

In troubled societies narratives about the past tend to be partial and explain a conflict from narrow perspectives that justify the national self and condemn, exclude and devalue the “enemy” and their narrative. Through a detailed analysis, Teaching Contested Narratives reveals the works of identity, historical narratives and memory as these are enacted in classroom dialogues, canonical texts and school ceremonies. Presenting ethnographic data from local contexts in Cyprus and Israel, and demonstrating the relevance to educational settings in countries which suffer from conflicts all over the world, the authors explore the challenges of teaching narratives about the past in such societies, discuss how historical trauma and suffering are dealt with in the context of teaching, and highlight the potential of pedagogical interventions for reconciliation. The book shows how the notions of identity, memory and reconciliation can perpetuate or challenge attachments to essentialized ideas about peace and conflict. z v i b e k e r m a n teaches anthropology of education at the School of Education and The Melton Center, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and has served as a research fellow at the Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace, Hebrew University. His main research interests are in the study of cultural, ethnic and national identity, including identity processes and negotiations during intercultural encounters and in formal/informal learning contexts. Recently his research has focused on educational strategies and processes geared towards the achievement of peace and reconciliation. m i c h a l i n o s z e m b y l a s is Associate Professor of Education at the Open University of Cyprus. His research interests are in the areas of educational philosophy and curriculum theory, and his work focuses on exploring the role of emotion and affect in curriculum and pedagogy. He is particularly interested in how affective politics intersect with issues of social justice pedagogies, intercultural and peace education, and citizenship education.

Teaching Contested Narratives Identity, Memory and Reconciliation in Peace Education and Beyond Zvi Bekerman and Michalinos Zembylas

c a m b r i d g e u n i ve r s i t y p r e s s Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, S˜ao Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521766890  C Zvi Bekerman and Michalinos Zembylas 2012

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2012 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Bekerman, Zvi. Teaching contested narratives : identity, memory, and reconciliation in peace education and beyond / Zvi Bekerman and Michalinos Zembylas. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-521-76689-0 1. Peace – Study and teaching – Israel. 2. Peace – Study and teaching – Cyprus. 3. Conflict resolution – Israel. 4. Conflict resolution – Cyprus. 5. Reconciliation. I. Zembylas, Michalinos. II. Title. JZ5534.B45 2011 303.6071 – dc23 2011040408 ISBN 978-0-521-76689-0 Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

Acknowledgments Permissions

page vii viii

Part I Introduction and theoretical underpinnings 1 Introduction

3

2 Problematizing peace education romanticism

24

3 On conflict, identity and more

44

Part II Living and teaching contested narratives 4 Victims and perpetrators: how teachers live with contested narratives

71

5 (Im)possible openings

86

6 The everyday challenges of teaching children from conflicting groups

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7 The emotional complexities of teaching contested narratives

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Part III Mourning, forgiveness and reconciliation: problems and possible solutions 8 The nationalization of mourning in troubled societies

135

9 The work of mourning in schools: ambivalent emotions and the risks of seeking mutual respect and understanding

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10 Forgiveness as a possible path towards reconciliation

164

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Contents

Part IV Conclusions: implications for peace education 11 Becoming critical design experts in schools

185

12 Memory and forgetting: a pedagogy of dangerous memories

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13 De-essentializing identity

213

14 Designing different paths for reconciliation pedagogies

224

References Index

231 256

Acknowledgments

Many friends and colleagues have supported us while we were writing this book. We would like to acknowledge Claire McGlynn, Ana Ferreira, Rob Hattam, Phillip Hammack, Tony Gallagher, Joanne Hughes and Cathleen Donnelly, all of whom have been exceptional partners in dialogue when considering many of the issues raised here. We thank the Ford, the Spencer and the Bernard Van Leer foundations and the Open University of Cyprus for their funding of our research over the years. A very special word of thanks goes to Ifat Maoz, Nurit Peleo and Julia Eksner, three wonderful colleagues, who helped us through the writing of the manuscript with their critical insightful and supportive voice. We also want to thank Merle Read and Sarah Roberts, our editors at Cambridge University Press, for their invaluable help in making the manuscript its most readable. As always, we offer our thanks to our friends and family, whose understanding and patience enable us to write. Yet in spite of all the above we bear sole responsibility for the final product.

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Permissions

The authors acknowledge the copyright-holders of the following articles for permission to reproduce the results of research first published in their journals. Bekerman, Z. (2007). Rethinking intergroup encounters: rescuing praxis from theory, activity from education, and peace/co-existence from identity and culture. Journal of Peace Education, 8(3), 259–76. Bekerman, Z. (2009). The complexities of teaching historical conflictual narratives in integrated Palestinian-Jewish schools in Israel. International Review of Education, 55, 235–50. Bekerman, Z., and Zembylas, M. (2010). Facilitated dialogues with teachers in conflict-ridden areas: in search of pedagogical openings that move beyond the paralyzing effects of perpetrator-victim narratives. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 42(5), 573–96. Bekerman, Z., and Zembylas, M. (2010). Fearful symmetry: Palestinian and Jewish teachers confront contested narratives in integrated bilingual education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26, 507–15. Bekerman, Z., and Zembylas, M. (2011). The emotional complexities of teaching conflictual historical narratives: the case of integrated Palestinian-Jewish schools in Israel. Teachers College Record, 113(5), 1004–30. Bekerman, Z., Zembylas, M., and McGlynn, C. (2009). Working towards the deessentialization of identity categories in conflict and post-conflict societies: Israel, Cyprus, and Northern Ireland. Comparative Education Review, 53(2), 213–34. Zembylas, M. (2009). Making sense of traumatic events: towards a politics of aporetic mourning in educational theory and pedagogy. Educational Theory, 59(1), 85–104. Zembylas, M. (2010). Negotiating co-existence in divided societies: teachers’ and students’ perspectives at a shared school in Cyprus. Research Papers in Education, 25(4), 433–55. Zembylas, M., and Bekerman, Z. (2008). Education and the dangerous memories of historical trauma: narratives of pain, narratives of hope. Curriculum Inquiry, 38(2), 124–54. Zembylas, M., and Bekerman, Z. (2008). Dilemmas of justice in peace/ coexistence education: affect and the politics of identity. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 30(5), 399–419. Zembylas, M., Bekerman, Z., McGlynn, C., and Ferreira, A. (2009). Teachers’ understanding of reconciliation and inclusion in mixed schools of four troubled societies. Research in Comparative and International Education, 4(4), 406–22. viii

Part I

Introduction and theoretical underpinnings

1

Introduction

It would be really nice if conflict was a “thing” that, given the proper conditions, could be overcome or even erased. It would be even nicer if peace was also a “thing” that, given the proper conditions, could be reached. If one looks at what is occasionally suggested in the fields of peace studies and conflict resolution, one might get the impression that indeed peace and conflict are reachable and/or erasable “things.” These representations of peace and conflict have certain consequences in terms of our (in)ability to envision and enact particular solutions as responses to conflict – not only in society but also in educational settings. Ultimately, it is this that we want to talk about in the present book. The prime aim of this book is to offer a social and anthropological perspective on the theoretical underpinnings and practical implications of peace education efforts in troubled societies, that is, societies in which there is some form of conflict (armed, political, cultural and so on). This book raises questions about the psychologized grounding of many peace education interventions within a nation-state framework that is taken for granted. It explores how our framing of the “problem” limits our vision for “solutions” to conflict. Central to our analysis are the ways in which notions of identity, memory and reconciliation are entangled and perpetuate or challenge the depth of attachment to essentialist ideas about peace and conflict. More specifically, we question whether – given the present emphasis that conflict and post-conflict societies put on identity, be this religious, cultural, ethnic, national or other, and/or the ways in which they nourish memories – there is any real possibility for reconciliation efforts to be nurtured. We inquire into the challenges confronted by educational institutions, mostly in the shape of schools and educators/teachers, when trying to negotiate between their understanding of the students’ needs, their personal commitments and their commitments to the larger society within which they are asked to educate. We also consider the many difficulties encountered by teachers when confronting contested issues as these relate to their immediate national 3

4

Introduction and theoretical underpinnings

contexts and learning experiences. Most importantly, we focus on daily classroom practices and events. We show classroom topics being invaded by the wider sociocultural and political context, either unexpectedly or intentionally. We show that teachers – who bear their own internal struggles, concerns and ambivalences – are not always successful in their efforts to overcome these challenges and support open dialogue between children coming from conflicting groups. Yet, we argue that there is a lot we can learn from these unsuccessful efforts. Lastly, we offer some hints at possible openings which, if followed, might help us change the world a little bit. The purpose of this book When we started planning for this book we had a rather easy job in mind. We had published many papers in academic journals which we thought that if put together could end up being an interesting volume. We ended up writing a different product, one which tries to overcome constraints of academic writing with its codes and norms, but without giving up on its guiding principles of consistency and systematization. We have used materials published in our academic journal publications, but we have organized them differently and have contextualized them in ways they might become relevant to both academics and practitioners. Having been able to show them successfully refereed, we are trying now to make them somewhat successfully relevant. We have worked – theorized, researched and lived – in our own countries, Cyprus and Israel. We have worked with each other thinking through our contexts, comparing and trying to learn from each other’s research theorizing living experience. We have also individually and as a team worked with scholars in other countries – Northern Ireland, South Africa, Croatia, Australia and more. With them we have also theorized, compared and dialogued. From these experiences and others reported in the multiple places where studies on education and conflict are published, we have learned that, though each of our contexts is special, they all share some universals (with a small “u”) in that they all are inhabited by humans who at the very least share a biology fundamental to their progress and development. Our book, then, is not about places. The data come from identifiable places, Israel and Cyprus, but the book is about issues. The book is about what gets done in educational settings in countries which suffer from intense conflicts regarding the presence/ voicing/telling of historical narratives, the creation and negotiation of identity, and the maintenance of memory. The book is also about how these tellings become intertwined with public mourning and historical

Introduction

5

trauma, and are organized to produce, or not, peaceful coexistence and reconciliation. We hope the reader will be engaged with the challenging questions with which we struggle in this book: How do hegemonic historical narratives shape perceptions of identity and memory? What can be done pedagogically to weaken the powerful influence of such narratives? What is the potential benefit or harm of emphasizing identity in educational settings? In what ways do students’ and teachers’ responses to historical trauma via mourning constitute (in)surmountable obstacles to promoting peaceful coexistence and reconciliation? How can teaching contesting narratives, despite the immense complexities, become a productive pedagogical intervention? In responding to these questions, our principal concern is to establish the nexus among identity, memory, reconciliation and contested narratives, as all of those are evinced within educational practice. What is explored, then, is an understanding of how various manifestations of “identity” and “memory” are produced and reproduced within and through historical narratives in schools, and how those might be experienced by students, teachers and communities and prevent or promote reconciliation and/or forgiveness. Addressing historical narratives in educational settings is both a political and an emotional act that involves endless “landmines” while engaging with reconciliatory ideas and practices. One of the landmines that we confront in this book is how to reconceptualize identity and memory as non-dividing constructs. Another landmine is how to deal with the multiple ways that historical narratives enter public spaces and educational settings, creating hegemonies that oppose reconciliatory ideas and practices. In reality, reconciliatory ideas and practices often impose tremendous demands on traumatized and mourning communities. However, understanding these demands and finding ways to address them pedagogically are extremely valuable for teachers and schools in troubled societies. Exploring the productive forms of pedagogical engagement with historical narratives aims to dismantle the view of identity and memory as dividing constructs. The purpose of this book, then, is not only to acknowledge the complexities of teaching contested narratives and negotiating identity, but also to highlight productive openings through providing examples of hopeful pedagogical interventions with teachers and students. By providing opportunities to critically analyze contested narratives in classrooms, students and teachers are invited to inhabit renewed learning spaces and form alternative emotional communities. Alternative options, in general, are enabled and invigorated by efforts that do not remain stuck in taken-for-granted assumptions about peace education

6

Introduction and theoretical underpinnings

interventions. Although transformations are not always achieved in the examples we offer in this book, it is important to reflect on both the failures and the successes of the efforts that are undertaken. This book, then, does not simply describe the complexities of teaching contested narratives and their intricate relations to identity-building and memoralization substantiated through and sustained by cultural essentialist perspectives; it also shows how under some circumstances these complexities may indeed create opportunities for alternative understandings of identity and memory – understandings that are not bounded in the limitations imposed by the nation state, psychologized perspectives or Western epistemological assumptions. (We return to these important issues in Chapter 2.) It is now time to introduce the reader to the sociopolitical, historical and educational realities of the settings we come from and in which we have conducted our research. Needless to say, serious introductions to these issues would entail writing a couple of volumes: in the following we offer just the bare essentials to hopefully allow you, the reader, to consider the context as you read our account. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict The Israeli-Palestinian1 conflict can be traced to the beginning of the Zionist colonization of Palestine, claimed by Jews as the land of their birthright, towards the end of the nineteenth century. The seemingly intractable conflict resulted from at least two dominant ideological discourses (one Jewish, one Palestinian) on the control of the land and recognition of group sovereignty. Historically the region was never autonomously controlled, having a long history of colonial and imperial rule (Khalidi, 1997; Morris, 1987). Two major historical events prior to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 – the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, which had controlled Palestine for four centuries, and 1

For political reasons we have chosen to refer to as Palestinians those who are regularly called by the Israeli Jewish hegemony Arab Israelis. We believe this is the term they prefer, or so it is stated by the majority of their leadership. This choice creates some difficulties, for Palestinians are also those who inhabit the conquered (since the war of 1967) territories and the recently created Palestinian Authority. These Palestinians are the ones with whom Israel has sustained an armed conflict since 1967, and these are the ones about whom we do not speak in this book. The bilingual schools from which our Israeli data are taken serve for the most part Palestinian citizens of Israel. These Palestinians clearly see their destiny as strongly connected to that of the Palestinians in the conquered territories and the Palestinian Authority, and politically struggle for the creation of a Palestinian state, but do not see themselves other than as Palestinian citizens of Israel and struggle in Israel for their full (still negated) equal rights. This book deals only with these Palestinians and not with those in the Palestinian Authority.

Introduction

7

the rise of anti-Semitism, culminating in the Holocaust in World War II – serve to position the conflict in its wider international context. The 1948 war, called the “War of Independence” by the Israelis and the “Nakba” (the Catastrophe) by the Palestinians, was the first open military clash between the Zionist and Palestinian nationalist movements. Palestinians in Israel are an indigenous minority who formed the majority in Palestine (two-thirds of the population) until 1947. Four major wars have erupted since then, in 1956, 1967, 1973 and 1982. In 1977 a peace agreement was signed between Israel and Egypt. The intifada outbreaks in 1987 and 2000, organized in the occupied territories under the flag of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), brought about even bloodier events which shattered the optimism for a peaceful solution that emerged after the Oslo agreements between the Israeli government and the PLO in 1993, and it remains to be seen whether the recent disengagement from the Gaza Strip holds any future promises; the 2006 Lebanon War, the recent takeover by Hamas of the Gaza area of the Palestinian Authority and the 2008 attack on Gaza by Israel leave little place for optimism. The Jewish-Palestinian conflict remains the most potentially explosive of conflicts in Israel, placing the Jewish majority and the Palestinian (primarily Muslim) minority at perpetual odds. The reader should always bear in mind that in this book we are dealing with Palestinians living within the internationally recognized borders of Israel who do not discuss national separation but focus on the struggle for equal rights within the state. Though structurally there is a sharp asymmetry between both communities, in all that relates to the fair distribution of resources, they both maintain beliefs with regard to having a monopoly on objective truth regarding the conflict and the identity of the villain in it, thus undermining possibilities for conflict resolution (Bar-Tal, 1990b, 1998). Israel, since its inception, and as is clearly stated in its Declaration of Independence, has been committed to full political and social equality for all its citizens, irrespective of their religion or ethnic affiliation. Yet, even the Israeli government agrees that it has not been fully successful in implementing this ideal and has, for the most part, implemented segregationist policies towards its non-Jewish minorities, policies which only relatively recently have begun to be challenged in the courts of justice (Gavison, 2000). These separatist policies are most visible in residential and educational arrangements which are fully separated for both the Palestinian and the Jewish communities (Rouhana, 1997). Israeli Palestinians, though officially offered full rights as citizens, have chronically suffered as a putatively hostile minority, with little political representation and a debilitated

8

Introduction and theoretical underpinnings

social, economic and educational infrastructure (Ghanem, 1998). In general, the Israeli Palestinian population is geographically segregated and institutionally and legally discriminated against (Al-Haj, 1995a; Kretzmer, 1992). In Palestine under the British mandate (1920–48), which sustained elements of the millet system under Ottoman political rule, education was divided into an Arab, mostly public, sector and a Hebrew, quasi-private, sector. The Hebrew sector was divided into a Zionist secular sector and an ultraorthodox non-Zionist sector. The Zionist branch was further divided into religious and non-religious sectors. During the period prior to the declaration of Israel’s independence (1948) and in the period immediately following, the dominant secular Zionist establishment struggled to find ways to integrate the sectorial educational system into a statesponsored system. These efforts incited a political crisis that came to an end only in 1953 with the adoption of the State Education Law (Zameret, 1997). This law aimed to institute an egalitarian and universal educational system, but ended up replicating old divisions (Zameret, 1997). Today, and still under the dictates of the 1953 law, the educational system in Israel is divided into two main branches: the Palestinian sector (called the Arab sector by the Israeli Jewish officialdom) and the Hebrew sector, with the latter being divided into secular and religious sectors. The ultraorthodox Jews, the Druze, and the kibbutzim2 have autonomous enclaves. In this sense it can be said that the sociopolitical conflicts are reflected in the Israeli educational system (Sprinzak et al., 2001). Al-Haj (1996) demonstrates how educational policies are designed to secure Jewish cultural hegemony in line with Israel’s self-definition as a Jewish state, while supporting the Zionist ethos among Jewish students and the inferiority of its Palestinian citizens, with the educational system serving as a mechanism of control (Mazawi, 1994). In spite of Israel’s declared goals of offering equal opportunity to all its citizens through the educational system, the gap between the Jewish and Palestinian sectors remains. For example, in 1980 the rate at which Palestinian students attended high school was 0.64 the Jewish rate. In 1990 this figure increased to 0.69, and in 2002 the narrowing gap was evident as it reached 0.84 (Shye and Zion, 2003). An improvement is also evident in the rate of children who pass the matriculation examinations. In 1991, 45.4 percent of Palestinian and 67.3 percent of Jewish children earned a matriculation diploma, while in 2001 the figures increased to 59.1 and 69.7 percent respectively (State of Israel, 2002), showing that the gap between 2

A kibbutz (Hebrew: $WBç, $wbyq, lit. “gathering, clustering”; plural kibbutzim) is a collective community in Israel traditionally based on agriculture.

Introduction

9

sectors remained. More recent data show the gap growing, with numbers published by the Ministry of Education showing for 2008 that the rate for Jewish students obtaining matriculation certificates (59.74 percent) is nearly double that of the Palestinian students (31.94 percent) (Jabareen and Agbaria, 2010). Not only are the school systems segregated, but so too are the curricula. Israel has no official multicultural educational policies. The Jewish curriculum focuses on national Jewish content and Jewish nationbuilding, and the Palestinian curriculum is sanitized of any national Palestinian content (Rouhana, 1997). While Jewish students are called on to engage in the collective Jewish national enterprise, Palestinian students are called on to accept the definition of Israel as a Jewish democratic state (Al-Haj, 2005; D. Gordon, 2005). They are not allowed to choose freely their own narratives concerning issues related to their cultural and national histories. The narrative of collective Palestinian identity is constructed primarily in response to Zionism and the assertion of Israeli identity itself (Khalidi, 1997). Lastly, it is worth mentioning some features of the Palestinian educational system in Israel which reflect the unique sociocultural background of this population (Abu-Nimer, 1999). Among these is an authoritarian model of student–teacher relationships, a very traditional frontal pedagogical approach and, for teachers, a sense of conflict regarding their loyalty towards their employer, the Ministry of Education, and their loyalty towards their Palestinian community. The security principle traditionally used by Israeli officialdom to restrict teacher appointments, by screening them for their political views, was canceled only in 1994, but it is still unofficially functional today (Kretzmer, 1990; Rouhana and Ghanem, 1998). All in all, the Palestinian educational system in Israel lacks the preferential support given by the government to the Jewish educational system, thus creating an enormous gap and leaving the Palestinian educational system behind. The data for Israel we refer to in this book are taken from a longstanding ethnographic research effort at the bilingual integrated schools in Israel. Given the political realities of Israel, the idea of creating integrated Jewish-Palestinian education is a daring enterprise. In 1972 Fr. Bruno Hussar founded the first (and still only) intentionally mixed Palestinian-Jewish village in Israel. The aim was to set an example of coexistence in practice for groups living in what has come to be known as an area of intractable conflict (Bar-Tal, 1999). The village’s name is Neve Shalom – Wahat al-Salam (Oasis of Peace) (Feuerverger, 2001). In 1984, three years after the first integrated Protestant-Catholic schools opened their doors in Northern Ireland (McGlynn, 2001), an integrated

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Introduction and theoretical underpinnings

school started functioning in this village in Israel. The local population, even today, is rather small (totaling sixty families). The school was an exotic educational undertaking, serving an unusual mixed community, which never developed into an attempt to influence the wider, almost fully segregated educational system in Israel (Nir and Inbar, 2004). Fifteen years later and with no connection to these previous developments, two friends – a Palestinian (citizen of Israel) and an American Jew (also a citizen of Israel) – started what at that time seemed like an impossible (and, in the eyes of some experts consulted, undesirable) grassroots movement towards the creation of integrated bilingual schools in Israel. This time the objective was to serve the “regular” population and not those people who already had very clear ideological commitments towards cooperation and coexistence, such as the population in Neve Shalom. The two friends’ determination brought about the creation of an NGO (at that time called the Center for Bilingual Education in Israel3 ) which became the institutional tool through which the Israeli schools discussed in this study developed. In 1998 the Center established the first integrated school in Misgav. During this period of relative calm, following expectations of peace upon the signing of the Oslo agreements, perhaps the Jewish community, the minority in this area, sensed the need to strengthen and sustain good relations with the majority Palestinian community. In Misgav the Jewish population reflected rather liberal political inclinations and a sense that practice needs to support ideology. The Palestinian population reflected no less of an ideological commitment. Additionally, however, they had a deep understanding of the failures apparent in the segregated educational system Israel had created (Al-Haj, 1995b) for them, and they wished to provide their children with a better alternative. These became the forces behind what ultimately allowed for the creation of the first integrated school. The second school opened its doors a year later in Jerusalem. During the first year the school functioned as a section (first and second grades) within the Experimental School, the bastion of liberal progressive education in Jerusalem and a school mostly attended by the children of the large academic community which populates Jerusalem. Within a year, the school moved out. The official reason offered by the committee from the Experimental School was that it believed two experiments (its own and the bilingual integrated project) were too much to be carried by one 3

In 2003 the CBE changed its official name to “The Center for Arab Jewish Education in Israel,” possibly reflecting the need to emphasize the initiative’s attempt at educational integration and multiculturalism more than its bilingual goals.

Introduction

11

lone school. The school later moved to a different location with its own new building donated by the Swiss government. The third school started functioning in 2004. In a sense this school is the most revolutionary of the three because it is located in a Palestinian Muslim village in the area of Waddi Ara called Kafur Kara. This was the first time that Jewish parents had sent their children to school in a Palestinian village, as opposed to the previous two schools which are situated in Jewish areas. The most recent school was established in Beer Sheba in 2007. The pupil population of these schools is approximately 1,100 students, and they are recognized as non-religious schools supported by the Ministry of Education. Their curriculum is the standard curriculum of the state non-religious school system, with the difference that both Hebrew and Arabic are used as the joint languages of instruction. The five schools, the one in Neve Shalom and the four initiated by the Center for Bilingual Education in Israel, employ an additive bilingual approach, which emphasizes symmetry between both languages in all aspects of instruction (Garcia, 1997). Classes are taught and led by two teachers, a Palestinian and a Jew. In addition there are two co-principals – one Palestinian and one Jewish – who share responsibility for school management and leadership. These schools, still considered a curiosity, must pioneer solutions to the multiple curricular problems raised by mixing Palestinian and Jewish populations. These challenges have to do with cultural and identity borders and with historical discourse and interpretations, including those that sustain the present violent conflict (Bekerman, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2008, 2009a, 2009b, 2009e; Bekerman and Horenczyk, 2004; Bekerman and Shhadi, 2003). The conflict in Cyprus Cyprus has been a theater of conflict for many centuries. The Ottomans conquered Cyprus in 1571 from the Franks (Lusignans) and ruled until 1878, when the island was sold to the British. At the beginning of World War I, Cyprus was annexed by the United Kingdom, and after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire it was made a crown colony. In the twentieth century there was a gradual rise first of Greek nationalism and later of ¨ Turkish nationalism (Kizilyurek, 2002); both communities began to form strong “motherland” feelings toward Greece and Turkey, respectively. ¨ As Kizilyurek argues, under the influence of Greek and Turkish nationalism as well as the historical burden of Greco-Turkish warfare, Greek and Turkish Cypriots became antagonistic about the political future of Cyprus. Cyprus emerged as an independent state in 1960 after a GreekCypriot (the majority, 80 percent of the population) guerrilla struggle set

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Introduction and theoretical underpinnings

up by EOKA (National Organization of Cypriot Fighters) against British colonial rule. This anti-colonial rebellion, however, did not aim toward independence but enosis, union with Greece. During that time, Turkish Cypriots, the largest minority on the island (18 percent), set up TMT (Turkish Resistance Organization), which aimed at taksim, ethnic partition. The Zurich-London Agreement in 1959 gave birth to the Republic of Cyprus; the independence document was drafted by Britain, Greece and Turkey (which were to act as guarantor powers of the sovereignty of the new state), leaving both communities’ political aspirations unfulfilled. Both ethnic groups continued to pursue their separate objectives during the 1960s, a decade in which Cyprus witnessed interethnic conflict, primarily in the years 1963–4 and 1967. During this period, the Turkish Cypriots suffered the greater losses. Around one-fifth of the TurkishCypriot population was displaced and moved to areas that gradually became armed enclaves under their control. By 1964 hundreds of Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots were killed or went missing, presumed dead. After Turkey’s bombardments in 1967 and the rise of a military junta in Greece during the same year, Greek-Cypriot leaders gradually began to separate their position from union with Greece and sought instead to preserve the independence of Cyprus, in the face of attempts by the junta to dictate politics in Cyprus (Papadakis, 1998). While armed confrontations between the two communities ceased after 1967, a new conflict, now among Greek Cypriots, began. On one side, there was a paramilitary right-wing organization, EOKA B, which had the support of the Greek junta and aimed for enosis; on the other side, there was the president of the republic, Archbishop Makarios, and his supporters, who wanted to solve intercommunal problems within the framework of an independent Cyprus. With the support of the Greek junta, EOKA B staged a coup in 1974 against President Makarios. Turkey reacted by invading Cyprus, causing heavy Greek-Cypriot casualties (thousands of dead and missing) and dividing the island, forcing 200,000 Greek Cypriots (one-third of the total population) to be displaced from their homeland and move to the south. Also, 45,000 Turkish Cypriots (onefourth of the total population) were displaced to the northern side. After the declaration of the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” in 1983 (considered legally invalid by the UN and recognized only by Turkey), there are in effect two rival states in situ (Constantinou and Papadakis, 2001), which lack any sort of substantial contact. The trauma of ethnic division, first in the 1960s, when the Turkish Cypriots were the main victims, and then in 1974, when the Greek Cypriots became the main victims, came to signify an intractable conflict in the politics of the region. Since 1974 the Green Line has divided

Introduction

13

the island, separating the two communities and deepening even further the antagonism between them and strengthening the status quo, despite numerous diplomatic efforts for a peaceful settlement. This decadeslong physical and cultural separation has rendered the division in Cyprus almost complete – socially, emotionally and politically – resulting in what Bryant (2004) described as “ethnic estrangement.” Ethnic estrangement has also been reinforced by intensive processes of “nation-building” after 1974 on both sides, which have heightened their respective “Greekness” and “Turkishness,” while constructing the other community as the “ethnic other” and “arch-enemy” of the collective self. In the spring of 2003 the permission granted by the Turkish-Cypriot side for unfettered access across the dividing Green Line rekindled hopes for a final settlement before Cyprus’s accession to the EU in May 2004. A few days before Cyprus’s accession, a comprehensive UN proposal for reunification on the basis of a bi-zonal bi-communal federation – known as the “Annan Plan” – was put to simultaneous referenda on both sides, but led to failure, with a 65 percent “yes” vote by the Turkish Cypriots but a 76 percent “no” vote by the Greek Cypriots. Today, despite ongoing diplomatic efforts, the partition remains in place. Naturally, everyone living on this island has a tale – a tale of trauma, victimhood, memory and suffering. Looking at the history of Cyprus, one can easily find competing discourses of representing the other. The Greek Cypriots and the Turkish Cypriots construct narratives that are different with respect to how the other is portrayed, but the common themes focus on the suffering, violence and historical trauma that one side has inflicted on the other. Greek Cypriots talk about the suffering from the “1974 Turkish invasion,” while Turkish Cypriots welcome Turkey’s 1974 intervention as a “happy peace operation” (Mutlu Baris¸ Harekˆati) that saved Turkish Cypriots from the evil hands of Greek Cypriots. Also, after 1974 Greek Cypriots invested heavily in creating a strong visual/educational culture of not forgetting the “Turkish occupied territories,” a campaign that has become known as “I do not forget and I fight” (Den Xechno kai Agonizomai). Similarly, Turkish Cypriots have established museums, such as the Museum of Barbarism (Barbarlik Musesi), in which are portrayed the acts of barbarism that they suffered at the hands of Greek Cypriots before 1974, particularly during the Bloody Christmas of 1963 (Kanli Noel). Turkish Cypriots have a similar slogan concerning not forgetting the past, “We don’t forget” (unutmayaca˘giz), which refers to the bloody events of 1963. In divided states such as Cyprus, education is an important vehicle through which conflicting sites legitimate their positions (Davies, 2004). In such societies, education is usually segregated along ethno-political

14

Introduction and theoretical underpinnings

lines, and so educational systems have been blamed for perpetuating divisions and conflict (Bush and Saltarelli, 2000). On the basis of the 1960 constitution of Cyprus, responsibility for education was assigned to two separate communal chambers (a colonial legacy that continued). The educational systems of each community were completely influenced by the “motherlands” (Greece and Turkey, respectively), and thus education had a clear ethno-political line within each community. There is now ample evidence from various studies that school textbooks and curricula, as well as national rituals, symbols and celebrations in schools and the society, create dehumanized images of the other in each community and ¨ inspire negative stereotypes and hatred (Bryant, 2004; Kizilyurek, 2001; Spyrou, 2006; Zembylas, 2008a). For example, it has been shown that school textbooks implore students to remember each side’s glories and honor the heroes who fought the other (Papadakis, 2008). There is also ethnographic evidence indicating how individuals as well as organized groups from both communities in Cyprus have systematically attempted to nationalize suffering and highlight the need to remember what “the enemy” has done in the past (Loizos, 1998; Sant Cassia, 2005). In the Greek-Cypriot community the educational objective of “I don’t forget and I fight” became prominent in the school curriculum after the Turkish invasion of 1974. This objective aims at teaching children and young people to acquire knowledge so that they will never forget the occupied territories and care enough to struggle in various ways to liberate those territories. The most prominent themes of the “I don’t forget” campaign focus on the remembrance of the Turkish invasion, the thousands of refugees, the missing, the enclaved who live in the occupied north, the violation of human rights and the destruction of ancient Greek archaeological places. At the same time, within the Greek-Cypriot community there has been a long conflict between two political identity discourses: Hellenocentrism, which emphasizes the Greekness of Greek Cypriots and is mainly supported by the political right, and Cypriocentrism, which emphasizes the Cypriot identity and is mainly supported by the political left (Spyrou, 2006). However, Hellenocentrism has been the norm in Greek-Cypriot education, which has promoted the strengthening of the national Greek identity within the Greek-Cypriot educational system, leaving little room for alternative discourses (Papadakis, 2008). Greece has also provided educational materials (e.g., textbooks) and other assistance, a tactic that is still followed nowadays (Persianis, 2006). In this historical context, then, perhaps it is not surprising that a recent educational objective promoting “peaceful coexistence” (introduced by a leftist government in 2008) has stirred intense public and educational

Introduction

15

debates within the Greek-Cypriot community. In a circular sent by the Minister of Education and Culture, the objective highlights “the development of a culture of peaceful coexistence, mutual respect and cooperation between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, aiming at getting rid of the occupation and re-unifying our country and our people” (Ministry of Education and Culture, 2008, p. 1). This particular recommendation has generated considerable debate and controversy, among not only teachers and teacher organizations, but also members of Parliament, the government and the wider Greek-Cypriot society. The debate and controversy have raised, among other things, the issue of whether teachers and the educational system have any right to promote reconciliatory ideas through education, while a large part of Cyprus is still occupied. Finally, it is important to note that in the Greek-Cypriot educational system there is an increasing number of “multicultural” schools, that is, schools attended by children from various cultures, including those children whose parents are migrant workers or married to someone from another culture. Occasionally, there are a few Turkish-speaking children, that is, Roma and Turkish Cypriots who stayed in the south after the war of 1974 or moved more recently. There are also international private schools in the south in which an increasing number of Turkish-Cypriot children are enrolled. Although educational policy documents and the official national curriculum of the Republic of Cyprus include strong statements about humanistic ideas and respect for human rights, justice and peace, in practice the diversity of non-Greek Cypriot children is seen as a type of deficiency that needs to be treated quickly so that children can be assimilated (Zembylas, 2010a). The data for Cyprus we refer to in this book are taken from a long-standing research effort conducted in these schools. Now that the reader has the background to the conflictual settings in which we conduct our research, we believe it is time to say something about the comparative aspects of this work. The comparative aspects of our research During the last decade, we have been involved in educational research efforts in our own countries – Israel and Cyprus – both of which are considered conflict societies. In our respective research studies, we have dealt with a variety of topics related to peace education, reconciliation and coexistence, with a special emphasis on the formation of identity and memory in educational settings. As mentioned earlier, in Israel the research has been conducted mainly in integrated schools (that is, schools in which children from rival communities, Israeli Palestinians and Jews,

16

Introduction and theoretical underpinnings

can be educated together in an educational system that is mainly segregated), while in Cyprus the research has been conducted mainly in a few Greek-Cypriot public schools (and less often in one particular international private school) in which children from rival communities, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, have a rare chance to be educated together. Our work, both separately and collaboratively, has developed in a variety of short-term dialogues and workshops which bring together teachers and students not only in homogeneous in-groups but also across conflicted groups. Clearly, there are important differences but also several commonalities between the conflicts in Israel and Cyprus. On one hand, their main commonality is that both countries have two major communities which have been involved (or are still involved) in violent conflicts: in Israel, these are the Jews and the Palestinians; in Cyprus, the Greek Cypriots and the Turkish Cypriots. Within each of these communities there is a perception that the other community is to be blamed for the conflict and the resulting violence, trauma and suffering. In public and political discourses there is also a perception among many that they belong to distinct groups involved in an intractable conflict which can be traced back for centuries in Cyprus and to a more recent history in the case of Israel. On the other hand, there are also important differences in the historical development and present state of conflict in these two societies. In Cyprus there is at present a reduced level of bi-communal violence with human casualties, but there is still strong animosity and lack of trust between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, as various research studies and polls have repeatedly shown. In Israel, however, the violence between Israeli Jews and Palestinians persists with casualties on an everyday basis. Not surprisingly, recurring polls also indicate animosity and lack of trust for members of the rival community. In both cases the communities in conflict live, for the most part, in segregated areas. In Cyprus, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots have lived in segregated areas since the Turkish invasion of 1974 (and in some areas since the bi-communal clashes of 1963, when most Turkish Cypriots were forced to live in ethnic enclaves); in Israel, Palestinians and Jewish Israelis have lived in segregated communities since the beginning of the Zionist settlement and the outcome of the war of 1948. In Cyprus and in Israel the communities are defined mostly in ethnic/national and political terms and less so in religious terms. Yet for many Greek Cypriots religious identity is an important aspect of who they are, and in recent decades religious elements have been accentuated as foundational in the Palestinian-Jewish conflict as well.

Introduction

17

Negotiations in Cyprus and Israel seem to have been at a political stalemate for many years now. Repeated polls in Cyprus suggest that a growing number of individuals from both communities are pessimistic about the possibility that the two communities will live together in a reunified Cyprus. In Israel the outbreak of the second intifada, the second war with Lebanon in 2006 and the 2008 war in Gaza added to the structural asymmetry suffered by Palestinians in Israel, all of which has restricted the possibility of reconciliatory discourses between the Palestinian minority and the Jewish majority groups. As related above, in terms of the educational opportunities to promote peace and coexistence in these societies, Israel has a few integrated schools, while in Cyprus the conflict has kept schools mainly segregated for the two communities, although there has been some contact between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots since the partial lifting of restrictions on movement in 2003. A recent (2008) educational objective emphasizing the development of peaceful coexistence in Greek-Cypriot schools sparked strong reactions both in schools and in wider society, fueling debates about whether it threatened ethnic identity, memory and survival. Lastly, both countries have accepted many immigrants in recent years and are becoming more ethnically and culturally diverse. Israel has always encouraged Jewish immigration, but recently it has also accepted foreign workers; similarly, Cyprus has given permission to many foreign migrants to work temporarily. In both settings there has been increasing evidence of racism and discrimination against migrants who are not accepted as equals in the society. Increasing multiculturalism and diversity in each society constitute an additional aspect that further complicates educational initiatives geared towards peace, coexistence and reconciliation. Although this issue is emerging and important, it is not dealt with in this book except at a very general level. After this first attempt to situate the reader in the reality of the complex settings from which we derive our data for this book, we describe now how the book is organized.

The structure of the book The book is organized into four parts comprising fourteen chapters. Part I (‘Introduction and theoretical underpinnings’) contains three chapters and describes the context in which our research has been conducted (Chapter 1) and how this research is conceptualized in light of our criticism of peace education romanticism (Chapter 2). In Chapter 3 the basic constructs of the book (identity, memory, reconciliation) are

18

Introduction and theoretical underpinnings

situated theoretically. This chapter puts forward the need to reconceptualize identity (we come back to this in Chapter 13) within a different framework that takes into account relevant theorizations of memory and reconciliation. A discussion of the links between identity, memory and reconciliation is also undertaken in light of seeking theoretical openings for the pedagogical dimension of overcoming conflict and enacting peace. Part II, consisting of four chapters, focuses on identifying “problems” in the context of teaching and living contested narratives. In Chapter 4 we show in detail some of the mechanisms and the paralyzing implications of the perpetrator–victim narratives in the context of in-service training sessions of Jewish and Palestinian-Israeli teachers who teach in Palestinian-Jewish integrated schools. The workshops serve both as a cross-cultural intergroup encounter (somewhat similar to the one the participating teachers themselves strive to produce in their daily school activities at the bilingual schools) and a working environment in which curricula tailored to the specific needs of the integrated schools are developed. The choice of these particular events relates only to the data that are available from the teachers’ workshops; for in principle we believe that there is nothing special about the teachers involved regarding the issues raised, and that the teachers are as special as any other adults in societies suffering from intractable conflicts. In our analysis we show to be misleading the usual assumption that the victim is always powerless, while the perpetrator is all too powerful and thus indifferent to the victim’s complaint. Our “thick description” of ritualized cross-cultural dialogues among teachers allows us to argue that being a victim can be immensely powerful and can be used advantageously by the (nation) state apparatus which by “nature” is involved in the production of grand narratives, for the successful indoctrination of its population. In the context of our workshop, the Palestinian teachers’ sense of victimhood is grounded in a number of collective memories, as well as school incidents, that show the traumatic consequences of Jewish hegemony in the State of Israel. Having in mind the Jewish teachers’ efforts to deny any form of symmetry (in terms of suffering or victimhood), the Palestinian teachers do not imply a monopoly of victimization today; they do not simply ask for acknowledgment of Palestinian victimhood (even in terms of asymmetry), but more importantly they want their Jewish colleagues to “do” something after listening to the Palestinian narratives. But what ways are there (if any) to overcome fearful symmetry? Chapter 5 continues from the previous chapter. Specifically, we describe and analyze the difficulties experienced by the teachers

Introduction

19

participating in our workshops in overcoming their need to uphold a strong sense of identification with the history of their own communities, even when they are provided with clearer alternatives to hegemonic narratives. We show the results of this effort not to be so encouraging in relation to the potential of educators to help overcome situations of intractable conflict, even within contexts specifically devised to encourage dialogue, as are the bilingual integrated Jewish-Palestinian schools in which these teachers develop their professional lives. There are, therefore, two stories we tell in this chapter, one pessimistic and one optimistic. The pessimistic story is that teachers will not change their identifications with hegemonic narratives unless radical structural transformations take place – that is, social, political and educational transformations that somehow undermine the power of hegemonic narrative. The optimistic story is that an ongoing agonistics of raising critical issues regarding one’s identifications with hegemonic narratives does offer “small openings” to take responsibility for both the challenges and the dialogic possibilities that are created in the process. While in Chapters 4 and 5 we introduce readers to the many difficulties encountered by teachers when confronting contested issues as these relate to their immediate national contexts and learning experiences, in Chapters 6 and 7 we focus on daily classroom practices and events. We show how classroom topics are invaded by the wider sociocultural and political context either unexpectedly or intentionally. We also show how teachers – who bear their own internal struggles, concerns and ambivalences – are not always successful in their efforts to overcome these challenges and support open dialogue between children coming from conflicting groups. The classroom events described in Chapter 6 – one took place in Israel and the second in Cyprus – are excellent examples of how folk (historical) knowledge, that of the students and their teachers (none of whom are trained as history teachers), and the pedagogical practices adopted allow or do not allow for reconciliatory openings between students coming from conflicting groups. In Chapter 7 we examine how affective rituals of identification, affiliation and belonging in schools emerge as emotional training technologies of the nation-state project. We focus on “emotions” as a strategic site – a constitutive component in teaching practice – of nation-state governance that illuminates the ways in which the relation between collective narratives and individual experiences is made central to ethnicized and racialized communities. We present an in-depth analysis of two examples – again, one from Israel and one from Cyprus – that show the emotional complexities encountered by teachers and students when dealing with contested narratives.

20

Introduction and theoretical underpinnings

While in Part II we deal with adults and/or children who are in one way or another involved in educational work, in Part III (Chapters 8–10) we move briefly outside the immediate educational spheres and then return again to show how macro-level sociopolitical issues are entangled with micro-level school matters. We do this because we want to underline that, though education may be innocent of the creation of and/or solutions to conflict, it easily reflects the hegemonic discourses and practices of outside environments. We show how hegemonic discourses work to have an impact on educational matters. What we want to emphasize is that although we do not believe education can be held responsible for offering solutions to intractable conflicts, it can help (at times, when critically approached) create spaces where some oppositional work can be done. For this purpose we take on three contentious issues, mourning, forgiveness and reconciliation, to show possible solutions to the problems identified in previous chapters; these issues are shown to be part of ongoing pedagogical struggles in peace education. Thus in Chapter 8 we deal with the nationalization of mourning in troubled societies. Mourning, just as memory in the first part of our book, can also be viewed as a major social practice in the modern nation state; that is, as something we do, as an action that plays an important role in the production of “collective identities.” At the same time we argue that, just like memory, mourning also constitutes a crucial site of disrupting the power of the nation state and contesting power relations as we know them. It is for this reason that some scholars in philosophy, political science and cultural studies speak of a “politics of mourning.” Our comparative analysis of mourning narratives from Cyprus and Israel highlights the immense difficulties for alternative interpretations to be translated into educational policies and teaching practices in the absence of changes in political structures. This idea is very much in line with what is shown in the second part of this book, mainly through our analysis of memory and teachers’ contested narratives. In Chapter 9 we examine what happens when the work of mourning becomes part of the school unofficial curriculum and ask: How do teachers and students who come from conflicting communities commemorate together past historical events and mourn for those who lost their lives in past and ongoing atrocities/wars/conflicts, when such events might be interpreted differently by these communities? What feelings are evoked in the process of mourning when it becomes part of the school curriculum, and what are the risks and potential benefits in pedagogical efforts to promote mutual respect and understanding? We present an in-depth analysis of two commemoration events – Holocaust Day and Memorial Day – in a first-grade classroom of a bilingual school in Israel. The

Introduction

21

analysis of these two events shows teachers’ and students’ “ambivalent” emotions about the other, as a result of pedagogical efforts to engage with the work of mourning in schools. Our claim here is that these ambivalent emotions about otherness – that is, both pleasant emotions (e.g., feelings of solidarity and empathy) and unpleasant emotions (e.g., anger and resentment) – shape pedagogical efforts to develop mutual respect and understanding. We further argue that ambivalent emotions in schools bring to the surface serious concerns about symmetry and asymmetry, similar to the issues raised in Chapter 2; these concerns reveal elements of the emotional risks and benefits as a result of bringing children from conflicting groups closer. Chapter 10 considers the possibilities and limits of forgiveness as a pedagogical practice. We do this by presenting data from our work with teachers in which we ask more directly about their perspectives on forgiveness in relation to their understandings of reconciliation. Analysis of the intersection of teachers’ understandings about forgiveness and reconciliation is particularly useful for a deeper analysis of issues of memory and identity. A number of perplexing questions about teachers’ understandings of forgiveness and the potential contribution of forgiveness as a pedagogical tool for supporting reconciliation in schools are addressed. How do teachers talk about forgiveness, and to what degree do they see it as a potential response to violence and historical trauma? What indications does the speech of teachers provide about the prospects of forgiveness as a pedagogical practice and as a goal of education that promotes reconciliation? How is the speech of teachers differentiated in Israel and Cyprus, and what does this tell us about possible openings and closures in creating peace education interventions? We conclude our book with Part IV, which moves from the micro level with which we have mostly dealt in Parts II and III to the macro level, and theorizes more holistically the pedagogical openings identified, as well as their consequences. This shift we make, initially in Chapter 11, from the micro to the macro level is not unproblematic. Yet, it is done – that is, the meaning of peace education is extended here from small details to the bigger issues – so as to prevent peace education from remaining trapped, as it is often nowadays, in a number of reified categories such as identity, memory, peace, reconciliation and so on. In earlier chapters we detailed the constructed nature of these categories and showed how these categories are employed by active agents, displaying the available options of a given social order – in our case, the given social order of states in conflict. At the macro level we engage with the sociopolitical context in which these constructs are shaped – that is, the nation state – pointing at this wider context as the arena within which any serious struggle for

22

Introduction and theoretical underpinnings

change needs to take place. While having in mind the importance of linking macro and micro perspectives, we propose key elements emerging from the stories and experiences captured in this book that highlight how teachers and students become what we call critical design experts – that is, critical readers who find out how the world is organized to sustain conflict, and then learn how to engage in small steps to propose alternative ways of organizing the world. In each of the three remaining chapters we shed light once again – separately and collectively – on each of the three constructs that have accompanied us throughout the book. In Chapter 12 our focus is on “memory” and we revisit some of the previous chapters, exploring further the meanings and implications of a concept we find particularly powerful, that of “dangerous memories.” Dangerous memories are essentially memories that go against the current, that is, they have the potential of being dangerous to hegemonic narratives. Our purpose is to outline some insights from this endeavor – insights that may help educators recognize the potential of dangerous memories for teaching contested narratives in troubled societies. Admittedly, the premise on which this idea rests – i.e., the importance of raising critical awareness on the role of memory in the everyday lives of those living in troubled societies and the link between memory and contested narratives – is not new; that premise, however, is not the most significant contribution of the chapter. What is more important is the analysis of the radically different meanings of dangerous memories in the two sites we explore in this book (i.e., Israel and Cyprus), and the implications of the complexities in the workings of dangerous memories for educational settings; such meanings and implications are exposed without being locked into perceptions that memories simply “control” individuals or that the political dynamics seek to control individuals by shaping their memories. In Chapter 13 we revisit the construct of identity and delve more into what we can learn from de-essentializing identity in peace education frameworks. As the various events described in the book clearly show, the attitudes of adults and children seem to reflect very different approaches to and understandings of the construct of identity and its relevance within the social context which foregrounds it. Adults in the two societies, which are the focus of this book, appear concerned when children do not demonstrate awareness of their religious or national identities; at least in the school context, these categorizations seem to be of little concern to the children themselves. Adults seem to be captive to hegemonic perspectives of an identity which is somewhat essentialized and reflects deep-rooted issues that stand at the basis of the protracted nature of the conflict they are trying to resolve. Children, not yet fully

Introduction

23

socialized into the historical realities which gave birth to the conflict, seem not to hold to an understanding of identity as a boundary marker, especially not one which delimits their spheres of social contact. The haunting question which lies at the core of this chapter is whether schools and teachers really are in a position to model the children’s perspective of backgrounding ethnic/religious identity when in fact society (and therefore the children’s parents and so on) foregrounds it. When confronting this problem we immediately realize that, if anything, change is no easy task. We conclude with Chapter 14, in which we recapitulate the main arguments in the book and link those to the implications of designing an alternative path for reconciliation pedagogies. We state that the (at times) perceived failure – or dissatisfaction with the products – of peace education has little to do with the quality of individual teachers or students and much to do with the quality of the systems we (all) cooperatively construct. Not understanding this means confusing failure with what are adaptive moves to local and global systemic circumstances. We point then to Western positivist paradigmatic perspectives in the social sciences which we see as responsible for the present educational perspectives which guide peace educational theory and practice, and argue that change will only be possible after these paradigmatic perspectives are abandoned. Changing the Western positivist perspectives means revising our basic ideas of identity and memory, and appreciating their implications for designing alternative reconciliation pedagogies. It means realizing that these taken-for-granted ideas are interactional, contextualized and historicized processes rather than isolated inside an individual (identity and memory), static and well defined outside (culture), and specific task-oriented and measurable transmissions (education). Unless the deconstruction of these ideas is done and the design of viable alternatives by teachers and students as “critical design experts” is undertaken, it is likely that peace education interventions will perpetuate the hegemonic categories that sustain the nation-state apparatus. All in all, the book refuses to accept traditional disciplinary divisions and even within disciplines tries to cross boundaries. It crosses such borders when raising epistemological questions; when considering general educational issues instead of, for example, focusing on a specific curriculum; or when building on examples which in principle could be understood as belonging outside educational spheres. We have approached our subjects of study with a profound belief that realities are shaped by multiple contextual levels, all of which come into play in the construction of their narratives; we hope the reader will find the attempt both enlightening and challenging.

2

Problematizing peace education romanticism

So far we have tried to familiarize the reader with the sociopolitical and educational settings which will be discussed, with what we as researchers have done, and with how the book is organized. In this chapter we present some of our theoretical assumptions and directions. This is necessary, for descriptive and analytical choices are not epistemologically free. Being reflective on that which guides our theoretical approach hopefully betters our chances of being critical about our own perspectives, and equips the reader with the knowledge needed to approach our work critically. Our arguments might seem to be repetitive at times, and they are. This repetitiveness has two sides, though. First, it is inevitable because our critique extends over multiple theoretical approaches which have sustained for the most part a compartmentalized epistemology; responding to each and every theoretical approach requires that we reiterate some of our ideas. Second, repetitiveness is somewhat purposive, because we see in repetition an outstanding learning strategy which will hopefully keep the reader both alert and informed in a book which travels multiple theoretical territories. Our theoretical underpinnings aim to widen the traditional understanding of peace educational issues and activities. First, we want the reader to know that we come from a philosophical and anthropological thinking that finds it difficult to consider nouns (e.g., “conflict”) and adjectives (e.g., “peaceful”) as “true” representations of the world. We are compelled to use representations for pragmatic reasons – otherwise we cannot be easily understood – and yet we know that these representations are what their names say, that is, “representations.” In this sense, peace and conflict are not just “things out there”; they have no predetermined or final forms that are simply reachable or erasable. This fundamental assumption inevitably leads to certain results that may prevent or promote the chances of peace education interventions. Let us explain our assumption some more. Within the dominant Western tradition, language as significant “speech act” (in J. L. Austin’s sense) is taken to be that tool with which we 24

Problematizing peace education romanticism

25

communicate ideas. Language is a means of communicating (more or less) thoughts using words; language is a resource upon which speakers can draw to confer meanings. All this is based on an epistemological dualism we owe to the long philosophical tradition which developed from Plato to Descartes (Berman, 1981; Cheetham, 1991). Being unhappy with the products of this dualism but unable to cope with it in its totality, in the following we take on words and their meanings not as pre-packed discrete units readily available for implementation in social life, but rather as a reflective accomplishment. This “production” is authored in process and in context by attentive makers intermittently reflecting on all: the process, the context and themselves; thus actors are being constituted in and constituting the environments in which and for which they have to make sense. We posit, for the time being, but hope to show later, that raising actors to consider all these (indeed) complex aspects might possibly “slow” their progress, yet deepen their humanity. In this book we take on words which seem to stand at the basis of much of what peace education wants to take care of: identity, memory and reconciliation. We do not believe these “words” can be taken as homogeneous units, bridging referents and proper meanings and thus making meaning appear as predetermined, readily available for implementation in social life. Rather, we take these words to be tricky constructs whose meaning is negotiated and put to work in complex social relations and practices. In a sense we believe these words (and the meanings they seem to stand for), as all other words, to be active verbs always making and inthe-making. Moreover, we argue that this takes place always and it can be perceived when properly attending to human (in our case educational) activity. Ethnographers make a living from articulating what we all have had time to forget, that our understandings, our lives, depend on our ability to daringly interpret the social activity that surrounds us. Interpretations depend on “good descriptions,” though. The problem with “good descriptions,” as Frake so wonderfully puts it, “is not to state what someone did (or said) but to specify the conditions under which it is culturally appropriate that he, or persons occupying his role, will render an equivalent performance” (Frake, 1980, p. 25). To make things even riskier, Ortega y Gasset warns us against the illusion of “proper” understandingtranslating: “two apparently contradictory laws are involved in all uttering. One says, ‘Every utterance is deficient’ – it says less than it wishes to say. The other law, the opposite, declares, ‘Every utterance is exuberant’ – it conveys more than it plans.” Ortega y Gasset (1957) continues with something alarming:

26

Introduction and theoretical underpinnings

That stupendous reality that is language cannot be understood unless we begin by observing that speech consists above all in silences. A being who could not renounce saying many things would be incapable of speaking. And each language represents a different equation between manifestations and silence. Each people leaves some things unsaid in order to be able to say others. (p. 247)

We want to work on the exuberance, the deficiency and the silence invoked by concepts such as peace, conflict, identity, memory, reconciliation and others. We want to do this for we take meaning as being “pregnant,” and pregnancy implies foreplay, co-opted or selected. Meaning is a game which can be risky or safe, but it is a shared play. As McDermott and Tylbor (1986) would have it, it is collusional (from Latin col-ludere, play together), by which they imply the need of members to hold each other accountable for possible states of affairs, even when such states of affairs would in no way be at hand without everyone so proceeding. Meaning, in this sense, is not a “thing,” but a future-bounded doing in concert (at its best, playful concert). Having briefly hinted at some of our theoretical premises, we want now to say more and in more depth about our educational and methodological groundings. Dismantling some fundamental premises of peace education In this book we want to work critically with how meaning is bounded in the ways that concepts are performed, contextually and historically. Critical perspectives have pointed to the lack of educational theorizing in peace education, which, to this day – as in most of the education field – is being guided mostly by functionalist, psychologized and often idealistic perspectives (Bajaj, 2008; Bekerman, 2007; Ben-Porath, 2003; GurZe’ev, 2001; Page, 2008). Thus many peace educational initiatives echo modern white Western totalizing conceptualizations, mostly expressed in essentialized conceptions of juridified human rights and positivistic perspectives of “truth.” Moreover, they identify the individual mind as the locus of the illness which needs to be treated. The treatment, in the best positivist psychologized tradition, is to be offered to solipsistic individuals, while ignoring contextual and historical factors: “Fix” the “sick” (e.g., nationalist, racist) mind of troubled individuals, and then you overcome the conflict and you have peace. We question whether working through the same premises which are constituted by and constitutive of the modern Western world – under which have flourished many of the conflicts which peace education is expected to help smooth and ultimately overcome – is a wise direction

Problematizing peace education romanticism

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such an education should take. Peace is set as a universal goal; sufficient effort would allow for violence and conflict to be erased from the face of the world; and yet peace is usually defined as being dependent on the absence of violence and conflict. This striking duality bears remarkable similarities to the paradigmatic dichotomies set by Western epistemology (male/female; good/evil; us/them) and therefore seems only to be able to replicate past outcomes. Inasmuch as there is one “true” epistemology all need to follow, the understanding of, recognition of and dialogue with alterity become a difficult task (Biesta, 2004). In the Western tradition, differences need to be first pointed out and then assimilated or destroyed; denied differences are the secret of “our” (good, right) existence; and what is more important, differences are set in the realm of meaning and not in the realm of power relations. The latter often falls victim to the former. We believe that when peace (education) is presented as a universal utopia, this stops its potential productivity by representing its values as universally self-evident. This essentialist understanding of peace (education) not only rejects the multiple representations of truth and the various understandings of justice, but most importantly it disregards the close connections between conflict and social injustice. In short, it disregards the social arrangements which institutionalize inequality and injustice. Avoiding the problematization of questions such as who are “we,” what perceptions of justice do we hold to, what dialogue do we want to sustain and under which conditions cannot be a good formula to encourage peaceful accommodation. If indeed peace education is serious about the verbiage that sustains it – the affirmation, recognition and rehabilitation of living in peace with the “other” – it needs to start by critically approaching the epistemological and metaphysical certainties of Western modernity. Within this context three related issues come to mind. The first relates to the complex historical processes which have brought the West, the colonial powers of old, to successfully replace the force of arms with the force of homogenization. This shift has taken place not only by the coercion of currency and consumerism, but especially by the chronic social proneness to create or construct the “other” through word and deed in a way that inevitably leads to the demonization of those who are not like us, who do not comply with the hegemonic standards of Western white males. In a similar manner, peace and reconciliation are homogenized. But we do not need the homogenization of peace and reconciliation; we need their multiplicity and their complexity. The second issue points to the nation state as the definite product of modernity – a modernity which has produced a distinct social form,

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Introduction and theoretical underpinnings

radically different from that of the traditional order of the past. This modernity is characterized by very specific forms of territoriality and surveillance capabilities that monopolize effective control over social relations across definite time–space distances and over the means of violence. The nation state can be viewed as a political socio-economic phenomenon that seeks to exercise its control over the populations composing it by establishing a culture which is at once homogeneous, anonymous (all the members of the polity, irrespective of their personal subgroup affiliations, are called upon to uphold this culture) and universally literate (all members share the culture the state has canonized). Reflecting modern psychologized epistemologies upon which it builds its power, the nation state creates a direct and unobstructed relationship between itself and all its “individual” citizens: no tribe, ethnic group, family or church is allowed to stand between the citizen and the state (Mendus, 1989). The implications of these ideas are striking for peace education, and therefore one should question how or when Western psychologized epistemologies (which are certainly not monolithic) strengthen or weaken particular manifestations of peace education (see, e.g., Enright et al., 2007; Kupermintz and Salomon, 2005; Pettigrew and Tropp, 2011); undoubtedly, these manifestations answer to the demands of scientific rigor and the test of empirical research, but do they pay attention to structures of inequality and injustice (e.g., patriarchalism and militarism) with the same rigor? Our claim here is that some psychologized perspectives – as assemblages of knowledges, professionals, techniques and forms of judgment – are linked to peace education as a “technology” of conflict resolution, while they also constitute particular ways of organizing, exercising and legitimating certain forms of political power (see Rose, 1999). Psychologized perspectives, then, would find their place in peace education where individuals were to be administered not necessarily in light of acknowledging social injustices, but on the basis of judgments claiming objectivity, neutrality and hence effectivity (see Rose, 1998). In a similar manner as before, one should question whether certain psychologized epistemologies are strengthened through particular manifestations of peace education and vice versa; these manifestations essentially depoliticize the issues involved and put aside inequality and injustice. The third and last issue is the logical corollary of the first and the second. As Mann (2004) has forcefully suggested, murderous cleansing is not only modern but it is also the dark side of democracy. Ethnic cleansing has indeed been known in the past but its frequency and deadliness are modern in essence. Ethnic cleansing does not belong to the primitive but to the modern Western inclination to confound into one “ethnos” and “demos,” the two concepts inherited from classical Greece

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as the pillars of its democratic states. To “demos,” the rule of the people, modernity has added “ethnos,” the group that shares a common sense of heritage, thus allowing for “the people” to rule democratically but also “tyrannically” any minority in its midst. Similarly, Dumont (1966) has argued that racism is a correlate of liberal democracies for if, as the credo goes, “all men are created equal,” then the evidence of inequality requires the dehumanization of the many. Equality from this perspective is a quality of man’s “nature,” not of the context within which he evolves. When these elements are not accounted for in peace educational efforts, they risk consolidating that same reality they intend to overcome. Peace education is in urgent need of reviewing its paradigmatic foundations, while problematizing the political structures which sustain the conflicts it tries to overcome. This is what we want to start doing now, and yet even if this were achievable, it would be good to remember that the long-standing and bloody conflicts that peace educational initiatives hope to remedy are grounded in, and sustained by, the very material unequal allocation of resources, more than in the heads of troubled individuals. From the above the reader should not expect a straightforward narrative through which to understand the whats and hows of teaching contested narratives, helping develop tolerant identities and treading the easy path to reconciliation. We are not seeking recipes but to problematize present understandings which if left untouched can only lead us into self-deception. We do believe that the problematization of the issues at hand is necessary for those who are serious about approaching human conflict and know well in advance that finding solutions is not at all an easy task. Schooling in the West and peace education Much of present educational thinking, including calls for reform, is grounded in the nation state’s attempt to impose certain categories with regard to individual and cultural identity. Indeed, the adoption of individualized perspectives in the West and the development of identity categories are strongly related to the development of the nation state (Elias, 1998; Porter, 1997; Watt, 1997; Williams, 1958). From whatever theoretical position one opts to look at nationalism, either as the awakening of a dormant force (A. D. Smith, 1998) or as the consequence of a new form of social organization (Gellner, 1997), it seems nationalism is “the most successful ideology in human history” (Birch, 1989), one that shapes our present perspective. Regardless of nationalism’s assumed components, whether civic or ethnic, nation states have struggled to homogenize their population through the development of institutional practices (the most

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powerful of which is education); these institutional practices create for their inhabitants a sense of uniqueness (individual identity) and togetherness (cultural identity) which, by now, we all assume to be natural. The social sciences and their social analysis seem to have been influenced by nation-state structures as well. Reicher and Hopkins (2001) and Billig (1995), among others, have urged the social sciences to recognize the crucial influence of national structures in shaping our understandings of group identities. Our flattened perspectives, on issues such as identity or ethnic belonging, do not seem to reflect the dynamics of human experience and, though allowing for quick analysis, might not further our understanding of complexity. When considering the above, we should be able to understand why for the most part interpretative efforts in peace education have rested on cultural and identity categories. Indeed, national, ethnic and cultural categories seem to be the salient ones in need of attention. These categories, as they are revealed in the setting, raise doubts regarding the potential of other educational theorizing to serve as a strong enough foundation upon which to base possible solutions. But our critique needs to go further, if it wants to uncover the “true” problems of educational activities geared towards peace. The critique needs to confront educational structures (the most traditional of which is Western schooling, which was universalized through the colonization process). This path is necessary because, as we shall see, formal educational efforts themselves are also strongly related to the historical developments which brought about the reifying conceptual tyranny of the nation state, thus consolidating our critique as one which cannot be easily discounted. As pointed out earlier, the development of mass education, through schooling, is closely related to the Industrial Revolution and the development of the nation state (Bekerman and Silberman, 2003; Gellner, 1983; A. D. Smith, 1998). Both required the recruitment of the masses to their service – masses with normalized basic cognitive and behavioral skills which could serve the needs of the nation state and its economic structure. Therefore, schools are in no way neutral arenas within which objective knowledge or skills are transmitted from the minds of specialists to those of passive individuals. In the modern era, schools have served as the primary means by which sovereigns have unified the different local groups inhabiting the areas they were successful in subordinating to their power, under one flag, one language and one narrative. With this in mind, it is already surprising that peace-seeking elements in society have so often chosen school-like educational structures to secure their aims. Yet, it could be argued that though they adopt existing structures,

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peace-seeking educators turn them into structures which serve their purposes and not just the sovereign under which they reside. However, the central linchpin of formal schooling’s success is its structure and its functionality, both based on and expressive of a particular paradigmatic perspective which we doubt can be beneficial for peacebuilding. Schools are the central conduit for the transmission of two interrelated beliefs of the modern Western world: the first is the belief in the individual self, and the second is the outside existence of knowledge which this self can absorb, if properly guided. These elements, of course, have been in the making for centuries in the functioning of schools. Over five thousand years ago, when the first schools were created in order to produce a cast of scribes able to sustain the bureaucratic needs of growing, powerful, centralized, urban, economic human enterprises, they developed the three central characteristics which hold to this day (M. Cole, 1990; Goody, 1987): 1. the student was trained by strangers, separated from his kin and family; 2. the knowledge slated for transmission was differentiated and compartmentalized into fields of specialization; and 3. learning took place outside the contexts of its intended implementation, i.e., students rehearsed knowledge “out of context.” If indeed the goals of liberal peace-seeking elements in society are to find ways that strengthen and enliven peace, tolerance, justice, equality and recognition, institutional educational structures and their foundational practices may not be the setting in which to achieve these aims. While some peace educators might want to point to the rather different settings within which they function, less formal and not necessarily school dominated, it would be difficult to validate the claim that encounters between individuals from rival communities are free from the influence of the historical development of institutional education. Informal educational settings have been shown to be invaded by school practices (Bekerman and Keller, 2003; Bekerman, 2006). Let us ponder the questions: Can a framework that is premised on distancing the individual from the family and community core serve to engender peace perspectives which challenge those accepted in society? Can a structure that conceives of and imparts knowledge in differentiated and compartmentalized chunks (history, physics, civics etc.) serve in the cultivation of peace and coexistence in the world as a comprehensive whole? And, last, is it feasible to expect that learners raised under the spell of school education would find what they learn relevant, if they are “educated” in environments in which the acquisition of knowledge is segregated from the places in which this knowledge can be functional (and in which the knowledge transmitted does not reflect the knowledge

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exercised by the community itself in the world outside)? These are obstacles that are common to formal schooling and peace education efforts. We need to consider two additional elements in our analysis. These elements are what modernity has come to call “universal cultural values” (for the most part localized and restricted Western concepts, universalized through colonization) and their appointed recipients, the “autonomous individuals” (another Western restricted and localized concept) and their assumed identities (Bekerman, 2001, 2000). These two elements bring about the turn that connects so closely our critical segment on modern educational strategies with the one we raised earlier regarding the theoretical blindness for the connection between the reified perceptions of (individual) identity and culture. These two elements are paradigmatic features which, if left untouched, will not allow for the system to be reformed. This not being the place to expound on a full-fledged critique of these paradigmatic Western bases, it will suffice to say that both culture, as a reified identifiable cast of behaviors and beliefs, and the individual, as autonomous and universal, have been the focus of a long and wide theoretical controversy within high and post-modernity; this controversy has successfully demonstrated the link between these paradigmatic features and many of the world’s current maladies (Giddens, 1991; Sampson, 1993b; Taylor, 1994). It is worth mentioning that these theoretical developments have pointed inter alia at two central issues related to our present understanding of culture and individual identity which are relevant to peace education. The first is that culture must be understood as a verb and not a noun, as something which grows, evolves and intermittently becomes when executed, to be promptly dissolved again into the doings of human activity which might, or might not, be able to reproduce it again in similar or different ways (Bauman, 1999). Second, individual identity must be conceived as a similar dialogic (verb-like) process of becoming and shaping, mostly through the use of the most human of human tools: language (Harr´e and Gillett, 1994; Holland et al., 1998). Thus both culture and individual identity have come to be conceptualized as evolving processes widely dependent on languaging (Wittgenstein, 1953). It is doubtful whether not accounting for these paradigmatic developments nor exposing the practices through which these paradigmatic perspectives – reified perspectives of culture and identity – are framed and constructed within school-like educational initiatives can be helpful to the education of individuals towards peace and coexistence. The individual, conceptualized as separate and in isolation, might be a good subject for domination, but is a less worthy one for social (and/or communal) change. Culture and identity, reified and segregated, might be

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a good means of offering cheap recognition by politically correct multiculturalism, but they serve equally to justify and perpetuate the ongoing suffering of minorities, now recognized but with their structural subordination left fully intact (Bekerman, 2003, 2004). We also want to expose the consequences of the simplistic assumptions within which peace education is often grounded. Education as a discipline has moved forward; at least within some constructivist traditions the normative and the ideal have been left behind and the activities and practices of education have taken center stage. Contents might still be in focus, but not as isolated matter waiting for the right opportunity or the right conductor (i.e., a wonderful teacher and/or a perfect teacher-proof curriculum) to enter the innocent brains of young individuals. Instead, activity and practice are at stake and have become the centerpiece of serious research. The path towards this still new approach to education has not been easy, and the politics of education – the elite’s ongoing attempt to use education as a homogenizing tool for the creation of passive and obedient citizens – are always around to try to reinstate the discourses of knowledge transmission. As if this is not bad enough by itself, it is even worse when discussing education for peace one adds to “regular” education a “qualification” (i.e., “peace”) and for the most part one ends up focusing on peace, while ignoring education. Idealism is back with all its faults, as if education is too complex by itself to survive other added complexities, such as peace, while retaining criticality at the same time. A retreat from critical educational approaches can only damage educational efforts towards peace education (Brantmeier, 2010). Another serious challenge is the inclination toward the compartmentalization of knowledge. Education is complex and peace education is, if at all an education, not less so. Given this, a relevant question to ask ourselves is: What new theoretical areas do we need to consider, when looking for educational efforts to address the complexities of conflict and peace? Dealing seriously with peace education implies confronting the whole spectrum of activities which fall into the category of education; that is, peace education cannot be treated as a special educational track, but has to be considered in the macro-level context and how this is in continuous transaction with micro-level issues. Thus far we have discussed what we believe to be the unchallenged theoretical principles that define and support many present peace educational efforts, thereby explaining our conviction that peace and coexistence education, in spite of its growth, will not necessarily help groups in conflict to achieve at least their declared goals of strengthening a vital and active peace perspective so as to make peace and coexistence a life option. Inasmuch as peace education is conceptualized as an element of

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a culture (peace culture) and culture is mistakenly conceptualized as a given, a static noun, as opposed to an active verb, there are little chances peace education can help reform human activity in the world (for the better). We argue, therefore, that proponents of peace education would do well to look for educational solutions in the organization of present Western world politics rather than in the limited parameters of school settings or the solitude of teachers’ or students’ minds. When looking inside schools we should be looking at practices and not abstracted individual minds and their assumed values. This idea implies paying serious attention to children and allowing ourselves to be influenced by their (possible) different perspectives. It also means trying to be critical enough of our own positions so as to try to prevent ourselves from inculcating them all in our children – realizing the responsibility we all bear in helping change the world. Lastly, there is something to be said about the importance of understanding that learning is not a conscious intentional act – a definition much in line with Western epistemology as we have criticized it above – but what people who are alive “naturally” do. In this sense living is synonymous with learning. Why is this important? It is important because in this way we reiterate, following a different path now, that peace education is not the issue. If and when peace education becomes the issue, we fall into the Western trap. Everything that humans in general, and, given the present context, educators in particular, do teaches someone something. There is no such concept as “they have not learned a thing today!” At times it would be nice to believe this could be true, but people, when in action, constantly teach and learn. From this axiom follows the tremendous responsibility we carry for all our actions. All details of what we do count, for all we do influences – teaches, produces learning in – the world. The understanding that all activity teaches is essential to understand that what we point to when considering monologism – which pretends to possess an absolute truth – and its dangers is nothing other than a becoming (product) of dialogical activity, an active dialogic creation which creates monologism in the first place. It is of tremendous importance to understand that the basis of the monologic is dialogic, for indeed everything is dialogic. Dialogism is not a choice but a reality in which we need to work hard to try to achieve the outcomes we wish for. Bad and good emerge from dialogic activity; if we want the result to be good we need to be very careful and attentive to detail, context and practice. To summarize our argument, we have mentioned two central issues: First, we exposed the reified conceptualizations of identity and culture

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that guide the psychologized perspectives of peace education, giving birth to educational activities which are grounded in encounters between groups in context; and second, we pointed out the historical trajectory of school education in the West which has aimed at separating the individual from his or her community and abstracting knowledge from the immediate reality so as to shape the individual (now citizen) in its own favored shape. We connected both lines of critique when indicating that state educational institutions were historically a central tool in the hands of the sovereign powers used to unify the masses through universalized concepts and categories of culture and identity. Before we return to these issues in more detail, it is now time to make some statements about our methodology and its paradigmatic grounding. Our methodology and its paradigmatic grounding Working as we do in the anthropology of learning or education, we have for long been convinced that the customary scales and graphics produced by the social sciences offer poor representations of that which we study, i.e., humans learning; by the mere fact of their being alive, their learning is intermittent and always in flux, and stubbornly refuses reification. We seem to stand alongside the biologists in the scientific wars of the old “hard” natural sciences who, when criticized by physicists for their “soft” scientific approach, would answer: What else can we do? What we study moves (Mayr, 1988). While physicists have, by now, removed themselves and their science from simplistic positivist stands when uncovering that relativity, uncertainty and chaos govern that which they research, social scientists seem, for the most part, unfortunately unable to overcome the traditional positivist paradigm which governed the physics of old. We take researchers to be always relevant in the research equation, for our methodologies and methodological tools stand at the basis of the paradigms which guide our inquiry. We take human understanding to be not a mere representation – linguistic, mathematical, visual or auditory – but the exercise of proficiency. We understand a thing when we know how to interact with it and use it well. Though we have classically been taught that science is driven by the formulation of hypotheses and by experiments designed to discredit them, Popper’s formulation seems insufficient for that which is alive and thus unpredictably complex, be it a biologist’s cell or a social event. The first step to understanding is to comprehend how best to interact with the information we have received, and that to understand is a creative, pleasing or useful interaction with the information in hand – such interaction is the creation of meaning. Biologists (Mayr, 1988),

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philosophers (Churchman, 1968, 1979) and even plain anthropologists (Bateson, 1979) have long recognized the limits of the modern dream for omniscience mostly constrained by a system’s complexity, which will not easily bow to our traditional scientific tools. We are empiricists but not positivists. Following complex human beings and not things that simply move to be somehow “measured,” we have come to realize that that which is needed for improving our social research is neither our methodologies nor the efforts of an individual mind, but instead us, humans, the researchers ourselves. We are the ones who carry and implement the methodologies and analyses. And yet the widespread assumptions we make often show exactly the opposite. The many years of training endured in schools – the institutions created by the sovereign state to inculcate in us a modern Western ideology – rest on a positivist monologic paradigm whose interpretations are shaped by the power of the nation state through the ongoing constitution of the political field by two irreducible poles of essentialist determinacy (Neuman and Bekerman, 2000) such as good/bad, particular/universal, Jew/Arab, Greek/Turk and so on. This should come as no surprise, for the powerful machinery developed by the nation state has been successful in making the banal practices of nation states look “real” and “natural” (Billig, 1995). These practices point to the deep-rooted cultural schemes that organize the way we study and interpret our environments. Countering these cultural schemes implies the need to account for the fact that the human world of activity and practice is complex and forever influenced by changing contexts and historical trajectories. Context has become an increasingly important focus in educational and psychological research (Bekerman, 1993; M. Cole, 1996; Lave, 1996a, 1996b; Wertsch, 1991). One of the best descriptions of “context” is rendered by R. L. Birdwhistell (in McDermott, 1980), when he states: I like to think of it as a rope. The fibers that make up the rope are discontinuous; when you twist them together, you don’t make them continuous, you make the thread continuous . . . The thread has no fibers in it, but, if you break up the thread, you can find the fibers again. So that, even though it may look in a thread as though each of those particles is going all through it, that isn’t the case. (p. 4)

The notion of context is a confusing one. Cole (1996) distinguishes between two possible metaphors that may be helpful in understanding it. The first envisions context as concentric circles, whereas the second is more related to the etymology of one of the two central words that produce the composite “con-text” (“text” from Latin “to weave”). The first metaphor – concentric circles – is important in that it reminds us that all phenomena are constituted by other phenomena positioned above

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or below or around them. Though indeed context constitutes and constrains, it should never be understood as an immutable and unchangeable background. As Bateson (1972) contends, there is always a context to context. The second metaphor of “weaving” reminds us that when different elements, different threads, combine, they recreate and refashion the system of which they are a part: creating new patterns, in concert, unknown up to that point in time. While it is true that becoming in communication is dependent on difference (Bateson, 1972), we should be aware that without background (no differentiation) there is no foreground (no becoming). Nonetheless, without an appreciation of the fact that all parts of a system help define all other parts of that same system, we lose the dialogic and intersubjective nature of human contextual activity. This ever ongoing constructive work of assembling the system is achieved through practices. Practice as a notion is a well-documented concept in a variety of disciplines and well on its way to becoming central in educational and psychological discourse (Lave, 1996a; Wenger, 1998). Interest in practices goes back to Marx’s use of the notion of “praxis” as a key to understanding materialistic perspectives of history and consciousness within a sociohistorical context. Our use of “practices” points at the ways through which culture, local and at large, is constituted by human activity in interaction. Through the use of practice we try to avoid the fallacies of cognitive approaches to educational analyses. We thus assume that the close study of educational practices is the best approach to understanding the complexities of social activity as they are shaped in real-life situations (Lave and Wenger, 1991). We try as well, with this concept, to overcome deterministic perspectives on the functioning of systems or agents within social systems, allowing for resistance and change within hegemonic structures (Bourdieu, 1998) to take place. With the concept of practice we address the production and reproduction of specific ways of engaging with the world. We point to the need to become concerned with the ways by which people in action coordinate their activities and relationships in real-life settings. In doing so, people produce a variety of meanings and interpretations. It is through the participation in these practices that humans learn, become, constitute and sustain the world we all inhabit. We thus approach the complexities we study with Ryle’s discussion of “thick description” in mind. Consider, he says (as cited in Geertz, 1973), two boys rapidly contracting the eyelids of their right eyes. In one this is an involuntary twitch, in the other a conspirational signal to a friend, a wink. Both movements are identical for the observer. No observer could tell in a laboratory situation which was a twitch and which was a wink,

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or indeed whether both or either was twitch or wink. Yet the differences could be great, and someone could pay with his life for confusing them. And what if a third boy were to appear on the scene and, on seeing the first two, parody the first boy’s wink. So there is twitch, wink (conspiracy) and parody (ridicule), or isn’t there (such would be the case for boys who, having read Geertz, are trying to trick the observer)? A fourth person could join, a girl now, a satirist this time, who had practiced the twitch of the first in her home in front of the mirror. While in front of the mirror, she was rehearsing; what is she doing with the other three, now, in the street? The above seems a good enough example of what meaning is all about: complexities, twists (not twitch), intricacies, logical, all endless. When talking about peace and conflict things do not change much; peace is talked, accompanied by winks, twitches, parody. Peace just refuses to make its appearance as a finalized agreed-by-all meaning. If you can overcome sensing you are a camera, a mistaken orthodox behaviorist or a legalist protocol freak, then, being careful, you would not choose to assure anyone that they were just narrowing their eyes or talking peace. “Thin description” is behaviorist and, if your life depends on it, risky. Ethnographic thick description resonates with our complex experiences and offers a sense that there is a way of looking at what we want to research – educational activity geared towards peace and reconciliation. In our work we insist on the complexities of human interaction, and emphasize the multiple contextual levels of analysis that need to be accounted for – i.e., micro-, mezzo-, macro-, exo- (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). We do not look at what stands behind – the transcendent, the unconscious, the intentional and the unintentional. Instead we pay attention to the richness of the material as this is expressed in the physical and the verbal realms. We believe it is much more human to judge, to interpret a situation according to what impresses our senses rather than through our (the observer’s) perception of that which is totally unavailable – that which the subjects think. We are empirical but not positivists. We request the reader to suspend, for a moment, the search for what stands behind what we are looking at. Our worst enemy in this effort is to constantly fancy more the so-called “intentions” than deeds. This process involves abandoning the hope of finding fast solutions. It involves acknowledging the intricacies of human interaction and networks, the intermittent nature of meaning-making, and the necessary exuberance and deficiency of all transcription and translation. It involves using the revealed complexities as a lever to humble our perspectives, when confronting multifaceted “realities.” Finally, it requires that all realize that

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the anthropological quest is one that to become acceptable must have not only an epistemological change but also a political one – that is, a political change that prevents its own reduction to traditional essentializing forces and/or (as in our case) theoretical and practical dichotomies. What is needed is a political change that involves the crossing of disciplinary spheres, while recognizing that in all research activity, the researcher’s and the subject’s identities are co-constituted in their relations with one another. Politics, unfortunately, is the frame of the nation state’s institutionalized educational system so as to seize and hold us in the positivistic paradigm for life. We all need to work hard to further uncover the banal practices which the sovereign nation-state context utilizes to trap us in its cultural/semiotic frames. Overcoming the nation state’s paradigm involves finding ways to offer ourselves literacies with which to read the world – ours as well as any other. This literacy requires abundant theory and rich descriptive faculties in order to uncover and cope with the complexity of the sites and social phenomena that we want to interpret. It is for all these reasons that we have chosen qualitative ethnographic approaches for our research. Sustained qualitative investigation of the educational contexts described above during the last ten years has provided a wealth of data and multiple insights into how these contexts operate and what impact they might have. On the basis of these data, each chapter is built around several vignettes from the contexts of our research. In particular, the Israeli vignettes exemplify data gathered from a long-standing research effort which started in 1998 using a variety of ethnographic methods. The study has mostly focused on educational practices from kindergarten to fourth grade geared towards identity formation, memory and cultural development. Throughout the years of research over 200 interviews have been conducted with school stakeholders, parents, teachers, principals and pupils – most of them in individual sessions and/or small group meetings. More than 250 hours of videotaped classroom activity have been gathered and a larger number of field notes have been recorded. At all stages of the research process the research team has included both Palestinian and Jewish researchers who conducted their interactions with the research subjects in the language of their choice.1 The vignettes from Cyprus are also taken from an ongoing ethnographic research project that has been conducted in Greek-Cypriot schools since 2002; these schools are primarily “regular” public schools 1

We would like to acknowledge the work of our research assistants Nader Schadde, Rula Awayed, Ayjala Habib, Netanel Silberman and Abeer Otman.

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(but occasionally we also do research in international private schools) in which the Greek-Cypriot student population (the majority) attends school with Turkish-speaking and other minority students. This longterm project aims at understanding how issues of identity, memory and reconciliation are entangled in students’ and teachers’ everyday lives. Data have been collected from over 170 interviews with children, teachers, parents, administrators, pre-service education students and teacher educators; observations of teaching/learning activities in schools and workshops with teachers (over 800 hours); and analysis of policies and historical documents. The research team has collaborated with Turkishspeaking social workers and sociologists who help to communicate with Turkish-speaking children and parents.2 In both Israeli and Cypriot contexts, data gathering was conducted according to qualitative ethnographic principles (Seidman, 1991; Spradley, 1979). The qualitative data were carefully analyzed with an eye to patterns and thematic issues of relevance, which were then coded so as to allow for further analysis. Clearly, most of the data have not found their way into the present book, because the goal here is to present representative events from the two settings which offer glimpses of the larger set of data that foregrounds them. Finally, it is important to acknowledge that our qualitative ethnographic methodologies and methodological tools are central to a commitment to empirical research in the social sciences, emphasizing that which is observed and experienced, and recognizing the complexity of studying that which is human. This commitment stands at the basis of the paradigms which guide our inquiry.3 The pedagogical dimension Given the overwhelming research illustrating how education is used as a tool for fostering and exacerbating division and conflict in many regions in the world (see Davies, 2004), the question remains as to the openings (if any) for education to encourage and support peace, coexistence and reconciliation. This question is not at all easy to answer: as we have already pointed out, peace education itself is often used to perpetuate psychologized perceptions of conflict, identity and other related constructs, and defines the “problem” as simply one of lacking the appropriate individual 2

3

We would like to acknowledge the work of our collaborators Galatia Agathocleous, Stalo Lesta, Christiana Aravi, Panayiota Charalambous, Hakan Karahasan and Constandina Charalambous. For more details related to methodological issues see Bekerman (2008) and Zembylas (2008a).

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competences (tolerance, communication etc.). Had we had even a slight belief that there was no pedagogical potential in teaching and exploring contested narratives, we would not have written this book. We do, therefore, want to stress the potential of education to bring about change and to contribute towards transforming conflict and taken-for-granted perspectives on peace. This potential is realized not only by creating a greater awareness and critique of unequal power relations and social injustice but, most importantly, by embodying practices of peace and reconciliation in spaces in which victims and perpetrators often exchange roles but somehow have to find ways to coexist after a conflict. For this purpose, each chapter of this book contains discussions about the pedagogical potential of the issues that are analyzed; we include, for instance, ideas on pedagogical interventions that might be useful to those of us who educate pre-service and in-service teachers in teacher education programs and workshops. In the following few pages we briefly sketch the philosophical foundations of the pedagogical openings that we talk about, that is, what we call critical pedagogies for troubled societies. Teaching contested narratives in schools of troubled societies is not only a difficult task but also a transformative form of pedagogical engagement, because it can create spaces for different affective relations with others (Zembylas, 2008a, 2010c). The aim of teaching contested narratives through critical pedagogies is to disrupt those regimes of feeling and thinking that perpetuate a conflicting ethos with others, and to invent new practices of relating with them. But we would like to remind the reader that we are not suggesting a “toolkit” containing specific practical pedagogical “tools” for teachers. Rather, we are mostly interested in describing what makes possible the development of critical pedagogies for troubled societies and how teachers are often estranged from such pedagogies – through disabling the power of criticality from their everyday pedagogical practices. It is also important to clarify here that we use the term “pedagogies” (plural) not to signify classroom pedagogical practices, but to refer to the relational encounters among teachers and students that entail transformative possibilities. The use of the plural suggests that there are many possibilities of constituting such transformative relational encounters, though sometimes these possibilities may not be limitless. But what are the fundamental premises of “critical pedagogies” in the context of troubled societies? Our point of departure is Jansen’s (2009) acute observation that critical theory is severely limited in conflict and post-conflict situations “for making sense of troubled knowledge and for transforming those who carry the burden of such knowledge on both sides of a divided community” (p. 256, added emphasis). As he explains, critical theory receives

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and constructs the world as divided (e.g., black/white, men/women, oppressors/oppressed) and then takes sides to free the oppressed. The focus of this work is less on what to do with the racist or nationalist in the classroom and more to do with how to empower the marginalized, that is, helping children become critical researchers of what is around them. Such a conception of the other side – with an emphasis on oppressive processes, ideologies and identities – has little value in conflict and postconflict societies, according to Jansen. Needless to say, this is not to deny the systemic and institutionalized character of oppression, identity and social injustice; rather, it is to highlight that classrooms are not homogeneous environments with a common understanding of oppression, but deeply divided places where contested narratives are steeped in the politics of emotions to create complex emotional and intellectual challenges for teachers. The teachers are themselves carriers of “troubled knowledge,” as Jansen rightly points out, and this has serious implications for the form that critical pedagogies take in conflict and post-conflict societies. Consequently, a basic premise of critical pedagogies in the context of troubled societies is not simply to question the dominant educational arrangements (curricula, textbooks, pedagogies); it is also “the people there, the bodies in the classroom, who carry knowledge within themselves that must be engaged, interrupted, and transformed” (Jansen, 2009, p. 258). These contested narratives within the classroom constitute the starting point for critical pedagogies in the context of troubled societies. We agree with Jansen that taking sides early on, as happens in critical theory, is not a very productive stance when there is a clash of narratives and memories. But we want to extend his theorization to emphasize how critical pedagogies highlight the practices through which certain emotions and knowledges become of most worth, what it means to feel and know something, and how traumatized students and teachers might construct safe classroom spaces within which the wounded of all sides can engage in critical and productive dialogue. It is important not to rush and take one side, thus dislodging the participants from a compassionate involvement with the emotions and the knowledges of the other side. Again, this does not imply that “anything goes” and that the recklessness of accusation is simply tolerated (Jansen, 2009). Everyone involved (including the teacher) needs to be critically engaged with their knowledges and emotions; taking sides too early will make it impossible to constructively confront and transform these knowledges and emotions. From the perspective just described, the pedagogical is undoubtedly political (Kincheloe, 2004). Even more so, the issues that this book deals

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with are inherently political. Knowledges and emotions in schools of troubled societies are forms of power, and therefore they are never neutral or objective but are structured and produced through certain mechanisms (rituals, celebrations etc.). In this book we take the position that teachers and students ascribe meanings and definitions to words and practices that legitimate some forms of knowledge and emotion more than others. By choosing to adopt a critical pedagogical lens in the context outlined in this introduction, we want to consider how received knowledges and reconstructed emotions underlie ways of thinking and feeling in the teaching of various narratives, without adopting a self-righteous perspective. Without intending to minimize the significance of the grounding framework of critical pedagogies in visions of justice and equality, we want to highlight not the rescuing or empowerment of the marginalized but the alleviation of human suffering and the solidarity with others as fellow sufferers (Kincheloe, 2004). A central question, then, that we want to be asking while analyzing different vignettes from our countries is: “Does this pedagogy humanize and connect people? If not, what are the consequences, and how can these consequences be alleviated?” The solidarity with others as fellow sufferers is not discovered by reflection but it is created (Rorty, 1989). This process of dissolving categorizations of “us” and “them” is a matter of observing very carefully the consequences of the underlying ideological and emotional attachments of the pedagogies that are implemented. These attachments, then, need to be engaged with and interrupted in sensitive and critical ways.

3

On conflict, identity and more

The purpose of this chapter is to delve into a theorization of the three major constructs that constitute the focus of this book: identity, memory and reconciliation. But we want first to sketch briefly the macro- and micro-theoretical perspectives of studying conflict. This brief overview will help us situate not only the theoretical ground of the constructs utilized in this book but also the context for the analysis of the teaching and learning events we have been studying. Macro- and micro-theoretical perspectives of studying conflict Conflicts are all around us and between us. Some we cope with rather easily; others become sources of very real trouble. In the context of this book we mean conflict associated with the allocation of resources, material or symbolic. In this sense we are speaking not only about this in the context of conflict and post-conflict societies – in the narrow sense of armed conflict – but also about all contexts in which the distribution of material and symbolic resources is unequal and creates marginalization and inequality; in this case the United States of America, for instance, would be an example too. Also, in this book we deal with those conflicts which cause real trouble as is universally recognized. In this sense the Jewish-Palestinian conflict in Israel and the Turkish-Greek conflict in Cyprus are readily recognized by the international community, as well as by individuals, as sources of worry for the well-being of the region and of the populations immediately involved in them. These clearly are not the only examples: Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland and Iraq are similar sources of international and local concern. The existing literature allows us to identify two main theoretical perspectives which attempt to explain intergroup conflict. Macro perspectives focus on “real realities” and identify the sources of conflict at the explicit, conscious level, as rationally expressed and substantiated, and 44

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as mostly instrumental in nature (mostly related to the “fair” distribution of resources); its outstanding representatives are realistic group conflict theory (see Jacob and Jordan, 1993; Riek et al., 2006; Sherif, 1966) ¨ and social dominance theory (see Kupper et al., 2010; Sidanius, 1993; Sidanius et al., 2007). Micro perspectives, on the other hand, focus on “less real realities,” those assumed to belong to the realm of the unconscious, the immediately unavailable, the irrational. They grow from social identity (Tajfel, 1978) and self-categorization theories (Turner, 1991) which were originally developed to understand the psychological basis of intergroup discrimination. Tajfel (1981) attempted to identify the minimal conditions that would lead members of one group to discriminate in favor of the in-group to which they belonged and against another out-group. In this theory a person has several selves or “social identities” (personal, family, national etc.) that correspond to widening circles of group membership which are triggered in different societal contexts. Social identity is based on an individual’s perception of what defines the “us” associated with any of his internalized group membership (Hogg and Vaughan, 2002). Social identity theorists assert that group membership favors the in-group at the expense of the out-group, making the quest for positive distinctiveness the result of a collective rather than an individual identification. Social identity theory (see Brewer and Brown, 1998), the utmost representative of micro-conflict theories, posits that individuals seek a positive social identity and define themselves chiefly in terms of their group membership. On their way to achieving this positive identity, individuals and groups work on comparisons with other groups which have the potential to lead to conflict. If we position ourselves within this dichotomy we clearly belong to the more “real approach,” the macro one, which tries to understand what is available to the researcher while requiring little or nothing to be deduced. To remind the reader, the struggle over resources stands at the basis of conflict (Galtung, 1969; N. Smith, 2009); just as an example, researchers tell us that eight out of ten of the world’s poorest countries are suffering, or have recently suffered, from large-scale violent conflict (Stewart, 2002). Cyprus and Israel are clearly not among the poorest countries in the world and yet conflict very much invades their present, which shows that resources rich or poor are indeed relative and can create conflict anywhere. At the same time, we are not insensitive to the micro approach; we realize that positive identities and group membership, even if not empirical, are indeed consequential and thus need to be accounted for. As will become apparent, we will be suggesting that acknowledging the “less

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real realities” is necessary, though epistemologically problematic; it is so because these function in reality and are performed in the negotiation of conflict. We will suggest that there is a difference between the premises we should adopt when trying to understand conflict and those we need to adopt when trying to find solutions. Though at first we will have to account for prejudice, identity and belonging, in the long run we suggest that the structural and the material need to be approached, if change is what we are after. Of the two main theoretical perspectives which attempt to explain intergroup conflict, macro perspectives seem not to have allowed for the development (or have not become the bases) of educational approaches. Micro perspectives seem to be dominant in the educational field. This in itself should raise suspicions, for it limits educational efforts to psychologized perspectives of conflict. From these micro perspectives two main approaches seem to have evolved to cope with the mutual attitudes and perceptions of the people involved in an intergroup conflict; these are the “contact model” and the “information model” (Stephan and Stephan, 1996). The former is strongly anchored in contact theories, while the latter builds upon the assumption that misinformation and/or lack of knowledge stand in the way of understanding among groups. From the early 1950s (Allport, 1954; see Miller and Brewer, 1986) it has been believed that intergroup contact creates an opportunity for mutual acquaintance which enhances understanding and acceptance among the interacting group members, and thus improves the mutual attitudes and relations among groups with a history of conflict. Empirical findings have in general supported the hypothesis showing that contact does often change attitudes and relations between diverse ethnic groups (Miller and Brewer, 1986). The positive impact of contact has been shown to be dependent on certain conditions which include among others the following: Contact should be regular and frequent; it should involve a balanced ratio of in-group to out-group members, allowing for a genuine “acquaintance potential”; it should occur between individuals who share equality of status; and while being institutionally sanctioned it should be organized around cooperation toward the achievement of superordinate goals (for review see Allport, 1954; Amir, 1976; Stephan and Stephan, 2001). Other critical perspectives suggest that contact that takes place at the interpersonal level has limited impact on changes in perceptions and attitudes at the group level (known as the generalization problem: Hewstone and Brown, 1986; Dixon et al., 2005). Research has revealed, also, that negative affect aroused in the contact situation can have a negative effect on intergroup perceptions (Coates-Shrider and Stephan, 1997).

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The information model suggests that it is possible to improve intergroup relations and to reduce intergroup prejudices by providing information about the groups, via media or educational programs (Triandis, 1975). The central premise of this approach is that ignorance and lack of information create fertile ground for the development of intergroup prejudice (Stephan and Stephan, 1985). The information model has been widely applied in the area of inter- and multicultural training which aims to enhance the capacity of the trainees to maintain effective interpersonal and intergroup relations with people from different cultures (Paige and Martin, 1996). There has been a growing trend to use such training for improving relationships between groups and cultures living in the same country, including multicultural programs implemented in the educational system (Ben-Ari and Amir, 1988). More recently, other theoretical perspectives have come on the scene and allowed for the expansion of available working models. One of these chooses to approach the encounter as taking place between two national groups rather than individuals, while assuming that the encounters represent a microcosm of the reality outside. This approach treats the group as representing the collective unconscious of its members (Bion, 1961; Tajfel and Turner, 1986), and it stresses group identities and asymmetric power relations at the expense of diminishing opportunities to create close personal relationships of trust and friendship among participants of the group (Suleiman, 1997). This strategy attempts to achieve the goals of empowering members of the minority group and helping the dominant group develop new insights into their ambivalence and power orientation (Halabi and Sonnenschein, 2000; Sonnenschein et al., 1998). One of the most recent models developed traces its roots to narrative perspectives (Bruner, 2002; Polkinghorne, 1988); it assumes that one of the main influences on groups in conflict is their perceived histories and memories as tools for building their own collective identities at the expense of delegitimizing the “others” (Bar-Tal and Harel, 2002). Narrative approaches do not only emphasize the collective but also look for an outlet of personal memories and recollections, in the belief that the sharing of personal narratives will enhance the participants’ ability to develop empathy towards others and to understand their experience (Bar-On and Kassem, 2004; Salomon, 2004). The theories briefly described above need to be somehow accounted for in any attempt at considering educational efforts towards peace, for they constitute the outer theoretical and practical limits which dominate the discourses of difference both in academic and political spheres. As we proceed with our analysis and theorization in each chapter, their importance will become more and more relevant for educational

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consideration. It is time, now, to tackle explicitly the three central constructs of this book – identity, memory and reconciliation – and show how their analysis within the grounding outlined earlier is valuable in overcoming the present limitations of the reviewed theories.

On identity, memory and reconciliation On identity Gregory Bateson’s radical notion of the mind, according to which the mind is a system whose boundaries are demarcated by context rather than by stable physiological boundaries, allows for the inclusion of the world in what otherwise has been considered for the most part in the social sciences, and more so in education, as a solipsistic event inside. In one of his most famous pedagogical reflections, Bateson (1972) questioned the boundaries of the mind by asking where a blind man ends: Suppose I am a blind man, and I use a stick. I go tap, tap, tap. Where do I start? Is my mental system bounded at the handle of the stick? Is it bounded by my skin? Does it start halfway up the stick? Does it start at the tip of the stick? But these are nonsense questions. The way to delineate the system is to draw the limiting line in such a way that you do not cut any of these pathways in ways which leave things inexplicable. If what you are trying to explain is a given piece of behavior, such as the locomotion of the blind man, then, for this purpose, you will need the street, the stick, the man; the street, the stick and so on, round and round. (p. 434)

Inspired by Bateson’s views, we see identity not as a given (in the mind) but as a product (in the world). Seeing it as such means that our inquiry should lead us not to the inner borders of individual minds but to the outer spheres of human interaction – in our case the interaction which takes place in educational settings and among educational agents. Yet these settings are based on two major modern premises: first, the unquestionable existence of an inner self; second, the unquestioned existence, or should we say pre-existence, of human groups and associations. In short, there is often the assumption in peace education that a group (Jewish, Greek, Palestinian, Turk) is a “thing” to be carried by a “self”; identity seems to be taken as a given and not as a product. We want to problematize these believed to be clear premises by historically contextualizing them. A great deal of academic work has been devoted to critique the concept of identity in its traditional positivist psychological meaning (Bakhurst, 1995; Gee, 1992; Harr´e and Gillett, 1994; Potter and Wetherell, 1990; Watt, 1997). These studies point to

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the relatively modern appearance of this concept and its close connection to socio-historical and philosophical developments in the last four hundred years of Western intellectual history. Identity as a unitary and autonomous construct has come under attack as being a product of exclusionary power relations (Bhabha, 1994; Hall, 1996), a monologic posture which tries to overcome through domination that which is “by nature” dialogic: the self and identity (Bakhtin, 1981; Gee, 1992; Mead, 1934). Although the modern development of a sense of individual self can be traced back to sixteenth-century Europe (Porter, 1997), for the sake of our argument here it would be enough to say that modern popular discourse on the individual self is situated in notions predominantly developed since the Renaissance (Shaw, 1997). Its modern positive connotations were not easily arrived at: the Oxford English Dictionary quotes a late seventeenth-century description of self as the “Anti-Christ and AntiGod in the World” and, as shown by Watt (1997), it took almost three hundred years for the literary individualistic and idiosyncratic heroes of the end of the sixteenth century (Faust, Don Quixote and Don Juan) to spread across the Western world and attain a universal and international status as emblems of a positive individualism. In the twentieth century it was primarily psychology, the discipline as much as the profession, that monopolized the theoretical and empirical focus on individual self and identity (Ashmore and Jussim, 1997), turning them into central constructs for our understanding of human thought, feeling and behavior. The outcome of this intellectual move was a conceptualization of self as rational, authentic, autonomous and above all largely independent of history and context. As MacIntyre (1981) put it, the new view of selfhood involves thinking of it as having existence prior to and apart from its roles in society. This self that has this identity, inside, is the carrier of that which is outside, culture – a term for which we can trace a somewhat similar path. A brief genealogy of culture is valuable to establish how identity and culture are often situated as essentialized and opposing concepts. Within the humanities, culture has been interpreted as that which represents the highest achievements of the human spirit (Griswold, 1994). In nineteenth-century Europe, intellectuals regarded culture in opposition to society and civilization; culture was seen as opposed to the dangers of the Industrial Revolution. The English educator Matthew Arnold expressed this view succinctly when stating that culture is “the best that has been taught and known” (Griswold, 1994, p. 367), pointing to a clear separation between culture and everyday life. The social sciences have represented culture as “that complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, laws, customs, and any other capabilities and habits

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acquired by man as a member of society” (according to the nineteenthcentury definition of Tylor, 1891); also Berger (1969, p. 6), in his classic definition, conceptualized culture as “the totality of man’s products.” The humanistic and the social science perspectives consider culture as either restricted or as all-encompassing systems, but in both cases culture is understood as material or immaterial stuff in existence “out there” and relatively static. In a sense we could argue that while the concept of self, in its historical development, was ultimately located “in,” culture has been positioned “out.” Correspondingly, the educational process for the benefit of peace is at times envisioned as an effort to transfer that which is out (culture, good culture) into that which is in (self-identity). In this book we suggest that abandoning positivistic perspectives might help reconceptualize our present situation, and if “abandoning” sounds too strong, then at least education for peace should seriously consider and eventually incorporate understandings offered by more recent developments in the fields of cultural studies, literacy, literary criticism, anthropology and cultural psychology influenced by strong hermeneutical and pragmatical leanings. Within these current views, older conceptualizations of cultures as coherent and discrete systems of meaning, common to all members have been undermined; the cultural practices of a group of people are no longer seen as representing the essential character of a culture, nor can they automatically reproduce its members. Instead of culture being positioned a priori, culture is located in a social communicative way as the actual patterning of given interactive processes themselves (Bhabha, 1994; Carbaugh, 1996). Culture is neither out nor in, but in-between – managed and constructed continuously in social concert, thus bringing to the foreground issues of power and contestation as central to its construction. Together with the disruption of an understanding of culture as congruous and harmonious, a new view of self and identity has been envisioned. This self of high modernity (Giddens, 1991) or postmodernity (Gergen, 1992) is not any more essential nor necessarily consistent or integrated, but instead multiple and at times ephemeral. Self still develops but it does not become conclusive; self is now historically and locally situated in social interactional events where it comes into being in dialogue taking many forms and expressions (Harr´e and Gillett, 1994; M¨artsin, 2010). Before bringing these theoretical deliberations to an end we want to add something about the unifying interest in discourse, in all its multifaceted expressions which seem to hold together the theoretical outlooks which we believe will support our arguments. Discourse includes both linguistic form and communicative practices, not only in the form of oral and written texts, but also in socially situated practices that are

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constructed in moment-to-moment interaction (Gee, 1992). Consequently, Gergen (1992), Sampson (1993a) and other postmodern theorists have viewed the self as a text in a sense unfinished, or at least always in its way invented and reinvented through social discourse. It is “outside” in social discourse where the social self is created anew. The same Foucauldian (1973a, 1973b) archaeological work, upon which most postmodern social theorizing is based, sees in discourse the producer of the effect of self radically historicized and contextualized. This positioning also sets culture as a product, an ever-evolving product, within the same discursive settings and processes within which self and identity are worked out. As Shweder (1990) has argued, “culture and psyche make each other up” (p. 24). Since Foucault’s position could be understood as reifying social discourse, thus presenting the individual as a social addict (“dope”) deterministically and involuntarily positioned in and by the discursive activity (Hall, 1996), we are in need of looking into theories much more attached to literary and oral texts. This is important so as to guarantee an understanding of self and identity and culture as intentional communicative discursive dimensions, as well as particular outcomes of specific communicative actions situated in socio-historical contexts. This step is also necessary since, by defining identity and culture as products and constitutive of social relations, we are in fact defining the essentials of any educational activity which is in fact the central focus of this book (in a way making education and society become one and the same). Both Vygotsky (1962, 1978) and Bakhtin (1981, 1984) have helped us identify the central role played by discourse in the social semiotic mediation which shapes knowledge and creates meaning. Vygotsky, in his socio-historical or sociocultural theory of development, made social speech the primary unit of psychological analysis. Symbolic systems are the ones that transform or interrupt human thinking (Emerson, 1993). This transformation is not only derived from social life but can be traced to these systems’ genetic precursors on the intermental plane (Wertsch, 1991). Thought, or inner speech, is, in Vygotsky’s theory, not a product of solitary mind but has its precursor in social language, and its meaning is constituted relationally between hearer and speaker as they are situated in history and social interaction. Bakhtin’s work radically extends our potential theorizing on the mediational role of social discourse. His writings on the discursive aspects of the novel take us further in our understanding on how social discourses are constitutive of individual consciousness. Bakhtin (1986) emphasized the connectedness of linguistic form and meaning to their actual conditions and sites of use, and moreover to the particular speaking subject situated in social

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performance. Linguistic meaning, however, is shaped in the utterance, not in the individual word. Utterance becomes the real unit of speech communication consequently shaped by the hearer and my appreciation of her, by the social milieu within which the voices are being heard and not least by intonation, the sound that value makes in the act of communicating, and by previous and expected succeeding utterances to be voiced in any given socio-historical event (Clark and Holquist, 1984). Not only does the discourse in the novel become dialogized but discourse in general is to be understood at the nexus of multiple voices of any number of social languages characterized by historical change which moment to moment shapes meaning in its becoming (Li, 2009). Overall these perspectives throw both human consciousness and cultural products into a lived present in which people in interaction become environments for each other (Varenne and McDermott, 1998), mediating their coming into being in context through symbolic tools, continuously fed by history and memory, ideology and values, as they are accounted for and recreated in the social stage. Indeed, as Maturana suggests, there is no language but languaging (Maturana and Varela, 1987) – one that combines telling in shaping, retrieving and storing knowledge into a never-ending process. Ortega y Gasset (1957) would have added that the process of languaging is not only fallible, for language is always deficient and exuberant, but is at times voiceless since language is from the beginning an amputation of saying, making our already fragile attempts to understand even more risky. Finally, Becker (1995) argues that there are no individuals (e.g., distinct identities) but a minimum of dyads who come into dialogue with each other while coming into being (in dialogue again) within certain historical contexts. We are all products of environments inhabited by many friends and foes. Understanding might be difficult but not because it is immaterial; it is difficult because of its complex materiality, its embeddedness in social interactions and historical contexts. Social identity and its constitution have also been analyzed as the product of power relations which establish dichotomous hierarchies (Laclau, 1990) in which the powerful attain the status of essentiality, while the weak are reduced to the rank of an unfortunate but necessary accident (i.e., man/woman, white/black). Regarding this second point, it is worth recalling that in recent decades historians, sociologists, culturalists and even psychologists (Billig, 1995; Gellner, 1983; Giddens, 1991; A. D. Smith, 1992) have expounded on the radical influence of the slow but steady development of the most universal of modern structures and ideologies: the “nation state” and “nationalism” on primordial and essential conceptions of “identity” (Li, 2009).

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Theoreticians have identified the national structure as one of the cruelest systems on the historical scene (Bhabha, 1990; Mann, 2004). For the community to be imagined in its national oneness (Anderson, 1983; Hobsbawm, 1983) borders had to be widened and groups lumped together through homogenizing efforts; culture had to be reified and the individual, and his relation to the sovereign, strengthened so as to undermine the power of smaller communal identifications. Concealed behind the promise of universal equality was the sovereign’s demand to have no other than an individual, stripped of any group affiliation, under his rod (Mendus, 1989). The nation-state scheme has become so powerful that, like language in the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, it seems to shape and direct our most basic paradigmatic conceptions both of culture and identity. When all these elements are not accounted for in education in general and in our case in peace educational efforts, we argue that they risk fixing that same reality they intend to overcome. Reconceptualizing identity and culture, then, in the ways described above helps peace educators to overthrow the bondage of psychologized perspectives and situate it in the realm of practice and activity. On memory Just like identity and culture, memory too can be conceived of as an intentional communicative discursive dimension, as well as a particular outcome of specific communicative action situated in socio-historical contexts. From whatever angle it is approached, memory has fascinated humanity for centuries. The ancient poet Simonides regarded the meaning of memory as a recollection of the material world. Since then, through Cicero, Thomas Aquinas, Giordano Bruno and many others, memory has fascinated our imagination (Yates, 1966). Memory has been strongly connected to activity, material or symbolic (not mental), and it has served as a useful human skill and as an aid to human understanding of the world. At the same time, it has also played more negative roles. Laura Otis’ Organic Memory (1994) clusters under the sign of memory history, race, heredity and national identity, and states that the proponents of organic memory theory identified memory with heredity, and located history in the body. Memory had now a strong sense of Lamarckian inheritance and Haeckelian biogenetics, making it become a perilous feature in world politics, one which in spite of new scientific developments seems still to be alive in a world settled in conflict. Considered as worldly theaters or mirrors which reflect inner states, memories always depend on changing technologies (Hutton, 1993) which shape them ever anew.

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Scholars of collective memory point out that we should conceptualize it as the result of the entanglement of three historical factors: the intellectual and cultural traditions that frame all our representations of the past, the memory makers who selectively adopt and manipulate these traditions, and the memory consumers who use, ignore, or transform such artifacts according to their own interests (Kansteiner, 2002). Kansteiner emphasizes how collective memory is not history (though it is sometimes made from similar material) but manifests itself in the actions and statements of individuals; “it is as much a result of conscious manipulation as unconscious absorption and it is always mediated” (p. 180). Halbwachs’s (1980) work on collective memories as shared representations has been widely revived by social scientists in recent years. The meaning of collective memory, however, remains largely elusive because it is difficult to delineate the precise relationship between what is actualized at an “individual” level and what constitutes “collective” memory (Conway, 2003; Gedi and Elam, 1996). For example, does the individual take precedence over society, or is it the other way around? Halbwachs’s emphasis on the function of everyday communication for the development of collective memories and his sole interest in social discourse creates discomfort among many historians who find his work anti-individualistic (Kansteiner, 2002). Some scholars, therefore, argue that the term “collective memory” is so vague and all-encompassing that it has little merit (Gedi and Elam, 1996; Olick, 1999), while others contend that, despite its shortcomings, the notion of collective memory sensitizes people to the influence of the social and political context on the formation of memory (Kansteiner, 2002; Middleton and Edwards, 1990). The term “collective memory” may be attractive because it encompasses a wide variety of perspectives; however, conceptual ambiguity – including questions on what exactly is being remembered and who is doing the remembering – obscures efforts to delineate the connections between trauma, history and memory. Nonetheless, Conway (2003) observes, there are two prominent meanings in the literature: first, collective memory refers to people’s shared recollections of past events; and, second, the term refers to past memories that are embodied in “technologies of memory” such as films, books, documentaries, poems, songs, memoirs and the like, so that they are allowed to be transmitted to future generations. In both cases the crucial point is that individuals do remembering, that is, memory is a kind of performance in which the act of remembering is the intertwining of both the individual’s will and social determinations (Olick, 1999; Santos, 2001). Also, the employment of “collective memory,” emphasize Gedi and Elam (1996), can be

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justified only on a metaphorical level, as a general name for something that is behind the myths, rituals, traditions of a society. Undoubtedly, the notion of memory has taken its place now as a leading term in cultural history (Confino, 1997). But what is the relation between memory and history? As Kansteiner (2002) argues, memory’s relation to history remains one of the interesting challenges in the field. While most scholars, explains Kansteiner, maintain that history stands in sharp opposition to memory when the demand for proof comes up – this idea is based on the well-known fact that memory is an unreliable source of history and that people remember and forget in selective ways (Epstein, 2001) – there are good reasons to question such a clear epistemological divide between history and memory. As Burke (1989) remarked: “Neither memories nor histories seem objective any longer. In both cases we are learning to take account of conscious or unconscious selection, interpretation and distortion. In both cases this selection, interpretation and distortion is socially conditioned” (p. 98). The French historian Pierre Nora (1989) helped launch the revival of the debate on collective memory in arguing that memory is no longer a servant of history but on a par with history, an equal rival. Nora’s attempts to historicize the phenomenon of memory indicate that memory is always subject to the dialectic of remembering and forgetting (Kansteiner, 2002). Remembering and forgetting, however, are by definition individual acts, thus to be meaningful collective memory needs to account for personal recollections as well as public representations (Siegel, 2002). Therefore, some scholars disagree with the assumption that history and memory are rivals; instead, it is argued that history is integral to the construction of national memory, and thus both history and memory are complementary modes of relating to the past (Assmann, 2006; Rousso in Siegel, 2002). The point of memories, then, is less to tell us what “exactly” happened than what it felt like to experience an event. Consequently, attempts at historicizing memory (such as Nora’s) indicate that memory plays a major role in structuring national identity (Kansteiner, 2002) and sustaining a sense of self in and through the communities in which individuals belong and relate to others (Epstein, 2001; Middleton and Edwards, 1990). As Barkan (2000) notes, “Our histories shape our identities” (p. x); therefore, remembering produces a shared collective memory of the past. Takei (1998) also argues that collective memory is the key to understanding why people invest so much in retaining a certain identity. The connection between memory and identity, then, raises two important issues: First, it highlights the political and emotional value of collective memories, because past

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representations are preserved through social and ideological practices such as commemoration rituals, school and military parades, and national monuments; and second, the connection between memory and identity suggests that memory is created in interaction between and among people in social and political contexts (Conway, 2003; Kansteiner, 2002; Middleton and Edwards, 1990; Olick and Robbins, 1998; Zerubavel, 1996). In other words, we should be careful to avoid a grave methodological error, according to Kansteiner (2002), that is, we should avoid perceiving and conceptualizing collective memory exclusively in terms of the psychological and emotional dynamics of individual remembering. It is for this reason that Olick in his work (e.g., see Olick, 1999; Olick and Robbins, 1998) makes a subtle but decisive distinction between “collected memory” and “collective memory.” A collected memory is an aggregate of individual memories which behaves and develops just like its individual components, while collective memories have their own dynamics, among which is the political and emotional manipulation of memory. Collective memories therefore (though they involve individual agency) are based in society and thus reside not in individual (perceived) self-consciousness but in social practices, that is, the practices and institutions of social or psychic life (families, schools, professions etc.). Memories are at their most collective when they transcend the time and space of an event’s original occurrence and presuppose a cultural homogeneity, consistency and predictability (Kansteiner, 2002). Thus the problematic assumption is made that people who have some knowledge about a past event have also similar perceptions of the event and thus form a stable community. However, an interrogation of the meaning and consequences of memories offers an opportunity to recognize how historical representations are negotiated and selective, and can be manipulated both in society at large and in one of its most successful modernist mechanisms, schools. On reconciliation The terms “reconciliation” and “coexistence” are widely and variably used (Kritz, 1995), and while they do not mean the same thing, they generally refer to the ways in which antagonistic or formerly antagonistic groups relate to each other. Coexistence points primarily at types of dispassionate relationships which exclude overt struggle, while reconciliation opens the door for more harmonious relations through overcoming wounds inflicted by extremely violent conflict. In general, interethnic coexistence can pave the way to reconciliation, making both become sequential, with reconciliation helping stabilize and maintain coexistence

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(Kriesberg, 1998). Kriesberg (1998) considers coexistence as bearing on structural and subjective aspects of relationships between persons and groups. Reconciliation is a rather new concept in studies of interethnic struggle (Bar-Tal, 2000). It points to the need to construct peaceful cooperative and trusting relations in a society after a long period of harsh intergroup conflict. A review of existing thinking on reconciliation suggests that it has multiple meanings and contested interpretations; for example, it is argued that reconciliation is not simply the end state but an ongoing process (E. Cole, 2007). Like peacemaking, reconciliation has been conceptualized as a continuum, advancing from weaker to stronger versions (Kriesberg, 1998). In its simplest form, reconciliation means restoring friendship and harmony between rival sides after a conflict (Bar-Siman-Tov, 2004). Lederach (1998) points to the transformative aspects of reconciliation which first reframe perspectives on “the others,” thereby allowing for a process leading towards a renewed encounter between “us” and “them.” Seeing reconciliation as a process associated with a particular set of practices, Bar-Tal and Bennink (2004) emphatically point out that it demands the complete transformation of “the motivations, goals, beliefs, attitudes, and emotions of the great majority of the society members regarding the conflict, the nature of the relationship between the parties, and the parties themselves” (p. 12). Kriesberg (1998) outlines the steps taken by former rivals on their way to reconciliation: “They acknowledge the reality of the terrible acts that were perpetrated; accept with compassion those who committed injurious conduct, as well as acknowledging each other’s sufferings; believe that their injustices are being redressed and anticipate mutual security and well-being” (pp. 351–2). It is in this sense that it is argued that reconciliation is not merely an act of conflict resolution, but also an emotional process of changing the motivations, beliefs, attitudes and emotions inferred about the rival side (Bar-Tal and Bennink, 2004). Recognition of each other’s suffering, developing mutual trust and positive attitudes, expressing empathy, considering the other side’s needs and interests, assuming responsibility for past mistakes, providing restitution and granting forgiveness are important aspects of reconciliation (Auerbach, 2009). Long-lasting conflicts reach stages in which new generations are not aware of any other possible realities, making any attempt to overcome the current perceptions in the new generations very difficult (Arthur, 1999). The move toward coexistence and reconciliation thus becomes a complex one, requiring the engagement of multiple domestic and international resources. The mobilization of social, cultural and educational systems within a given society is central to the creation of an environment

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which fosters reconciliation (Bar-Tal, 2002). This is especially true for those systems that will now be geared toward validating cultural variations between the groups previously in conflict, generating experiences which support equitable existence, and providing opportunities for the acknowledgment of mistakes and the expression of forgiveness. At the same time, international support can also contribute greatly to coexistence and reconciliation efforts (Gardner-Feldman, 1999). Given that the notion of reconciliation is often linked with contested issues such as history, memory and forgiveness (Lederach, 1998), there are negative overtones in particular historical contexts; in Spain and Latin America, for instance, it has been argued that reconciliation is promoted by political elites at the expense of justice and in the interest of silencing crimes of the past (Jelin, 2003). Reconciliation processes are multifaceted and vary according to the future visions of peace held by the parties involved. These can range from integration, as in the case of South Africa, to separation, as in the case of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict (Ross, 2000). In Central and Latin America, reconciliation efforts have been perceived as a prerequisite for the constitution of democratic regimes after long years of violent conflict (Hayner, 1999; Kaye, 1997). Reconciliation is in general hard to achieve, and in some instances in which it has been attempted, the process has been criticized for imposing a hegemonic discourse of justice and healing within liberal and humanitarian practices, as in the case of the Rwandan Commission on Unity and National Reconciliation (Ranck, 2000). Thus, there are voices which question the agendas of those who advocate reconciliation, especially in relation to forgiveness (see Chapter 10), because some critics argue that it is not clear whether all violations are forgivable, and therefore forgiveness should not be subsumed under reconciliation in the interest of amnesia (Helmnick and Petersen, 2001). In addition, there are concerns with the Christian overtones of forgiveness and fears that the Christian tradition reduces the importance of justice in reconciliation (Little in E. Cole, 2007). Critics also worry that reconciliation can provide refuge to neocolonial agendas, impose unrealistic expectations of social and political change, and undermine redistribution efforts in societies in which inequality and social injustices prevail (de Gruchy, 2002; Doxtader and Villa-Vicencio, 2003). One thing, however, that clearly emerges from the literature about reconciliation is that it is a process of bringing people together, dealing with the past and “moving forward” in the formation of shared meanings. In this sense, reconciliation can be seen as a therapeutic praxis of recognizing those who suffered and taking into account their demands (Friedland, 2004). Recognition of each other’s suffering, as noted earlier,

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is important for creating a new reality that does not forget the past, yet has the courage to move forward. Cole (2007) summarizes recent contributions to new understandings of reconciliation, highlighting the following five components: (1) reconciliation is a dynamic, complex and long-term process; (2) it is a spectrum rather than a definition; (3) it is an ongoing struggle to engage and manage difference rather than harmony; (4) it is not synonymous with amnesia and forgetting; and (5) it should be seen in realistic and practical terms rather than in idealist and sentimental ways. Among the central factors which must be mobilized if reconciliation is to be achieved, Bar-Tal (2000) ranks the educational system high because of its role in socializing new generations to live in peace with past enemies. Anderson’s (1983) classic assertion that a nation is primarily an “imagined community” points to educational systems as one of the most central and effective arenas engaged by the state to form that community. Interest in reconciliation in education seems to follow from a sense that dealing with ethnic conflicts only at the cultural and legal levels is insufficient. Reconciliation problematized through the educational system can potentially address basic threats to identity and a sense and experience of victimization as expressed in the cultural spheres of conflict-ridden areas, thus helping to cultivate a sense of trust and recognition between parties previously in conflict (Ross, 2001). Teachers and students in conflict-ridden areas often remain stuck in certain self-identifications and collective memories; these self-identifications create serious obstacles to peaceful coexistence and reconciliation. Real stories in complex and dynamic worlds All that has been mentioned above should come to life now in the following two stories taken from our ethnographic work. We choose to provide a first glimpse of our work at this point because these stories reflect the problematic of how identity, memory and reconciliation are entangled in complex ways that need to be accounted for. Two stories The first story comes from a classroom incident in which Elle, a Jewish teacher in a first-grade bilingual integrated classroom, was conducting a short introduction to the Passover (Pesach) festival. Up to this point, the children had been referring to the festival by its name without linking it to a specific group’s culture. This pattern does not mean that the children did not know its connection to Judaism. Instead, they did not mark it

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in their discourse. The Jewish teacher was the one who emphasized the Jewish-specific nature of Pesach: “[W]ho chooses to celebrate, celebrates, but it is a festival of the Jews [and not a festival of either Muslims or Christians].” On another occasion in class, Elle asked three children to bring out food to prepare for a break. Two of them followed her instructions, but one boy (Hayim) pulled out a small game. Noticing Hayim’s action, Elle said, “Hayim, you cannot go on identifying with Muslims; Ramadan is over and you need to eat.” Hayim was a Jewish boy well known for fasting with the Muslim children during Ramadan. He was always noted as an exception; for instance, when one morning during Ramadan the Palestinian teacher, Mem, and Elle blessed the children with the traditional “Ramadan Karim” blessing, they added “and to you, Hayim, too.” There seemed to be a double play in these short statements. On the one hand, the teachers seemed to mark the fact that there is one Jewish exception to the unstated rule of “do not cross identity borders.” On the other hand, it was a demonstration of a liberal perspective which offers recognition to the choice of the child who, in this case, preferred to cross what at least for adults might be understood as an identity border. In contrast, Palestinian and Jewish children seldom referred to Hayim’s idiosyncratic choice. When they did so, some students indicated they did not believe that Hayim truly followed all the days of the fast, while other students suggest that they did. They seemed to agree, however, that Hayim should be allowed to act upon his choice and “do as he wishes.” Data regarding national events reveal similar observations. When discussing Memorial Day in the third-grade classroom, the teachers drew two windows on the board to represent the different perspectives which the groups and individuals within them might have concerning the historical accounts related to the holiday. The teachers opened the discussion and were the main speakers for the larger part of the class session. Each teacher presented her own version and understanding of the events of the 1948 war, its reasons and its consequences. The two teachers presented their accounts in a careful way, respectful of the other, but with difficulty and guarded tension, which were clear from their frequent hesitations and self-corrections. For example:1 1

Transcription notation: (.6) etc. a pause ::: an elongated sound (text) transcriber unsure of what was said [ . . . ] material omitted [text] material added by the authors for the sake of clarity [text] explanatory comments provided by the authors.

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m e m : I see this, through this window that there was a country here, (.6) Palestinians (.5) lived in all the areas . . . Su:::ddenly came the Jews and they came and told them (.4) you must go out of this country, this is not your country.

This approach contrasts to that of the students who presented their views, which for the most part reflected the views held by their own groups within the general Israeli society, in a respectful way acknowledging the existence of different narratives belonging to different national groups. For instance: j e w i s h b oy : I can look through both . . . I go every year to the Nakba Memorial too . . . we can divide each window into two. p a l e s t i n i a n g i r l : (I want to say) why I don’t want to participate [ . . . ] eh, because, eh::: the ceremony [ . . . ] is not for us [it is] for – for the Israeli people and the – the Jews that remember it, not us.

The difference between the teachers’ discomfort, marked by long pauses, and the students’ ease could be attributed to the teachers’ heightened awareness of the social and political nuances and implications of the topic. Thus, while the teachers’ side-by-side discussion of Memorial Day conveyed more unifying messages, the manner in which the teachers led the discussion may exemplify how they use language as an ethnic-identity marker and to suggest that ethnicity is organized through differentiation and practiced as a separatist activity. Differentiation is achieved as the students witness the teachers’ unease or tension in talking about national and ethnic issues. Our interviews with children showed that they are aware that their teachers find it difficult to discuss national issues. For example, a Jewish girl observed, “They only speak about these issues (national issues) in special events and not throughout the year,” and a Palestinian boy said, “Yes, yes, there were Arabs here first and then came the Jews and conquered the land, some Arabs hate Jews and the other way round but here Arab and Jews are like brothers . . .” For the teachers in the integrated schools in Israel, dealing with national and religious issues is a complicated task. These topics are never dealt with as information, but as central ideological elements of a curriculum with a declared twofold goal of supporting integration towards coexistence and safeguarding and strengthening individual identity and sense of belonging to each “original group.” The children might easily relate to and learn about a variety of ceremonies, festivals, texts and other cultural or national artifacts. Teachers, however, seem always to try to ensure that individual children understand to which group and traditions they are connected.

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Now let’s move to the other context, Cyprus. In recent years GreekCypriot teachers have increasingly found themselves teaching in multicultural classrooms, but they are ill-prepared to deal with this challenge. Their task becomes even more complicated in schools in which Turkishspeaking students are enrolled. Although there are only a few such schools in the Republic of Cyprus, and the Turkish-speaking student population in those schools is small (5–10 percent), the situation is complex in light of the unresolved political problem and the intractable conflict between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots. The following incident was narrated by a teacher who witnessed it in a public elementary school in which approximately 10 percent of the students were Turkish-speaking. It illustrates Greek-Cypriot teachers’ intense struggles and ambivalences when dealing pedagogically with Turkish-speaking children, while teaching Greek-Cypriot children not to forget that their “arch-enemies” (i.e., Turks) still occupy a large part of Cyprus. For Greek-Cypriot teachers there is some tension and confusion between emphasizing Greek identity (for Greek-Cypriot children) and dealing with increasing multiculturalism, especially in the presence of Turkish-Cypriot children. Murat and Christos were third graders, spending a lot of time together, playing in the schoolyard, sitting together in class, and getting together after school. Murat, whose first language was Turkish, learned to speak Greek fluently and participated in all religious (i.e., Greek Orthodox) events of the school (e.g., ceremonies, festivals, fasting etc.), although he was Muslim. On this particular day, the teacher and his third-grade students were out in the schoolyard where he was showing them the direction of a mountain in the north, saying: “This is the direction of the mountain Pentadaktylos. Unfortunately, it is still occupied by the Turks, so we can’t visit it.” However, Christos added: “But I did go there with my parents! Now we are allowed to go. We also visited Murat’s grandparents in Keryneia!” After a dead silence, the teacher responded: “WE are NOT allowed to go freely to the other side! [pause] It is unacceptable to show our passports to visit our own land.” Then he turned to Christos and said firmly: “Obviously, your parents have shown passports. This is a personal decision made by each family. But a part of our country is still occupied by the Turks who are responsible for all the evil we have experienced in Cyprus since 1974.” Another child said: “My parents told me that all Turks are evil and we should never trust them,” to which the teacher responded, “Your parents are right, Yianni. You should listen to them.” Then Murat, who was silent all this time asked in a voice that was clearly distressed: “Am I a Turk? Am I a bad person?” A few children shouted, “Yes, yes!” The teacher responded with a smile: “You are a Turk, Murat, but I don’t think you [personally] are a bad person!” The next day, during the break, Murat found an anonymous note on his desk saying, “Turks are bad. You are a Turk. Hooray for our nation [Zito to Ethnos]!” This was the first time such a thing . . . happened. Murat started crying immediately and went to tell his friend Christos. They both went to the teacher

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and showed him the note. After the break, the teacher began yelling at everyone, saying, “I am tired of your caprices and your fights all the time. You need to find a way to resolve your problems without my intervention every time something happens. We don’t have much time to waste. You need to pay attention to your lessons.”

Interviews with teachers and students as well as further observations of student interactions at this school showed a transformation taking place in children’s views as a result of this incident. For example, the teacher who narrated this incident pointed out: Something has changed after this incident. I have noticed, for instance, that Murat’s classmates do not want to sit next to him or play with him in the schoolyard. At least not in the way they used to play before . . . Also, a Greek-Cypriot child came and told me that his parents do not approve of him sitting next to Murat. I [ . . . ] see these kids every day [ . . . ] so I see what’s going on and there are definitely some changes happening. [ . . . ] [Now] Christos is basically the only one who hangs out with Murat.

The following dialogue with a Greek Cypriot girl (from Murat’s class) also reveals some of the implications of the incident: r e s e a r c h e r : How did you feel when this incident happened? g i r l : I was afraid. r e s e a r c h e r : Why were you afraid? g i r l : Because Murat is Turk. r e s e a r c h e r : Yes, but why did this make you afraid? g i r l : Because he can get into fights . . . and hit me. r e s e a r c h e r : Did you and Murat have fights before? g i r l : No. r e s e a r c h e r : Then why do you think he is going to hit you now? g i r l : Because he is Turk . . . and my dad says Turks are different from Greeks . . . Turks do bad things to people . . . the teacher says so too. r e s e a r c h e r : Do you play with Murat in the schoolyard? g i r l : Not any more . . . We used to play with him . . . Once, he sat next to me . . . but [that was] before he was a Turk.

A teacher also confirmed that: With the younger children, we never used to have any fights around issues that have to do with children’s national origin and things like that. I mean children have fights about stupid things all the time . . . someone steals a pencil . . . everybody wants to be first in line, you know, things like that. But there has never been a fight about one’s ethnic identity!

This incident with Murat and its fallout illustrate the consequences when teachers (that is, adults) decide to highlight identity when children seem to pay less attention to this. The children did not find it necessary to identify each other strictly as “Turk” or “Greek” (although they seem to

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be aware that there are differences) until their teacher – or any adult in their lives – did so firmly. At that point, the children’s perceptions and relations seemed to change, and the teacher’s attempt to disavow that the negative Turkish identity applied to a Turkish-Cypriot student in the class did not discourage other students from drawing this conclusion based on what the teacher said generally about Turks. The stories just described, though arriving from different geographical regions, reflect very similar approaches and understandings to the constructs of identity and memory and their relevance to possible reconciliatory efforts. On one hand, adults in both societies appear concerned when children do not “show” that they are aware of their national or religious identities or do not carry the “appropriate” memories. On the other hand, children do not seem to be concerned with identity categorizations and hegemonic memories. Theoretically these positions are not surprising. Identity development includes the establishment of autonomy from parental settings, learning to relate to the same and to the opposite sex and developing a sense of uniqueness when differentiating self from others (Erikson, 1968). The little that is known about gender and racial identity formation in early childhood points to the tension between perceptions of discrimination toward stereotypes and feeling pressure to conform to these stereotypes (Egan and Perry, 2001). Young children are aware of racial differences (Clark and Clark, 1947; Goodman, 1952; Spencer, 2006), and prejudice and discrimination are certainly not limited to adults (Allport, 1954). Gender recognition occurs by the first year of life (Fagot and Leinbach, 1991; Katz and Kofkin, 1997), and though findings are not always consistent, both gender and race can be labeled correctly by children as early as four to six years of age (Aboud, 1988; Katz and Kofkin, 1997). Thus, it is likely that even very young children can perceive discriminatory attitudes. Discrimination is recognized not only at an early age (Theimer et al., 2001; Verkuyten et al., 1997) but by a high percentage of minority students (Fisher et al., 2000; Simons et al., 2002). Similarly, studies suggest that children as young as preschoolers regularly harbor negative attitudes toward members of ethnic or racial groups other than their own (Abbink, 1984; Aboud, 1987). Yet, prejudices seem to be learned (Aboud, 1988), just as hegemonic memories are taught, and their development can be explained almost exclusively in environmental terms (Allport, 1954; Bar-Tal et al., 1989; Dovidio and Gaertner, 1986; Katz and Taylor, 1988; Lynch, 1987). Interestingly, young children’s positive feelings toward their own group do not necessarily involve or cause negative out-group attitudes, implying that various factors might differentially influence in-group and out-group attitudes.

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Adults go through particular socialization experiences in which selfidentification has become strongly linked with their perceptions of largegroup identity and collective memory. Teachers, despite their involvement in reconciliatory initiatives, are often captive to hegemonies of large-group identity and collective memory. Therefore, it is not easy for teachers to overcome their position as historical actors. These difficulties not only are related to individual constraints but also have to do with the educational setting within which these teachers function. The educational contexts within which the educators function seem to carry what could be understood as contradictory messages. In our search for potential options to respond to this question facing teachers, we ask if indeed there is no feeling of being alive, as Erik Erikson (1968) would have us believe, without a sense of identity. Answering this question is not easy if only because in modernity identity has become so central a concept that it is almost impossible to speak about humans without it. And yet from our experience we know that many can live a life without knowing the word, while others could speak without making use of it. From any linguistic perspective it would be difficult to say why we say, for example, “I have a strong sense of Jewish identity” or “I have a strong sense of professional identity” and not “I am Jewish” or “I am an engineer.” Children do not speak about their identities, many adults do not either, and this, though they might sound less intellectual, does not make them less human. These simple “facts”2 are enough to raise suspicions towards the notion of “identity” and its use. Knowing its etymology could raise even more skepticism as well as an added understanding of how its rather late development could undercut its standing. It is not every day that we introduce into the social sciences words from the mathematical world which, in short, state that identity is a tautology, A=A; and though rather hidden from the uncritical eye it is well documented that the concept of identity, as related to that which is truly human, makes its appearance closely related to the development of centralized powers and the evolution of the modern state machinery (Billig, 1995; Wodak et al., 2009). Thus, identity is not inherited but inscribed. In our work over the last decade in the troubled societies in which we live, we have been attracted by the dissimilar ways in which educators/ adults and children attend to identity and memory issues when such issues appear in interactional events. Although adults, in their rhetoric 2

It is worth remembering that, as Pirandello would have it, “A fact is like a sack which won’t stand up when it is empty. In order that it may stand up, one has to put into it the reason and sentiment which have caused it to exist” (Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author, New York: E. P. Dutton, 1922, p. 27).

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and educational practices, often seem to essentialize identity and memory and mark events as related to absolute categories, children, though knowledgeable about these categories, seem less attentive to them in their social activities, and construct their social worlds with less emphasis on ethnic or other divisions. Regardless of the differences found in the educational policies of Israel (emphasis on Zionist ethos), and Cyprus (emphasis on Greek-centered education), we have observed that, in practice, children’s perspectives differ from those of adult educators. Even when identity is rarely mentioned as such in schools, pedagogical practices and policies “push” children towards the direction of a particular identity. The rest is done with collective memory, which is often so powerful that any reconciliatory efforts inside or outside schools have almost no effects; even when these efforts are “adjusted” to the language and “normal” practices of peace education it is not certain whether there are genuine openings for alternative practices or whether hegemonic forces score another (hidden) blow. Concluding remarks Lurking in the background of the potential role of reconciliation in education are deeper questions on issues around identity and memory: How can coexistence and reconciliation be addressed in a world of almost absolute self-identifications that produce powerful national(ized) memories and emotions such as resentment, anger and hatred? How can the challenges of addressing peaceful coexistence and reconciliation in schools create useful openings for teachers and students to reconsider the prospects of coexistence and reconciliation without feeling that their (perceived) identities or memories are threatened? These questions are concerned not only with how to actively engage children to know how to enact reconciliation in their everyday life, but rather with how to inhabit alternative social spaces that do not undermine or put aside legitimate negative feelings, yet do so with vigilance and criticality. The interrelatedness of reconciliation with identity and memory creates a lot of tension and many challenges. Thus, we need to examine these challenges through considering the politics of identity and memory in the context of conflict and the efforts for peace-building and reconciliation, showing once again that identity, memory and reconciliation can benefit from being conceived of as intentional communicative discursive dimensions, as well as particular outcomes of specific communicative actions situated in socio-historical contexts. A useful theoretical tool in this work is Moya and Hames-Garcia’s (2000) notion of postpositivist realism (which is discussed in more detail

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in Chapter 13) through which we emphasize the importance of appreciating the primacy of the interactional, affective and material over the idealized and reified categories; for these categories are consequential and shape the ideologies on which legal, economic and political structures are founded, and to which definite forms of social consciousness (identity/ class/culture) correspond. Human agents use words to form practices or induce actions in others, but the formation of identities and memories takes place through various properties of “substance” such as physical objects, friends, activities and values. Unfortunately, with the passing of time identities and memories are reified through various categories, while the mechanisms of the formation of these categories are forgotten. The advantage of revisiting and problematizing these categories is the acknowledgment that individuals are socially and culturally specific persons engaged in complex webs of power relations. Thus, it seems to us that without any attention to this idea, any discussion about identity, memory and reconciliation risks entailing a normalizing metaphysics. All in all what we have done in this first part of the book is to rehearse the arguments that have a potential multifaceted contribution to the field of peace education. These arguments oblige us to relate the material of the following chapters to specific educational practices or educational content areas (Hicks, 1995, 1996) which have the potential to influence policy and wider social issues (Jacob and Jordan, 1993). Our work attempts to illuminate how knowledge, culture, memory and social identities come into being in a variety of social sites and historical contexts and in the face of the constraints of political powers (Giroux, 1994), while paying serious attention to the possible relations between discourse and processes of teaching and learning and the construction of socially situated meanings. The educational work to be undertaken is essential to pursue a better understanding of the uses of different texts and discourses in teaching and learning in troubled societies, as well as the different symbolic systems put to use in educational environments, when hoping to produce creative co-participants for the next moment of human existence.

Part II

Living and teaching contested narratives

4

Victims and perpetrators How teachers live with contested narratives

In this and the following chapter we want to show in detail some of the mechanisms as well as the paralyzing implications of the perpetrator– victim narratives in the context of in-service training sessions of Jewish and Palestinian-Israeli teachers who teach in Palestinian-Jewish integrated schools. As noted previously, the choice of teachers and context reflects only the data we have available; there is nothing special about these teachers regarding the issues we raise, and they are as special as any other adults in societies suffering from intractable conflicts. Our experience and some other works published on intergroup encounters show adolescents and adults behaving and arguing in similar ways (see Maoz et al., 2007).

Background on teachers’ workshops The teachers’ workshops discussed in this chapter were designed as a sphere of activity and learning that would enable primary school teachers teaching in the Palestinian-Jewish integrated schools to analyze and systematically develop innovative school curricular activities. These activities aimed at attending to issues of cultural/religious/ethnic identity while creating and supporting social cohesion and inclusion within the framework of a civil society. The ultimate goal of these efforts was to allow participating teachers to seriously consider the challenge of implementing educational practices that could sustain a substantive multicultural educational policy rather than merely paying lip service to equality. Researchwise, the idea was to record all teacher activities in order to allow us, upon analysis, to better understand the intricate issues that teachers from different religious/ethnic/national backgrounds have to confront when jointly working in integrated educational initiatives in societies suffering from intractable conflict.

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With these considerations in mind, we created a series of teachers’ workshops1 which served both as a cross-cultural intergroup encounter (somewhat similar to the one the participating teachers themselves strive to produce in their daily school activities at the bilingual schools) and a working environment in which curricula tailored to the specific needs of the integrated schools were developed. In the contexts of these workshops, teachers: (1) learned about multiple issues related to present theorizing in the fields of multicultural education, peace education, bilingual education, identity and culture, and cross-cultural encounters; (2) reflected upon the influence that their work in a Jewish-Palestinian school might have had, or might be having, on their emotions about and attitudes towards Jewish-Palestinian relations; (3) examined educational practices in the Jewish-Palestinian schools and the possible benefits they might have in advancing multicultural understanding and peaceful coexistence; and (4) created curricular units that address questions of cultural/ethnic/ national identity, and that contribute to multicultural understanding and peaceful coexistence. The workshops were offered to all teachers but we indicated that places in the workshops were limited and that an equal number of Palestinian and Jewish teachers would be accepted. Authorization for the workshops was secured from the Ministry of Education of Israel, which accredited them as a yearly in-service teacher-training course of 112 hours. Teachers were offered a small stipend in recognition of their effort and participation. All their travel and living expenses were covered by the organizers. Fourteen teachers, seven Jews and seven Palestinians, participated in the workshop that is discussed here. Of the participating teachers all but one were female and all were accredited teachers holding at least a B.A./B.Ed. degree. Except for one teacher, who had just joined one of the schools, all had a minimum of three years of experience in the job. The course included four three-day workshops held at the faculty house of the Hebrew University’s campus. The series of workshops made up an ongoing course, much of which was planned from one workshop to the next in response to issues the teachers brought up for discussion – issues that had to do with many complexities of working at an integrated bilingual school. 1

The workshops discussed here were supported by grants from the Bernard Van Leer Foundation.

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Working at an integrated Palestinian-Jewish school has something of the exotic, new age, avant-garde. It can even, at times, add a bit more to the salary, and there may be some perks – a trip to Italy, Germany or any other country fervently supporting peace educational work. Working at an integrated school, however, can cause difficulties, as while doing so one is expected to identify with the cause, which might affiliate one to a leftist political stance one might not necessarily hold. Yet, it is not easy to define what exactly this “identification with the cause” means. For a Palestinian teacher it might mean recognizing the State of Israel as a legitimate Jewish and democratic state (as if Jewish and democratic could be anything other than an oxymoron), expressing the need for reconciliatory work, having a relatively open perspective on education, being willing to teach with a co-teacher from the other “faith”/“ethnicity,” and subsequently being able to sustain proper/friendly professional relations. The ideological expectations, even if they are not easy to accept, are the traditional expectations of any Palestinian living in Israel, i.e., be faithful to a country which does not necessarily recognize Palestinians as legitimate citizens (see Dahan and Levy, 2000) even when they get little in return. For Jewish teachers “identification with the cause” means pretty much the same, but it is that much easier because Jews are recognized, for the most part, as legitimate citizens in the Jewish democratic state. In the many years we have been involved with teacher training sessions and workshops, we have been witnesses to numerous encounters between parties belonging to different groups in conflict. For the most part these encounters take place between what could be considered “elites,” that is, individuals with highly educated backgrounds (homologous to rather high socio-economical status) and fairly liberal views. Despite their highly educated backgrounds and their somewhat liberal views – if indeed it is the middle classes that get to meet it is also the relatively open-minded who agree to meet – the participants seem not to be able to set themselves apart from the phenomenon of schismogenesis, the creation of schism (division). In anthropology, schismogenesis is a concept, developed by the anthropologist Gregory Bateson in the 1930s, to explain certain forms of social competitive behavior (rivalry) between groups. Bateson’s argument was that certain ritual behaviors either inhibited or stimulated divisions between groups. In our case, our interlocutors seem for the most part to develop a rivalry as to who is to be considered more of a victim between rival communities. But why would someone want to be considered a victim? What is there to be gained from such a self-identification?

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A brief note on victimology At first glance, a victim is usually defined as powerless because his or her loss is irretrievable. As Lyotard (1988) suggests: “It is the nature of a victim not to be able to prove that one has been done wrong” (p. 9). Ophir (2000) also proposes that a victim is unable, for lack of proof, to expect a replacement or compensation for his or her loss; this irretrievability of the victim’s loss is assumed to be an indication of the victim’s powerlessness. Not surprisingly, then, a usual assumption in various narratives about perpetrators and victims is that the victim is always powerless, while the perpetrator is all too powerful and thus indifferent to the victim’s complaint (Smeyers and Masschelein, 2000). However, watching repetitively rituals of cross-cultural dialogues among teachers we have come to realize Barkan’s (2000) argument: that is, how victimization empowers. Being a victim can be immensely powerful. In Foucauldian nomenclature, power is not repressive but productive (Foucault, 1983); thus, the victim’s power derives from his or her potential to determine if there is anything which can be done to terminate one’s status as a victim. It is possible, however, that under some circumstances victims may want to maintain their status of victimhood so that they can use it to perpetuate particular power differentials at the moral or political level (Barkan, 2000). In fact, the categories of “victims” and “perpetrators” are often used to serve manipulative political/ideological agendas (Yaron, 2006). Indeed, being a victim can be very advantageous in some cases. As we have already hinted, the advantageous qualities of victimhood can be easily realized in contexts such as the ones in which we do our research. In Israel, Zionist Jews have always positioned themselves as the ultimate victim (and never as perpetrators) and thus denied (others and themselves) the option to find a solution to the intractable conflict in which they find themselves with the Palestinian people.2 The recognition of the victim as such – by the perpetrator or others – becomes the victim’s ultimate power to be used for political and moral purposes. Israel nowadays keeps maintaining its position as a victim in its dialogue with the Palestinian population, but also in much of the dialogue it sustains with its partners and foes in the international arena. Victimization is used to 2

This last statement should be in some ways qualified, for Israel acknowledged the possibility of being compensated by having reached with West Germany the Reparations Agreement signed on September 10, 1952, which entered into force on March 27, 1953; according to the agreement, West Germany was to pay Israel for the slave labor and persecution of Jews during the Holocaust, and to compensate for Jewish property that was stolen by the Nazis.

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legitimize many of its political decisions and acts in the name of victim morality. Similarly, most of the governments and political parties in the Republic of Cyprus position the Greek Cypriots consistently as the ultimate victims of the conflict in Cyprus. Bringing up only the events of the Turkish invasion of 1974, Greek-Cypriot government officials and politicians fail to acknowledge the Turkish Cypriots’ pain and trauma (e.g., during the period 1963–7). This consistent failure to acknowledge the other side’s victimhood in an earlier historical period has prevented Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots from rising above their common suffering and transforming their traumatic experiences into a constructive political solution. Like the Israeli Jews, the Greek Cypriots have utilized narratives of victimization to score moral and political points in the international political arena, particularly in relation to missing persons – yet there have also been missing persons from the Turkish Cypriot community (Sant Cassia, 2005). The fact that we mention here Israeli Jews and Greek Cypriots does not necessarily mean that the other side in the conflict is free from these same accusations; it is just that we opt to talk about the groups we are assumed to belong to rather than about the others. Sustaining the position of a victim has not been difficult. It requires the successful exploitation of the (nation) state apparatus (be this Israel, Cyprus or some other). This apparatus is by “nature” involved in the production of grand narratives, for the successful indoctrination of its population – through mass educational efforts, official history and the creation of cultural commemorative objects that flood with powerful symbols the geographical landscapes (i.e., museums) and time frames (i.e., ceremonies) of the state (Davies, 2004). For example, considering the powerful effect of official history and historical narratives, recent research on Palestinian and Israeli textbooks and curricula has shown them to be lacking in complexity and criticality when presenting the multifaceted events and outcomes that brought about the present conflict (Adwan and Bar-On, 2004; Adwan and Firer, 1997). In a detailed study of the Israeli curricula produced from 1950 to 1990, Bar-Tal (1999) found that while Palestinians were not necessarily delegitimized, they were still presented through stereotypical perspectives, while Jews were expected to identify with Jewish heroism and Jewish victimization. Bar-Tal also found that curricula support an ethos of continuity in relation to the present conflict so as to allow students to cope with this situation. And it is not only in the history curricula. Resnik’s (1999) study of the national Jewish school curricula in bible history, civics and literature over five decades concludes that these curricula enforce particularistic

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perspectives at the expense of universal and civic outlooks. Studies conducted by Podeh (2000), on a similar period to that covered by Bar-Tal, point to the fact that in all aspects related to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the history curricula in the Jewish schools have, like many other tools of socialization, acted as “memory agents” that help crystallize the Jewish nation’s collective memory. Though he observes a changing and diminishing particularistic national sense over time, and thus a lesser amount of Palestinian stereotyping, these curricula still do not seem to open the Israeli education system to a true Palestinian-Jewish dialogue regarding historical narratives. Even more recently, since the signing of the Oslo peace agreements, Al-Haj (2005) showed that the new Israeli textbooks introduced to junior and senior high school in 1999 (i.e., after the signing) present a more open and complex perspective than the previous curriculum did. Yet, they seem to be grounded in the same old Zionist narrative about Jews being the eternal victims, leaving no room for dealing with the legitimacy of the Palestinian narrative. Similar indications of the effects of official history and historical narratives exist in the Republic of Cyprus. In recent years there has been accumulating evidence showing how national curricula, history and civic textbooks, and pedagogical practices in Greek-Cypriot schools over the last three decades have established and perpetuated negative stereotypes of Turkish Cypriots (Bryant, 2004; Hadjipavlou-Trigeorgis, 2007; Papadakis, 2008; Spyrou, 2006; Zembylas, 2008b). Papadakis’ (2008) comparison of Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot schoolbooks on the “history of Cyprus” highlights the underlying ideological principles guiding representations of history and divisions between “victims” (us) and “perpetrators” (them). Greek-Cypriot schoolbooks are grounded in the assumption that Greek Cypriots are and have always been victims of acts perpetrated by Turks, leaving no room for acknowledging the TurkishCypriot narrative. It is important to keep in mind that though textbooks are indeed schools’ main channels for the socialization preferred by the sovereign state (whose power dominates their production), they cannot do the work by themselves. Multiple other agents in and out of school are involved in the construction of us/them perceptions. Media technologies of multiple sorts take part in the active configuration of such representations. In addition to textbooks, teachers with their colleagues or teachers with their students partake in dialogues that show first-hand how victim– perpetrator accounts are constructed. In Chapters 4 and 5 we take a look at dialogues between teachers who belong to rival communities, while Chapters 6 and 7 focus on teacher–student dialogues. In what follows, we provide a narration of the workshop events and then analyze

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the implications of teacher discussions in terms of victim–perpetrator narratives. The workshop events (part 1) The second three-day workshop of the 2004 school year opened with an activity in which the teachers were asked to discuss issues they had found difficult to raise in the presence of representatives from the other group. At first, the teachers were asked to write down their thoughts, and when this stage was completed, the Jewish teachers were asked to remain around the table while the Palestinian teachers were asked to create an outside circle. Our plan was to establish a sense of privacy for the Jewish group (similar to a fishbowl activity) in which the Jewish teachers could relate to what they had written, initially without interacting with the Palestinian group, which was expected only to be attentive to the uni-national Jewish dialogue. Of the Jewish teachers, Yoni (J)3 was the first to speak. Yoni is today one of the few Jewish teachers at the bilingual schools who is fluent in Arabic and is also a declared “conscientious objector” who does not serve in the military reserves, thus positioning himself on the far left liberal wing of the Israeli political spectrum. As did five of the six Jewish teachers who took turns in the dialogue, Yoni mentioned military service and terrorism as central issues he had difficulty discussing with the Palestinian group. He said:4 I’m not embarrassed to speak, but there’s some discomfort – I think I feel altogether comfortable with my military service. I also have family members in the army and I have no problem with those who are not refuseniks [conscientious objectors]. I feel fine and comfortable with my national group even though they don’t think like I do. In mixed [Jewish–Palestinian] groups, the military gets a different stress. [But] it gets me angry when a Palestinian who doesn’t support terrorism doesn’t condemn it. He says “he [the terrorist] is a part of my people.” Now when I’m with friends and family and I know that they serve in the Territories [occupied by Israel since the 1967 war], I don’t necessarily condemn it.

In this brief statement Yoni raised many of the conflicts the teachers would discuss throughout the sessions on which we are reporting. Yoni, on one hand, was quick to acknowledge that he did not see his previous participation in the Israeli military as something shameful or necessarily 3

4

To facilitate the readers’ identification of the teachers involved in the dialogue we have added in parentheses a ‘J’ after the name of Jewish teachers and a ‘P’ after those of Palestinians. All the names used throughout this book are pseudonyms. Transcription notation: see Chapter 3, note 1.

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bad, and that though in disagreement with some of his peers who did still serve in the reserve forces, as well as with his brother, who was at present in the army, he did not condemn this but rather understood the choices they had made. In other instances, Yoni was careful to indicate that while he condemned some of the military activity conducted by the Israeli forces, in general he still believed Israel had a need for a strong army given its security problems. On the other hand, he expressed his anger against Palestinian friends whom he criticized for not openly condemning terrorist attacks. It seems that from his perspective, Palestinians of Israel, in spite of their present situation as a peripheral and subjugated minority in the State of Israel, should condemn terrorism as outright evil as he did. Next to speak were Reuma (J) and Lili (J), who mentioned that some issues might be more difficult than others to be talked about, such as the Palestinian “right of return.” When asked why, they emphasized that, though politically “liberal” (a word often kept from view), they just could not see themselves agreeing to the refugees’ return, and at the same time they acknowledged that their position contradicted their political inclinations but followed from their deep sense of fear. Then it was the turn of the Palestinian teachers to hold the inner circle and the Jews move back. Nadia (P) said (in Arabic – Nadia was one of the few teachers who regularly opened her statements in Arabic, later moving into Hebrew): “I can’t bring to my mind anything that awakens fear – that I avoid saying. There are things that have to be heard . . . They [the Jews] shouldn’t expect to hear just the things that are acceptable to them.” Ibtisam (P) expressed similar feelings. Manal (P) added that in mixed groups with close relations, talking was easier, but still some issues were more difficult, such as recognizing that Jewish settlements sit on what previously were Palestinian lands. The Palestinian teachers seemed to have less difficulty expressing their views in the presence of the Jewish group. The group to which they were referring was one purposefully involved in peace education through the bilingual integrated schools. Yet, the closeness of the group became an obstacle when raising issues associated with immediate concerns, such as a “true” sense of belonging, native rights and land ownership, indeed problems which touch on questions central to the Palestinian-Jewish conflict. In the following activity the teachers were asked to react to the comments made by each group. The Jewish teachers acknowledged that the Jewish group seemed to express more inhibitions. Yoni (J) also acknowledged that the traditional Jewish-Palestinian power asymmetry (that is, the majority is usually not afraid to talk; it is the minority that worries) seemed to be reversed in the dialogue, because Jews seemed to feel the

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need to apologize, while Palestinians did not. Ibtisam (P) was fast to pick up on this asymmetry reversal and responded to Yoni: “I had a feeling that you do understand the problems of the Palestinians better, but it’s contingent. As soon as the other side doesn’t meet your expectations [doesn’t apologize] you’re disappointed. And I wonder what it is we should apologize about.” In everyday life the asymmetry which the teachers talked about is obvious: Jews are the powerful ones. Yet this asymmetry is hidden and not spoken about – something that clearly benefits the majority group (i.e., the Jews). In this particular dialogic encounter, there seemed to be little choice for the Jews but to acknowledge the power asymmetry to some degree. This acknowledgment, however, paradoxically works against the Palestinians in the long run, for while in the present dialogue it creates the impression that Jews recognize the asymmetry, this recognition is never really transferred to everyday life in the real world outside. Ela (J) alluded to this when she engaged in a rather long statement about a possible (and forbidden in Israeli hegemonic terms) comparison between the plight of the Palestinians and that of Jews in the Holocaust: I feel that there are two historical narratives and that it blends in with personal feelings. I know that the Palestinians take more of an interest in our narratives than we do in theirs. Sixty years after Auschwitz, there’s now discussion of Americans and English knowing what was going on and why they didn’t bomb the railroad tracks. It’s said that they didn’t know what they’d do with another million Jews. And I see how important it is that the Palestinians know my story. [Addressing Fatem] My grandfather is the eighth generation [of his family to live] in Israel. He didn’t immigrate. The Palestinian narrative doesn’t threaten me. When Manal [P] spoke, I thought, “speak. I want to hear.”

Ibtisam (P) reacted by putting what seemed to be a rhetorical question to the Jewish teachers. She asked if they meant to do something with the knowledge gained from paying attention to the Palestinian narrative. She then turned to Yoni (J) and added, “You said it angers you if a Palestinian doesn’t condemn terrorist attacks. What angers you? I’m not a saint. I’m dying of fear. I haven’t done anything. What should I apologize for?” The teachers in a rather short time were able to cover the totality of the Jewish-Palestinian conflict, as if their participation in the joint educational experiment had made no difference other than the fact that painful issues had been discussed openly. The themes of perpetrator– victim, “terrorism” (and its naming), memory, and the Holocaust are some of the issues behind the tensions in this workshop. The workshop made the significance of these issues clear and substantiated the teachers’ discussion. Most importantly, the teachers seemed to fear “symmetry” in relation to the role of victimhood; thus, each argument raised on one

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side was countered on the other. The teachers’ discussion shows that the existence of two oppositional perpetrator–victim narratives is a paralyzing aspect in the teachers’ efforts to find common ground. Collective and historical memories are crucial to understanding perpetrator–victim categorizations, because they imply simultaneous functioning of the past and the present, and shape the identity of perpetrators and victims, both during and after instances of collective trauma (Kosicki, 2007). Gillis (1994) suggests that “identities and memories are not things we think about, but things we think with. As such they have no existence beyond our politics, our social relations, and our histories” (p. 5, added emphasis). As Ricoeur (2004) has suggested, not only is the past traumatic memory continually replayed in the present, but that replaying defies a structured ontology, allowing for the simultaneous (selective) activation of different memories as well as their repetition. This argument rests on the view that past (hi)stories and their legacies are essentially “present” in contemporary collective and individual identities, institutions and distributions of socio-economic and political resources (Streich, 2002). Historical legacies embedded in the social structures of a society cannot be easily wished away or denied (Booth, 1999); therefore, it is immensely difficult to subvert the perpetrator–victim duality, as both sides involved in a conflict construct their own group as victim of the other side as perpetrator. This is shown vividly in the discussion that erupted in the last session of the workshop described here. For the next six hours in the program, two historians teaching a joint course on history and the historical narratives of Palestinians and Jews at the university took the floor. Their presentation included a description of the university course and the curricular considerations which guided them in the development of it; a comparative historical analysis of the main events of the 1948 war as documented and interpreted by Palestinian and Jewish historians; a detailed historical analysis of the expulsion from the Palestinian village of Majd al-Krum (the Palestinian scholar’s village of origin) and the executions of nine Palestinian inhabitants at the hands of Israeli forces during the 1948 war; a review of new research findings on the 1948 war; and a discussion surrounding the legitimacy of oral history in current historical research. In the last session of the workshop, after the Jewish and Palestinian scholars who presented to the group the historical narratives of each group left, participants were asked to relate to what has been learned/discussed throughout the workshop. Miriam (J) said, “I identify with the weak side – with the difficulty of defending my home . . . When they lined them up [in Majd al-Krum to be executed] against the wall and shot them, the pain, the humiliation, it reminded me of the Holocaust.

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I’m sorry that I mention it.” Ela (J) was critical of the participation of the Jewish scholar, who in her view should have been more supportive of the Jewish Zionist historical perspective, for she believed that as the issues were presented not enough emphasis was given to the need for Jewish survival. Fatem (P) responded by asking Ela (J) if her remarks implied she agreed with the expulsion of the Palestinians from the village, to which Ela reacted by stating “No! I’m glad the results were as they were. I wish they could be less tragic . . . [but] my truth is my truth.” These types of contradicting statements were usually left untouched in the dialogue, maybe because of the difficulties implied in critically reflecting on them in a mixed group which not only had to work together in the future in the context of the workshop, but also regularly worked together in the context of the schools. Next, Manal (P) added: “It was strange for me to hear Miriam (J) saying it [bringing up the Holocaust in the ’48 context].” To this Miriam promptly reacted, showing her discomfort: “I apologize. There’s no comparison.” And Ela (J) agreed, saying, “No comparison.” Manal (P) had clearly touched upon a taboo which, though hinted at before, only now received close attention. Yoni, adopting the traditional Jewish Zionist posture, reacted to Manal, saying he was not ready to allow any comparisons to be made between the Holocaust and Nakba.5 He added that he saw no possibility of comparing events where eight or nine people (in the Majd al-Krum execution) were killed with others where 12,000 people were killed daily (in the Holocaust). Ibtisam (P) countered with: “For us it is a catastrophe [the Nakba]. I know that the Holocaust is a sensitive subject for Jews. Today, I see it as a catastrophe for all humanity. But instead of enabling me to identify with that catastrophe, the Jews treat it as a taboo and tell me not to come near.” Manal (P) added, “Suddenly, I discover that there’s no place [for the Palestinian catastrophe]!” In general, there are many reasons why any group might develop its own victimological narrative (Kosicki, 2007). Todorov (1996) has written of the moral legitimation that victimhood brings, and Cairns and Roe (2003) have referred to the social and political benefits of victimhood in that a shared sense of victimization in collective memory “can be seen as 5

Nakba Day (Arabic:   , yawm in-nakbah), meaning “day of the catastrophe,” is an annual day of commemoration for the Palestinian people of the anniversary of the creation of Israel. It is held every May 15, the day after the anniversary of Israel’s independence according to the Gregorian calendar. This day marks the expulsions and flight of Palestinians from their towns and villages in the face of Jewish and later Israeli troop advances and their displacement from Palestine, and the loss of their property.

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an element of promoting group cohesion” (p. 175). Barkan (2000) also explains that the relative strength of the victim grows when one assumes such a position in discussing the past. In this manner the legitimacy of the victim’s claims becomes the victim’s political power; the discourse on victims and perpetrators, then, turns the victim’s claims into a political tool used in all possible arenas – political, educational and social. The aforementioned contributions clarify how memory and history can essentially be used by social/political groups to perpetuate their benefits from victimhood. The following excerpts from our ethnographic records of the final session of the workshop further illustrate this point. In these excerpts, participants once again reflected on the difficulties encountered in their schools when dealing with historical narratives. Nur (P) shared the pressures sensed by teachers in the school during the days of national commemoration. She stated that teachers always tried to balance and weigh how much time was given to Kafur Qassem (where forty-nine villagers making their way back from their fields to their homes were slaughtered in cold blood by the Israeli army in 1956) and the Holocaust, and so did parents. In this context she emphasized the worries of Jewish parents and doubts whether they had ever heard about details from the Nakba, yet they were concerned for the possible implications of presenting those events as equal to the Holocaust. She closed her statement saying, “I have no problem standing [to attention during the sounding of the commemorative Holocaust Day siren] on holidays . . . it [the Holocaust] is against humanity. Either we stay together and we reach equality or we keep going round in the same circle.” Reuma (J) pointed to her own struggles to manage the harsh outside realities, the ministry’s official supervision and her own as well as her students’ feelings during memorial days at school: I try to give the kids the feeling that we should not compare the pain of each group. I ran into this for the first time when the Arab group demonstratively did not stand up on Holocaust Day. It was the year of Jenin, three years ago [when, in 2002, the Israeli military conducted what they called an anti-terrorist raid for almost two weeks, causing much destruction in the city and many casualties], the Arab children said “we won’t stand.” It was important to me to pass on my feelings. You can stand up on Holocaust Day without taking away from what happened [in Jenin] . . . They saw on Al-Jazeera what happened. I understood . . . We don’t have ceremonies [for the Nakba]. This is forced upon us. [ . . . ] There are no Arab ceremonies so it’s hard for them [the Arab children] to stand up on [Jewish memorial days].

To show how he related to this struggle, Yoni (J) offered a biographical note about his relationship with a German girl whose grandfather was a Nazi. He explained he saw no problem in having such a relationship, for

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his German girlfriend was born in a different reality, and compared this situation to the children of the school who were not born in the 1948 war; he closed his statement saying, “We put the children into [school] and ruin them.” Yoni seemed to point to the function of schools as socializing agents for the nation state, which as such ruin the “natural” inclination of children to be able to overcome the past and allow for reconciliation. Fatem (P) added her story: Everyone has their own problems. You have yours and we have ours. There’s no place that’s perfect. The hardest thing for me, after we spoke about the Nakba, the expulsion, massacres etc., was when one pupil [a Jew] told me that she lives in an Arab house in Ein Karem [an originally Palestinian neighborhood in Jerusalem today inhabited by Jews]. I didn’t know what to tell her. I hadn’t noticed that I had a child like that. I didn’t know what to answer. A nine-year-old girl. I felt that the girl felt guilty, and I didn’t want her to feel guilty. Yesterday it was hard for Ela to express her feelings. If it’s hard for Ela, then how much more for a child. If she [the pupil] had been an adult, I would have asked her how she felt living in an Arab house. I would have confronted her. There’s a place for you to do something, take responsibility, acknowledge [the injustice]. How do I answer that child?

Yoni (J) responded quickly. In his reaction he seemed to be threatened, as if refusing to accept what could be seen as the logical outcome of the story, that in the case of an adult, and not that of a nine-year-old child, returning the house would be a reasonable expectation. It seems that despite his self-proclaimed liberal views, Yoni (not unlike other teachers) was uncomfortable with the possibility that the hegemonic victim– perpetrator duality was somehow challenged. National identity had done a good job, once again, reminding Yoni who he “really” was. The entanglement of memory, identity and victimization: a background explanation The above evidence from the teachers’ workshops exemplifies how memory plays such a powerful role in structuring national identity (Kansteiner, 2002; VanSledright, 2008) and sustaining a sense of self in and through the communities in which individuals belong and relate to others (Epstein, 2001; Middleton and Edwards, 1990). The connection between memory and identity highlights two important issues: First, it emphasizes the political value of collective memories because past representations are preserved through social and ideological practices, such as commemoration sites and rituals; and second, the connection between memory and identity suggests that memory is relational, that is, memory is constructed in particular social and political contexts that encourage

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certain versions of national identity (Conway, 2003; Wineburg et al., 2007). To say that memory is socially and politically situated is not to deny that it has an emotional dimension unique to each individual; on the contrary, memory is both individual and collective and is constituted in affective economies of shared remembering (Ahmed, 2004; Zembylas, 2008a; see also Chapter 7). Research in history and history education has repeatedly shown that narratives about the past are constructed and maintained to justify the nation state’s existence (Barton and McCully, 2005). These narratives are believed to be true and provide an underlying meaning and cohesion to a national group and its identity. Specifically, in societies suffering from intractable conflicts, these narratives tend to be partial and explain the conflict from narrow particularistic perspectives that justify the national self and condemn, exclude and devaluate the “enemy” and his narrative (E. Cole, 2007; Davies, 2004). If at all present, the narrative of the enemy is judged as morally inferior, while the enemy is depicted as immoral with irrational and manipulative views (Opotow, 2001). In his recent review of research on the construction of nation-state narratives through schooling in the United States, VanSledright (2008) documents a number of consequences of using history education as a means of constructing collective memory. These consequences include not only limited opportunities for students to achieve high-status cognitive capabilities but also an ideological indoctrination (i.e., Americanization) that excludes all others, that is, the non-white, Anglo and Christian. The communication of triumphal national narratives through the ways history education is practiced in the US, argues VanSledright, perpetuates exclusion, moralism and lack of multi-perspectival understanding of history. Similarly, in countries suffering from intractable conflict, these narratives tend to be partial and explain the conflict from narrow particularistic and moralistic perspectives of what “truth” is (McGlynn and Bekerman, 2007; McGlynn et al., 2009). In other words, there are powerful social and educational mechanisms that teach individuals from a young age who the victims and the perpetrators are. While students and teachers may view state-sanctioned curricula and textbooks as simply “the truth” about past collective memories, such tools are technologies (Foucault, 2003) formed and circulated to promote particular ideological practices. These technologies select and organize what can be legitimately known about the nation state, and legitimize both the existence and the governance of the nation state as normal and unproblematic (Montgomery, 2005). Drawing on Foucault, Montgomery (2005) explains that there are two mechanisms by which this happens: first, by selecting and organizing what can be legitimately known

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about the nation state and its supposedly glorious character (or its victimization in the hands of the “evil enemy”); and second, by legitimizing both the existence and governance of the nation state as normal and unproblematic. Analysts of political socialization through education emphasize that the discursive practices built around curricula, textbooks and everyday pedagogical practices can become overtly nationalistic in depicting the “evil enemy,” thus creating a social world of two opposing identity categories of “us” and “them,” “victims” and “perpetrators” (Davies, 2004). History education often implores students to remember the nation’s glories, leaders and warriors through practices which aim at establishing a historical consciousness that “aligns forgetting with evil forces” (Eppert, 2003, p. 186) which threaten to destroy the nation’s identity and its very existence. Modern nation states have long made use of history education to promote a strong sense of belonging in its citizenry (Nash et al., 1998). In areas of conflict, history education becomes a central political tool in the prolongation of conflict (Bar-Tal, 1999). If one (luckily) does not share the psychologized perspectives which substantiate most cross-cultural-encounter research, one may argue that teachers first and foremost work to make a living, sometimes under very hard conditions. Undoubtedly, psychological and/or ideological issues come into the picture, but these issues do not necessarily have to be regarded almost as pre-social and predetermined in absolute terms. Yet in a psychologized environment there is an inclination to speak about coming to school because of ideological needs or convictions. When psychologized rhetoric is predominantly used, we allow the world to be organized in the ideological way we want to approach critically. Yet, students and teachers are not “dopes” answering the mandates of the “politics of memory” (Simon, 2005; Todorov, 2003); instead, a sense of rupture with official historical narratives and essentialized identities and memories may be found in challenging narrative closure around the perpetrator–victim duality. Some of the pedagogical tools that can encourage this to happen constitute a central concern in this book and are discussed in the following chapter.

5

(Im)possible openings

Continuing from the previous chapter, here we describe and analyze the difficulties the teachers participating in our workshop experienced in overcoming their need to uphold a strong sense of identification with the history of their own communities, even when they are provided with clearer alternatives to hegemonic narratives. The results are not so encouraging in relation to the potential of educators to help overcome situations of intractable conflict, even within contexts specifically devised to encourage dialogue, as are the bilingual integrated Jewish-Palestinian schools in which these teachers develop their professional lives. Yet, our concern here is to find possible openings that may disrupt hegemonic narratives despite the immense challenges that exist. The task of disrupting hegemonic narratives is so challenging because teachers, like other adults, often invest strong emotions in particular historical narratives and ideologies with which they identify (Boler and Zembylas, 2003; Zembylas, 2007). Therefore, there are two stories we want to tell in this chapter: on one hand, the pessimistic story is that teachers will not change their identifications with hegemonic narratives unless radical structural transformations take place – that is, social, political and educational transformations that somehow undermine the power of hegemonic narratives; on the other hand, the optimistic story is that an ongoing agonistics of raising critical issues regarding one’s identifications with hegemonic narratives does offer openings to take responsibility for both the challenges and the dialogic possibilities that are created in the process. In this chapter we tell both stories, showing how they are especially captivating to those working to develop history curricula that address multiple perspectives, particularly the perspectives of those engaged in conflict. We are especially interested in highlighting two possible openings in this effort: first, the importance of contextualizing conflicts in the wider social and political arenas and the investigation of the seemingly insurmountable contextual forces which might impede efforts for peaceful coexistence and reconciliation both in society and schools; and, second, the value of developing empathy through the exchange of (also 86

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forgotten) memories, without abandoning asymmetries (e.g., asymmetries in terms of the trauma experienced by conflicting communities), while being open to possible symmetries (e.g., symmetries on the basis of common human suffering). The latter opening – the only one that is realized in our workshops – provides a useful point of departure for establishing common ground; the former opening – which unfortunately has not materialized in our workshops, despite the attempts to encourage its use – shows that challenging contested narratives has to move beyond a superficial level. Our analysis extends the work that has been done so far in two ways: First, it shows the multiple tensions and challenges in sorting through historical narratives that are brought into the context of peace education efforts; and, second, while it tells a story of discouraging results in terms of the potential of teachers to help overcome situations of intractable conflict, even within contexts specifically devised for this purpose it seeks openings that base such efforts on taking responsibility for both the difficulties and the dialogic possibilities that are created. These two contributions enrich ongoing debates on how to gain a deeper understanding of the implications of teachers’ selective drawing of historical narratives to justify their own sense of belonging. Back to the teachers’ workshops As we began to see in our previous chapter, both groups of teachers in the context of our workshop reflect the many years of socialization within their communities; this socialization makes clear for each community that the others are and have always been the “perpetrators.” Each community’s fears are built on hegemonic narratives that they have always been victims and they will continue to be so in the hands of the other community. In teachers’ perceptions, the sense of victimhood is entangled with issues of memory and identity. For example, the Holocaust features as a central point of reference for Jewish teachers, providing the fundamental ground for their current sense of victimhood. The Nakba constitutes a major event for Palestinian teachers, providing the beginning of their own sense of victimhood that continues to the present. In teachers’ narratives the logic of self-victimization is manifested in the difficulty of acknowledging the other’s victimization. This difficulty is produced by and produces the construction of a collective memory and identity that is cited over and over again, and complicates the finding of openings for mutual respect and understanding. The Jews expect symmetry from the Palestinians on a variety of levels. They would like the Palestinians to condemn “terrorism” unconditionally – terrorism as understood from

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the Jewish perspective, thus in a way they expect Palestinians to recognize the 1948 war as the Archimedean point from which the discussion should start. Paradoxically, this reasoning runs counter to the one symmetry Jews will not allow for, the one which would portray the Nakba as similar to the Holocaust and subsequently Jews themselves as perpetrators. Moreover, the Jewish position denies the structural asymmetry entailed in the present social, political, economic arrangements in Israel which have positioned Palestinians in a periphery not easily overcome. Such expectations strengthen the sense on the Palestinian side that even Jews close to them and supposedly having liberal views (since they work in the bilingual schools) will offer recognition, but at the price of Palestinians denying their past memory. The symmetry that the Palestinians are after is one that the Zionist Jewish ethos will not allow for, that is, the recognition that the Nakba and Holocaust belong in the same realm. Palestinian teachers have no difficulty in declaring that they realize the differences and acknowledge the Holocaust as a constitutive event not only for the Jews but for the whole of humanity, and expect that within the local realities the Nakba and its outcomes will allow for a similar interpretation. From their perspective the 1948 war is not over yet, and, with care, its outcomes can be paralleled to those of the Holocaust. Historically, the Palestinian sense of victimhood has also evolved and changed over time in relation to issues of memory and identity. The conflict has hindered the development of a transcendent identity for Jews and Palestinians and created a state in which one group’s identity requires negating the identity of the other (Kelman, 1999). Beliefs about self-victimization are functional, for they delegate the responsibility for both the outbreak of the conflict and the subsequent violence to the opponent (Bar-Tal, 1998). In the context of our workshops, the Palestinian teachers’ sense of victimhood is grounded in a number of collective memories as well as school incidents that show the traumatic consequences of Jewish hegemony in the State of Israel. Heedful of the Jewish teachers’ efforts to deny any form of symmetry, the Palestinian teachers do not imply a monopoly of victimization today; they do not simply ask for acknowledgment of Palestinian victimhood (even in terms of asymmetry), but more importantly they want their Jewish colleagues to “do” something after listening to the Palestinian narratives. “Official history,” however, seems to be in the way. Official history and the prevention of symmetry What gets defined as “official history” reflects the power of certain groups and ideologies in society to define the past according to their interests, often by silencing alternative and competing memory discourses

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(Crawford, 1995; Phillips, 1998). Official history, then, leaves little space for alternative narratives. Also, official history prevents the establishment of any symmetry in comparing the status of victimhood between conflicting groups, because victimhood is part of the nation state’s effort to gain moral power in the political arena; there is a moralistic belief that one’s own victimization is unique and has to be acknowledged as such. In general, official historical narratives – reflecting a nation state’s norms and values – are ideological and political in the sense that they involve systematic efforts (through various state mechanisms, including schooling) to establish particular “truths” (Conway, 2003; Epstein, 2001). Teachers play a vital role in socializing children to the “truths” of the nation and its enemies (VanSledright, 2008). Through their teaching and the official history they put forward, teachers can pass their fears, prejudices and biases on to a new generation, helping to maintain conflictual relations and prevent reconciliation (Bar-Tal, 2000). Alternatively, it can also be argued that teachers who teach in an honest and balanced way are likely to help soften ingrained hatreds and stereotypes and strengthen reconciliation prospects (Tawil et al., 2003). However, this potential can manifest itself only when teachers themselves critically reflect on and challenge directly their beliefs, emotions and assumptions, and formulate an alternative to the partisan histories encountered everywhere. To be able to do that, teachers need dialogic opportunities and the supporting structures to begin considering alternative or reconstituted narratives (Ron et al., in press). There is already a rather long line of research regarding the importance of teacher knowledge and beliefs and their impact on what students learn in schools (Clandinin and Connelly, 1996; Clark and Peterson, 1986; Clark and Yinger, 1987; Milner, 2005). In addition, teachers have been shown to hold onto stereotypical perspectives which they have internalized from the multiple social settings they inhabit, and in turn limit the examples they employ, the questions they pose and the answers they validate in their educational practice (Apple and King, 1990). Others (Gay and Kirkland, 2003; J. Gordon, 2005) have pointed to the importance of teachers questioning their knowledge and being reflective on their own biographical development when approaching teaching contexts in which race, ethnicity and cultural variations are salient. Critical scholars have called on teachers and teacher educators to engage in a careful examination of their verbal and non-verbal transactions, as well as an examination of curricular materials, to help them uncover the ways in which these might perpetuate stereotypical perspectives and inequalities in classroom activity (Gray and Leith, 2004; Pinar et al., 2002). These issues have been shown to be of particular relevance in societies suffering from intractable conflict. Donnelly (2004) has shown that if integrated

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schools in Northern Ireland are to develop cohesion and tolerance, then teachers’ own stereotypes and assumptions need to be recognized as pivotal to the value transmission process. Bekerman (2005, 2009e) has also emphasized the need for a careful examination of the bilingual and multicultural educational strategies that are used in peace educational settings. In general there have been many calls for teacher education and training to provide opportunities for teachers to explore the impact of hegemonic historical narratives on teaching and learning (Bar-On, 2002; Bar-On and Kassem, 2004; Bekerman, 2009a). These calls highlight the need for teachers to develop critical historical understanding if they are going to encourage critical thinking in their own students as well. Critical historical understanding helps teachers to gain a more comprehensive understanding of historical events by critically comparing and contrasting the various perspectives that are constructed; to develop a deeper understanding of the historical relationships between conflicting groups; and to construct a more dynamic picture of the ongoing development of the relationships between nations and groups. Research on the implications of historical narratives for the promotion of critical understanding of history emphasize that it is important for teachers to find new ways that are disruptive to taken-for-granted assumptions about a group’s identity as well as the potential symmetries or asymmetries in being victims and/or perpetrators (Zembylas and Bekerman, 2008). Alternative ways of negotiating one’s narratives – e.g., uncovering forgotten memories that are not part of the official history (see Chapter 12) – establish new understandings of personal and collective identities that enable empathy, multi-perspectivity, contextualization of events and solidarity (Dyson, 1994; Hill, 2000; Ostovich, 2005). Yet, in some cases, as we show below, this is easier said than done; notions of critical historical understanding are not easily developed, especially when the insurmountable influence of sociopolitical context and history dominate everyday school realities. The workshop events (part 2) Three weeks after the workshop events we described in the previous chapter, in the first activity of our third three-day workshop, we asked teachers in three mixed groups to try to develop a joint Memorial Day1 /Nakba 1

Israel’s official Memorial Day (Hebrew: hbyah twlw[p y[gpnlw lar`y twkr[m ylljl @wrkzh !wy, lit. Israeli Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism Memorial Day) is observed on the fourth day of the month of Iyar on the Hebrew calendar, always preceding the next day’s celebrations of Israel’s Independence Day on the fifth day of Iyar, the anniversary of the Proclamation of the State of Israel in 1948.

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ceremony for their bilingual school. Though at first some teachers resisted the idea, all groups were able to prepare a draft for a joint ceremony by the end of the activity. For the most part these drafts presented a ceremony built upon the traditional patterns of the regular ceremonies conducted for Memorial Day with added elements which, for the most part, presented in full the Palestinian historical narrative and/or paralleled the pain of both populations during the 1948 war. The discussion that followed raised a number of interesting issues. Nur (P) said: “I always wanted to make a common ceremony, focusing on the pain of both peoples. In war nobody wins, everyone loses. Those who lose family . . . To neutralize it politically and focus on human pain.” To this Fatem (P) added, “I have no problem with a common ceremony. I have a problem with Nakba and Memorial Day together, where the only common thing is pain. It’s hard to say. Memorial Day, I don’t know . . . if I think of Memorial Day I think of soldiers, who are also people, but they went out and killed people who died in the Nakba.” Yoni (J) agreed with Fatem and says, “That’s absolutely true in both directions. Those who died on our side were killed by the other side and vice versa.” Yoni seemed worried at Fatem’s statement – a statement that disallowed the creation of symmetry on the basis of common suffering by both people. As before, here again there seemed to be a double effort on the part of the Jews, on one hand, to prevent any parallel being drawn between Nakba and Holocaust, and on the other hand, to secure such a parallel for the present situation of armed conflict between the groups. Lili (J) aligned with Fatem (P) but in a surprising direction that was different from that taken by Yoni. She said: “I try to think if we could take part in a ceremony in memory of German soldiers who died in World War Two,” to which Reuma (J) added, “Ever since I joined the school I dreamed of a joint ceremony and now I think that it is possible. When Lili said what she said, I thought, wow, I couldn’t do a thing like that [joint ceremony with the Germans] but I think there are points at which we can meet.” Yoni (J) hinted again at the need to overcome differences. This time he tried to achieve this through the need to forget: “I feel that the memory of the human race is something we have to overcome in order to live a normal life.” Yoni’s statement is not fully clear. But if it is considered in the context of his previous statements, it seems to expect “forgetting” to be part of the Palestinian experience, as if asking them to set a memory boundary starting with 1948. Fatem (P) rejected Yoni’s perspective on memory: “Memory is in order not to forget, but to learn. I think that memory is very important for the future. The past of the Palestinians enables me to understand a simple people, tied to the land.”

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The discussion up to this point, though presenting serious difficulties, seemed to open up dialogical possibilities but, as we will see in the following, these short dialogical moments were soon shattered. The last activity on this day presented teachers with a short exercise, built as a semantic differential, in which they were asked to circle the number which best represented their position regarding the “ought to be” characteristics of the State of Israel. The three central questions related to whether the teachers believed the State of Israel should be “a state for all its citizens” or “a Jewish state,” “secular” or “religious,” “segregated” or “integrated.” Teachers were asked to mark on a scale from 1 (the least) to 8 (the most) the extent to which they would like to see each of the contrasting concepts of the differential characterize Israel. Ibtisam (P) was the first to volunteer to present her answers. In principle, her answers reflect her disposition towards a secular state, for all its citizens, egalitarian and segregated. Most Palestinians in the group offered very similar answers, with the most salient difference being the preference of some of them for a more or less religious state (not in the sense of a Jewish state but one in which religion has a say). On their side Jews reflected almost exactly opposite views, presenting a state which needs to be defined as Jewish. They too were somewhat divided on their preference regarding the religiosity needed for the state, but again they all agreed on it being a segregated one. Some within the Jewish group, those who throughout had presented more liberal views regarding the conflict, were aware that their choices betrayed somewhat their previously declared liberal outlooks and tried to explain. Yoni (J) said: “I couldn’t decide between a Jewish state or a state for all citizens. In all of my decisions I felt I had to add a proviso. I’d choose in favor of a Jewish state at the expense of equality and individual rights.” Reuma (J) was also ambivalent about her choice; she said, “I also wavered between a state for all citizens and a Jewish one, and I chose 3. If I could be assured that I wouldn’t be ‘erased’ in a few generations, I’d go for number 1. [There’s a fear that] if the Arabs were in the majority, they would kill us.” After these remarks there was a long period of silence, with the facilitator failing to engage Palestinian teachers to react, at which point he openly asked if anyone has an explanation for this silence, to which Luna (P) answered, “It’s like I got slapped. Here in the bi-national schools . . . I thought of the place where I live. I want to preserve my culture, tradition.” Ibtisam (P) adds, “Here I want a state for all citizens. But there should be a Palestinian state . . . I want to experience a state. We’re natives. We didn’t colonize.” To which Yoni (J) reacted by asking, “Let’s say now

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there’s a Palestinian state next to Israel. Doesn’t it look reasonable, [to have] a small state for Jews?” Though these issues have been mentioned already, Ibtisam’s last statement uncovers one of the cornerstones of the misunderstandings (principally on the side of the Jews) which feed the present conflictual situation. Jews seem to see the problem as one related to the need to find a solution to those Palestinians outside the internationally recognized borders of Israel (the ones which correspond to the end of the 1948 war) without attending to the plight of the Palestinian citizens of the State of Israel. Palestinians in Israel, without denying the need to provide a solution to the Palestinians in the territories, see themselves as the group Jews need to deal with in the search for a solution which, for them, is basically an issue of full equality within a civic state. Sua (P) reflected on the exchange and pointed to the ever circular arguments: “We keep returning to the same place. Even here. We’re in favor of equality etc., as long as we remain a Jewish state . . . I expected it, to tell you the truth. Maybe not from this group. It’s like the Ministry of Education. Learn two languages . . . [but don’t touch politics].” Sua (P) seemed to give up; there was no way anything could change. Reuma (J), well aware of the contradictions, brought the discussion to an end: “In a way it hurts even more that we don’t reach equality, considering who we are [teachers in the bilingual schools].” Ibtisam (P) closed with some optimism: “I worked with Reuma in Misgav, and there was movement, she does not hold the same positions that she held [when they met a couple of years ago].” Contested historical narratives: their implications in teaching and learning contexts Our analysis in this and the previous chapter shows in what ways teachers’ personal and collective perspectives are grounded in their different historical narratives. The teacher training that was provided made an attempt to supplement these narratives with alternative perspectives. The events of the workshops present a complex picture, one accompanied by some good and some bad news. The bad news is that throughout the workshops we became aware that, for the most part, the official history – the hegemonic one – is ever present and guides and shapes even this discussion. The good news is that teachers on both sides seem, at times, to be able to raise critical issues regarding their own positions concerning the hegemonic historical narrative and the educational implications of retaining or considering alternative narratives. The teachers do so even when identifying with or opposing the official narrative and express doubts as to its

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usefulness in the education of children. Jewish and Palestinian teachers are able to find points of agreement regarding what stands in the way of a better approach to history in schools. Consequently, there are two levels of discussing and analyzing the findings and implications of this work. At one level, there are the teachers’ different historical narratives and the struggles to find common ground; at another level, there are the teachers’ own realizations about the implications of contested historical narratives in the context of their teaching in integrated schools. In other words, although this book addresses intergroup dialogue within a context in which there is intractable conflict, the teachers’ discussions also raise issues particular to educators and their students in this context. Therefore, in the following discussion we will be addressing issues relevant to both of these levels of analysis. The teachers’ different historical narratives become obvious right from the beginning of the workshop, as shown in the previous chapter. When Yoni (J), for example, expresses his initial views – views that both position him in the left active-peace-seeking side of the political map and present him as someone still able to fully understand those Israeli Jews who participate in the “legitimate” activities of the armed forces (while at the same time indicating his reservations towards Palestinians who do not condemn terrorism) – all that we witness in the development of the workshop has already been present. In other words, what we witness is a circular argumentation which, though at times upset by some new information or reflective path, seems to stabilize in a pattern which leaves almost no space for transformation. Jewish teachers are the ones who attach themselves to a deterministic perspective while seemingly perceiving their experience as a given. Palestinian teachers find it the most difficult to speak openly even with those Jews assumed to be close to them or with the children at the school not considered responsible for the present situation. They are the ones who suffered and still suffer the consequences of past and present politics, and resent the expectations on the part of the Jews to see the present situation in symmetrical terms. Palestinians contest the Jewish expectation for both symmetry and asymmetry: symmetry regarding the present political situation in Israel and its conflict with the Palestinian people; asymmetry regarding the non-equivalence between the way Jews suffered in the Holocaust and the way Palestinians suffer at the hands of Jews. These concerns about symmetry and asymmetry are “transferred” in the efforts to develop a joint Memorial Day/Nakba ceremony for their bilingual school. It is truly compelling and at the same time troubling to remember that these teachers teach at a school in which it is assumed that teachers

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are more open-minded. Yet, the hegemonic historical narratives are so powerful that few openings are left even in “alternative” settings (BarTal, 2000; Tawil et al., 2003). This should not be surprising, of course, because schools do not exist in a political vacuum. And yet, both groups of teachers have opportunities in the context of this workshop to reflect on the many years of socialization they have gone through within their communities. The critical insights presented by the Jewish and Palestinian scholars teaching at the workshop – insights that clearly pointed to a wide agreement among historians that most of the official Jewish Zionist history presented at schools regarding the events of 1948 is mythical – do not seem to allow for much change in the positions of the Jewish teachers. This lack of change makes it even more difficult to allow for trust to develop between the two groups and bring about some mutual respect that would also begin to question the existing (normalizing) role of schooling and of teachers more particularly (E. Cole, 2007; Zembylas and Bekerman, 2008). A possible opening for dialogical possibilities is offered when the discussion focuses on taking responsibility and acknowledging common human suffering (Zembylas, 2008a). There are moments in the conversation when recognizing human pain seems to open up some possibilities for convergence, based on empathizing with each other’s suffering. For example, Reuma’s understanding why Palestinian children refuse to stand on Holocaust Day, Fatem’s empathizing with the feelings of a Jewish girl, and Lili’s suggestion that it was about time to have common Memorial Day/Nakba ceremonies are examples of how this “difficult” dialogue grounded in different historical narratives creates opportunities to raise issues particular to these teachers and their students in this context. These small openings (Zembylas, 2007) constitute possibilities for cultivating an alternative political consciousness and criticality against fixed and reified categorizations of the past. The presence of these possibilities does not necessarily imply any grand transformations, and nor do they foreclose any interruption. These examples are, even momentarily, disruptive of the teachers’ dominant claims about having a moral monopoly of victimization, because they call for solidarity with the other group on the basis of common human suffering. Those who are involved in educational efforts in societies suffering from intractable conflict know very well the daunting task of transformation (Zembylas, 2008a). However, the identification of small openings on the basis of common suffering offers a point of departure for going beyond victims and perpetrators and propelling teachers into a process of re-narrativization. These few instances show that reclaiming forgotten connections with the “enemy

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group” involves acts of self-criticality and resistance to the grand narratives of victimization. What also comes to light through these examples are the teachers’ multiple dilemmas and ambivalences related to both their conceptions of historical narratives and their everyday teaching practices. The role of teachers in these contexts is even more complicated because historical narratives and everyday teaching practices are part of the wider cultural frame within which a sense of belonging is created (Huyssen, 1995; MacIntyre, 1981). Consequently, it becomes apparent that these teachers are faced with a profound tension: The Jewish frame alienates Palestinians and the Palestinian one alienates the Jews; this alienation has important implications for these teachers’ everyday teaching practices. Both groups seem sincerely to want to overcome this tension, but they do not seem to be able to find the way. And even if they do within the limits of the workshop (and this only barely), in the activity in which teachers are asked in mixed groups to develop a joint Memorial Day/Nakba ceremony, they consider these solutions not to be applicable in the outside world, that is, in their everyday teaching practices. On the other hand, as we have noted in the previous chapter, social participants are not “dopes” unwillingly fulfilling their tasks in the social sphere; agents have multiple goals for actions, while cultural encounters do not ever allow for only one action accompanied by one set of meanings (Wertsch, 1998; Wertsch and Polman, 2001). This is evident when teachers – Palestinians and Jews alike – struggle to find openings for negotiating their narratives and their educational implications, and in the process tell stories that contain some ambivalence; that is, stories which offer some forms of recognition to the other group, thus allowing for some convergence in their discussions. Yet, the teachers fail to move beyond the recognition level and contextualize the conflict in the wider ideological and political discourses. For reasons we have already discussed, the teachers do not take that extra step needed to investigate the contextual forces that impede efforts for peaceful coexistence and reconciliation in both Israeli society and schools. In other words, in spite of some convergence as well as some possible ideas that could be implemented, the question of what can be done pragmatically is difficult to answer. Lomsky-Feder (2004) has shown that disassociating, for example, memorial ceremonies from national demands is not easy even in educational institutions ready to challenge basic cultural assumptions. Teachers in our workshops, even when presenting alternative ideas on their own, doubt their power to overcome the demands of “habitus” and recognize that they themselves embody, at least partly, the hegemonic perspectives mentioned above.

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On a personal level, reclaiming forgotten connections with the other requires a constant openness and criticality towards oneself and a willingness to recognize the other’s (forgotten) memories of suffering. In this way individuals begin to see themselves as interdependent and vulnerable to injustices (see also VanSledright, 2008). Clearly, the cultural circulation of memories of others’ suffering does not always result in formations of solidarity. However, solidarity on the basis of common (i.e., not the “same”) suffering offers a way out of the sanitized narratives of selective memories within which the narrow “us” is barricaded against the fearful “them” (Ashley, 1998). Concluding remarks We believe that the workshops we developed and described above offered some support for dialogic possibilities to teachers. Still we know from the reports of these teachers that upon returning to school, they were overwhelmed by the school realities and concluded that not much could be changed, at least at the initial stage. For example, those who attempted to implement a joint Memorial Day/Nakba ceremony were promptly convinced by colleagues, administrators and the community that such efforts would not succeed. This outcome could be interpreted as a product of the immediate school context and of those stakeholders who had not participated in the dialogues conducted in the sphere of trust created in the workshops. Our take on this collapse and on the ongoing failures of teachers to stick to the critical perspectives developed in the workshops – perspectives which were flittingly adopted in their own narrations at different points in the dialogue – points to the systemic challenges encountered in the wider sociopolitical spheres. Teachers acknowledged these contextual constraints in the workshops. Multiple authorial voices, parents’ expectations, the Ministry of Education, and their own socialization and perspectives built in dialogue with the surrounding context stood in their way. As much as we tried in our workshops, we were not successful in helping teachers to re-story (Randal, 1995) so as to undermine the authority of the unwritten social context script. Despite these challenges, there seem to be three important issues that need to be taken into consideration when developing such intergroup encounters among teachers. First, what come to light are the inherent tensions in the teachers’ narratives. The teachers, even when presenting alternative narratives of their own, express doubts about their power to overcome the taken-for-granted perpetrator–victim narratives. Yet, as Ritchie and Wilson (2002) suggest, it is important that teachers are given the opportunity to reflect on their own stories within supportive contexts

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and exchange memories and stories with teachers of the conflicting group (Bar-On, 2002; Bar-On and Kassem, 2004; Bekerman, 2009a); only then they can begin to interrupt taken-for-granted perpetrator–victim narratives and compose new narratives of identity and educational practice. This means investing seriously in a continued dialogue which would involve the educational community (teachers, parents, principals, children) and would try to consider how to empower their unique voices so as to enter into dialogue with the hegemonic narrative that prevents reconciliation (Bar-Tal, 1999, 2002). This would also mean opening up for communal discussion and as part of the curriculum some of the issues raised in the workshops the teachers attended, and working together to elaborate potentially different understandings and solutions towards developing the tolerance needed to recognize diverse perspectives. Second, contextualization of the different historical narratives seems to be an important aspect of facilitated dialogues with teachers. By reinserting their own oral stories within the terms and concepts of a hegemonic language, teachers can begin to “translate” the hegemonic narrative, and in this translation alternative narratives will enter the mainstream discourse. The narrative tensions between hegemonic narratives and personal oral stories (such as the realization of common suffering in our teachers’ workshop) are related to what Ritchie and Wilson (2002) have referred to as the interplay of multiple and often conflicting narratives of professional and personal history (in our case, teachers as Jews or Palestinians and as teachers). Stories are not innocent (Randal, 1995); variations in stories constitute one of the most common sources of conflict in human affairs on all levels, from individual relationships to entire societies in which different sides tell differing stories. Although the use of narrative in the educational process implemented in the workshops led to a generative move that enabled teachers to uncover their assumptions, the teachers seemed not to be able for the most part to move beyond prescribed versions of knowing (Greene, 1995). As stated, what seemed to stand in their way was the larger institutional-social-political context which invaded the sphere of trust created in the workshops. Finally, it is important to remind teachers and teacher educators that they are not alone; even if “personally” they wish to change, there are too many voices around and in this sense the school becomes a difficult and dangerous place for change. Therefore, this is one more indication that educational change needs to be understood as very closely connected to the sociopolitical situation outside school and to structural change; education alone cannot and will not take the place of political and structural change. Educational interventions alone – no matter how critical they are – cannot go far without structural changes that support these

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interventions. At the same time, changes in the wider system, though much needed, do not seem to be the best thing we can offer teachers already working in complex everyday realities. Clearly, the bilingual integrated schools cannot oppose the hegemonic forces openly; doing so would put their very existence at risk. Thus, even with teachers as dedicated as those participating in our workshops, in order to overcome conflict and forward peace and reconciliation it seems as if only structural change might engender the space needed for some forgetting to take place. And yet an ongoing agonistics of taking responsibility for keeping the dialogic possibilities open is the only pragmatic option left. Therefore, it seems valuable to interrogate systematically how narratives are formed around hegemonic claims about victims and perpetrators and to illustrate the paralyzing implications of these narratives. This idea requires that facilitated dialogues include opportunities for individual and collective reflection on multiple stories. Teachers need those opportunities to address the difficulties and openings in ways that acknowledge the weight of memory and identity claims, as these are situated in contexts and historicized (Bekerman, 2002a; Maoz, 2004) and yet are not locked into them. The profession would indeed be well served if pre-service and in-service teachers were given opportunities in their teacher education classes to engage in critical reflection on their selective drawing of historical narratives to justify their own sense of victimization (Conway, 2003; Kosicki, 2007; Wineburg et al., 2007). Teachers are essentially asked to unpack their cherished beliefs and comfort zones in order to deconstruct the ways in which they have learned to see, feel and act in relation to taken-for-granted narratives (Zembylas, 2008a). Teachers must recognize in what ways their taken-for-granted narratives define how and what one chooses to see, and conversely, not to see (e.g., how certain stories privilege some groups at the expense of others, and how common suffering might offer new beginnings). We come back to this in the last part of the book when we argue that teachers and students need to become “critical design experts.”

6

The everyday challenges of teaching children from conflicting groups

In the two previous chapters we became acquainted with the many difficulties encountered by teachers when confronting contested issues as these relate to their immediate national contexts and learning experiences. In this and the following chapter we will focus on daily classroom practices and events. We will see how classroom topics are invaded by the wider sociocultural and political context unexpectedly and/or intentionally. We will also see how teachers – with their own internal struggles, concerns and ambivalences – are not always successful in their efforts to overcome these challenges and support open dialogue between children coming from conflicting groups. The integrated bilingual schools in Israel search for ways to overcome the difficulties concerning conflicting historical narratives which are perceived as the main obstacle towards reconciliation. Schools in the Republic of Cyprus (especially those in which Turkish-speaking students are enrolled) search for ways to overcome the challenges of teaching about peaceful coexistence, while the political problem remains unresolved and the Turkish occupation of the north part of Cyprus continues. In both cases the schools have to do this under the vigilant supervision of the education ministry and public opinion, knowing full well that any perceived deviations from the “official history” could create serious problems for teachers. As we have described earlier, official history leaves little space for alternative narratives in schools. For example, curricula in both Israel (Al-Haj, 2002, 2005; D. Gordon, 2005) and the Republic of Cyprus (Zembylas, 2008a, 2010a, in press) focus on Jewish and Greek nation-building, respectively, and exclude narratives that might question the hegemonic national identity. The classroom events described in this chapter – the first event comes from Israel and the second one from Cyprus – are excellent examples of how folk (historical) knowledge, that of the students and their teachers (none of whom are trained as history teachers), and the pedagogical practices adopted allow or do not allow for reconciliatory openings between students coming from conflicting groups. 100

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Two classroom events Event 1 The following example is taken from a discussion in the third grade of a bilingual school about the events of October 29, 1956. The date is that of a massacre that took place in the Israeli Arab village of Kafur Qassem, situated on the Green Line1 – at that time the de facto border between Israel and Jordan. The incident resulted in the deaths of fortynine Palestinian civilians, including six women and twenty-three children aged eight to seventeen, at the hands of the Israeli army. The discussion was led by two third-grade homeroom teachers. Uki, the Palestinian teacher, had worked at the school for four years and was much appreciated by the school authorities. Dalia, the Jewish teacher, was a newcomer to the school and had no proficiency in Arabic at the time of the recording. An interesting observation about this classroom session is that the students were not very much involved. For the most part, very short strings of conversation were recorded. Though it was promised by the teachers several times, the floor was never open for the students’ questions or comments. The teachers embarked on long descriptive and informational strings of conversation and these were not only translated, but also repeated through the session. In this rather long example, of which we present only a small extract, we want to highlight the “hidden” dialogue sustained by the two teachers when presenting the events of the massacre. After her attempt to clarify the historical events that surround the episode of Kafur Qassem, Uki (P) explained in great detail “the curfew” which brought about the massacre, emphasizing its harshness: the Palestinians, all the Arabs, didn’t agree that the Palestinian land would be split between the Palestinians [calls class to attention] and the Jews and that is why after they declared the state the Je– the Arabs protested, and they declared the war against Israel, the point is that during the period of this war Israel decided [calls class to attention] that there would be a curfew. What is a curfew, it is the first time you hear it, what word does it come from? . . . excellent, so [you can] only stay at home, it is forbidden to go outside, forbidden to open the windows, forbidden to open the door and this is how it was decided that there will be a curfew over Kafur Qassem – which is called? Yes D a curfew . . . in the night from

1

The term “Green Line” is used to refer to the 1949 armistice lines established between Israel and its neighbors (Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria) after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

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five o’clock till the morning till the morning hours from five in the evening till the morning hours, the Arabs are forbidden to walk, even to go into their village it is forbidden, like even if you need food for the small children, you want to buy it for them it is forbidden to go out during these hours because the most important thing – because whoever violates the law or whoever does not . . . has a fate – do you know what was his fate? His fate was he is shot, killed.

In the following segments and in response to a Jewish student inquiring about the meaning of what had been said so far, the Jewish teacher took the floor. Under the pretext of an explanation/translation, she offered her take on the events. Her presentation represents a radical shift both in the language used and in the way the events were described. The terms used for the wars were now those used by the Israeli hegemony. The 1956 war2 turned into the Mivtza Kadesh (the Israeli 1956 Sinai Campaign) as a result of the Arab countries’ refusal to agree on the creation of the State of Israel. Dalia (J) also seemed to be preparing for what had not yet been described by Uki regarding the specific events of the massacre. She asked the students to remember that what was being discussed occurred during a time of war and not during just “regular times.” Dalia also focused on a specific population. She explained that what was being described related to the army and not to the totality of the (Jewish) population. In addition, the situation was such that the army in charge of the area might have been justified in declaring the curfew, which ultimately brought about the massacre: OK, sorry, I see children who maybe did not exactly understand everything or not all has been translated . . . so to help [you understand] I will say some things. Uki has reminded us that in 1956 there was a war, Mivtza Kadesh, part of the wars the State of Israel had with those that did not agree with the existence of Israel. These were neighboring countries and also people within. Ah T, T stop it, it’s disrupting. Please remember it was a state of war. Israel was at war it was not a regular time an everyday event. It was not just that an order was announced from anywhere. That’s to say there was tension in the land . . . remember the people there [in the villages mentioned] were under military supervision, that’s to say the army was in charge there. An order was given for there was a war . . . it was not a regular situation . . . an order was not just given to stop people and they are not allowed . . . it seems there was tension in the area before the war started . . . L is there anything you know that you want to add, not now [this last statement is said disallowing any further responses from participating students]? 2

The 1956 war, known according to the parties as the Suez Crisis, or the Tripartite Aggression, or the Sinai Campaign (Arabic:    –    Azmat al¯ ¯ al-Thal¯ath¯ı; French: Crise du canal de Suez; Hebrew: `dq [xbm Mivtza’ Suwais/Al-Idw an Kadesh, “Operation Kadesh,” or ynys tmjlm Milhemet Sinai, “Sinai War”), was fought by Britain, France and Israel against Egypt, beginning on October 29, 1956.

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At this point, Dalia was determined to put things straight and she did not allow for any more interruptions; questions were postponed for later. Dalia justified and supported Uki’s account, but Uki, sensing that her story might be being co-opted by Dalia, interjected a sentence again emphasizing the inhumane acts of the military. Dalia followed by making a new attempt to allay the potential blame. She reminded the students that there had been other cases where more flexibility was shown during curfews. Dalia never negated the facts. Rather, she seemed to be working towards safeguarding the emotional wellbeing of the (Jewish) children, who would soon be confronted with some hard “facts.” A few moments later Dalia seemed to make a last attempt to readdress the issue by asking a math question: “How many years back was it?” However, this question ended up enabling Dalia to present some more palliative information: “Forty-nine years ago,” she said. She explained that technologies were not as available as they are today to transmit important information. She hinted at possible confusion in the orders announced by the military. The session was over and a difficult topic had been covered. Dialogue was absent among teachers and students. If at all present, there was a hidden, contesting dialogue between the teachers. The teachers never openly disagreed with each other but tensions were perceived. Kafur Qassem is a Palestinian issue. It was Uki’s task to present it and she did so forcefully. She seemed to strongly believe that all the children should know the facts and she would not allow anything to prevent her from presenting them, in full. Dalia was partially supportive. She never openly negated any of the “facts” presented but throughout seemed to try to ameliorate their potential negative meaning. Yes, Kafur Qassem was a horrible event. However, it was not representative of the full picture but rather an exception to the different, much more humane, Israeli military government. Indeed, the above episode is a bold example of introducing students to the unspoken history of Zionist colonization and (Jewish-Zionist) Israeli statehood, as well as introducing them to conflicting perspectives and controversial issues. Yet, the students were never allowed to become engaged in a critical inquiry, though if given the opportunity, they could have done so with ease. They had personal histories to offer. They reacted to particular elements in the story and were able to humorously relate to difficult events, as the following brief example shows. Dalia took the floor and tried once more to reframe the events without ever denying them. She mentioned that curfews were ordered in other villages, insinuating that the same order in other places resulted in different behaviors and outcomes. This allowed for the possible interpretation

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that something might have happened in Kafur Qassem that removed full responsibility from the Israeli army. As before, throughout, she rejected questions, mentioning that she understood their importance but that they should be kept for later. We are talking about people that did not know about the curfew and walked around in the streets. In general, when they heard there was a curfew over the loudspeakers, that is also not about someone who opened the door and pulled people out of their homes and massacred them. We are not speaking about such events. We are talking about an order given for the curfew that has to be fully kept and that anyone walking on the streets would be shot but we need to mention it. Put down your hands now, when the time comes we will give you time to ask questions. I know it is urgent and that it is important to you, but later. It is important to mention that the curfew order was not only given in Kafur Qassem and that it was given in some other villages in the neighborhood. But when such an order is given. An order that comes from above from a high-ranking officer in the area and now the soldier has to fulfill the order . . . for example, here in class when we the teachers tell you to find a solution to a math problem . . . you look for a solution to the problem because if you don’t . . . s p b : tshs tshs tshs [the student makes sounds simulating a machine gun, and the class all laugh]

The students reacted with humor, suggesting that they could approach difficult events in different ways than adults, who are locked into predetermined emotional reactions. However, the teachers in this and previous examples did not allow students’ questions to be aired. The teachers’ sense that the “facts” needed to be presented, combined with their hiding of their fears, uncertainties and suspicions, made the day a sad example of an exclusively teacher-centered dialogic (i.e., between the teachers) monologue. Also, we want to highlight how psychologized perspectives – like the ones we talked about in the context of teachers’ workshops in Chapters 4 and 5, creating an ideologized sphere which reproduces the language that sustains the conflict – are also at work here. When teachers speak in defense of children, as if children need defense, what seems to happen is that teachers – who have difficulties as adults coping with certain problems/issues – prefer to speak about “children’s problems” (need of defense) instead of dealing with the problems as adults. For example, when they do not know what to say, for different social or political reasons, they tell children they will understand when they grow up or that they have to wait and “develop” before certain issues can be discussed with them. This last point is also evident in the following event from Cyprus.

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Event 2 The following example is taken from a discussion in a sixth-grade classroom of a multicultural school in Cyprus; in this class, there were two Turkish-Cypriot students. The teacher, Maria, had twenty years of teaching experience and is a refugee from a city in the north that is at present occupied by the Turkish military forces. In this particular lesson she spoke to the children about the Greek-Cypriot missing persons as a result of the Turkish invasion of 1974. The topic of missing persons3 has gained wide societal publicity in both communities of Cyprus during recent years, after the discovery of the remains of hundreds of Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots in mass graves, wells and other places. These findings have brought to the surface once again the violence and trauma that each side inflicted on the other in the past. The issue of the missing persons has always been a taboo in Cyprus (Sant Cassia, 2005). Nevertheless, GreekCypriot schools have taught this topic as another indication of Turkish barbarism (Zembylas, 2008a). Here we present only a small extract of the lesson in which we highlight the tensions between individual memories and collective narratives and examine their pedagogical consequences. After Maria’s effort to clarify the historical events around the Turkish invasion, she explained in greater detail how Turkish soldiers captured many Greek Cypriots (men, women and children) and killed them instead of keeping them prisoners: The Turkish soldiers arrested our people, there are pictures about this . . . there is a famous picture, here it is [shows a well-known picture of four Greek Cypriots in the village Tzaos, kneeling down with their hands behind their heads] . . . until recently we thought [calls class to attention], we thought they were alive, but apparently the Turks killed all of them, after this picture was taken. They could have kept them prisoners and give them back to their families, like we did with their soldiers and other civilians, but unfortunately . . . [stops for a moment] the barbaric invader does not have a human face . . . The Turks are Turks . . . Our people suffered a lot during and after the Turkish invasion. As you know, I am a refugee, I come from Ammohostos, I lost my house, I lost my land . . . This is very painful to overcome . . . Some of you are also children of refugees. Your parents are refugees, some lost loved ones during the invasion. But we are peaceful people and we want 3

Between 1963 and 1974 over 2,000 persons from both communities disappeared in Cyprus. Officially the Greek Cypriots claim 1,619 and the Turkish Cypriots 803 missing persons. The Greek Cypriots claim their missing from the 1974 Turkish invasion (or Peace Operation, as known in Turkey), while the Turkish Cypriots claim their own missing from the hostilities between 1963 and 1974. In 2007 the first remains of both Turkish-Cypriot and Greek-Cypriot missing persons were recovered from mass graves; these remains were identified and then buried in highly emotional public ceremonies. This process continues in various parts of Cyprus. (See also Chapters 8 and 9 for our discussion on mourning.)

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peace, right? [some children say, “yes, ma’am”]. The Turks continue to occupy our land but we don’t want war, we want peace for all. War is a very bad thing. We still suffer as a result of war, and the children suffer most when there is war, right?

The Turkish-Cypriot children stood silent all this time. As soon as Maria stopped for a few moments, a Turkish-Cypriot girl, Gul (who spoke Greek very well), asked: “Ma’am, my parents told me that there are also Turkish Cypriot missing persons. My father’s uncle has disappeared too.” The teacher seemed initially surprised with Gul’s intervention. Many Greek-Cypriot students reacted by saying to Gul, “You’re lying! This is not true” or turned to the teacher and said, “Ma’am, she invented all this! She invents things all the time.” The teacher told the children to keep quiet and engaged in another rather long monologue in response to Gul’s comment: OK, there are Turkish Cypriots who also disappeared but today we are talking about our own [she emphasizes this] missing persons. We should not forget that this tragedy is the result of the Turkish invasion in Cyprus. Before the invasion, we used to live peacefully with Turkish Cypriots. If Turkey left us alone, we would continue to live in peace. But with the ongoing occupation of our land and properties, it’s difficult to have peace . . . I know a family, they are my friends, who buried the remains of a loved one from 1974. He went missing a few days after the invasion. Their pain cannot be described . . . We should remember the sacrifice of these people for our Cyprus, right? We should never forget these individuals . . . That’s why we make statues for them and have memorial services at churches. They gave to Cyprus the most valuable thing they had, their own life.

Maria seemed determined to put things straight and so she dismissed Gul’s comment: on this day, the topic was about the Greek-Cypriot missing persons. Maria did not explicitly address her Greek-Cypriot students’ comments about whether Gul was “inventing” the story about TurkishCypriot missing persons, and essentially left those comments hanging in the air. She simply admitted that there were missing persons from the other side but all this tragedy was the result of the Turkish invasion (a usual argument by most politicians in the Greek-Cypriot community). An important opening for talking about the common suffering of both communities in Cyprus was lost. A second chance to do so was also lost when Gul asked the thoughtprovoking question, “Who killed the Turkish Cypriots, if Greek Cypriots were living in peace with Turkish Cypriots?” in response to her teacher’s previous intervention. Maria seemed to realize that there was a hidden, contesting narrative between her and Gul and responded:

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This is a really difficult question, alright? I think you are not ready for it. Not yet. You need to grow up some more. When you grow up you’ll learn more things about the history of Cyprus, OK? For the time being, it’s important to remember today’s lesson about the suffering from war and the missing persons and how we should honor their memory. Thirty-four years after the invasion and we still find out about the barbarism of the Turkish invaders.

Maria felt obliged to remind the students several times that the lesson was about Greek-Cypriot missing persons and the Greek-Cypriot tragedy, but missed a number of opportunities to build bridges with Turkish-Cypriot suffering. Dialogue was essentially absent between the teacher and the students, as was the case with the classroom event from Israel. Here again, the teacher believes the children need development, as if developmental perspectives (the traditional ones) were built only for the sake of hegemonic powers, for they allow the justification of what adults expect or need children to believe (ideologically). It also helps adults prevent or explain “deviations.” “You are not ready for it,” says the teacher; only when the student develops/grows will he or she be able to understand. Although Maria did not negate the facts that Gul put forward, she undermined and essentially dismissed Gul’s interventions – interventions which were remarkable, considering that she was a student in the minority challenging the narrative of her teacher (who was in the majority group). Gul reacted to particular elements of her teacher’s story; however, the students were generally not allowed to become engaged in a critical dialogue, although some opportunities were offered to do so. Gul, other students and the teacher had certainly personal stories to offer; however, these stories seemed to be absorbed by the hegemonic narrative of the Greek-Cypriot collective memory. The teacher’s insistence on conveying the “facts” about Greek-Cypriot missing persons was combined with her diachronic feelings about the other side’s barbarism (“The Turks are Turks”).

Analysis of the two events Both classroom events highlight many issues but two in particular deserve further attention: first, the process by which teachers serve the aims of the nation state by eliminating the individual (student), and second, the issue of how the argument about children’s need to “develop” constitutes another mechanism of sustaining hegemonic narratives. Each of these issues is discussed below in an effort to engage in a deeper analysis of the two events that are narrated in this chapter.

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We have already pointed out in previous chapters how the process of identification in modern nation states is served through various social, political and educational mechanisms (see Gellner, 1983; Giddens, 1991). We have also argued that schools and teachers contribute to this process through the development of very specific forms of rituals, practices and surveillance capabilities which monopolize effective control over students. Schools and teachers serve this aim very well, whenever collective narratives acquire hegemonic status and individual narratives are somehow delegitimated. As shown in both events that are shared in this chapter, the teachers highlight collective narratives whenever they find the opportunity to do so. Although students apparently have individual stories to tell, even when they (rarely) get a chance to share those stories, the teachers retreat to the collective narratives. That is, the whole “system” in these classrooms is well geared towards a specific kind of domination through the construction of the self subjugated to the collective narrative. The process of dismissing the “individual” in favor of the “collective” is secured through long teacher monologues that preach to the students the “truth” about what “exactly” happened in the past. The teacher’s insistence on conveying the historical “facts” ends up restating existing stereotypes and prejudices against the adversary, such as the Greek-Cypriot proclamation that “The Turks are [after all] Turks.” That is, no matter what “we” do, “they” will always be the same “barbaric” group. The collective narrative about who the “victims” and who the “perpetrators” are (Chapter 4) and the impossibility for any “symmetry” (Chapter 5) despite the “fact” that both communities have missing persons are once again confirmed. Opportunities for acknowledging the other’s pain are lost in an effort to “teach” the students the (selective) “facts” of what “our” community suffered. It seems preferable – perhaps more “safe” for the teachers – not to offer any opportunities to the students to become engaged in a critical inquiry and share their personal stories. Even in the few chances the students have to ask a critical question or share a personal story, the teachers in both settings retreat to psychologizing the situation: “You are not ready for it. You need to grow up [i.e., ‘develop’].” The second issue we want to discuss here, then, is how the teachers’ “developmental” argument essentially contributes to sustaining hegemonic collective narratives. As we have already mentioned, traditional psychologized perspectives are lacking in that the reality of the nation state is not sufficiently accounted for. Also, such perspectives fail to recognize that national ethnic categories, though at times functional, are generated under conditions which have been shaped by the nation state’s “genetic” code – the code which has molded the problem that

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well-intentioned cross-cultural educational initiatives and their theories seek to overcome (Bekerman, 2002b). Western monologic paradigmatic perspectives not only organize and interpret the political field through irreducible essentialist dichotomous national ethnic categories, but they also organize social spheres according to gender, age and multiple other categories. These perspectives are thus also responsible for the view of children as innocent (if not “primitive savages”) and developing towards adulthood. Even when acknowledging the need to account for biological maturity, it would be difficult to subscribe to traditional developmental perspectives, because they have for long now positioned children (together with women and multiple others) as unable to reach the intellectual heights of the (white middle-class male) eye (I) from nowhere. It has become apparent that operational functioning is possible for the great majority of the population from a very early age, and that differences are very dependent on the contexts and the tasks at hand. Understood as such, operational levels are not any more seen as general properties of an individual’s thought but they are properties situated in the world (M. Cole, 1996). Furthermore, cultural constructivist developmental perspectives (see, e.g., Valsiner, 1988), while sharing Piagetian understandings regarding the active constructive involvement of children in their own development, emphasize the centrality of cultural environments as these are shaped by adult interactants – through their cultural beliefs, ways of earning a living and social traditions. In this sense the child and the environment become active in the co-construction of cultural meaning systems with which experience (the children’s and the adults’) is interpreted. Our teachers seem to be captive to traditional hierarchical (age) perspectives on operational capacities. They seem so at least in their rhetoric when asking children to wait for later to understand, or stating that the “truth” – the teachers’ “truth” – not understood at this point will become apparent as they develop, grow older, fall more into the grip of hegemonic perspectives. We could take their words as innocent statements which express their true feelings about the needs of children. Yet, the places in which these statements appear in the excerpts above make this approach difficult to take. The teachers’ doubts about children’s developmental level in terms of properly understanding the “truth” appear in those places which seem difficult for the adults to discuss. It is as if developmental perspectives are built conveniently for the sake of hegemonic powers (just as are the essentialized categories), for they allow adults (teachers in our case) to justify their fundamental belief; that is, children might not yet be ready to believe, but in time (after the long socialization process in hegemonic discourses) they will eventually get there. In this

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way, adults/teachers are enabled to prevent or explain “deviations.” Paradoxically, then, the meaning that is constructed for these events is one which sustains power relations and mistrust rather than promoting tolerance and recognition. As Nodelman (1992) so brilliantly indicated, child psychology and modern children’s literature can be easily compared to Orientalism (Said, 1978), as the “corporate institution for dealing with childhood – dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, . . . ruling over it . . . as an adult style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over childhood.” Oddly, the developmental explanation/strategy adopted by adults/teachers to dominate the ideological scene with their students resembles the strategies which support the same problems peace educators seek to overcome – monologism and categorization. How collective memory invades school spaces Societal beliefs of collective memory, in the case of intractable conflict, evolve to present the history of the conflict to society members (Cairns and Roe, 2003; Connerton, 1989; Halbwachs, 1980; Wertsch, 2002). This narrative develops over time, and the societal beliefs describe the conflict’s beginning and its course, providing a coherent and meaningful picture (Devine-Wright, 2003). Thus, according to Devine-Wright, societal beliefs about a conflict have a number of characteristics. First, they do not intend to provide an objective history of the past, but speak about the past as it is functional to the society’s present existence, especially given its confrontation with the rival society. Therefore, they create a socially constructed narrative that has some basis in actual events but is biased, selective and distorted in ways that meet the society’s present needs. They omit certain facts, add doubtful ones, change the accounts of events and offer a purposive interpretation of the events that took place. Second, societal beliefs of collective memory are shared by society members and are treated by many of them as truthful accounts of the past and a valid history of the society. Often, in societies engaged in intractable conflict, members’ shared collective memory (i.e., public memory) corresponds to the narrative relayed by the society’s governmental institutions (i.e., official memory). This narrative may even dominate school textbooks and pedagogical practices, being presented as the history of the society. It follows that opposing groups in a conflict will often entertain contradictory and selective historical collective memories of the same events. By selectively including or excluding certain historical events and processes from the collective memory, a society characterizes itself and its

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historical experiences that count in unique and exclusive ways (Baumeister and Gastings, 1997; Irwin-Zarecka, 1994; Salomon, 2004). In short, the narrative of collective memories relating to an intractable conflict provides a black and white picture which enables a parsimonious, fast, unequivocal and simple understanding of the history of the conflict. With regard to particular contents, the societal beliefs of collective memory touch on at least four important themes in terms of the perception of the conflict and its management. First, they justify the outbreak of the conflict and the course of its development. Second, the societal beliefs of collective memory of intractable conflict present a positive image of the in-group (e.g., Baumeister and Gastings, 1997). Third, the societal beliefs of collective memory delegitimize the opponent (Bar-Tal, 1990a). Fourth, the beliefs of collective memory present one’s own society as the victim of the opponent (Bar-Tal, 2003). This view is formed over a long period of violence as a result of the society’s sufferings and losses and even sometimes viewed as “chosen trauma” (Bar-Tal, 2003; Mack, 1990; Volkan, 1997). The two classroom events whose descriptions are provided in the present chapter bring to the surface the educational challenge of finding ways that talk about social remembering without putting aside individual memory or presenting it as less important than collective memory (Olick, 2007). Collective memory has the tendency to conflate all manifestations of memory (e.g., recollection, commemoration, mourning rituals) and collapse them into one concept that reifies the memory as an entity. Collective memory may be a social “fact,” yet individuals have minds and emotions that are part of the narratives constructed; all these need to be constantly acknowledged and interrogated. When societal beliefs of collective memory “invade” school spaces, then, something extraordinary happens: the “individual” is lost or is considered not in the proper developmental stage to comprehend the “collective.” Therefore, the first thing he or she has to do is simply follow that societal belief of collective memory; he/she can “understand” later (when socialization mechanisms essentially “finish” the job). Yet things might not be gloomy altogether. To add another level of complexity to our discussion, we want to remind the reader about recent studies on the relationship between historical narrative accounts (e.g., through textbooks) and students’ historical memory and how they show that students comprehend narratives with the help of previously acquired knowledge, combined with their perceptions of the surrounding cultural milieu. Students also try to reduce any possible tensions created by perceived disparities between them (Porat, 2004b). Textbooks and curricula, for instance, do not seem to help redefine the cultural and historical

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perspectives that are shaped in concert with the wider sociocultural context (Wertsch, 2002; Wertsch and Polman, 2001). In spite of the expectations laid on textbooks and curricula to secure certain types of historical memory, culture at large and its multiple mediational tools embodied in a wide gamut of communicational technologies seem to set the parameters and the potential motions of “individual” memory. Textbooks and curricula are political tools but their influence is not necessarily greater than that of other mass media apparatuses. Moreover, given the context in which they function – schools – they lose a force that in another context might have been noticed. Consequently, “individual” memory may be put aside in school spaces but it is not clear that it is eliminated altogether. Admittedly, there is an important and rather long tradition of textbook analysis and teachers’ classroom discourse that has contributed much to our understanding of official efforts to shape national collective memory through the production of hegemonic narratives. This research tradition suggests, just as the two narrated events in this chapter show, that a mix of inspirational stories and the narration of flat facts are geared towards the manipulation of young children’s beliefs. These narrations have been shown through time to change shape according to the immediate sociopolitical needs perceived as urgent by the state. Last, but not least, this research tradition has exposed tensions between collective memory and analytic historical versions of past constitutive events and also some of the discursive strategies which support the shaping of historical events as these are dictated by hegemonic visions. Succinctly put, these strategies have to do with the use of linguistic devices which shape single committed authoritative perspectives suspicious of, if at all allowing for, ambiguity. In general, it might seem as though people living in any society have no choice but to form memories in line with that which is considered the collective memory of that society. Doing so implies an alignment with a particular social group and its accompanying sense of belonging and affiliation. Yet, Halbwachs (1980) rightly points out the lightness of individual memories and their tendency to vanish if they are not supported through social interaction within a material cultural framework. From his perspective, memories are not individual but social. They are collective not because there is a collective psychology to societies but because they are practiced, acted and re-enacted in the social sphere through multiple venues of activity. Many are involved in what we ultimately identify as historical knowledge, popular culture, official activities, family agents, friends and foes. This discussion is not an attempt to measure the historical knowledge of the teachers and students observed. Rather, it is an attempt to

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comprehend how students participate in historical discussions, especially in light of formal curricular efforts that shape their historical recollections. We show students gleaning their knowledge from the “cultural curriculum” (Wineburg et al., 2007), that is, the multiple sources that produce cultural work in their surroundings. This is shown, for example, in the Turkish-Cypriot student intervention in the second event narrated in this chapter. This example also helps us question whether students, in the future, after being exposed to a state-mandated curriculum – be this a critical one or not – will ever reconsider their present positions. For some, the possibility of children not being influenced by a state-mandated curriculum might sound appealing because they see in this curriculum the reflection of the hegemonic power they might oppose. Paradoxically, even if we are right in our argument and children will not necessarily change their perspectives as a result of learning the mandated curriculum, sovereignty is secured. For the most part, the “cultural curriculum” is as much a reflection of hegemonic power as the curriculum from which our children might not learn. The argument is similar to the one suggested by Tulviest and Wertsch (1994). They argue that official accounts tend to be built around central themes and actors, whereas unofficial histories seem to be more fragmented, focusing on anecdotes directly experienced. They suggest that these unofficial accounts might be organized in response to official ones. Thus, they are inherently dialogical and not independent of official depictions. What can be done? This is a difficult question to answer at this early stage in our research; we need to gain a better understanding of how ways of representing the past are organized and how they interplay in dialogue in classroom interactions. These understandings help clarify our thoughts with regard to potential pedagogical tools and their ability to serve peace educational efforts. A first step toward this direction is provided in the following chapter, in which we take on emotions as these are engaged and performed in the work of dealing with historical narratives.

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The emotional complexities of teaching contested narratives

Emotions are an important component of historical consciousness and ethnohistorical practices (Harkin, 2003). Extreme negative emotions evoked by traumatic historical events, as Harkin explains, strongly shape collective narratives and memories. “Memory,” as LaCapra (1998) argues, “poses questions to history in that it points to problems that are still alive or invested with emotion and value” (p. 8). Understanding contested narratives, then, requires comprehending emotion and its cultural components. While there is strong evidence of how emotions accompany historical matters (Ahmed, 2004; Svasek, 2006), there have been few sustained investigations in the field of education concerning how and with what implications emotions are mobilized and performed in the classroom as a crucial site of power, control and identification. In other words, it is valuable to examine how affective rituals of identification, affiliation and belonging in schools emerge as emotional training technologies of the nation-state project. The focus on the emotion as a strategic site of nation-state governance illuminates the ways in which the relation between collective narratives and individual experiences has been fundamental to ethnicized and racialized communities (Zembylas, 2010b, 2010c, 2010d). Needless to say, educational research on collective narratives in schools has tended to leave emotions in the margins or, at best, regard them as epiphenomena rather than as constitutive components in teaching practice (Zembylas, 2008a). In this chapter we present an in-depth analysis of two examples – again, one from Israel and one from Cyprus – that show the emotional complexities encountered by teachers and students when dealing with contested narratives. The first example is based on a classroom activity in a bilingual school in Israel and it addresses the death of Yasser Arafat, the past iconic President of the Palestinian Authority; the second example is based on a series of lessons on peaceful coexistence conducted by a high-school teacher in a classroom comprising only Greek Cypriots but 114

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in a school in which Turkish Cypriots are also enrolled. These examples are representative of similar ones that we came across in the last ten years of our research in schools. We have selected these particular examples because they expose best and most clearly the emotional complexities involved in teaching about contested issues. But before describing the two examples, it is important to briefly outline the links among emotions, politics and history teaching. Emotions, politics and history teaching Since the late 1970s, scholars working in the area of emotions in different disciplines have developed sociocultural theories that challenge traditional biological and psychological approaches to emotions, thereby acknowledging the political dimension of emotional processes (Svasek, 2006). Rosaldo (1984), Lutz (1988) and Abu-Lughod and Lutz (1990), in particular, have argued that cultural and social phenomena are constitutive of emotions, and affect the ways in which people feel, perceive and conceptualize life events. On their view, emotions are public, not exclusively private, objects of inquiry that are interactively embedded in power relations. This perspective historicizes (a) the ways in which emotions are constituted, (b) their organization into discourses and technologies of power, and (c) their importance as a site of social and spatial control through surveillance and self-policing (Ahmed, 2004; Barbalet, 1998; Lupton, 1998; Lutz and Abu-Lughod, 1990). As power relations are inherent in cultural processes (for example, in terms of kinship or ethnicity), domination, resistance and sociality are at the core of emotional processes (Svasek, 2006). The politics of emotion are manifest at many levels of social interaction, from the dynamics of everyday life to the dynamics of local, national and global political processes. The notion of politics here refers to “a process of determining who must repress as illegitimate, and who must foreground as valuable, the feelings and desires that come up for them in given contexts and relationships” (Reddy, 1997, p. 335). In other words, issues of (de)legitimation of emotion – again, who gets to express emotions and under what circumstances – are implicated in matters of individual agency and collective belonging. Emotions are “actions or ideological practices” that serve specific purposes in the process of creating and negotiating reality (Lutz, 1988); they make individuals into socially and culturally specific persons engaged in complex webs of power relations. Unavoidably, then, power is an integral part of discursive practices of emotions because “power relations determine what can, cannot, or

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must be said about self and emotion, what is taken to be true or false about them, and what only some individuals can say about them . . . The real innovation is in showing how emotion discourses establish, assert, challenge, or reinforce power or status differences” (Abu-Lughod and Lutz, 1990, p. 14). Consequently, it is important to pay attention to the contextual specificity of the transaction between larger social forces (macro-political) and the internal psychic terrain of the individual, highlighting the ways that feelings are politicized in specific locales. Drawing on this perspective on emotions foregrounds the cultural, political and historical context in which emotions are constituted (Zembylas, 2005). Socialization practices, including corporeal and discursive signs and hierarchies of power and position, are critical to this repertoire, shaping the presence or absence as well as the intensity of any given emotion. The presence and intensity of emotions, in turn, shape the social context in which they occur. Within this transactional process emotions are understood as embedded in culture, ideology and power relations (Zembylas, 2005). Acknowledging the historicization and politicization of emotions helps educators analyze and sort through various discourses about emotion, and understand how those discourses operate to fabricate particular meanings about ethnicity that are circulated through certain practices. For example, historical narratives are unavoidably embedded in particular emotion discourses about collective (national) belonging and otherness. Ahmed (2004) argues that emotions play a crucial role in the ways that individuals come together, move towards or away in relation to others and constitute collective bodies. In other words, affective connections (for example, national imagining and sense of belonging) are not individualized but work to bind together a whole community. To put this differently: Emotions do not come from inside us as reaction, but are produced in and circulated between others and ourselves as actions or practices. This circulation happens precisely because individuals do not live in a social, historical and political vacuum but move on, and thus emotions become attached to individuals united in their feelings for something (e.g., a common historical narrative). It is in this sense that it may be argued that teachers and students are always caught up in the politics of emotions; emotions are (de)legitimized not only on the basis of social relations in the classroom but also in the context of larger historical narratives and power relations (Boler, 1999; Zembylas, 2008a). It is worth investigating, then, the emotional struggles and challenges that take place among teachers, students and the overarching historical narratives involved.

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Two examples Example 1 The scenes we discuss took place during the first hour of the morning, in the first grade, after the death of Yasser Arafat, the President of the Palestinian Authority (November 11, 2004), was announced. The political situation in Israel is organized in such a way that any conversation about Arafat’s death in a classroom would be controversial at best. The history of the Palestinian-Jewish conflict offers both sides only antagonistic views and sad memories of this leader. Moreover, by 2004 little was left from the optimism that followed the signing of the Oslo IsraeliPalestinian peace accords in 1993. Since 2001 the Sharon Israeli government had adopted a strategy based on the non-acknowledgment of the Palestine leader as a valid interlocutor, and this truncated any attempts at negotiations. Though in late 2002 a new peace plan known as the “Road Map” was accepted by both sides, tensions were not reduced, the conflict escalated and Israel proceeded to build a security barrier with the aim of stopping any Palestinian extremists from attempting to enter Israel – an act condemned by the international community. Even in a school dedicated to crossing tabooed boundaries, overcoming these limitations was not easy, especially when considering that Arafat’s death came unannounced and there was little time to prepare a commemoration. Yoda (the Jewish teacher) and Nuna (the Palestinian teacher) co-taught the class in which this event took place. In the first hour of school and almost unexpectedly, Yoda introduced the topic of Arafat’s death, emphasizing its emotional aspects. In her presentation she used an all-inclusive “we” seemingly to create a sense of cohesion in the group. She introduced the subject indirectly, talking to Nuna but not mentioning Arafat’s name: “Ah Nuna, I know that this morning there is something a bit different, the way we feel, in . . . in yeah. When I was on my way to school I heard over the news [and wanted to speak a little bit about it] here in class.” The children reacted by stating that they knew Arafat died. The first intervention by Nuna was one in which she tried to elicit information about who Arafat was: “Who is this Arafat, Nahla, did everyone hear? All the children heard that Yasser Arafat died.” This statement was immediately followed by Yoda translating (from Arabic to Hebrew) and asking a similar question. Multiple contributions were offered by the children, which created some disorder. Sam, a Jewish child seated at one of the tables at the front, where Nuna was standing, said in a rather low voice, “I will spread shit on his grave.” Nuna immediately picked up on this very strong, disrespectful comment.

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She approached Sam, placed her hand on his shoulder, asked him to calm down and made a comment that set the rules for the conversation. She set a very simple rule – anything could be said as long as it was respectful: “Shsh:: I need to stop for a while, I have no problem with each one and what he thinks, how he thinks, how he feels, what he feels. Sam, the most important thing is respect.” Although simple, it was repeated in different ways a number of times, underlying the importance Nuna attached to this principle. Her statement was supported by Yoda, the Jewish teacher, who joined her in repeating Nuna’s full sentence in Hebrew: “Also respect [one another], and also respect the person we are speaking about.” Nuna was quick to add that respect was something not necessarily related to that day’s events but a rule for all occasions: “About us, about other children, about the world, [you must speak respectfully]. What you said [turning to Sam] and I will not repeat it, is something that even when not connected to what happened today is not acceptable to us in class.” This last statement could be interpreted as one directed to the possibility that her previous statement might be misinterpreted as partial and dictated by the death of Arafat. Nuna wanted to make sure her statement was understood as free of political bias or national preferences. As a minority teacher, she might feel the need to be careful. Also as a teacher in an integrated bilingual school, she needed to make sure her statement was not interpreted as one biased towards one of the groups represented. Defiant, and showing again that his first utterance was not just a slip, Sam challenged Nuna’s reference, saying, “even if a rat that walks on the street dies?” for which he was once again strongly reprimanded by Nuna and asked to keep quiet by the Jewish co-teacher. The statement by Sam provoked laughter in the class. After this Nuna again encouraged the children to speak about their feelings and thoughts regarding Arafat and his death. In the following segment, Yoda and Nuna tried to find out what the children knew about Arafat. A Jewish child mentioned the facts “he had a heart attack, and his heart stopped”; a Palestinian student added, “Yasser Arafat is the president of the Arabs,” to which Yoda reacted by asking if Arafat was the president of all the Arabs. From the exchange, it was clear that not all children had a clear map of the local heroes and they were confused as to who was who in local politics. Yoda’s following answer was full of pauses and hesitations (shown in parentheses). She stated: Yes, he is the president (.5), of the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian (.4) not the Arab, there are Arabs in Saudi Arabia, in Egypt . . . as we said last week, the::re are Arabs all around the world, but Arafat was the (.5) Chairman of the Palestinian Authority which is (.6) here.

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The hesitations and pauses indicated the difficulties Yoda experienced when she tried to define Arafat’s position in the classroom context. As a teacher she attempted to put some facts straight; as a Jewish teacher in an integrated school she had to be careful that the facts were understood as respecting the feelings of the two groups involved in the conflict and present in class. Yoda corrected the reference to Arafat as “the president” to “the chairman,” acknowledging that although for Palestinians he might be considered president, for Jews he was a chairman of an authority; this idea implied that the authority was not yet a national entity, thus lacking a president. “Chairman” and not “president” was the accepted title for Arafat in Jewish Israel, a small hierarchical difference that went unnoticed this time, though Nuna always referred to him as “president” (rais). The second point of hesitation was relevant to the geographical position of the authority. It was clearly not in Egypt or Jordan, but where it was did not become clear from Yoda’s statement; “here” was not necessarily Israel, yet this interpretation could not be completely rejected. Conversational turns were flooded with the realities of the outside world, though it was never clear if the sensibilities raised were relevant to the six-yearolds present in the classroom or related to the absent (parents, ministry officials) “presence” of adults in the classroom setting. In the following segments, children responded to the invitation to dialogue by expressing a variety of views and emotions on Arafat’s death and what he represented to the Palestinian people. The session progressed without much difficulty. Yoda then asked a referential question (“Do you think there are people who are happy to hear what happened?”), directed to the real world of students outside the classroom. This question opened a long string of conversation in which many students participated. What seemed to evolve, following the question that was put, was a true dialogue in which different views regarding Arafat were openly expressed by the children. For some he was “a terrorist” and for others a “respected president,” but all seemed to agree that these characteristics could be interpreted differently by the two groups, as exemplified by the following excerpt from the extensive dialogue:1 n u n a : OK, H thinks Arafat is bad for the Jews. What do you think? That he is also bad for the Palestinians? Or only for the Jews? h : only for the Jews (.) he does them bad things.

Nuna summarized the above section, pointing out the different views expressed by the children but not adding any final argument. 1

Additional transcription notation: (.) negligible pause.

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At this point, the conversation took an unpredicted turn. Some of the children brought up stories of death in their families. The deaths of a loved uncle or grandmother were mentioned. These were acknowledged by both Nuna and Yoda, who marked the utterances as belonging to the general sphere of death, seemingly different from the one discussed in class that dealt with the particular death of Arafat (Yoda: “It is a bit different [the death of an uncle or grandmother] for today we speak about a man all the world knew . . . he was the leader of the Palestinians”; Nuna: “He was the leader of a people”). This step could be interpreted as an attempt to redirect the conversation to its main course and it seemed to be effective, because a Palestinian girl then mentioned her experience of watching television with her grandmother and how hearing about Arafat’s death caused her grandmother to cry and reminded her of her husband’s death. Nuna used this utterance to return to the fatherly figure theme she had commented on earlier. By referring to the child’s grandmother’s emotional reaction when her husband (the grandfather of the child) died, Nuna drew an analogy between Arafat and the grandfather. She represented Arafat as a fatherly figure for the Palestinian people and things ended there. The episode was over, a difficult topic was dealt with, one initiated and guided by the teachers. The subject of Arafat’s death allowed for two social/emotional norms to be enacted. First, respect was established as the basis for freedom of speech. Second, and fully related to the first, all emotions were decreed as legitimate, even when they were dealing with issues lacking social consensus as long as they were expressed respectfully. It was clear that without the teachers initiating the topic, it might have never been put on the floor. Whether it should or should not have been brought up is a difficult question to answer. Death might not be a subject to discuss with first graders, but death was part of what they found themselves discussing in the few moments when the students initiated the conversation. Nevertheless, death was not what originated the talk – at least not “death in general,” as mentioned by Nuna when trying to redirect the conversation to Arafat’s death. Though frequently talked about, respect was also not the key point. What brought about the conversation was the school and its aim to produce spheres of encounter, emotionality and recognition between two peoples in conflict. Arafat’s death provided an opportunity to exercise this aim and the teachers decided to cooperate. To do this, Yoda introduced a difference, “I know that this morning there is something a bit different, the way we feel,” but what was different remained undecided. Were the differences ones that touch upon the way individuals feel as representatives of “people” (e.g., Palestinians or Jews) or were these differences “individual” and related to the way each

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individual encountered death? Though until that point in the morning the children had not focused on the events to be discussed, it was clear they knew about what had happened. Sam was even ready to offer a violation which provided the opportunity to discuss respect, and all the children were able to become involved and contribute to the discussion. While teachers focused upon group identities, societal beliefs and collective belonging, children emphasized individual feelings and emotions, a focus that was more of a personal call and distant from collective belonging. Undoubtedly, both “individual” and “collective” issues were present and might reflect a “problem” and a “solution.” The “problem” was related to the need to account for group identities, which the surrounding resources had made available, but via conflict. The “solution” was related to an individualized approach, which afforded other, more personal connections. But the individualized approach was only possible within the group identity framework; only in the presence of group identities could individual feelings be invited in and dealt with, in the hope of resolving some of the group tensions through them. It is this “fit” between the collective and the individual that we want to point to, a fit which might enclose a negation or neutralization of attempts to create renewed emotional connections (e.g., based on solidarity and mutual respect) among students coming from conflicting groups. From a different angle, it is interesting to note that in response to the call for personal experiences, the Palestinian children first offered true, personal stories of death in their families, and then the Jewish children offered, as their individual experiences, the group’s perceptions of Arafat as a political entity. Were the Jewish children lacking encounters with death? Had no grandmother died? Or was it possible that Arafat could not become personal because if he did become so, it would disrupt the consensus around his image as an arch-enemy? The minority children felt more secure in the individual field. Whether this was a result of their training as minorities who needed to hide their political preferences was something that could not be known. Yet, for Palestinians in Israel, talking about Arafat might be perceived as dangerous. Palestinian and Jewish children responded differently and shared individualized or collectivized emotions about Arafat’s death, indicating in the most powerful way that power relations were at the core of emotional processes in the classroom, particularly when the issues discussed were so controversial. Example 2 The scenes we discuss in the following example took place at an international private high school in 2008. In this school, both Greek Cypriots

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and Turkish Cypriots are co-educated once again after the opening of checkpoints in 2003. Similar to what happens in Israel, the political situation in Cyprus is organized in such a way that any conversation about shared schooling between the two conflicting communities is controversial. Since its foundation in 1900 this school has accepted students from all communities of Cyprus. After the events of 1974 it had no Turkish-Cypriot students enrolled, but in September 2003 a small number of Turkish-Cypriot students from the north part of Cyprus were enrolled. The enrolment of Turkish-Cypriot students was encouraged and supported by the government of the Republic of Cyprus, aiming to revive the school’s multi-communal character. Currently, TurkishCypriot students constitute approximately 10 percent of the student body, while Greek-Cypriot students are the majority (85 percent). A series of incidents against the presence of Turkish Cypriots at the school (e.g., graffiti on the walls; an attack on some Turkish Cypriots by a right-wing youth group that damaged the school premises; racist and nationalist slurs) led the school to seek effective ways of how to integrate Turkish-Cypriot students in the school smoothly. However, many Greek-Cypriot students, parents and teachers have reacted to this endeavor. Chris, a religious instructor, was one of those teachers who decided to take the initiative and encourage peaceful coexistence and reconciliation among Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot students. Although the school subject on religion was offered only to Greek Cypriots (there were no Turkish Cypriots in his classes), Chris taught a series of lessons about how religion (with particular emphasis on the Christian Orthodox faith, adopted by the overwhelming majority of Greek Cypriots) contributes to peaceful coexistence and reconciliation. The student audience to which we refer below was made up of twenty-five Greek Cypriots aged sixteen or seventeen. The lesson began with a question from Chris, and the dialogue that followed is presented here: c h r i s : We are a multicultural school, with Armenians, Maronites, Turkish Cypriots. Do you think we are ready to “approach” the “others”? s t u d e n t 1 : [ . . . ] firstly, we need to know their culture, their beliefs and customs. s t u d e n t 2 : But we don’t do that. c h r i s : Why not? What is the obstacle? s t u d e n t 3 : Religion is an obstacle. c h r i s : Our church reaches out to people. The saints, Christ, Christianity reaches out, to embrace all people. Christ died in an effort to embrace all people.

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At this point, Chris showed a picture of Christ on the cross, with his hands open, and said: Christ embraces all people, He does not distinguish or discriminate. Do you remember the party that we had, the get-to-know-each-other game at the beginning of the year when we had teams of Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots? [Do you remember that] you couldn’t understand who was which? We were all one team – we were all the same. Christ does the same – he accepts everybody, for Him all people are equal . . . All people are the same. Those of you that will go abroad will meet Germans, Italians, Christians, Muslims, Turks . . . but they are all the same. We need to have the same outlook towards all people and we should not discriminate. The nature of Christianity is purely intercultural . . . the verb “to forgive” in Greek (συγχωρ ω) ´ means “I come together with others” . . . we are in a school where embracing the other is not defeat but a step towards victory.

Chris was clearly trying to make links to the presence of Turkish-Cypriot students in their school. Minas reacted almost immediately by saying that he would never reconcile with his Turkish-Cypriot classmates as long as his mother was a refugee. As he explained: I wake up every day and I see the Turkish flag on the mountain and you tell me to reconcile with the Turks? How can I abandon these feelings at home when I see them here in my own school? My mother is a refugee. At home, she talks about the home she once had and lost because of them. Living with the Turks is impossible.

Minas’s tone of voice was quite intense and he was visibly upset. He referred to his Turkish-Cypriot classmates indiscriminately as “Turks,” despite the subtle interventions from his teacher to make a distinction and refer to them as “Turkish Cypriots.”2 Chris, then, asked his students to consider whether their Turkish-Cypriot classmates could be held responsible for the Turkish invasion. Many students spoke and reiterated essentially that it was impossible to reconcile with them because they could not get out of their minds that their classmates had a Turkish origin. A few students expressed a different view: “The idea is not to remain stuck in the past,” said one student, “but move forward.” Another 2

During recess time, we talked to Minas and some of his classmates about his reaction in class and where he thought his views came from. Minas mentioned that his family had frequent discussions at home about their lost home and property in the north side. He also referred to a party he had organized in which he invited all of his classmates except the two students who were Turkish Cypriots. As he stated: “They [Turkish Cypriots] took my house once, do you think I will simply stand by and let them take this one too?” Talking to other students, we discovered that some of Minas’s classmates had criticized him for his decision not to invite their Turkish-Cypriot classmates to his party, given that they celebrated their team’s victory (during school competitions) – a team which included these two Turkish-Cypriot students who, according to several comments made by students and teachers, had made a major contribution.

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student stated: “What is important is that we must look at the present and the future. We are here with Turkish Cypriots, we have to find ways to coexist with them. Is it their fault because some fanatics from their side did what they did? Didn’t some fanatics from our side commit similar atrocities against innocent Turkish-Cypriot women and children?” Then, Minas again intervened in a seemingly emotional tone: Are you guys serious? Whatever we did, we did it as defense against Turkish aggression. What you are saying about killing innocent people is leftist propaganda which is the same as Turkish propaganda. We are Greeks, we are not barbarians! We don’t just kill people for no reason. When you hear lies such as these, it is not surprising that we’ll never become friends with them.

Chris and some students seemed a bit surprised at Minas’s outburst. Chris went on to say something but another student interrupted and said: “As you can see, sir, we cannot be friends with Turkish Cypriots, because we learned to say “Den Xechno” [I do not forget] in school. It’s not easy to put all this behind and just move on.” Chris, then, responded: You are right, it’s not easy at all. I myself admit that I struggled to overcome some of my own stereotypes and fears about Turkish Cypriots, so I understand what you are saying . . . My godfather is a missing person and I had a hard time not seeing the face of the Turkish occupier when I looked at these children for the first time. But then I thought it would be absurd to blame these children, who were anyway unborn in 1974 [when the Turkish invasion took place]. What exactly is their fault? What kind of a Christian would I be if I rejected these children because of their ethnic origin? Wouldn’t this go completely against what we said about God at the beginning of our lesson today? So give me a good reason why you cannot be friends with these children, besides blaming them for something they did not do [i.e., the Turkish invasion].

Some students repeated that they did not want to accept Turkish Cypriots as equal and reconcile with them because of the past trauma and suffering and the unresolved political problem. Some of the students’ responses show the strong emotions – anger, resentment, feelings of injustice – and how those are very much aligned with hegemonic narratives. For example, two students emphasized that they felt a debt towards their ancestors not to forget Turkish atrocities, and used this argument as a justification of why coexistence and reconciliation with their Turkish-Cypriot classmates were unacceptable. One student said: “We do not want to forget. We have a debt to our ancestors not to forget what the Turks did to us, so coexistence is out of the question. All those atrocities they did to us, should we just dismiss them?” Another student reiterated that: “We know the kind of barbaric group the Turks have been throughout history.

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Nothing will change that. I do not understand why they were brought to a Greek school.” At the same time it is interesting how other students acknowledged the socialization processes they had gone through in their schooling, and admitted that it was difficult or unacceptable to forget past learning. For instance, one student stated: “Is it our fault that in history we are told all the bad things about the Turks? Naturally, this is what we know about them. It is difficult to change these beliefs.” Similarly, another student pointed out angrily: “This is what we have been learning all these years. What, now we are going to change history? They have wronged us and now we are going to become friends with them simply because they attend our school?” The time was up and so the lesson had to end here. A difficult topic had been dealt with, one initiated and guided by the teacher. The hegemonic narrative of the Greek-Cypriot community dominated the students’ talk and brought up the strong emotions that were involved in dealing with community trauma and suffering. It was clear that without Chris initiating the topic, the students might never have had the opportunity to express their strong emotions about traumatic history and its implications for their everyday interactions with Turkish-Cypriot classmates. Like the case study from Israel, simply putting forward a “difficult” topic seemed to heighten group identities and strong emotional belonging. Just like the Jewish majority group of students, Greek-Cypriot children (also a majority) offered, as their individual experiences, the group’s perceptions of Turks as enemies and included their Turkish-Cypriot classmates in those perceptions. Through their individualized or collectivized emotions about the political situation in Cyprus, Greek-Cypriot children indicated how wider issues of politics and power relations were at the center of emotional processes in the school. After the lesson we talked to Chris and asked him to comment on his students’ emotional reactions: Do not forget the impact of six years of primary school and children’s indoctrination with the “Den Xechno” campaign. This mentality is evident in school celebrations, marches, slogans. All these things are not necessarily wrong, but they are a form of education in believing that “All Turks are barbarians!” I mean, I grew up learning that “A good Turk is a dead Turk.” That is how our society is educated. Similarly, Turkish Cypriots have been educated in the same manner to consider every Greek as someone who wants to squeeze them up, to rip them apart, to take up their space. It is this “us” and “them” mentality. On the other hand, though, I have seen Greek-Cypriot students approaching Turkish Cypriots, yet Turkish-Cypriot students seem to have some kind of – justifiably or not – fear that does not allow them to get close to Greek Cypriots. I think that

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Turkish Cypriots themselves have a certain prejudice against Greek Cypriots. It just happens that the majority here, the Greek Cypriots, has the upper hand and sets the rules of the game.

Chris also referred to a minor incident that shows the emotional resistance from the majority of Greek-Cypriot students to any reconciliation with their Turkish-Cypriot classmates: I took two children – one Greek Cypriot and one Turkish Cypriot – and asked them to have a “reconciliation handshake” but I realized that in real life it is much more difficult. It’s difficult to make the first move. You need to educate students, cultivate the notion of reconciliation to them . . . it needs constant and persistent effort to make them take one step towards the other. [ . . . ] I have been struggling for 3 years to make them talk with some respect about each other but it is difficult . . . their ego kicks in . . . they go back to the usual historical narratives of whose fault it is and we are back to where we started from.

In general, this example shows the strong emotional tensions and challenges in negotiating the everyday reality of students’ coexistence in this school. On one hand, there was strong suspicion and resentment on the part of many Greek-Cypriot students; on the other hand, there was a teacher, Chris, who perceived the presence of Turkish Cypriot students in positive ways and tried to teach his students to overcome the emotional challenges of coexisting with the “enemy.” He took up the challenge, deliberately raised open discussions about such challenges, and created a classroom culture in which students expressed their opinions about the political situation on the island. He was convinced that open and critical dialogue supported a reconciliatory ethos at the school. He believed that through relevant instruction and dialogue in the classroom, students could develop empathy and negotiate their differences with respect not only to this school but also to society at large (see also Johnson, 2007). As argued in previous chapters, open and critical dialogue can open up reflexive spaces for listening to silenced, anxious or angry voices, and for reimagining community in terms of inclusion rather than exclusion (Venn, 2005; Suga, 2006). But this attempt involves numerous emotional complexities that need further attention. Emotional complexities and contested narratives First of all, it is important to remind the reader that there are significant differences between the two examples discussed in this chapter. One is that the two examples refer to different ages – in Israel we were talking about young children, whereas in Cyprus we were talking about adolescents. Another difference is that teachers and children were doing

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opposite things. In the example from Israel, young children had different perspectives than adults; in the example from Cyprus, as children became older they behaved like adults. Together, the two examples presented reveal the emotional complexities encountered by teachers and students when dealing with conflicting historical narratives in schools. Needless to say, there are different challenges involved in each context, yet the events discussed show that the transaction between the macro-sociopolitical context and micro aspects of the working relations between communities in conflict is deeply emotional. As has been argued, cultural and social phenomena are constitutive of emotions and affect the ways in which people feel, perceive and conceptualize life events (Ahmed, 2004). In the context of the two examples in this chapter, one can easily identify emotions at work in educational settings. Emotions are present, activated and played out in all interactions taking place in the classrooms, even more so in settings in which much is at stake (Zembylas and Bekerman, 2008). In the settings described here, the challenge becomes more complex in light of the fact that children and adults have to find ways to coexist. Just as noted in the previous chapter, in both of the examples of this chapter the individual almost disappears and groups take their place in the discourses set in e[thnic]motion in class. This seems to be the main struggle that is taking place: that is, the tension between “individual” feelings and emotions of “collective belonging.” In the example from Israel, while the adult teachers choose to discuss or highlight the overarching units of peoplehood/nation, the children point to more personal experiences related to their individual narratives. In the example from Cyprus, while the religious instructor wants to overcome fixation on national identity, the Greek-Cypriot adolescents point to emotional experiences that reify the hegemonic narrative; it is possible, then, that when children are strongly socialized with hegemonic narratives, these narratives become prominent in their lives. For integrated schools in Israel, the death of Yasser Arafat and the need for it to be recognized in the curriculum constitutes a new challenge. It is with great difficulty that schools in the past have dealt with historical narratives which divide the groups involved in the educational integrated bilingual initiative – Palestinians and Jews (Bekerman, 2003, 2004, 2005). Dealing with conflicting historical narratives has not been easy, and the teachers mostly seem to be able to present each narrative separately but not necessarily in dialogue with each other (Bekerman, 2009a). Time has not been able to heal the wounds of the past, and yet the past allows for some distancing which in turn allows for some recognition. But Yasser Arafat is a different situation altogether. He is present

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and for some he is a national hero, while for others he is a terrorist responsible for the death of many people. For the international high school in Cyprus, the ongoing Turkish occupation of the north and the simultaneous presence of Turkish-Cypriot students coming from the north side constitute a serious challenge. It is with great difficulty that this school deals with the contested historical narratives of the two groups involved. It seems to be the case that many Greek Cypriots at this school hold on tightly to their own narrative and rarely engage in open dialogue with Turkish Cypriots. Time and contact have not been able to heal the wounds of the past and yet there are teachers who attempt some distancing from the heavy “burden” of collective remembering. In general, however, it is valuable to point out that the mere fact that Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot students do not generally socialize together, and have a hard time interacting and communicating with each other, highlights that the issue is not simply one of personal/individual prejudices but a matter of social practices embedded in specific power relationships. Therefore, it is important to consider the multiple levels of power relations that are implicated in social interactions in classrooms and schools. At one level the groups involved in the example from Israel stand in asymmetrical positions of power; the Palestinians, Muslim and Christian, are a marginalized destitute minority representing 20 percent of the Israeli population, and the Jews constitute a powerful reigning majority (80 percent). At another level there is the politics of emotion as manifest in the dynamics of everyday school life. In this case, adult teachers seem to be the ones that define the “legitimate emotions” and foreground “valuable feelings.” This becomes very apparent in the manner in which teachers do not allow expressions touching on personal experiences of mourning to be aired. Even when left with no other options but to allow emotions, teachers try to reframe them in the discourse of nation. Children seem to have no other resources available other than their own individual familial experiences of mourning (e.g., an uncle or a grandparent). But the relevance of these individual emotional experiences is challenged by the teachers. Its relevance is doubted as appropriate to the event of the death of the great national leader, Yasser Arafat. When left with no other choice, for otherwise they feel their efforts to be in vain, teachers co-opt the individual emotional experience of death of a grandparent to position it in parallel to the death of the great leader (as when a grandmother cried for the death of her husband, so she cried when Arafat died). In the example from Cyprus, attention to the politics of emotion helps us theorize stereotypes and prejudices as not simply an individual matter grounded in psychological characteristics or personal emotions; rather,

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the theory on the politics of emotion emphasizes the political dimensions of conflict expressed through various practices that prevent coexistence and reconciliation. One could easily find fault with the individual GreekCypriot adolescents who had negative stereotypes of Turkish Cypriots and expressed strong emotional views against the presence of this group in the school. However, this would be the easy way out and would constitute a simplistic explanation of a rather complex set of issues. If anywhere, as Bekerman (2005) argues, the “blame” should be placed on social, cultural and political structures that perpetuate divisions between “us” and “them.” This becomes very apparent in the situations in which, even when Greek-Cypriot adolescents are offered opportunities to reframe their emotions about their Turkish-Cypriot classmates, most students try to reframe them in the hegemonic discourse of the nation. Another issue that stands out in the example from Israel is that both co-teachers partake in the efforts to reframe emotions. Yet they do not necessarily share the same interpretation of the events. For the Palestinian teacher, the death of Arafat is the death of the father of the Palestinian nation, her nation. For the Jewish teacher, though politically clearly positioned on the center-left of the Israeli political spectrum, Arafat is at best a foe who has recently become a friend and at worst just an enemy. And yet both make endless efforts to set the conversation at a macro-political level in which leaders and nations – and the emotions about them – are the only ones allowed to appear on the stage. The teachers, regardless of their ethnic belonging, are captive to schooling as an instrument of public policy and preparation for specific forms of group organization. In this sense, teachers become (willingly or not) a supra-category representative of the ideological foundations of the nation state (see McGlynn et al., 2009). Paradoxically, this ideology is also at work for the Palestinian teacher, who clearly suffers in the present national Israeli context from that same ideology that at present represses her. In the example from Cyprus, the roles seem to be reversed; that is, it is the Greek-Cypriot students who are captive to their previous schooling as an instrument of collective belonging. In this sense these students become representatives of the ideological foundations of the nation state; the state has done an “excellent” job of using elements of personal experiences to reiterate the hegemonic narrative. Thus, it is shown here what is well known among anthropologists and cultural studies scholars in other disciplines, that is, how emotional socialization in national ideological discourses is extremely powerful, especially in conflict-ridden or contested areas (Ahmed, 2004; Svasek, 2006). As much as the religious instructor attempts to provide an alternative discourse – that of peaceful coexistence and reconciliation – Greek-Cypriot students “choose” the

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emotions that are already widely legitimized by the hegemonic forces. These emotions – anger, resentment, feelings of injustice, for example – become predominant in students’ discourses and seem to put aside opportunities that could potentially reframe those emotions, without dismissing them, in ways that would seriously consider the teacher’s calls for peaceful coexistence and reconciliation. What emotions, then, are legitimized and delegitimized in the two examples we narrated in this chapter? In the example from Cyprus the legitimized emotions are those that convey the trauma and ongoing feelings of injustice suffered by the Greek-Cypriot community. Despite the teacher’s intervention, the students seem unable to look at their negative emotions from another perspective. It is not that feelings of peace and reconciliation are delegitimized altogether, but the hegemonic emotional culture of the society and the school cannot be easily interrupted. Essentially, the teacher through his intervention efforts fights against what is perceived as the legitimate emotional sphere at the macro-social, national level at large. Thus, the power of the teacher as teacher to set the rules does not seem to have any effect in reframing Greek-Cypriot students’ strong negative emotions; the power of the nation over the individual, inscribed through the students’ refusal to interact with Turkish Cypriots, is much more powerful. In the example from Israel, on the other hand, two types of children’s emotions are delegitimized. First, there are the emotions such as those expressed by the Jewish child at the opening of the classroom event described – that is, emotional expressions that are considered disrespectful of the occasion. This is interesting in itself, for the child who claims he will “spread shit on Arafat’s grave” is clearly expressing emotions that strongly relate to the legitimate sphere (in the discussion as set by the teachers) of the macro-social, the public, the national level. This child seems to be well aware of what he is doing, and challenges several times the teachers’ efforts to quiet him (e.g., he compares Arafat to a rat). One can say that he is the only child that in a sense speaks the “language” of the teachers, challenging them and “playing with” their emotions. What seems to trigger the delegitimization of this child’s emotions is not the sphere in which they are positioned but the color with which they seem to try to tint this sphere. To “spread shit on Arafat’s grave” is a red flag which does not fit the declared aims of tolerance, recognition and respect in the bilingual school. Therefore, emotions that are perceived to be intolerant or disrespectful are delegitimized by the teachers not because of the expressed disagreement but for the way in which they are said. Yet most (almost all other) children who are respectful raise individual emotional experiences of mourning – the second type of children’s

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emotions that are, to say the least, not legitimized enough. The other children clearly know some things about Arafat, but if the death of Arafat is on the table it is from their perspective more “the death” than “Arafat himself ” that needs to be attended to. What is central again in the politics of emotion in the classroom is the fact that children’s stories are allowed little or no space in the classroom event. Children’s emotions about their own personal mourning experiences are delegitimized because they seem to be considered irrelevant by the teachers. The emotional climate in the classroom, as set by the teachers, is so sensitive to the political aspects of the emotions around Arafat’s death that children’s personal experiences are undermined. In other words, it could be claimed that by expressing personal mourning experiences, the children make an attempt to empathize with Arafat’s death and yet this effort seems to be ignored by the teachers. What is being reinforced in terms of power relations is not totally clear because there are two levels that work in parallel; it could be the power of teachers as teachers to set the rules, but it could also be the power of the nation over the individual inscribed through the teachers’ denial of space for individual emotional experiences (for similar patterns related to “identity talk” see Bekerman, 2009d; Bekerman et al., 2009; Zembylas and Ferreira, 2009). The differences between the examples from Cyprus and Israel show that nothing can be predetermined, though – at times, it is students and at times it is teachers who are the ones doing the job of hegemony. This is one more reason to take seriously the fact that things are indeed complex. In the next part of the book we delve deeper into how these two levels – that is, the nation-state and the school level – interact and feed each other in relation to the work of mourning as well as with respect to the prospects of forgiveness and reconciliation.

Part III

Mourning, forgiveness and reconciliation Problems and possible solutions

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The nationalization of mourning in troubled societies

In this chapter we deal with mourning and its nationalization in troubled societies. Why mourning, you may wonder? Because mourning, like memory in the second part of our book, can also be viewed as a major social practice in the modern nation state; that is, as something we do, as an action that plays an important role in the production of “collective identities.” Yet this chapter might surprise the reader somewhat for it does not deal specifically with educational settings. We move for a moment outside the immediate educational sphere. We do so because we want to underline again an important point in our work which is emphasizing that education may be innocent of the creation of and/or solutions to conflict, yet it readily reflects hegemonic discourses and practices of “outside” environments. By going outside the immediate educational sphere, we show how hegemonic discourses of mourning (this chapter) work to have an impact on educational matters (Chapter 9). What we want to emphasize is that although we do not believe education can be made responsible for offering solutions to intractable conflicts, it can help – at times, when critically approached – create spaces where some oppositional work can be done. It may be difficult to do this oppositional work, and to do it in the public sphere; yet, it is important in showing that there are alternative options to hegemonic discourses and practices. We argue, therefore, that, just like memory, mourning also constitutes a crucial site of disrupting the power of the nation state and contesting power relations as we know them. It is for this reason that some scholars in philosophy, political science and cultural studies speak of a politics of mourning. Essentially, this notion refers to the ways that politics and mourning are made to intersect (e.g., Butler, 2004; Kaplan, 2005) and personal stories blend with collective ones, with important political and educational implications. We want to examine, therefore, how public pedagogies of mourning also constitute certain school pedagogies. Through our analysis of the politics of mourning in this chapter, we want to show how a comparison of our research in Cyprus and Israel highlights the immense difficulties for alternative interpretations to be 135

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translated into educational policies and teaching practices in the absence of changes in political structures. This idea is very much in line with what has been shown so far in the second part of this book, mainly through our emphasis on the analysis of memory and teachers’ contested narratives. We begin by discussing the forces – the same forces that have been identified in earlier chapters – and their workings to nationalize mourning. Our interest in the following chapter is in investigating the pedagogical possibilities of marshaling these forces – rather than rejecting or simply ignoring them – to advance the prospects of peaceful coexistence and reconciliation. Mourning and its nationalization Jacques Derrida, a renowned philosopher, and Judith Butler, a major figure in feminist thinking, have written extensively about the ethics and politics of mourning, highlighting the kind of critical interventions that are required to avoid the normalization of mourning. Derrida (1989, 1995, 1996, 2001), on one hand, affirms the impossibility of mourning as “the aporia of the ethical injunction to preserve both the memory and the alterity” (Ziarek, 2006, p. 144) of the other. Butler (1997, 2004), on the other hand, exposes a very different impossibility, which is an effect of the political regulation of mourning and the distinction between grievable and ungrievable lives; that is, lives which deserve to be grieved and those that do not (whose sufferings and hardships are dismissed). Both Butler’s and Derrida’s ideas present us with the ethical and political modalities of the work of mourning. Mourning, says Derrida (2001), evokes questions of what the one we have lost has been to us, and how to respond to his or her memory. How does one mourn the dead and move forward in life? “Speaking is impossible,” suggests Derrida, “but so too would be silence or absence or a refusal to share one’s sadness” (1989, p. xvi). The “work of mourning” can be broadly understood as a coming to terms with absence (Dastur, 1996). A guiding theme in anthropological, sociological and psychological studies of mourning is that humans seek meaning in mourning and do so by struggling to construct a coherent account of their bereavement that preserves a sense of continuity with their lost loved ones (Neimeyer et al., 2002), while also integrating the reality of a changed world into their own transformed selves. Derrida challenges us to acknowledge the alterity of the lost other without incorporating the other into the self or erasing the other; instead, the other is allowed to be in its absence, and thus the work of mourning is without end. It is the finitude of memory in the context of infinite

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alterity (Ziarek, 2006). In other words, there is ambivalence in mourning; alterity is both preserved and betrayed by memory. On one hand, the legacy of the dead is intertwined with memory and thus a certain interiorization is impossible to avoid; on the other hand, this interiorization leads to assimilation of the other’s alterity. For Derrida, then, mourning is faithful to the other when it is unfaithful in terms of interiorizing that other; a failure to mourn (that is, an unfaithful interiorization) is paradoxically faithful in that the alterity of the other is respected – the other is not assimilated. It is from this perspective, Derrida argues, that true mourning is impossible; if it succeeds, the otherness of the other is not respected. Perhaps to truly mourn, then, we must fail to mourn, be faithful to the indigestibility of the other. Although in the Work of Mourning Derrida (2001) does not discuss how politics or the political is related to mourning, in his other writings he argues that there is no politics without an organization of the time and space of mourning (see Derrida, 1996). In the Athenian context, for example, as Naas (2003) explains, there is a rhetoric of mourning that tries to complete or foreclose mourning by elevating death; thus there is the notion of the “beautiful death,” especially in the event of one’s sacrifice for the sake of the city. Mourning for someone’s beautiful death binds us together, says Derrida; the genre of funeral oration and public rituals of mourning constitute powerful ways by which mourning is politicized. While emotional pain is often perceived as an irreducibly private and psychological matter (Cole, 2004), several scholars assert that the experience of pain is socially and historically constituted and expressed (Good et al., 1994). Thus the variable ways in which emotional pain and suffering can be interpreted also highlight the political manifestations of pain; in other words, personal stories blend with collective ones with important political and other implications (Svasek, 2006). This idea becomes more apparent when the loss of loved ones in war is read in the context of past historical traumas through people’s narratives and memories (Homans, 2000). By focusing, then, on memories and narratives of trauma as mechanisms of linking individuals to wider social narratives (Caruth, 1995, 1996), we gain an insight into how mourning is related to broader ideological projects that have important political and educational implications. In terms of the political implications, studies conducted in countries in which exhumations of missing persons have taken place in the aftermath of war (e.g., Bosnia, Argentina, Guatemala) have shown how state authorities and communities can encourage extended grief (Malkinson and Bar-Tur, 2000) or facilitate the process of mourning by providing

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the bereaved with social recognition of their loss (Pollack, 2003) – such as turning the missing into “heroes” (Robben, 2000). In his seminal anthropological study on the missing persons in Cyprus, Sant Cassia (2005) shows how the memorialization of the missing by the state as well as by political representatives focused not on bereavement but on social and political gains to set the national agenda on how the past should be remembered and what individual and collective emotions should be harnessed. Also, in their work in Israel, Witztum et al. (2001) as well as Weiss (1998) suggest that bereavement and traumatic loss acquire immense cultural and national meaning, and the deceased (as a result of a conflict) are immediately turned into “martyrs” and “heroes” for political or moral purposes. Besides the political implications of mourning, there are also important educational implications. There is much empirical evidence, for instance, indicating how the nation state’s educational authorities capitalize on people’s loss and mourning to strengthen the discourse of victimhood in schools and create dehumanized depictions of the enemy/ other in textbooks and school rituals (Bryant, 2004; Davies, 2004; Zembylas, 2008a). This sort of evidence is also found in the narratives shared in this book, suggesting how discourses of victimhood among teachers and students depict the other as the enemy. Yet, what seems to be missing from discussions on the discourse of victimhood in schools is often recognition of the common vulnerability involved in human suffering. In her work following September 11, Butler (2004) offers a relentless critique of the repudiation of vulnerability in the very discourse that seeks to redress it. Butler exposes the aggression unleashed by national mourning in terms of the denial of vulnerability through the fantasy of a national superiority over the other (Ziarek, 2006). Like Derrida, Butler suggests that what binds us together is essentially the experience of mourning, that is, the realization that we are all exposed and vulnerable, and are all engaged with bereavement. Butler’s concern, then, is to examine the circumstances in which psychic and social operations of power make mourning impossible. The impossible, in Butler’s view, is manifest in the demand that some losses (e.g., the losses of those who are not part of “our” national community) are not to be grieved. Butler’s (2004) point of departure is that “each of us is constituted politically in part by virtue of the social vulnerability of our bodies . . . Loss and vulnerability seem to follow from our being socially constituted bodies, attached to others, at risk of losing those attachments, exposed to others, at risk of violence by virtue of that exposure” (p. 20). She argues that “we cannot . . . will away this vulnerability. We

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must attend to it” (p. 29). Writing about the United States’ shift to violence after 9/11, she poses the following questions: Is there something to be gained from grieving, from tarrying with grief, from remaining exposed to its unbearability and not endeavoring to seek resolution for grief through violence? . . . If we stay with the sense of loss, are we left feeling only passive and powerless, as some might fear? Or are we, rather, returned to a sense of human vulnerability, to our collective responsibility for the physical lives of one another? . . . To foreclose that vulnerability, to banish it, to make ourselves secure at the expense of every other human consideration is to eradicate one of the most important resources from which we must take our bearings and find our way. (p. 30)

To mourn, continues Butler, is to make mourning a resource for politics grounded on a consideration of the vulnerability of others. The denial of such vulnerability unleashes violence against others, whereas its acknowledgment creates openings for an ethical encounter with others. “Then we might critically evaluate and oppose,” she emphasizes, “the conditions under which certain human lives are more vulnerable than others, and thus certain human lives are more grievable than others” (p. 30). Once we consider how the psychosocial and political operations of power produce “who will be a grievable human” and what “acts” are “permissible” for “public grieving” (p. 37), then we may begin to realize how a prohibition of grieving others’ lives extend the aims of violence. Examples of such prohibitions, says Butler, are how certain losses are not avowed as losses (e.g., the narratives of Arab lives killed elsewhere by brutal means). In this sense we need to ask “about the conditions under which a grievable life is established and maintained, and through what logic of exclusion, what practice of effacement and denominalization” (p. 39). Butler insists on a “common vulnerability” as the point of departure for a renewed politics of recognition that is fundamentally dependent on existing norms of recognition. This implies that “to ask for recognition, or to offer it, is precisely not to ask for recognition for what one already is” (p. 44) – which is grounded on the historical categorizations of identity – but to solicit a transformation based on the relationality with the other. Relationality forces us to appreciate, she argues, how far our ties with others constitute who we are. Hence, Butler suggests that recognition of our own vulnerability to loss may indeed open up the potential for recognition of all humanity as vulnerable. The work of mourning helps us reconsider one’s relation to another as a source of transformation. As she puts it, “one mourns when one accepts that by the loss one undergoes one will be changed, possibly forever”; it is a question, she says, of “submitting to transformation” (p. 21).

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Butler’s theorization of mourning on the basis of common vulnerability suggests that mourning may not only be a resource for nationalistic politics but also a productive politics for creating solidarity and mutual understanding. As Engle (2007) points out, if mourning is a process that does not contribute to the nationalization of suffering and trauma and instead is transformed into critical resistance to the quest for selfrighteousness and mastery, then it is possible that the (unavoidable) politicization of mourning can follow a different path. Our studies on mourning Though in the next chapter we will deal with mourning as this is managed among teachers and students, in this chapter we examine public (non-educational) understandings of mourning, but we also begin to sketch some possible educational implications in terms of the prospects of acknowledging common vulnerability in schools. As we mentioned in our opening remarks to this chapter, we turn to the public – nonformally educative – sphere because we believe it is this larger space that sets the limits of what education can do. As we stated, education may be innocent of the creation of and/or solutions to conflict, yet it easily reflects hegemonic discourses and practices of “outside” environments that nonetheless serve as public pedagogies. As point of departure for our analysis here we render partial findings from two research studies – one from Cyprus and the other from Israel (for a full rendering of the population and methodology see Zembylas et al., 2010). In the case of Cyprus, our study focused on Greek-Cypriot families whose loved ones went missing during the 1974 Turkish invasion; in particular, we were interested in the mourning narratives of those families who buried the remains of their loved ones, after these had been recently discovered in mass graves, wells or other sites. In the case of Israel, the participants were Palestinian families (citizens of Israel) who had lost their sons as a result of violence exercised by Israeli military and police forces during protests in 2000. Although there are obvious differences between the two contexts – for example, in Cyprus those mourned were victims of war, while in Israel those mourned were Palestinian citizens of Israel killed by the Israeli police and armed forces – there is a universal aspect in that the loss of loved ones is one of the most traumatic events in human life. In both cases, those who are mourned are victims of political conditions under the rod of the nation state. Loss and mourning are events that make all of us vulnerable; the political implications of this vulnerability need to be further exemplified, as Butler tells us. In the case of our

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studies, the comparison of Greek-Cypriot and Palestinian cases is helpful in understanding the extent to which mourning is interpreted differently depending on the sociopolitical context of the conflict; these different interpretations of mourning may also mark different opportunities for promoting reconciliation in schools. Analysis of mourning issues in Cyprus and Israel In what follows, our aim is not to engage in a detailed empirical description of the findings as such, but to summarize the major issues related to mourning in each of the two settings. Our concern here is to expose how these issues are differentiated or are similar in the two settings so that we can discuss their educational implications in more detail. It is important to point out up front that the differences and similarities that are shown below are representative of what the individuals reported in their interviews; consequently, we do not want to engage in any generalizations. We are certain that diametrically opposing views can be found in both conflicting communities in Cyprus and Israel. Our emphasis at this point is to outline the range of the possible responses that exist within each community of mourners. The case of Greek-Cypriot mourners The interviews conducted with Greek-Cypriot mourners highlight three major issues. The first issue has to do with the blending of personal grief and national mourning. On a personal level, the relatives of these victims explained how much they suffered the absence of their loved ones for so many years. The agony of not knowing what had happened to the missing was something that accompanied them every day, as many of them said. The interviewed relatives also mentioned that they felt an “ethical responsibility” to find out what had happened to their loved ones; at the same time, most of them acknowledged that their lives, especially during the first few years after the loss, “had no meaning.” Even after all these years, they reported that they felt as if their loved ones “died yesterday.” On a national level, the relatives stated that many politicians approached them and attended the funeral, offering funeral orations and participating in rituals of mourning. The second issue focuses on the support that the relatives received from their family, the community and the church, and the role of their religious faith. The interviewed relatives pointed out that their immediate family members provided them with financial support but most importantly emotional support, especially once it was known that the remains of their

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loved ones were identified and preparations for the funerals began. Also, many relatives emphasized how much they appreciated the community honoring the deceased at the funeral as well as afterwards (e.g., through commissioning statues and naming streets and buildings after the victims’ names). Finally, several interviewees mentioned that the church (local priests; Holy Bible circles) and their own faith provided them with the strength to handle their loved ones’ death. The final issue has to do with the expressed emotional ambivalence in some of the families’ mourning narratives. On one hand, the majority of the interviewed relatives expressed intense feelings of bitterness and resentment against all Turks and Turkish Cypriots (who were blamed for the loss these families had suffered); these stories linked personal mourning to national memory, trauma and sacrifice. These relatives bestowed national meaning on the “sacrifice” of their loved ones by naming them “martyrs” and “heroes.” On the other hand, the remaining interviewees pointed out that their loved ones were “heroes,” yet their grief focused on the pain and suffering experienced by all Cypriots, that is, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots alike; the stories of these mourners linked mourning to learning how to live with the other in peace and avoiding nationalistic feelings and actions that were considered responsible for these “unjust killings.” In these stories, the human pain and sorrow from losing someone was highlighted by the mourners – this pain was “common to all humans, regardless of one’s nationality or religion,” as several family members stated. These interviewees reported that, despite their personal loss, they were not angry at the Turkish Cypriots; rather, they made references to previous friendships and collaborations with Turkish Cypriots, emphasizing that the perpetrators of crimes were extremists from both sides. The case of Palestinian mourners from Israel Like the case of Greek-Cypriot mourners from Cyprus, the interviews with Palestinian mourners from Israel reveal three core themes about the interviewees’ grief. The first theme focuses on how these mourners reported on the traumatic experience of loss; their talk seemed to take place at two levels, the personal and the national-collective. On a personal level, the mourners reported how they kept re-experiencing their loss many times during the years following the tragic event. They also mentioned how they felt a diminution in personal and family safety; a sense of destruction and annihilation or that life had stopped at the time and place of the event; a loss of meaning; a sensation of helplessness or of an open wound that would not heal; feelings also of dissonance, damage

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to cognitive capabilities, and a continuous feeling of living under the light of the traumatic loss. On a national-collective level, our analysis showed that the discourse of personal grief and mourning was deeply entwined with expressions related to national, social and religious identity. That is, mourners reported how the loss of their loved one deepened their feelings about who they were as Palestinians. An exception that deserves to be mentioned is the reference made by a Palestinian father that he was against suicidal bombers when directed against civilians, because “Jews have also fathers and mothers that feel pain and sorrow.” The second theme concentrates on the coping patterns mentioned by the participants to deal with the traumatic loss over the years. These coping strategies fall into four different categories: personal, family, religious and national-collective. In the personal realm, the single most important tool reported by these mourners was creating and sustaining an emotional, cognitive and behavioral connection between them (as individuals) and the deceased. In the family realm, the mourners emphasized that the exchange of mutual and positive support among immediate family members was critical. In the religious realm, family members stated that they found comfort in the Quran and stories of modern shahids;1 thus they adopted the title of shahid for the deceased and focused on the physicality of death and on the absolute power of God. In the nationalcollective realm, having a supportive community during the first year was the most important factor for beginning to heal, as many of the family members noted. The importance of endowing the shahid with public and national meaning, and giving the shahid and his family a high social status, also played a prominent role in providing comfort to parents and siblings, according to several interviewees. In the five years since the death took place, our interviewees admitted that they relied most heavily on support from the religious field. Even though most family members reported that national-collective rituals helped them to somehow overcome intense pain, they also admitted that the intensity of their effect seemed to dwindle with time. Our own interpretation was that the interviewed family members found it extremely difficult to accept the traumatic loss of a son or sibling, even though he became a shahid. The third and final theme focuses on the changes that took place in the family members’ perceptions of personal, national and civilian identity. The identity of the shahid – that is the national-collective significance of the deceased rather than his personal identity – dominated the discourse 1

Shahid (Arabic:  ˇsah¯ıd), “witness.” It is a religious term in Islam, literally meaning “witness,” but in practice meaning a “martyr.” It is used as a honorific for Muslims who have laid down their life fulfilling religious commandments.

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of the family members. This was also reflected in how the deceased and his family were viewed by the rest of the community, as many family members explained. As reported by these mourners, the surviving family members came to embody national symbols of “struggle” and “sacrifice” and were placed at the center of the national public discourse. Our own understanding is that a key change that took place in the national identity of the deceased’s family members was an intensification of the “Palestinian” element of their identity. At the same time, it also seemed to us that there was a complete shirking of the “Israeli” element of their national identity, with most of the interviewees choosing instead to define themselves as “Palestinian Arabs belonging to Palestinian land.” The changes which took place in the family members’ civilian identities were characterized by a magnification of the elements of minority, discrimination, oppression and racism, while the “Israeli citizen” elements and the hope for “equality and coexistence” were almost obliterated. Most of these mourners reported a complete lack of trust in the State of Israel and expressed intense feelings of alienation and estrangement towards Israel.

Mourning: between the individual and the collective There are two major motifs in the experiences of both the Greek-Cypriot mourners and the Palestinian mourners from Israel. First, there are clear dialectical relations between grief and mourning that are experienced on a personal level and grief and mourning that result from nationalcollective consciousness. The intervention of national-collective rituals into the personal sphere of grief and mourning seems to link personal loss to issues of national identity. For both Greek-Cypriot mourners and the Palestinian mourners from Israel, the deceased are ascribed the status of martyrs.2 The mourners in both settings blend in their talk personal experiences about the deceased with claims about the national-collective meaning of his death. That is, there is a collectivization of mourning by the national community and the state (in the case of Cyprus) and by the national community (in the case of the Palestinians from Israel). By harnessing personal suffering to collective consciousness, each community attempts to construct a collective identity. This identity is linked to 2

Etymologically martyr – formed from μ´αρτυρ and μ´αρτυς (ancient Greek) – means “witness.” It is used in the New Testament to refer to witnesses who suffered martyrdom for their faith, such as St Stephen (Acts 22:20). It is perhaps a derivative of the IndoEuropean base of Sanskrit (s)mer-, to bear in mind, remember (H. G. Liddell and R. Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th edn., Oxford: Clarendon, 1996).

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national values and ideals such as the “sacrifice” of the “martyrs” for noble purposes. In other words, the case of Greek-Cypriot mourners indicates how the state intensifies the community’s imaginability as one that has not healed from past traumas, and still suffers from the tragedy of 1974 for which the other side is deemed responsible. In public rituals and memorial services for the victims’ remains, there are powerful political workings transforming personal mourning into national-collective mourning. An important aspect of this nationalization of mourning is the demand of the victims’ relatives and society more generally for recognition of the victim’s sacrifice (Davies, 2004). There is a similar demand for recognition expressed through other venues such as school textbooks, national rituals in schools, symbols and school celebrations (Bryant, 2004; Zembylas, 2008a). Similarly, in the case of Palestinian mourners from Israel there are also hegemonic powers that work to magnify the national instead of the civic identity. This seems to be related to increased feelings of alienation and estrangement by Palestinian Israelis within the State of Israel. The killing of Palestinian youngsters from Israel, when perceived as political violence, does not only damage, injure and harm, but also produces cultural subjects and objects. When violence is exercised against a people and a nation, it is considered both personal and national, simultaneously, and creates victims that are related to that specific social or national identity and reality. In the eyes of society, the families and their killed sons become a symbol validating social reality, beliefs, values and social identity, and personify that reality. Thus pain and grief are also attributed a national and cultural dimension, which is difficult to disassociate from the individual casualty (Humphrey, 2000). In both cases the nationalization of mourning comes with responsibilities for the victims’ relatives. For the shahid’s parents and siblings, this includes serving as a good example for the whole Palestinian society in action and speech, maintaining the struggle on the national level and not only on the family level, participating in all public nationalcollective events and acting as representatives of central national issues. Similarly, for the Greek-Cypriot relatives of the victims, these responsibilities include serving as the national manifestation of the struggle to “return to the land that is now occupied by the Turks,” and acting as good examples of families whose loved ones sacrificed their lives for everyone. The second motif of the Greek-Cypriot mourners and Palestinian mourners from Israel concerns the interviewees’ perceptions about the other and how those perceptions changed as a result of the loss of a loved one. In the case of Greek-Cypriot mourners there are relatives –

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especially those who had prior relations and friendships with Turkish Cypriots – who recognize not only their own loss but also the other’s loss and the common pain with Turkish Cypriots; this happens only on one occasion among Palestinian-Israeli mourners. In general, recognition of common pain opens up a space for connecting with the other through an empathetic sorrow (Caluya, 2006) or common vulnerability (Butler, 2004). Caluya (2006) describes this move as an “affective alliance with the other’s sadness without claiming the other’s specific loss as one’s own” (p. 98). As Butler (2004) also points out, an inclusive mourning community has the potential to disrupt already formed national(ist) communities. Most of the Greek-Cypriot interviewees express intense feelings of anger and bitterness; similarly, the overwhelming majority of Palestinians from Israel express intense feelings of loss and resentment. These feelings of anger, bitterness, loss and resentment, as Brown (1995) argues, may be a reaction against the injustice suffered, but the attachment to past wounds certainly refuses to see some future possibilities of action. For Brown, there is a paralyzing tendency inflecting the logic of wound attachment; a preoccupation with the past risks forcing individuals in pain to get stuck in a present with no hope and a future that puts the past before everything. It is important not to read the two cases in a polarized manner, that is, how some Greek-Cypriot mourners demonstrate an opening while Palestinians from Israel express this opening but to a lesser extent. This lesser extent might be explained not as a lack of sensitivity to the other’s pain, but it has to be seen in the context of Palestinian struggles with an ongoing situation. Therefore, the differences between the stories of Greek-Cypriot mourners and Palestinian mourners from Israel should be interpreted in terms of the fact that we are speaking about two different sociopolitical contexts. While the Cypriot reality has organized a society fully divided, the Israeli context is organized around the existence of a subjugated indigenous minority and a Jewish majority. In both Israel and Cyprus the conflict is still present though indeed bloodier in Israel. Finally, the events for which the Palestinian parents from Israel mourn took place fairly recently in comparison to the events of 1974 in the case of Greek-Cypriot mourners. Despite these differences, the comparative consideration of the two cases provides insight into the complexities involved in the political use of mourning. Among the Palestinian community, it is very hard to consider the possibility of forgiving those responsible for the killings of young Palestinians from Israel by their own state. And yet, as one example found, there seems to be a different perspective that might invite future

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efforts to be grounded on common pain. However, this exception is also a good reminder that unless there are real structural changes in the political landscape of Israel reconciliation among its own citizens seems a daunting task. On the other hand, the example from Cyprus shows a different kind of politicization of mourning. Despite the state’s powerful effort to nationalize mourning, there are individuals who lost loved ones under tragic circumstances, and yet they not only acknowledge their own losses, but also recognize the other’s pain and suffering. These mourners state emphatically that common pain should constitute a point of departure for creating some sort of new solidarity among the two conflicting and mourning communities in Cyprus. Coming from individuals who have always been constituted as a symbol of trauma in the GreekCypriot community, the idea of common pain makes available openings for alternative interpretations of mourning in both society and schools. There is much to learn from critically evaluating and juxtaposing the possibilities and prospects of openings and closures in the two cases of mourning discussed here. For the Palestinian mourners from Israel, asking them (a minority group) to acknowledge the losses of the Jewish Israelis (majority group) may be patronizing as long as this minority group is oppressed in the State of Israel. This idea seems very difficult as long as the conflict continues. However, in Cyprus, where the two communities lived apart for years and the tragic events of 1974 are (relatively speaking) not as recent (unlike in Israel), it is not impossible to find spaces in which dominant discourses of the nationalization of mourning may be questioned. In the next chapter we argue that recognizing the other’s trauma (under some circumstances) as an initial step, while retaining negative views about reconciliation, constitutes an ambivalent position that may not be such an unproductive point of departure for educators. What we seem to learn from the above comparison is that mourning in troubled societies is easily manipulated towards its nationalization. It is in these nationalizing contexts in which peace education tries to interfere. Yet interfering is no easy task; the hegemonic forces are powerful and engage multiple tools in the struggle to co-opt all which is deemed favorable to the national cause. We argue that alternative interpretations about mourning are difficult to raise in the absence of changes in political structures, and yet in the following chapter we return to the educational sphere to analyze what happens when the work of mourning becomes part of the school unofficial curriculum.

9

The work of mourning in schools Ambivalent emotions and the risks of seeking mutual respect and understanding

As we pointed out in the previous chapter, the work of mourning (Derrida, 2001) can be broadly understood as a coming to terms with the loss of loved ones (Dastur, 1996). In troubled areas such as the Middle East, mourning for those who lost their lives in past atrocities/wars/ conflicts unavoidably takes on a wholly different meaning. In this chapter we examine what happens when the work of mourning becomes part of the school unofficial curriculum and ask: How do teachers and students, who come from conflicting communities, commemorate together past historical events and mourn for those who lost their lives in past atrocities/wars/conflicts, when such events might be interpreted differently by these communities? What feelings are evoked in the process of mourning when it becomes part of the school curriculum, and what are the risks and potential benefits in pedagogical efforts to promote mutual respect and understanding? We particularly focus on exploring mourning not only as a ritual of existential or political meaning, but also as a source of reconciliation pedagogies (Hattam and Atkinson, 2006). Reconciliation pedagogies are essentially public and school pedagogical practices that examine how certain ideas can enrich our thinking and action towards reconciliation – not through a moralistic agenda but through an approach that views such ideas critically. Mourning can be a valuable source of such pedagogies, if the role of emotion – a major aspect of mourning – is interrogated and normative practices are questioned. These normative practices of mourning not only in wider society but also in schools may be delineated by actions and rituals that reiterate how “they” are despised as responsible for “our” loss in the first place. We have already discussed in previous chapters how school curricula capitalize on people’s loss and mourning to strengthen the discourse of victimhood and create dehumanized depictions of the other. However, there is not much research on the emotional entanglements involved in pedagogical efforts to engage with the work of mourning in schools, while attempting simultaneously to promote mutual respect and 148

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understanding. This chapter presents an in-depth analysis of two commemoration events – Holocaust Day and Memorial Day – in a first-grade classroom of a bilingual school in Israel. We choose to focus on this setting because the two aforementioned events constitute exemplary cases of the multifaceted complexities involved when students and teachers from conflicting communities are brought together to address issues of historical trauma and mourning. In particular, the analysis of these events shows teachers’ and students’ ambivalent emotions about the other, as a result of pedagogical efforts to engage with the work of mourning in schools. Our claim here is that these ambivalent emotions about otherness – that is, both pleasant emotions (e.g., feelings of solidarity and empathy) and unpleasant emotions (e.g., anger and resentment) – shape pedagogical efforts to develop mutual respect and understanding. We further argue that ambivalent emotions in schools bring to the surface serious concerns about symmetry and asymmetry, similar to the issues raised in Chapter 4; these concerns reveal elements of the emotional risks and benefits associated with bringing children from conflicting groups closer. The analysis in this chapter strengthens our discussions from previous chapters highlighting the multiple ways in which individual feelings and emotions – of teachers and students alike – are muddled up with the emotional aspects of group belonging. The present chapter shows that the line between remembrance as critical learning and the nationalization of mourning is rather thin; this space is full of emotional ambivalence and many uncertainties. School ceremonies: Holocaust Day and Memorial Day in Israel Anderson’s (1983) classic assertion that a nation is primarily an “imagined community” points to educational systems as one of the most central and effective arenas engaged by the state to form that community. Within this arena, rituals and ceremonial events, as important aspects of the school unofficial curriculum, play a crucial role. School ceremonies (Brunett, 1976; Magolda, 2000; McLaren, 1993), like other types of ritual, can be conceptualized as stories enacted by the participating community, telling themselves about themselves (Geertz, 1973). These ceremonies are acts of performative memory which, through gesture and movement, become embodied (Connerton, 1989). Emphasizing more the emotional than the cognitive aspects, they reinforce the creative and generative powers of the participants (Ben-Amos and Bet-El, 1999; Kertzer, 1988) and play a central role in the mnemonic socialization

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of citizens (Zerubavel, 1996). Through the memorial ceremony, society announces its most central myths, mourns for its heroes and presents them as role models, and reinforces the collective through the remembrance of personal sacrifice on its behalf. Ceremonies become rituals of social affirmation which periodically and routinely validate personal and group identities (Volkan, 1988). Commemorative ritual events address and redress (Ortner, 1978) contemporary conflicts embedded in the social relationships of the participating communities, while at the same time mediating a cognitive and emotional experience through their enactment. Drawing upon fragments of texts and selected symbols, they weave a narrative that both remembers and potentially transforms, thereby attempting to shape anew the participants’ identities and their intergroup relations. Several studies have shown the importance of ritual in contemporary society (e.g., Brunett, 1976) and its effectiveness in creating and transmitting culture within educational settings (e.g., McLaren, 1993). More recent studies have revealed the centrality of rituals as political performances that communicate expectations and norms of behavior (e.g., Magolda, 2000). National rituals and memorial ceremonies are quite common in the education system in Israel. Handelman (1990) rightfully notes that schools construct more than reflect the ideological bases of Israeli society, contributing to the development of well-adapted and identified citizenry. In the early years of schooling this socialization is, for the most part, achieved through the development of a complex net of commemorations enacted throughout the school year. In the Israeli case, these commemorations form a tightly woven texture of revised Jewish narratives which serve the national needs of cohesion and endurance for confronting the political reality in which Israel has lived since its inception (Zerubavel, 1996). Two main ceremonies under this rubric that constitute central tools in the construction and maintenance of the Zionist ideology are Holocaust Day and Memorial Day (Ben-Amos and Bet-El, 1999; Lomsky-Feder, 2004). Holocaust Day ceremonies traditionally include a general memorial assembly starting with the two-minute siren sounded all over Israel, the national flag lowered to half-mast, the lighting of six candles, the reading of some appropriate prose and poetry, and a presentation by an invited camp survivor and resistance fighter to relate his/her Holocaust experience. It is also customary to hold class discussions devoted to the meaning of the Holocaust and its moral lessons. For the most part these activities exalt resistance fighters, worthy of the highest praise, while placing the passive victims of the Nazis in a secondary place (and/or contrast the Jewish suffering in the Diaspora to the Jewish pride in the State of Israel).

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Memorial Day is an event that takes place during regular school hours on the eve of Israeli Independence Day. School ceremonies traditionally include the use of state symbols, menorahs, flags and the Israeli Declaration of Independence. The ceremony starts when a siren is sounded at 11:00 a.m. for two minutes, followed by a Yizkor prayer (a Jewish prayer traditionally recited in honor of the dead) written especially for this day, poetic or prose texts commemorating heroes or heroic acts, songs and a short speech recalling the fallen alumni of the school, and concludes with the singing of the national anthem. In general, the custom of holding Holocaust Day and Memorial Day ceremonies in schools goes back to the 1950s and follows a strong tradition of holding school ceremonies aimed at strengthening the national spirit of the Zionist youth (see Ben-Amos and Bet-El, 1999). These ceremonies are central to the constitution of the Jewish nation state and its hegemonic collective memory, shaping its ethnocentric national identity and establishing its continuity (Ben-Amos and Bet-El, 1999; Etzioni, 2000; Ichilov, 1990; Ram, 2000). As prime tools of normative socialization into contemporary paradigmatic thinking, these commemorations have become one of the most challenging elements in the curriculum of the bilingual integrated schools. It is only natural that commemorative acts at these schools are considered to be risky moments, and are widely discussed and planned for by a steering committee and the parent-teacher association. Yet, the form and contents of the Holocaust and Memorial Day commemorations at the bilingual schools are kept very similar to the traditional ceremonies conducted at monolingual Jewish schools in Israel, for their implementation is dictated by the guidelines of the Israeli Ministry of Education. The above discussion has been about school ceremonies and rituals, yet our interest in this chapter is what happens before those ceremonies in classrooms. In other words, we want to examine how school ceremonies influence the work that is done in the classroom, particularly in relation to issues of mourning. The brief review of research on school ceremonies is still relevant for the proximity of the events to formal rituals and ceremonies, and for these having a curricular connection to them. The classroom events The scenes we discuss took place during the Holocaust and Memorial commemorative days in 2005. We will present first excerpts from the Holocaust Day commemorations and then move to those which belong to Memorial Day.

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Holocaust Day The following scenes come from the first hour of class immediately after the children in first grade finished the individual opening reading activity in the morning. Children, as was customary for commemorative days, were asked to come dressed in white shirts in recognition of this being a special day in the regular school calendar. White shirts were requested to be worn on other festive days of the school calendar, and thus in the opening excerpts the teachers struggled to secure the proper understanding of the first graders on the meaning of wearing white on Holocaust Day:1 j e w i s h t e a c h e r ( j t ) : (Holocaust) Do you know anything about the day? You know, something about the day, do you know something? j e w i s h s t u d e n t ( j s ) : () j t : Is it a day we celebrate, other than being [dressed] in white? j s : We do not celebrate. p a l e s t i n i a n s t u d e n t ( p s ) : Yes, yes. j s : We commemorate. j t : (celebrate?) ahhh= p a l e s t i n i a n t e a c h e r ( p t ) : =(bravo!)= j t : =you chose a better word, commemorate (commemorate).

The Jewish teacher made sure the children realized the difference between those days in the school calendar in which they were asked to dress in white as part of a day of celebration (e.g., the festival of Shavuot) and Holocaust Day, on which the dress code, though similar, implied commemoration and not celebration. The Palestinian teacher supported emphatically the effort of her colleague. In the following section the teachers tried to clarify some of the historical facts that explained the day of commemoration. The Jewish student’s opening statement implied that he knew the basics; the teachers found themselves amplifying possible understandings regarding who the victims were. j s : The Nazis killed us [the Jews]. j t : We remember today how the Nazis killed (many) [many people] p t [turning to a PS]: (Amir) j t : Also Jews and also other people . . . (many many many) many people died during the war that ended sixty years ago. 1

Additional transcription notation: () something inaudible was said = there is no pause between this and the next sentence.

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The Jewish student stated the facts as they were regularly expressed by the Jewish majority in Israel and reflected the national Zionist narrative; that is, Holocaust Day was a day on which a truly unique event in history was commemorated: the planned extermination of European Jewry by the Nazis. The Jewish teacher did not deny the statement but corrected it partially by adding that “also other people” (i.e., non-Jews) died “during the war.” It is important to pay attention to the fact that the Jewish teacher placed a strong emphasis on “many” and repeated this word several times; moreover, when she said that “other people” had also died, the events were renamed and were then called “the war that ended sixty years ago.” For the Jewish majority, the Holocaust stands as the only recognizable name over any identification with the Second World War. Some form of symmetry began to take shape in recognizing that others had died too; however, the differential naming of the events (“Holocaust” versus “war”) prevented a full symmetry. In the next part of the conversation, the Palestinian students asked about others (i.e., non-Jews) being killed, suggesting that they might be in search of symmetry. p t : Aa, (PS) asks if the Arabs were also killed ah:::, there is (), (not in the same way as the Jews were killed). j s [talking to a student sitting at his side]: when my grandmother was eight years old.

The Palestinian teacher’s answer was not fully clear, but it was clear that she differentiated the ways that “others” and Jews were killed. The Jewish teacher, however, intervened to explain that Arabs were not killed in the Holocaust, because during the war there were not many Arabs living in Europe. j t : I do not think that h::: there were many Arabs that lived in countries in Europe that Hitler conquered.

What might be understood by the Jewish teacher’s intervention was that if Arabs had been present in Europe at that time, they might also have been killed just like Jews. In the last two rounds of the conversation, the Palestinian teacher tried to prevent a full parallelism between the fate of the Jews and the fate of others, although she included non-Jews in the murderous acts of Nazis. The Jewish teacher, also seemingly worried by similar issues (the need not to reduce the Holocaust to an only Jewish catastrophe), tried to include Arabs and the possibility they could have been victims like Jews, thus allowing for the inclusion of otherness in the event.

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In the next part of the discussion, the Palestinian teacher specifically mentioned “others” (Russians this time) as victims of the perpetrators of the Holocaust. Jews and Russians were mentioned and Arabs once again; the justification for Arabs not being killed was that most of them lived in Arab countries and not in Europe at the time. The Palestinian teacher echoed the Jewish teacher’s previous statement. p t : Russians, many Russians were killed () there were (massacres) of the Russians, many Russians were killed, many Jews were killed. Arabs, there was not a large number, aa, of (people), maybe people were – because many Arabs were living in the Arab countries, not in Europe.

In the following and last segment of this event, a Jewish student seemed to agree with the fact that “others” were also murdered, but tried to emphasize the uniqueness of the Jewish tragedy. p s : [there is no] () p t : Good () [question]. [JS] j t : We will try to reach all children and their questions. j s : True but Hitler killed Jews with () gas. j t : Hitler was the leader of a big group, a group very strong which killed many many people, also (in gas chambers, and also in war, and also) . . .

The Jewish teacher’s response tried to evade a direct confrontation but emphasized again that “gas chambers” were not uniquely used for Jews. A few minutes later, a Jewish student suggested that what had been discussed about Janusz Korczak2 was essentially an example of Jews who chose to die for the sake of other Jews: j s : So um:::, so so, Janusz Korzch::: j t : Janusz Korczak. j s : And it reminds us that Janusz Korczak died because of this [trying to save young children], and because of this, this day is sad. j t : It is also sad, and all the people that we remember (remember they died on that day). j s : The one that wrote. p t : Then there is also I want to say [to JS] that as well, there are many people who tried to help aa, and were also killed. Who were not Jews.

The Palestinian teacher ended this exchange with a statement in support of symmetry – this time it was not only Jews who helped Jews but also others, non-Jews, did. Symmetry seemed to make its appearance in 2

Janusz Korczak, the pen name of Henryk Goldszmit (1878–1942), was a Polish-Jewish children’s author, pediatrician and child pedagogue. After spending many years working in an orphanage, he refused freedom and stayed with the children when they were sent to be exterminated by the Nazis.

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all directions. The Jewish teacher offered her own closure, emphasizing again that Jews were not the only target of Nazis: j t : Hitler and the Nazis decided not only to kill the Jews and all people who were different from them and the Nazis, they decided to kill all people that were different . . . all who were different=

Memorial Day The events discussed below came from the same class (during the same year) as those presented for the Holocaust Day commemorations. The Memorial Day events had taken place approximately forty to sixty minutes before the siren announced the beginning of the Memorial Day ceremonies. At this point, all students in the first grade (i.e., Jews and Palestinians) were together in class but soon the Jewish students would have to participate in the memorial ceremony. The Palestinian students, though not prevented from taking part, were not encouraged to participate in the Memorial Day ceremonies. Over the years there were a few cases of Palestinian children who chose to attend the ceremony but for the most part Palestinian children and teachers did not participate. The Palestinian students joined the crowd participating at the end of the ceremony. At this point, when the whole school (Jews and Palestinians) was back together, all children sang a song for peace. It is worth noting that this bilingual school had a special extracurricular activity dedicated to remembering the Nakba which traditionally included a visit to one of the Palestinian villages destroyed during the war of 1948. These visits were well attended by both Jewish and Palestinian students and parents. In the opening scene of this classroom event, the Palestinian teacher initiated the conversation by pointing out that not all children would be happy with the plans for the day. p t : Shshss:: now I know that there is a part of the children who are curious to know what is there . . . We are very curious, OK? And we, since we are not used to not being together, OK? And there is a camera that will film, and each child will, I also want to know what happens outside and () surely want to know . . . to know what happens. p s : () () p s : I know. p t : You know what they will do but you didn’t see and want to see. p s : () p s : No (but) I saw (what they) did in the break, they did. p t : Ah::: OK they saw () OK::: And we, who want to be here in the class, each one of the children will take a paper like this, OK? We will write here each one, I don’t want to tell you exactly what you will write but I can tell you generally what I expect you to write, here you write hope, you can write how

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you feel today, today all children alone in general. What do you feel that suddenly we are not together? What does this day (do to you)? What are your feelings concerning this day?= j t : =yes::: concerning this day.

The Palestinian student who spoke at the beginning seemed to discard the issue of the ceremony that would take place outside, saying “I know,” as if he dismissed the concern expressed by the Palestinian teacher and was indifferent to the non-participation of the Palestinian students in the Memorial Day events. The Palestinian teacher continued by explaining the activity to be done by the Palestinian students in which they were asked to express their feelings about Memorial Day, while the Jewish teacher expressed her support. At the same time, however, both the Palestinian and the Jewish teachers expressed their doubts regarding the present segregatory arrangements for Memorial Day followed at the bilingual school: p t : I want to tell you something that I also don’t know if it is a good idea . . . that [Jewish and Palestinian students] separate or not separate. Also this issue, this is not a good solution. I’m not even sure there is a solution, a good solution. j s : () j t : Inasmuch as we keep thinking what is right about this and what we can change.

In the following part of the conversation, the connection between Holocaust Day and Memorial Day was introduced by a Palestinian student asking the Palestinian teacher about her participation in the ceremony for Holocaust Day. (The Holocaust Day ceremony took place during a week in which the Palestinian teacher was absent from school; however, she did attend the commemoration). p s : Why didn’t you come that week? p t : We talked yesterday, we said that the Holocaust Day, this is first of all a humanitarian occasion generally and I am not part of this struggle, and I didn’t fight with Hitler or with the Jews in the Second World War, right? j s : () p t : [I came because it] is very important to me that what happened will not happen again, it is very important to me that what happened in the Holocaust will not happen again, and I think that we said also (that) in the Shoa (Holocaust) it happened with the Jewish people (people) and happened with many in the Second World War, many people died, OK? I think that like this death of people, like this without a reason=

The challenge presented by the Palestinian student in his opening question was met by the Palestinian teacher emphasizing the difference between Holocaust Day and Memorial Day. As a Palestinian the teacher

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emphasized that she was not part of the events of the Second World War and nor was she on the Jewish side. Yet, she also made clear that she was not neutral about these events; for her, the Holocaust was an event of profound importance to all humanity, one which everyone should be involved in preventing from happening again. Her utterances reflected aspects of the Holocaust Day events previously discussed. The Palestinian teacher emphasized that the Holocaust was not only a Jewish event but an event for all humanity; however, at the same time, her wording pointed at the Holocaust as being particularly Jewish. For example, this was evident in the different use of words such as “Shoa” and “the Second World War.” The Jewish teacher introduced another difference, adding to the Palestinian teacher’s statement: j t : =and you did not feel that the war . . . that the ones that died were against you? p t : Exactly. j t : Or that they take something from your account (that it is yours)=?

Both the Jewish and the Palestinian teachers made connections between the events of Memorial Day and the present conflict affecting Jews and Palestinians. They attempted to make clear to the children that during the Holocaust, the Jews (the ones who died) were not enemies of the Palestinians and did not take anything from them (possibly referring to the disputed lands in the present-day conflict). The Palestinian teacher continued in support of the Jewish teacher’s statement: p t : Just innocent people, it is very simple, but now on this day the situation is very different, still there is a struggle between the Palestinians and the Israelis and there is war and soldiers, we talked [about] soldiers that are in the defense army [the Israeli army is mostly Jewish, but non-Jews such as Druzes, Cherkesians, Christians and even some Arabs do serve in the Israeli Defense Forces] [that] also fight. p s : OK, why do Arabs and Jews . . . aa why did the Jews kill them? ()

It became apparent that the explanation offered for the Palestinian teacher’s participation in the Holocaust Day ceremony was different from the explanation provided for the Memorial Day ceremony (in which both the Palestinian teacher and children would not participate), implying a lack of symmetry. While Palestinians might identify with the historical lessons which might be learned from the Holocaust – for these had to do with “universal values” – Memorial Day could not allow for any identification given the present ongoing conflict. This bilingual school (just like the other bilingual schools) seemed aware of this asymmetry and took steps which offered recognition of the Nakba while not defying the Ministry of Education guidelines for

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Memorial Day. This was achieved by leaving the Memorial Day commemoration almost intact and adding, as we have already mentioned, the commemoration of the Nakba as an extracurricular activity. It is within this context that the continuation of the earlier segment should be understood. After explaining the differences between the Holocaust Day ceremony and the Memorial Day ceremony, the Palestinian teacher was quick to add that: p t : The Palestinians remember on Sunday, Nakba Day, we will learn on Sunday about Nakba Day that is parallel to the Day of Independence more or less, OK? p s : () (it is not the same)

The need to create parallelism to balance the experiences of the two groups (what we have called symmetry till now) became very evident in the Palestinian teacher’s words, yet these words were challenged by a Palestinian student whose statement, though unclear in our audio recordings, became clearer when considering the Palestinian teacher’s response: p t : We do this thing but half an hour (the Nakba Day) in the year, but it is true what you say [referring to the Palestinian student saying that the Nakba does not get much time]. j t : But we spoke about this more than once. p t : True, true we talked for three days.

The Palestinian and the Jewish teachers’ responses were well tuned. They both seemed to realize that the Palestinian student was right, on the one hand, and that there was a need to sustain a sense of equity among educational activities, on the other. Thus, although they agreed that the Nakba extracurricular activity might not be comparable to the Memorial Day ceremonies, they emphasized that in terms of time allocated (“three days”) there was equity. At this point the Jewish children were getting ready to leave the class for the ceremony: j s : () p t : It is weird right and I think the same thing and (for me) it is also weird [turning to JS] that all the time we are together, it is as if we fight (now), despite Palestinians and Jews (being together in the school) it looks weird= j t : =yes it looks weird (that we separate).

The segments ended with a stated agreement by all that separation though weird might be justifiable – a point which seemed to be apparent in the next segment. This segment exemplified the main issue that the Palestinian group had to deal with, when they were left alone in the classroom.

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p t : [to one of the children] Leave your bag. Shsh:: is everyone sitting? [sits among them] Ahmad [PS]? Exactly, Ahmad I want to speak because I see Basel [PS] since the morning has been very quiet, OK? And there was a moment when you even put your hands on your ears and you didn’t want to listen [shows how]. p s : Because I don’t want to hear that only the – only the Israeli army died, many Palestinians died. p t : You think that it is important= p s : =and I, they do not have the right to take the – our lands and bring us to a land which is not ours. p t : And this thing makes you, bothers you? p s : Yes.

The Palestinian teacher was aware throughout that some of the Palestinian students were quiet and she encouraged them to speak, after the Jewish students left. The Palestinian student in the above excerpt stated his rationale for not participating in the Memorial Day ceremony. According to this rationale, the Palestinians were still dying at the hands of the Israeli army and Palestinian lands were being expropriated. The Palestinian teacher followed up with an important question as to the possible relevance the students gave to which one (out of the two groups) seemed to be dying more (PT: “Yes? Wait, and do you think that it is important who died more?”). The Palestinian teacher implied that symmetry in this sense might not be a proper approach and the Palestinian student agreed. The session continued for approximately thirty more minutes in which variations of what was exemplified above were developed, while the children prepared their statements regarding their feelings on Memorial Day. Some statements prepared by Palestinian students were as follows: p s : I don’t like soldiers () I do not like wars. p s : I offer a black flower which symbolizes I don’t like this place, for people here do not respect each other. p s : I do not like the Jews. p s : I offer a white flower for it is a quiet/peaceful color.

These statements were also reflective of the emotional ambivalence with which the minority Palestinian students approached the subject. All but one made direct and universal reference to the Jewish majority group, while the Palestinian teacher tried to prevent generalizations of this sort. All other statements recognized the conflict but saw it as specifically situated (e.g., soldiers) or potentially something that could be resolved.

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Analysis and pedagogical implications We have offered an in-depth description of two educational events which took place on commemoration days at a first-grade classroom of a bilingual school in Israel. The two events described show Palestinian and Jewish teachers’ and students’ ambivalent emotions in pedagogical efforts to engage with the work of mourning as part of the Holocaust Day and Memorial Day commemorations. Emotional ambivalence is shown in the Palestinian and Jewish teachers’ attempts to be “true” to the historical narratives of their respective communities, while establishing some sort of symmetry in recognizing the other community’s trauma and mourning and creating emotions of solidarity and empathy. Emotional ambivalence is also shown in the Palestinian students’ responses to teachers’ pedagogical interventions: on one hand, the Palestinian students participate in the Holocaust Day commemorations and mourn with their Jewish classmates in the context of representations of the Holocaust as a universal event; on the other hand, they struggle to understand the present-day suffering and mourning of the Palestinian community as a result of the ongoing killings of Palestinians by the Israeli army, the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and their present minority status in Israel. It is interesting to point out that Jewish students participate very little in the discussion of the Memorial Day commemorations. It is as if they realize the problem but have nothing to offer to relieve it; as a majority they seem, on the one hand, to offer a small concession in the direction of the minority needs, while, on the other hand, they rest secure in their massive (politically and socially supported) hegemonic power. The teachers’ and students’ emotional ambivalence raises a number of issues in relation to the symmetry and asymmetry of engaging with the work of mourning in conflict-ridden societies as part of the school curriculum. While the engagement with the work of mourning, particularly in integrated school settings, entails an increased risk, the internalization of historical narratives by both the Palestinian and the Jewish teachers (as is evident in Chapter 5) and students (as is evident in the present chapter) assumes an important role in complicating the efforts for creating some sort of critical symmetry between the suffering of Palestinians and Jews; that is, a symmetry in recognizing common suffering but viewed from a critical perspective that does not equate the suffering of the two groups yet avoids the trap of engaging in discussions about who suffers more. As with our findings in the context of workshops with teachers (see Chapters 4 and 5), Jewish students seem to attach themselves to a narrative that presents the Holocaust and the mourning of its victims as unique. The two teachers struggle to find some sort of symmetry in

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teaching children to mourn for both the Holocaust and Nakba, without evading the recognition of the asymmetries that exist. The Palestinian students (especially in the context of the Memorial Day commemorations) find it the most difficult to speak about such commemorations, especially when the Palestinian people still suffer in the present day from the Israeli army and occupation and the Jewish hegemonic power in the Israeli state. Thus, the teachers’ pedagogical interventions in the bilingual school seem to create a paradoxical situation: While their efforts to create some sort of symmetry might be beneficial for promoting mutual respect and understanding, the reification of asymmetry (especially in relation to the Holocaust) seems to have negative consequences in terms of bringing Palestinian and Jewish students together. Therefore, the students’ and teachers’ emotional ambivalence is unavoidably entangled with issues of symmetry and asymmetry, reflecting the larger process of the nationalization of mourning within the Israeli society. Yet, reflecting further on the implications of teachers’ pedagogical interventions, we want to highlight that the nationalization of mourning is not the only option left for this classroom. In the process of mourning for Holocaust victims and the Memorial Day commemorations, both the Palestinian and the Jewish teachers evoke pedagogies that provide – even momentarily – alternative ways of relating to otherness, trauma and mourning. These ways are seen, for example, in the recognition that besides the Jews many others (non-Jews) also suffered during the Second World War and there are Palestinians who still suffer today. Moreover, it is acknowledged that there is a common “weird” feeling when Jewish and Palestinian students and teachers are segregated to commemorate Memorial Day at this integrated school. These small openings provide opportunities for teachers and students in settings where children from conflicting groups come together to undo the artificial boundaries between grievable and ungrievable lives. There is little doubt that the rhetorical, emotional and structural challenges that face any educator in integrated schools (e.g., in Israel and other troubled societies) are deeply unsettling and discomforting. Yet, echoing Butler’s (2004) arguments, as discussed in the previous chapter, we want to suggest that the emotional ambivalence that exists in struggles for symmetry and asymmetry can constitute a truly productive point of departure for critical learning. There are, then, two important pedagogical implications in relation to the argument about the nationalization of mourning. First, although some manifestations of mourning in schools may contribute to its further nationalization, there are also opportunities for critical resistance to the quest for self-righteousness and mastery. This insight is grounded in the

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notion that reconciliation pedagogies should not impose any closure; that is, although there is symmetry concerning common human vulnerability, there is simultaneously an endless asymmetry with respect to power relations and the manifestation of historical trauma within a society. The recognition of the simultaneous presence of symmetries and asymmetries shows how mourning is co-opted for the purposes of consolidating the fantasy of national mastery. The potentially radical innovation here is the analysis of the intersections of mourning with power, showing how the work of mourning is both about common human vulnerability and the impossible incorporation of any loss – neither its fetishization and certainly nor its dismissal. For example, only when the commemoration of the Holocaust is free from ideology and Zionist/Israeli co-optation can it become “universal” (as the teachers in this bilingual school seem to hope for) and only then it can gain its critical symmetry/asymmetry with other catastrophes. Otherwise, the Holocaust will continue to be submitted to the will of nationalism (the same power that created it) and will not be made available to all humans. Therefore, the second implication has to do with the value of promoting the notion of “common vulnerability” as part of pedagogical efforts to build mutual respect and understanding. The recognition of common human vulnerability in the context of reconciliation pedagogies on mourning can potentially induce “a break with trauma’s seduction” (Berlant, 2000, p. 36) and align us politically – but certainly, not uncritically – with others. Butler (2004) insists on a “common vulnerability” as the point of departure for a renewed politics of recognition that is fundamentally depended on some form of symmetry, but she warns us not to ignore the existing asymmetries of power. In the midst of these multiple asymmetries of power relations, Butler highlights that we should not underestimate the ultimate symmetry we have, that is, our common human vulnerability. This symmetry forces us to appreciate, as she argues, how far our ties with others constitute who we are. Hence, the recognition of our own common human vulnerability to loss as part of the curriculum may indeed open up the potential for recognition of all humanity as vulnerable – without making unproductive distinctions between grievable and ungrievable lives. The work of mourning in schools within this reconstituted framework can help teachers and students reconsider their relations to others who may have been uncritically deemed in the past as “ungrievable.” In addition to Butler’s warnings, Berlant (2004) also insists that we consider the dangers from wholly submitting to a sentimental approach grounded on common human vulnerability, that is, a rhetoric which avows that mourning can translate into (kitsch) communitarianism based

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on the notion that past trauma and suffering can be felt through channels of affective identification and compassion. The work of mourning in schools based on a sentimental approach is not only ideological but also naive, because mourning can easily be fetishized, which thereby condenses mourning in self-repetition and habituated banality (Zembylas, 2007, 2008b, 2009a, 2009b). That is, the argument about both the particularity of historical trauma (e.g., only the Holocaust is the ultimate manifestation of evil) and the universality of mourning (e.g., everyone should mourn for the Holocaust) leads not only to an impasse in terms of connecting with others who also suffer, but also threatens to diminish the implications of such historical trauma and its mourning because it gets caught in the politics of resentment (Brown, 1995), as is evidenced in the Palestinian students’ reactions during the Memorial Day commemorations. In conclusion, we want to address the most obvious question that has been left lingering since the previous part of the book. Is symmetry “beneficial” or “detrimental” at the end of the day? In a sense, it can be argued that symmetry is “detrimental” because it implies that “an eye for an eye” (common suffering) is legitimized as long as this is somehow recognized by the conflicting communities. However, the claim that symmetry is detrimental does not necessarily mean that symmetry is completely unnecessary or that it should be utterly rejected. It means that even if some sort of symmetry is offered – willingly or unwillingly and accompanied by ambivalent emotions – we (educators, teachers, students, parents) seem to have no options but to be critical of it. For example, this may imply asking the following questions: In which contexts and under what circumstances can symmetry in any way repay/return what has been lost? Who are the ones ready to pay with the lives of their dear ones the price needed to create symmetry? Given that symmetry cannot restore the experienced trauma and mourning, teachers and students from conflicting communities need to somehow work together towards the future and not the past. In other words, some sort of “forgetting” or “forgiving” may be needed, but this is not a forgetting of the recognition without which killing continues nor a forgiving that puts aside concerns about justice. In this sense, small “cracks” have to be found for both the minority and the majority, but it seems that these cracks will be different for each individual.

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Forgiveness as a possible path towards reconciliation

For some, reconciliation and forgiveness might be synonymous terms; others would struggle to sustain their differences. For us these concepts represent constructs that belong to a similar semantic field – a field that includes the possibility of living with conflict, yet finding paths towards peaceful coexistence. We have already seen how this field is closely connected to issues of identity and memory. In previous chapters we touched upon these issues when discussing, for instance, students and teachers participating in commemorative events at a first-grade classroom of a bilingual school in Israel. The two events analyzed in Chapter 9 showed Palestinian and Jewish teachers’ and students’ ambivalent emotions in pedagogical efforts to engage with the work of mourning as part of the Holocaust Day and Memorial Day commemorations. We have seen Palestinian and Jewish teachers’ attempts to be “true” to the historical narratives of their respective communities, while establishing some sort of recognition towards the other community’s trauma and mourning. Similarly, in the context of Cyprus (see Chapters 6 and 7) we have seen Greek Cypriot teachers and students attach themselves to a narrative that presents their suffering and victimization as unique, while the other side’s trauma is not recognized. Any recognition of the other’s trauma and suffering seems to be threatening to the “true” historical narrative of one’s own community. We have also seen how Palestinian teachers in the context of workshops (Chapters 4 and 5) contest the Jewish expectation for both symmetry and asymmetry: symmetry regarding the present political situation in Israel and its conflict with the Palestinian people; asymmetry regarding the non-equivalence between the way Jews suffered in the Holocaust and the way Palestinians suffer at the hands of Jews. Interestingly, the issue of symmetry and asymmetry is not raised explicitly in the context of our research in Cyprus; however, there seems to be a strong resistance to even recognize the other’s loss and trauma. These negotiations around mutual recognition of loss and trauma – what has been identified as a struggle for symmetry – seem to be an essential element that might allow 164

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the first steps towards reconciliation to be taken. Yet this struggle for symmetry, which implies in a sense giving up on the attempt to be the “only victim,” is shown to be in need of critical perspectives that do not equate the suffering of the two conflicting groups, yet avoid the trap of engaging in discussions about who suffers more. Overall, we have seen that dealing with contested narratives in schools seems to create a paradoxical situation: Working towards symmetry can be beneficial for promoting mutual respect and understanding, while at the same time the reification of asymmetry seems to have negative consequences in terms of bringing students or teachers from conflicting communities together. We want now to refocus our attention on teachers in Israel and Cyprus, and make an attempt to clarify further this paradoxical situation on symmetry and asymmetry. We will do this by presenting data in which we ask teachers more directly about their perspectives on forgiveness in relation to their understandings of reconciliation. Analysis of the intersection between teachers’ understandings about forgiveness and those of reconciliation is particularly useful from whichever perspective one is looking at this. For one thing, reconciliation offers a wider way of looking at how pedagogical efforts can be enriched with provocative concepts such as forgiveness that bring new points of view. For another, forgiveness perspectives can help explain how issues of justice, healing and tolerance may translate into complex pedagogies that do not ignore controversial issues. While the primary focus in this chapter is on forgiveness and its pedagogical prospects, an exploration of its entanglement with reconciliation, then, is not only unavoidable but also valuable. But first we need to provide some necessary conceptual clarifications on the notion of forgiveness and its theoretical relevance to reconciliation. The meaning and educational justification of forgiveness The notion of forgiveness has gained increasing attention in recent years, especially in societies troubled with violence and historical trauma (Henderson, 2002). Asking or offering forgiveness signifies an effort to overcome past wrongs and to work toward the establishment of a society which breaks “the cycle of evil, the vengeance-fueled downward spirit of violence, of an unquenchable desire that traps people in cycles of revenge, recrimination, and escalation” (Minow, 1998, p. 10). Arendt (1958) affirms that cycles of violence can be broken by an act of forgiveness, which frees from its consequences both forgiver and forgiven. To ask or offer forgiveness, however, requires acknowledgment of the

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meaning and objective of forgiveness – something that is not always apparent or easy to do. If such an acknowledgment is ignored, then the potential of forgiveness as a contributor to social change and transformation of people’s attitudes and emotions towards others may be seriously compromised. The meaning of forgiveness Forgiveness is a complex construct and not easy to define. Most scholars from various fields agree that forgiveness essentially involves an attempt to overcome resentment (Gobodo-Madikizela, 2002; Murphy and Hampton, 1988). Most researchers also agree that forgiveness should not be confused with pardoning, apology, forgetting or reconciliation (e.g., Auerbach, 2004; Cherry, 2004). In other words, to forgive does not mean to condone the wrongdoing, to forget what happened or to lower standards of justice in order to offer mercy (McCullough et al., 2000; Wenzel and Okimoto, 2010). The most prevalent argument in favor of forgiveness concerns its potential to release victims and wrongdoers from the harmful effects of vindictiveness and resentment (Eisikovits, 2004). These negative emotions can lock one in the past and essentially perpetuate a never-ending cycle of resentment and violence. Reading the recent literature on the subject, however, one also sees that forgiveness is a concept that raises a lot of skepticism and a host of questions. Who can forgive whom? Under what circumstances? Is it always possible or desirable to forgive? Why are certain individuals reluctant to forgive perpetrators and other individuals are able to forgive them? Is it ever harmful for the victim to forgive his/her injurer? Is there ever a moral obligation not to forgive? These questions are not theoretical; they become very pragmatic in the context of real-life traumatic incidents. Consider, for instance, the well-known incident of Simon Wiesenthal’s refusal to offer forgiveness to a dying SS soldier who requested it from him. Wiesenthal (1976), who survived concentration camps, wrote that he found himself unable to extend forgiveness to the soldier. This incident shows the complexity of forgiving and the fact that forgiveness is not always self-evident or simply a “noble” thing to do. One of the most important arguments against forgiveness is that forgiveness can be used to manipulate the vulnerable (i.e., the victims) and thereby perpetuate oppression and injustice (de Gruchy, 2002). On this view, it is problematic to put the burden on the victims and promote forgiveness as a policy, adding insult to their injuries (Eisikovits, 2004). Moreover, there is the moral argument for a healthy and virtuous form of resentment that functions as a way of maintaining the value of the

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self in the aftermath of terrible traumatic experiences (Murphy, 2003). Therefore, it is questionable whether forgiveness is a moral obligation that actually encourages a just reconciliation or a premature closure that continues hurting an individual or a community (de Gruchy, 2002). The literature dealing with forgiveness from a philosophical perspective helps to illuminate further some of these concerns. One of the most important philosophers who wrote on forgiveness in the aftermath of the Holocaust is Hannah Arendt. Arendt (1958) makes an important distinction between what she terms the thoughtlessness of ordinary transgressions, which deserves forgiveness, and the thoughtlessness of “willed evil,” which is unforgivable. With regard to the latter, Arendt points out that “radically evil” acts “transcend the realm of human affairs” and are therefore neither punishable nor forgivable (p. 241). The radically evil acts are unpunishable because no punishment can restore a sense of justice and symmetry in what they have done. Radically evil acts are also unforgivable because there is no human measure of what it means to forgive them that would correct the sense of injustice these actions have created. Taking a different perspective concerning the nature of forgiveness, Derrida (2001) argues that the essence of forgiveness is in forgiving the unforgivable. The paradox of forgiveness, says Derrida, is that if one forgives something that is forgivable, then one engages in an instrumental reasoning and thus does not really forgive. Genuine forgiving, then, must involve the impossible: “forgiveness forgives only the unforgivable” (Derrida, 2001, p. 32). That is, forgiveness must be unconditional and impose no demands for an apology or repentance by the one who is guilty. “In principle, there is no limit to forgiveness, no measure, no moderation, no ‘to what point’” (p. 27). But while Derrida says that forgiveness should be granted, “if it can be . . . even to those who do not repent or ask forgiveness” (p. 34), he is careful to state that “in no case does anyone have the right to say that one should forgive or one should not forgive . . . only the victims have the right to forgive” (1998, p. 3). Derrida, therefore, is not entirely certain that true unconditional forgiveness is possible. Although defining an ethics of forgiveness and setting its limits is valuable in traumatized societies, the unforgivable is not that which is in principle unforgivable but that which people are practically incapable of forgiving (Gobodo-Madikizela, 2008a). Writing in the context of postapartheid South Africa, Gobodo-Madikizela argues that it is more valuable to analyze “how forgiveness happens, what conditions are necessary for it to occur when it does occur, why some people choose to forgive perpetrators of terrible crimes while others find it difficult to forgive those crimes” (p. 339, author’s emphasis). It is for this reason that an

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exploration of teachers’ views on forgiveness in context offers insight in clarifying what could possibly make forgiveness instructive (Norlock and Rumsey, 2009) or pedagogical (Zembylas and Michaelidou, 2011). The potential and limits of forgiveness as an educational goal Although the nature and conditions of forgiveness have long been the subject of debate among scholars in other disciplines (e.g., theology, philosophy), the notion of forgiveness as a pedagogical practice and as a goal of education is a recent idea (Ben-Porath, 2005). Moral philosophers discuss the ethical aspects of forgiveness in education (e.g., Andrews, 2000; Barnes, 2002; Papastephanou, 2003; White, 2002), while psychologists and peace educators explore the effectiveness of various forgiveness education interventions (e.g., Enright et al., 2010; Holter et al., 2006). According to Ben-Porath (2005), contemporary literature on forgiveness in the field of education offers three basic models, all of which are based on the idea that forgiveness presupposes recognition of the other as guilty. The most radical of these models is the one developed by Derrida, whose ideas were briefly discussed earlier. Essentially, Derrida argues that the act of forgiveness is entirely in the hands of the victim, and that pure forgiveness is unconditional, without any expectations of return. This type of forgiveness, argues Ben-Porath, has little relevance outside religious and interpersonal relations, because establishing peaceful relations in the context of intergroup conflict requires many more steps than simply the feeling and declaration of forgiveness. Andrews (2000) distinguishes between unilateral or unconditional forgiveness and negotiated or conditional forgiveness that requires of the wrongdoer confession and repentance for their actions. A similar distinction is made by White (2002), who defends the “relaxed view” (i.e., the idea of forgiving the unforgivable) as opposed to the “strict view” defended by Barnes (2002). These two models of forgiveness – that is, unconditional (“relaxed”) and conditional (“strict”) forgiveness – tend to reinforce paradigmatic ideals of forgiveness in schools. According to the “relaxed view,” children are taught to forgive with no demand for punishments. As White (2002) writes, children should be taught to forgive because “it is a matter, on the one side, of encouraging a willingness to apologize and make amends (if possible) combined, on the other, with a generous acceptance of people who have caused one hurt” (p. 64). A “strict view” of forgiveness, on the other hand, requires repentance and/or just punishment before forgiveness, and proclaims that granting forgiveness (after such repentance) is the victim’s moral (or religious) duty (Barnes, 2002).

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In her contribution to this debate, Papastephanou (2003) asserts that, above all, “we must teach pupils that forgiveness is context-sensitive, and therefore open to numerous possibilities and subject to different necessities” (p. 520, added emphasis). Because of this, explains Papastephanou, forgiveness is not always morally admirable, possible or impossible, conditional or unconditional, strict or relaxed. Therefore, children should be encouraged by teachers to think about various conflicts and consider whether an apology or forgiveness is appropriate. Under some circumstances the relaxed view may be the most pertinent. All these, however, should take into consideration, argues Papastephanou, that a critical self-reflective attitude needs to be cultivated in children, because in everyday life all of us may alternate between being victims and offenders. Education, then, “must explore the idea that genuine repentance and the sincere request of forgiveness is a moral duty for an offender” (p. 521). In other words, the burden should not be exclusively on the victim – as the strict and relaxed views assume – but an equal emphasis should be given to the offender, that is, the one seeking forgiveness. To recapitulate our argument so far: The entanglement of notions of forgiveness and reconciliation provides a wider framework to theorize controversial issues of trauma and justice when individuals and groups struggle to coexist. Even further, an analysis of these two notions in the theoretical context described in this book enriches each one in an important way: By interrogating the nature and interpretation of these notions in different sociopolitical contexts, we are able to find out under what circumstances and why there are more chances for peace educational interventions to succeed. The difficult task and pedagogical challenge for teachers is first to critically reflect on their own understandings of forgiveness and reconciliation and the perceived value of these constructs, and then to examine how and under what circumstances relevant pedagogies might or might not become part of curricula and teaching practices. Teachers may themselves be bearers of normative discourses, values and prejudices with regard to forgiveness and other related concepts (Murphy and Gallagher, 2009). Encouraging teachers to even consider teaching about/for forgiveness, for example, requires deep personal as well as professional change on their part (see Weldon, 2009). Therefore, delving into teachers’ understandings of these constructs is valuable in exploring the prospects and limitations of relevant pedagogies in troubled societies such as ours (Phillips and Schweisfurth, 2006). This chapter, then, attempts to summarize the understandings of forgiveness – in relation to reconciliation – by the teachers with whom we

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have been doing our research for the past several years. This summary is not exhaustive by any standards and the views shared here are not representative of all of our teachers’ beliefs. The aim here is simply to provide an overall cartography of the range and variations of teachers’ views of such issues. The particular analysis in this chapter is focused on the following overarching question: How do our collaborating teachers perceive forgiveness in relation to the challenges of reconciliation, individually and collectively, in the specific school and societal contexts in which they teach? Teachers’ understandings of forgiveness Definition of reconciliation One of the first questions we asked all the teachers we worked with was their definition of the word “reconciliation.” Despite the variety of (positive or negative) stances towards reconciliation, most teachers both in Cyprus and Israel agreed on the general meaning of the word as “living peacefully” and “improving a damaged relationship from a past conflict.” For example, teachers from the bilingual schools of Israel offered the following definitions of reconciliation: “getting to a place that is after a conflict, so two sides feel comfortable again,” and “opening a new page.” Teachers from Cyprus offered the following definitions: “Avoid having conflicts with other people,” “understanding each other and learning to accept and live with them” and “resolve your differences and move on with life.” That is, reconciliation was articulated as the possibility of bridging/overcoming differences. Teachers also mentioned the words “acceptance” and “tolerance,” and envisioned situations where there were no discriminations and disputes and where people could respect each other and cooperate without problems. Another important conclusion of our conversation with teachers in both countries relates to the fact that even those who were supporters of reconciliation efforts pointed to the great difficulties involved in any reconciliatory attempt. For example, one teacher from Cyprus said: “The word ‘difficult’ comes first in my mind. It’s not something you can always achieve, and you have to constantly evaluate whether what you do is reconciliation.” Most teachers we talked to often contextualized their definitions within the conflict in their society and emphasized (usually without being prompted) that the word “reconciliation” could not be disassociated from its political context. We should also keep in mind that this might be the result of the contexts in which we asked the questions. That is, reconciliation was perceived as a politically loaded concept

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pointing mostly in the direction of in-group/out-group relations and the prospects of living peacefully with the other. Interestingly, reconciliation was not only confined to discussing relations among the traditional groups which sustain(ed) conflict in both Israel and Cyprus, but also included accounts of tensions following from global challenges such as immigration and economic migration. Reconciliation was generally seen by our teachers as those activities that allow renewed communication among groups conducive to coexistence. Similarities in these understandings of teachers from both countries seem to end here, for the most part. In what follows we describe the different discourses used by participant teachers in the two countries. The analysis of teachers’ discourses looks into the ways that the talk of teachers sets up boundaries of the meaning of forgiveness in relation to reconciliation. Teachers from Israel emphasized mostly issues of recognition and concerns whether forgiveness was an individual or a national process, while teachers from Cyprus insisted that forgiveness was not possible without justice and that remembrance was more important. First, we discuss the two discourses from Israel.

Forgiveness begins with recognition In their narratives, several Palestinian and Jewish teachers emphasized that the first step to forgiveness was to recognize the other as a victim and understand his or her pain. As Hana (J) said: “I think that in order to forgive, you need to find common ground, and the common ground is not to say ‘OK, I forgive the murder of children’ because you cannot forgive a thing like that. But [you begin] from an understanding of the feeling of victimization.” It is from the acknowledgment of each other’s victimization that the possibility of forgiveness arises. “And from this understanding,” explained Hana, “you can draw a line and say ‘OK, no more victims and no more victimization.’” Nuna (P) also emphasized the need to acknowledge the presence of each other but at a more basic level, that is, to get to know someone and connect with that individual (from the other group), if forgiveness has any chance. As she stated: I will talk about the Palestinians under the occupation and the Israelis living inside Israel, the degree of distance and alienation is unimaginable, and I don’t see any chance at all for forgiveness as long as we do not meet, talk, get to know each other, not touching each other a bit. [ . . . ] I think I can forgive someone, if we sit together and talk and argue but if I am in my own world and he is in his own world how can we forgive each other? That’s imaginary.

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This process, admitted Nuna, can take many years, but it is necessary if people want to learn how to forgive “the most horrifying things.” In other words, Nuna is not adamantly against forgiving “horrifying things,” but she insists on the importance of recognizing the presence of each other, if forgiveness has any chance of taking place. Mana (P) also asserted that the meaning of forgiveness is recognition of the other’s suffering but added another interesting element, that of taking responsibility for the mistakes made. She explained: “When you think about forgiveness, you recognize the pain and the suffering of the other. [ . . . ] This is also connected to forgiveness; if you don’t take responsibility, you cannot ask for forgiveness, because someone has to take responsibility for the mistakes, and he should ask for forgiveness.” Esther (J) argued that, in fact, all that is left, even when some things cannot be forgiven, is offering recognition to the other: There are things that you cannot forgive . . . I mean, I cannot forgive someone who decides: today I go into a place, blow up and kill children, I cannot forgive also someone who says: I will drop a bomb here and maybe by chance I will also hit someone I wanted to hit, like an ant-nest . . . I cannot forgive these things . . . [ . . . ] If we take, for example, our request for forgiveness from the Palestinians, then I would ask for forgiveness for the essence, for not acknowledging the Nakba, for not acknowledging the fact there was a disaster, I would just ask for forgiveness not for the things I’ve done, but for not realizing that it happened at all, for saying “I don’t know” . . . For me this is the only forgiveness possible. That each side will create a position where he acknowledges the other side. [ . . . ] Forgiveness has also an operative aspect. When you are asking for forgiveness from someone, you are saying “I am sorry for doing this, I realize I was wrong. I also think that from now on I can act differently.”

The present discourse of Palestinian and Jewish teachers highlights two important elements in their understandings of forgiveness. These are the recognition of the other’s side suffering and one’s own responsibility in causing this suffering or failing to acknowledge it, and the need for connectedness with the other. The teachers considered those elements essential, if forgiveness was to have any chance of happening. Importantly, these elements do not reject the notion that some things may be unforgivable; however, they underline that asking for and offering forgiveness includes an attempt to appreciate the other’s pain and make a human connection with him or her (Gobodo-Madikizela, 2002). Without this connectedness, there can be no real possibility for forgiveness to take place; forgiveness needs this interconnectedness. This so-called interconnected forgiveness (Krog, 2008) is a form of forgiveness that has meaning only when there is (enacted) recognition of the other.

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Forgiveness: between individuals and/or nations? The second discourse that was characteristic of Jewish and Palestinian teachers’ talk concerns whether forgiveness is an event that should take place between individuals and/or nations. In this discourse, teachers’ views ranged from those declaring that forgiveness could only happen between individuals to those insisting that forgiveness had meaning only when it took place between nations. Ayala (J) stressed that forgiveness was “a personal act” and asserted: “I don’t believe that by the acts of governments we will achieve that [forgiveness].” Consequently, she argued that forgiveness should come from individuals and therefore schools could do something in this direction: “By working at the individual level, we [at the school level] will influence the general society. From working at a small scale and then working on a bigger scale, in the future, I hope, from the individuals we will get to the whole society.” For this reason, Ayala maintained that an individual had to ask for forgiveness on behalf of his collective group, even if he or she had not been personally involved in violent action against the other: “I’m blaming myself for being part of, not that I have done it, but to know that I belong to the ones who did it, to the side that did it, and this, I cannot change this and I don’t want to change the past, because I know I can’t, I want to start from today.” Ayala’s claims add complexity to the issue of forgiveness, because one can emphasize individuality and still stick to the group (as in this case) or one could emphasize individuality as separate from the group (a rather liberal view). Yoni (J) also mentioned that “forgiveness is an inner understanding, and it can happen only individually . . . it starts from one person who has some understanding of the humane.” Individuals, according to Yoni, need to see the humane in each other and offer forgiveness because of our connection to other human beings. But he admitted that there was a gap between “understanding” and “expressing” forgiveness, because forgiveness could easily become “an instrument of politics” and thus it was not forgiveness any more. As he explained: This issue of whether the government should ask for forgiveness or politicians, who should be asking for forgiveness? . . . This is a matter of negotiation, a certain rhetoric we use in order to promote “I will forgive you, if you will forgive me” and then we start anew and I don’t know what . . . as far as I am concerned this is politics and negotiations. [ . . . ] that’s not forgiveness.

But Mana (P) had a different view. She insisted that “forgiveness in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict shouldn’t be personal, because the mistakes that were done, they were done against groups or against

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nations, so forgiveness should also be between the two nations.” To elaborate her thought, Mana offered an example from the recent war in Gaza: The truth is that when Danit [J] says she is sorry for the war in Gaza, I accept it as empathy. She identifies with me, with my people, she knows I am suffering and she asks for forgiveness, but that doesn’t make any change in reality. But when a government asks for forgiveness from a group or nation, that’s what makes a difference. For better or worse. [ . . . ] So at the personal level it’s hard for me, if someone expects me to ask forgiveness for the terror attacks. That’s why I say it should be between groups, nations and not between individuals. It includes acknowledging the pain of the other, taking responsibility, all of this is part of forgiveness.

The present discourse highlights the teachers’ ambivalence whether forgiveness should be considered an individual or a collective act. On one hand, most Jewish teachers perceived forgiveness as an individual act and raised concerns about its political manipulation. On the other hand, some Palestinian teachers, like Mana, stressed very adamantly that in problems between nations the responsibility for asking for or offering forgiveness did not rest with the individual; it should rest with the government. A possible interpretation of this difference may be that the teachers in this case seemed to be more closely aligned with the issues that seemed to be a major concern in the “affective community” in which they most likely felt they belonged – for example, Palestinians were concerned with the legitimation of a Palestinian nation state and thus emphasized that forgiveness should be taken at the nation-state level. Overall, forgiveness in the case of teachers from Israel is described as both an individual and a political process. Forgiveness is not possible: what is needed is remembrance The most characteristic discourse among Greek-Cypriot teachers was that the majority of those with whom we discussed the meaning and potential of forgiveness indicated that it was impossible and even absurd to forgive the other side – that is, those perceived as the perpetrators of crimes against the Greek-Cypriot community since the Turkish invasion of 1974. As Evelyn pointed out quite poignantly: “It would be absurd to consider forgiving them. They caused us so much pain and trauma; they invaded and still occupy our country . . . It’s ridiculous to talk about forgiving them!” Orestis claimed that it would even be “immoral” to forgive those who were responsible for numerous atrocities: “Forgive them? It’s unheard of! I claim that nobody in the Greek-Cypriot community has the ethical right to forgive the Turks for what they did to us. It would

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be completely immoral to do something like that.” It is important to note that most of the time Greek-Cypriot teachers made no distinction between Turkish Cypriots and Turks, as both groups were treated as the “enemy.” Also, there was rare acknowledgment of the trauma and loss that Greek Cypriots caused to Turkish Cypriots. Many teachers emphasized that what was needed in Cyprus was not forgiveness but remembrance of the historical trauma suffered by Greek Cypriots. As John explained: “Look. I don’t want forgiveness, I want us to remember. I don’t want us to forget what happened. I think we should remember and stay adamant about not forgiving those who caused us so much suffering.” Maria, who had several missing persons in her family since 1974, also stated: There are some things that I cannot forgive, no matter what happens at the end of the day – with or without a solution to our political problem in Cyprus. I cannot forgive the cold-blooded killings and rapes of innocent women and children by the Turkish invaders. It’s impossible to forget this trauma, and I don’t see any possibility of forgiveness . . . So, I will not forgive those who killed members of my family and kept silent about it or denied it . . . and now I have to bury my loved ones 35 years after being in the darkness concerning their whereabouts.

While most teachers rejected the possibility of forgiveness either at the individual or the collective levels, there were a few teachers who were willing to consider it, but only under certain conditions. As Lina stated: “Despite all these [difficulties], I would consider the possibility of forgiveness, but only if the other side acknowledged the atrocities they inflicted on us and apologized for those.” Niki went even further and stressed that, “Forgiveness, if it is ever possible, can happen only when the other side repents for what it did to us and requests our forgiveness. Otherwise, it is unrealistic to have any conversation about forgiveness.” Leonidas also noted that, “Nothing can be forgiven under the present circumstances. Without the departure of the Turkish invaders from Cyprus, the return of our land, and the restoration of justice, nothing can be forgiven.” Finally, Monica recognized that forgiveness would be beneficial and provide relief from past resentment, but: “Something of this nature is very difficult and time-consuming. A great investment in time is required as well as education, because we grew up with the perception that ‘the Turk’ is our age-old enemy. But it could help us move forward and put the past behind us.” The evidence from these interviews shows Greek-Cypriot teachers’ ambivalent views about the possibility of forgiveness in Cyprus. On one hand, there is the Arendtian position assumed by many teachers, that is, how some acts are unforgivable and no matter what happens, there

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is no chance to forgive the other side. On the other hand, there are a few teachers who are willing to talk about the conditions that may foster forgiveness rather than to suggest that certain acts are simply unforgivable. What these examples from Greek-Cypriot teachers’ talk suggest is that there are alternatives to resentment and hatred, despite the immense suffering and trauma experienced by victims. An important pedagogical challenge in the aftermath of tragedy, then, is how to create the conditions that will make “enemies” regard one another as fellow human beings – an idea that is also present in the discourse of some Jewish and Palestinian teachers, as noted earlier.

No forgiveness without justice In addition to the previous discourse, most Greek-Cypriot teachers asserted that Greek Cypriots need justice rather than forgiveness. Maria argued that, “Forgiveness and justice at the same time will never be possible, because every injustice that still takes place against Greek Cypriots makes forgiveness sound absurd. No individual, politician, or government has the ethical and political standing to offer forgiveness to the other side without justice being restored first.” John also said: “We want justice; we will not simply offer forgiveness as a gift to the perpetrators.” Learning to grow up and consider the other side as the “enemy” was recognized as one of the major difficulties for insisting that justice was above any consideration of forgiveness in Cyprus. As George explained: It is difficult for me to forgive the Turkish Cypriots, because I was taught that they were to blame for the horrible things that happened to us. Of course, we’re not completely innocent, we also did a lot [to them]. But even if I took into consideration what we did, it is difficult to forgive them because they remain in my country as invaders and occupy my land . . . This is not fair. What I want is justice and human rights for all. Forgiveness would not do anything to bring justice closer.

Growing up to hate and resent the other side could not be easily overcome, as Anne also admitted: Forgiveness between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots is really a utopian idea. We grow up hating them, we carry the memories of loss from our parents . . . It’s very difficult to overcome feelings of trauma, even if we haven’t experienced them first-hand. [ . . . ] It is very clear in my mind that we ought to be talking about justice, not forgiveness. We are wasting our time with the idea of forgiveness.

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Those teachers who did not reject outright the possibility of forgiveness stressed that justice was clearly a precondition for any consideration of forgiveness. As Niki noted: Forgiveness has no meaning without first establishing justice. If I look at the reality here, there is no chance under the present circumstances – the occupation of half of our country by Turkey, checkpoints that divide Cyprus, missing persons and so on – there is no way to consider forgiveness, unless there is justice first. Bring justice for all and then perhaps we’ll talk about forgiveness.

The talk of some teachers about justice being a precondition for forgiveness brought up the issue of whether forgiveness should be an individual or a collective act – a similar issue to that raised in the context of Israel. Justice was seen as something collective – i.e., justice for all – while forgiveness at the collective level was rejected. As Monica explained: I can accept the possibility of a Turkish Cypriot asking forgiveness from a Greek Cypriot because he committed a crime against the Greek Cypriot and vice versa. But I think that no government has the right to offer forgiveness to the other side, without first accepting a solution that brings justice for all. Individuals can talk about forgiveness, if they want, but our political leaders do not have this right. Our political leaders should be concerned with how to make sure there is justice for our side.

This last discourse of Greek-Cypriot teachers describes the immense skepticism and even hostility towards the possibility of forgiving the other side in the absence of justice. These views call attention to the ethical and political superiority that is ascribed to justice compared with the possibility of even considering forgiveness as a means toward justice. This discourse may sound as if it has less of a humanizing character and more of a sense of self-righteousness; however, it would be very simplistic to draw this conclusion without gaining a deeper sense of how the potential of forgiveness is linked to the particular political circumstances that move individuals and groups further away from some kind of reconciliation. Forgiveness in the talk of these Greek-Cypriot teachers is viewed more as an obstacle to a just settlement in Cyprus rather than as a viable possibility that could promote justice. Perhaps, however, if material justice were to be accomplished (e.g., acknowledged and worked towards), forgiveness would be possible or even less relevant. Forgiveness and reconciliation as aspects of pedagogies This chapter has briefly outlined teachers’ understandings of forgiveness in relation to reconciliation in the schools where we conducted our research for the past several years. We have particularly focused on the

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various interpretations of forgiveness by these teachers and some of the conditions they considered important for forgiveness to take place in their respective societies. We are acutely aware of the fact that our interpretation of the teachers’ views and the complexities of discourses that have been identified may put us on shaky ground, since the possibilities for interpretation are wide, teachers’ views themselves vary, and it is always possible to misunderstand and misinterpret participants’ words. However, despite these limitations, the discussion of different teacher discourses from Israel and Cyprus provides an important opportunity: The views expressed by these teachers constitute an important signal of the conditions that exist in certain contexts, making the consideration of forgiveness possible or impossible not only in the wider society but also as an educational goal in schools. For example, in Cyprus it seems rather difficult for Greek-Cypriot teachers to consider the possibility of forgiveness in the absence of what they regard as a just solution to the Cyprus problem. However, Jewish and Palestinian teachers who teach in the bilingual schools of Israel (admittedly an exceptional setting compared with the majority of schools in Israel) entertain the possibility of forgiveness as a path towards mutual recognition of suffering and human connectedness (see GobodoMadikizela, 2002). The discourses identified in both settings demonstrate the depth of the traumatic legacy of the past and how powerful it can be to be able to dominate the present and even prevent the consideration of forgiveness as a viable opportunity for peace and reconciliation. These reflections by teachers emphasize the need to take into account the full consequences of trauma for people’s lives when thinking about the ways that certain ideas (e.g., forgiveness) might or should inform educational goals about reconciliation. After exploring the process of forgiveness in light of what she has witnessed in the work of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Gobodo-Madikizela (2002, 2008a, 2008b) argues that understanding the possibility of forgiveness requires a full grasp of the impact of trauma on the victims and an appreciation of the psychological reparation necessary in restoring the humanness of both the victims and the perpetrators, and of the role of the perpetrators’ remorse in this process. While there are teachers in both settings of our research taking an Arendtian position on forgiveness – considering some heinous acts as unforgivable – Gobodo-Madikizela reminds us that perhaps it is more instructive to talk about the conditions that may (or may not) foster forgiveness than to suggest that certain categories of acts are utterly unforgivable. Doing so creates the necessary intellectual and emotional space to recognize the other’s humanity, to clarify the responsibilities of the communities and

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to promote a critical analysis of the conditions that permit forgiveness (Norlock and Rumsey, 2009). This is precisely what some teachers from Israel seem to be telling us, when they stress the recognition of the other’s suffering and the importance of human connectedness. Theoretically speaking, the meaning of forgiveness can be linked to a wide analysis that highlights important connections with justice (de Gruchy, 2002; Eisikovits, 2004; Murphy, 2003). Pragmatically speaking, however, it seems that these connections are not always obvious, acceptable or even issues of concern by the participant teachers. For most Greek-Cypriot teachers, for example, justice is a major issue of concern and forgiveness and justice are considered incompatible. There seems to be a widespread perception of a gap between the level of justice desired by teachers and the level of justice they perceive that forgiveness can promote (see Worthington, 2003). On the other hand, it should not slip our attention that the possibility of forgiveness appears in unexpected places where justice cannot any more be achieved, yet it is always dependent on it. For instance, teachers from Israel seem to realize that justice cannot be accomplished, and thus they do not reject forgiveness as a possibility.1 One could argue, then, that forgiveness may be used when justice cannot any more (not even in the eyes of the victim) be achieved; instead, forgiveness is offered in exchange for recognition. However, forgiveness is not offered if it is believed – as pointed out by some Jewish and Palestinian teachers alike – that the price is too high (e.g., human lives), or what needs to be returned (e.g., reparations or recognition) cannot be given back. Therefore, a significant challenge for those involved in peace education efforts is how to recognize and critically interrogate such complex perspectives in the repertoires of teachers’ discourses. A theoretical idea that might prove useful in such efforts, as noted earlier, is the notion of just forgiveness (Ben-Porath, 2005) – a conception of forgiveness that does not waive claims of justice, but also refrains from adopting a “strict view” of forgiveness. A consideration of this idea can have important pedagogical implications that raise new questions for teachers, school leaders and curriculum developers: Should (just) forgiveness be a part of school curricula and pedagogical practices, when a conflict is unresolved or violence continues? If yes, what notion of forgiveness might be considered and under what circumstances? At the same time, what are the ethical and pedagogical limits of forgiveness in some traumatized societies compared with others? Needless to say, once again, it is important to 1

Their Palestinian counterparts in the occupied territories and or the Palestinian Authority might not settle for forgiveness but require justice.

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keep in mind the context in developing specific curricular interventions that respond to both forgiveness and justice concerns. Such pedagogical practices can be part of our overall direction of creating “critical design experts.” Our analysis in this chapter also shows that forgiveness in schools will not happen until there is some form of conflict resolution or political reconciliation first (see also Auerbach, 2004). Forgiveness, however, could be an important element of school curricula and pedagogical practices as a value that would promote humanness and connectedness. As shown in the discourses of teachers from Israel, humanness and connectedness are elements that are not rejected as such and thus can provide important openings to talk about forgiveness – initially, at a rather broad level. The specific connection to the conflict within a traumatized society may be addressed later, only if and when the circumstances allow for it. For example, the overall skepticism of Greek-Cypriot teachers toward forgiveness needs to be respected and understood better; what seems to be needed is a more detailed investigation of the circumstances under which these teachers would consider teaching about/for forgiveness without feeling that they are giving up justice or memory (see also Gobodo-Madikizela, 2008b; Govier, 2002). At the political level, this finding reveals the hegemonic forces present in the society, rendering any talk about forgiveness as absurd or precarious. Thus, a possible interpretation of the intensely negative perception of forgiveness among Greek-Cypriot teachers may be linked to evidence about the widespread dehumanization of the ¨ other side in Cypriot schools (e.g., see Bryant, 2004; Kizilyurek, 1999; Zembylas, 2008a). It should not be surprising, then, that among GreekCypriot teachers forgiveness is not viewed as a value that could promote humanness – unlike the context of teaching in the bilingual schools of Israel – since the humanity of the other is rarely recognized. The recognition of the other’s suffering constitutes an important point of departure for reinstating the other’s humanity and considering forgiveness as a viable possibility for reconciliation (Gobodo-Madikizela, 2002). There are other valuable pedagogical choices that may be available concerning the prospects of forgiveness as an educational goal. For example, it is argued that teachers need to adopt a general pedagogical approach which recognizes the power that is present in the relation of the forgiver and the forgiven, and the need to cultivate critical reflection on wrong deeds (Papastephanou, 2003). This critical reflection can begin from the notion of humanness that is present at the individual level and explore how it may be restored (if ever) at the sociopolitical level as well (Gobodo-Madikizela, 2008a). The struggle to make this shift is reflected in the ambivalence of some teachers from both Israel and Cyprus in

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deciding whether forgiveness is individual or collective. The establishment of opportunities for critical dialogue in the classroom on the possibility of forgiveness will provide openings to question how some emotional norms and discourses about “us and them” are perpetuated uncritically. Closing remarks Although we acknowledge the limitations of this comparison owing to its size, methodology and breadth, it does offer some critical insights into how teachers understand the notions of forgiveness and reconciliation as well as their linkages. Theoretically speaking, the discourse of forgiveness and reconciliation in education can be linked to a wider theorization that focuses on justice, tolerance and recognition issues. Yet it seems that in pedagogical practices these linkages are not always obvious or acceptable to teachers. These remarks also raise some interesting questions: Should forgiveness be a part of school curricula and pedagogical practices, when a conflict is unresolved? If yes, what notion of forgiveness might be considered? In other words, what would forgiveness and reconciliation pedagogies look like, and what would they transform (i.e., how would that be different from what the teachers are doing now)? It is important to find elements of forgiveness that are not rejected by teachers; these elements can provide the initial openings to talk about some aspects of forgiveness (e.g., at a general level). Perhaps the relevance to the conflict in Israel or Cyprus may be addressed only when the circumstances allow for it. The teachers’ present refusal to teach students about sociopolitical forgiveness needs to be respected and understood better; this idea implies a more detailed investigation of the circumstances under which teachers would consider such teaching without feeling that they are giving up justice, identity or history (see also Gobodo-Madikizela, 2008b; Govier, 2002). To close, we would like to return to where we began this chapter – the problematic of forgiveness in relation to reconciliation. What the various teacher discourses on forgiveness identified here have in common are the complexities in finding a way forward from a situation of trauma and conflict towards peaceful coexistence and reconciliation. Responses to forgiveness – often expressed through ideas about recognition, justice and reconciliation – fall along a continuum rather than being an oppositional either/or case. We have suggested, then, that under some circumstances the notion of forgiveness may constitute a viable educational goal, if it promotes mea culpa and adequately responds to concerns that justice

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claims are not waived (Ben-Porath, 2005). The task of pedagogues and politicians is – or at least ought to be – to create learning spaces where all of us are engaged in critical reflection on the meaning of forgiveness and on how the value of forgiveness can be manifest in public and school pedagogies. Schools cannot resolve political conflicts and change the world, but they constitute powerful mechanisms by which to lay the groundwork for seeking and offering forgiveness, as a means to furthering reconciliation in traumatized societies.

Part IV

Conclusions Implications for peace education

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Becoming critical design experts in schools

Education has for too long been discussed in the abstractions of theory and not enough has been done to understand its practice. Without a basic understanding of what gets done in educational activities, be these peace educational activities or other, we do not believe any serious discussion on education can be held. While in general education some progress has been done and research on actual classroom realities has been published, peace education lags far behind. In Parts II and III we travelled the world of educational practices, we dealt with the micro, the actual doings as these get done in the educational spheres we have researched. We have also analyzed in detail some of the teachers’ ideas regarding concepts that are central to peace education, and discussed how these ideas are manifested in pedagogical practices. Yes, we are committed to understanding the world in detail, and details are what we have tried to bring to the table, and yet we are not naive. Details, the details of small pedagogical practices, are enacted in wider contexts which evolve in specific historical conditions. Thus we have no choice now that we are approaching the end of this book but to widen the perspective, try to once again situate what has been said back into wider horizons, for it is this continuous dialogue between the macro and the micro that is the one (only) thing which might allow for serious considerations as to how to bring about change (change with a small “c,” for that is the most we can expect when considering the complexity of the issues we have raised). Details might help correct some of the pedagogical practices implemented which have been shown to be dubious and/or problematic in the context of our research sites. No less importantly, details allow us to understand how the macro-level picture (i.e., the one usually discussed in educational policy) becomes organized. This shift from the micro to the macro level is not unproblematic. Yet, if it is not done – that is, if the meaning of peace education is not extended from the small details to the big issues – then peace education will remain trapped in a number of problematic reified categories. 185

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In the last part of the book, then, we will try to offer some “answers” to the big questions we posed in previous parts of the book. Firstly, can steps towards change really be achieved without first exposing and overcoming the structures and practices which have established the present conflictual situation and their functional categories? Secondly, and of critical importance, how possible is it to overcome such structures and practices? In general our answers relate to our call for a distancing from the abstract, the transcendental and the epistemological and a return to the empirical, the contextualized and the historicized. In the following section, we start drawing some conclusions and suggesting some “solutions” to the problems identified earlier.

Teachers and students as critical design experts In previous chapters, we have gone to great pains to detail the constructed aspects of categories such as identity, memory, reconciliation and so on; each of these categories is constituted through the co-construction of other notions (e.g., history, trauma, mourning). These constructed concepts are employed by active agents, displaying the available options of a given social order – in our case, the given social order of communities in conflict. We emphasize that all pedagogical practices we have uncovered are executed by active agents, experts in their contexts, not hostages to the mandates of a secret order. These agents are undoubtedly experts in the workings of a given social system. They often seem to be functionalist “experts” of sorts. Given the daily pressures and the risky complexities of the system they inhabit, teachers and students as experts exhibit a deep knowledge of the system and a profound understanding of the competences needed to survive in it, believing that sustained equilibrium and not necessarily change will move them forward without problems. In a sense these types of experts look for adaptive strategies to survive in the system while trying to better their lot according to the system’s rules. To put this idea differently: What we are after, we suggest, is to try to make the natural activity of all humans from the moment they are born – that is, our endless possibilities of adaptation to changing circumstances and contexts, our profound understanding of the way the social world is organized, the in-depth knowledge we all have of the contexts in which we live and adapt – become more critical. In this case, more “critical” suggests being alert to the difficult though possible event that adaptation does not imply “more of the same” (something which usually benefits the powerful), but might come to mean small careful steps towards change. This rationale works against common Western understandings, for it

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assumes the very basic and initial equality of all humans and does not assume that education is needed to achieve equality (Ranciere, 1991). All by itself this assumption is revolutionary: We are all design experts by virtue of being human; what we need is to try to change the world a bit and thus become “critical design experts.” Critical design experts are literate about the world they inhabit and how it is constructed so as to be able, if so they wish, to change it – and realize that change is the outcome of practice as much as the thing that needs to be changed is also a product of practice and not God-given. The longer schools remain trapped in Western psychologized perspectives, the fewer chances there are of creating opportunities for disrupting pedagogies. For this to be realized our educational practices need not be epistemological or romanticized ideologies. In other words, there is no intangible force that guides the activities of what we earlier called “active agents.” It is all of us, agents of sorts, who are involved and work together and collude (play together) in the context of: constraints that perspectives and actions put on each other; tools that are available; stages in which roles are played out; historical trajectories that we trail. All of the above indicate the constructed nature of constructors/constructions; for all involved in the construction processes are both constitutive and constituted at the time of their involvement. These complexities are the ones we have tried to attend to in our work, knowing well that, if they are left unattended, little can be learned and even less can be done about their ultimate results. While having in mind the importance of linking macro and micro perspectives, here we propose three key elements emerging from the stories and experiences captured in this book that highlight how teachers and students can become critical design experts. Emphasizing context and practice Our analysis has emphasized context and practice. This emphasis aligns our work with those whose perspectives draw on the images of apprenticeship as a powerful form of learning and its emphasis on peripheral participation (Lave, 1988, 1996b; Wenger, 1998). Halpern (2009) has rightly pointed to the fact that if the practices of the apprentice are not supported by the surrounding cultural environment and the resources it affords, then failure is most likely. It could as well be argued that our approach is aligned with the relatively new perspectives developed in what has come to be called “cultural therapy” (Spindler and Spindler, 1994; Trueba, 1993). Cultural therapy is the process of bringing one’s own culture to a level of awareness that permits one to perceive it as a potential

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bias in social interaction and in the learning of skills and knowledge. The teachers and students who engage in cultural therapy perform their roles as critical design experts. For teachers, cultural therapy can facilitate an awareness of the cultural assumptions that they bring into the classroom and affect their behavior and their interactions with students; for students, cultural therapy is essentially a means of critical consciousness raising which helps them identify and critique unequal power relationships in the school, the classroom and the society. In general, cultural therapy encourages teachers and students (that is, everyone involved in educational activity) to appreciate the relevance of culture to educational activity, as well as to be able to identify the contextual obstacles which stand in their way when trying to engage in a peace culture. Last, but certainly not least, the move suggested is similar to that taken in anthropology (Varenne and McDermott, 1998) when examining central paradigmatic perspectives in the study and practice of education. It starts by restoring the concept of identity/culture to its historical sources, thus de-essentializing it. It follows this by developing the restored meaning into a methodology – cultural analysis – that is to say the gaining of skills on how to read/describe the world through careful observation and recording of practical activity. This in turn allows for a shift from the individual or the socializing group as the crucial analytic unit for (educational) analysis to the processes and mechanisms of producing cultural contexts through social interaction. What is common to the above approaches – i.e., apprenticeship, cultural therapy, the anthropological approach – is that they try to reverse positivistic approaches that have characterized traditional Western scientific perspectives on culture. The theoretical developments to which we alluded perceive culture as a whirlpool rather than as an island. Cultural identities reinforce their unity not by relying on meanings from the past but by reconstructing and reinterpreting cultural materials accessible to all (Bauman, 1999). Cultural development is consolidated through translation – an act that from the outset does not address the intercultural sphere alone but also accounts for all communicative activity between human beings, even those who ostensibly belong to the same culture (Becker, 1995; Ortega y Gasset, 1957). As for the need to acknowledge the historicized and contextualized nature of all human activity, we realize that educational activity in general, and more specifically that which is constrained by the institution of schooling, suffers from serious contextual limitations. This is not unrelated to the fact that schooling has traditionally been the main tool in the hands of the sovereign power to homogenize its population under one flag and one anthem. Yet the educational rhetoric we have come to

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be accustomed to in modern societies hides these limitations and usually argues that education through schooling is the best option to deliver unlimited social achievements and change. This argument is not new and it is closely connected to the rhetoric developed by the sovereign (nation state) around the time of the Industrial Revolution, when it finally chose to support universal free and compulsory education for the masses in need of basic skills to fuel the new industrial (thirsty for cheap human power) era. In those days schools and mass education were perceived as agents/factors of change – the change needed by the state and industrial masters. Schools were agents of change also in the preparation of the local elites which would ultimately support the nexus between the, now, free colonies and the old colonial powers. Indeed, schools can be agents of change but they are usually so in the service of hegemonic powers – those which seem to need and thrive in conflict. It is these same hegemonic powers that present schools and the promise of universal compulsory and free education as the epiphany through which the masses will ultimately benefit and better their lot; and yet it is not clear this comes to pass, for the masses may improve their lot slightly but never enough to close the gap in ways which are significant. In our introduction we hinted that one of our main realizations in the course of the research had to do with understanding how macro-political formations such as the nation state fix our gaze in ways we are not always “aware” of. We highlighted that education as schooling is central to the preservation of the nation-state machinery, for it helps it shape a national consciousness and ideology. It therefore comes as no surprise that education and its goals become the focus of agitated debates. The arguments are often organized around either national or ethnic distinctions. Those in power need to preserve these distinctions in order to retain their power. Since the central conduit for the advancement of the masses in modernity has been the state-instituted, mass-educational establishment, suggesting its reform is parallel to taking a true interest in reforming society towards the “good” (in our case towards “peace”), or so we are asked to believe. Teachers and students as critical design experts understand well the machinations of preserving the nation-state apparatus that rests on conflict and alterity, and thus are vigilant and suspicious of claims about educational reforms that “promote” peace and reconciliation. Disrupting taken-for-granted assumptions about peace education There is one fundamental assumption, in our view, behind educational reforms in the case of peace education that needs to be seriously reconsidered. This assumption is that lack of peace, tolerance, justice, equality and

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recognition is primarily considered a product of “ignorance” rather than ill will; educational reforms, then, should aim at transferring knowledge and skills to students and teachers. In particular, there are two important implications of this assumption: First, it is assumed that peace, tolerance, justice, equality and recognition can be forwarded through reforms in the educational system that focus on instilling the “appropriate” knowledge in students; and, second, with proper training, teachers can foster the implementation of peace, tolerance, justice, equality and recognition values for all. Both implications, however, fail to investigate and cultivate critical praxis and transformative agency in ways relevant to the respective economic, political, historical and social contexts (Bajaj, 2008). The above assumption and its implications rest on a second set of cultural assumptions that are equally important in terms of defining the aims and consequences of peace education initiatives. These assumptions refer to how peace, tolerance, justice, equality and recognition values are culturally perceived in a particular setting. For example, in the case of the countries which we come from (i.e., the State of Israel and the Republic of Cyprus), this second set of assumptions presupposes that the very basic values of the Jewish or Hellenic civilizations deny racist perspectives while emphasizing respect and recognition of “otherness.” The same could be argued for the foundational values of Western civilization. If so, and in the absence of unexpected obstacles, it is perceived that these civilizations can only produce peace, tolerance, justice, equality and recognition, and work only for the good. Given these assumptions, it is often considered that attempts at reform need simply to achieve technical changes such as the restructuring of the curriculum, the reorganization of the time devoted to old and new school subjects, and the training of teachers. That is, the aforementioned assumptions are taken for granted and are never interrogated in theory, nor is how they are actually enacted in practice. Still, it has become increasingly clear that, save a few exceptions, educational reform has failed to deliver the goods, leading us to the realization that what education is asked to correct has little to do with education and a lot to do with the world in which schools exist, the very world they are asked to support. For better or for worse, present research supports this critique, showing that reforms developed in Western countries in the last half-century have achieved little, if anything at all (Anyon, 1995; Apple, 1999; Berliner, 2006; Hirschland and Steinmo, 2003; Ravitch, 2000; Sarason, 1990; Tyack and Cuban, 1995). We raise these complex macro-level issues, in short, because of the familiar rhetoric that saddles schools and education with the responsibility of finding solutions to all the problems which beset modern societies.

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Thus education is rhetorically constructed by those in power as a worthy goal. Unsurprisingly, peace (and its cronies, tolerance, civility etc.) is also rhetorically constructed by nation states as a necessary and worthy goal, achievable through education and schooling. It is exactly this rhetorical construction (so consequential for the achievement of peace) that we worry about. For, just as other promised constructs such as social reform and or equality have not (yet) been achieved through schooling and education, we doubt peace can be. This approach of ours should not be considered pessimistic – we are not pessimists; we are rather realists, pragmatists. The other option, that traditionally considered antagonistic to pessimism, is optimism. But we perceive optimism to be blind to hegemonic power and in this sense its best ally. The engagement with the rhetoric of change through education within the nation state usually implies embracing the “dogma” (it is a dogma, because it is never proven) that education can be a “solution.” The dogma is somewhat similar to a double bind in which, while it is not permissible to say change is not available – for education is seen as the path to change (and is offered on a universal, free and compulsory basis) – the contexts within which education evolves are set in such a way as not to allow education/schooling to produce the necessary, wished-for change. If the situation is so gloomy we need to ask what we can expect to achieve. What we should hope for is tiny and modest, and it relates to the difficult attempt to change practices and strategies as these are uncovered through serious empirical research efforts. Yet even when practices in need of change are exposed and successful attempts to change them are implemented, we need to know these changes might have very little influence. And yet these small changes are the most that can be done at this point, at this level, given present contextual circumstances and our limited freedom as educators. Indeed teachers and students as critical design experts are not free; even if they were they could not do it all, they may not be able to change the world, and yet as critical design experts they should do the most they can to change their immediate contexts somewhat. What we are saying is that, even when realistically trying to think about small changes, we need to think about the macro level because a complex mixture of macro- and micro-level issues is what produces the reality we want to change; both need to be attended to. Recognizing the power of emotions As argued in the second part of the book, it seems important for peace education scholars to pay attention to the contextual specificity of the

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transaction between the macro-political level and the micro-individual manifestations of emotions, highlighting the ways that feelings are politicized in education. As Ahmed (2004) argues, these transactions work to bind together a whole community. If this is so, then this process can be clearly conceived as the work of a successful ideology – the national ideology. In the examples described in this book, conflicting historical narratives are shown to be emotionally inscribed by teachers or students through hegemonic nationalized narratives. Consequently, it is valuable for teachers and students as critical design experts to gain a deeper understanding of the complex interplay between emotion and historical narratives in specific cultural, political and historical contexts. Gaining such an understanding is important for two reasons. First, emotions need to be understood as publicly and collaboratively formed, not as an individual psychological mechanism. This idea suggests that the constitution of emotional practices is an inextricable dimension of political process (Goodwin et al., 2001) in which ideologies and practices – such as nationalism – adapt and accommodate supremacy beliefs within specific contexts, as shown in the examples from Israel and Cyprus. Second, teaching historical narratives in schools will profitably be seen as enacted, emotional practices rather than simply as socially expressed (Zembylas, 2007, 2008a). The evidence we shared in this book suggests that it will be important to understand how both emotions and historical narratives are co-constituted and operate interactively at the level of both the individual and the social-political structures (Harding and Pribram, 2004) within school and the wider society. What are the implications of these ideas for peace education? We want to briefly highlight two implications. The first one concerns the suggestion that teachers and students as critical design experts interrogate the emotional discourses/practices through which historical narratives are authorized by, implied by and embodied in schools; this position also entails the recognition that such discourses/practices have consequences for the ways in which affective spaces and communities are constituted within the classroom and beyond (Zembylas, 2009b). To take seriously the affective politics of teaching conflicting historical narratives in schools, it seems that teachers and students should be vigilant in exploring how such discourses and practices create specific inclusions/exclusions with particular consequences (Zembylas, 2009a). As Fenstermacher (1978) argued more than three decades ago, it is insufficient to change students’ mistaken views simply by criticizing them as wrong or illegitimate, or simply by giving counter-responses to unaccepted perceptions. Rather, changing such attitudes and beliefs requires

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following the process and rationales by which they were formed in the first place, and that requires having some patience with hearing out views – up to a point, at least – that one might find deeply objectionable. [ . . . ] When these views are regarded as something solely to be silenced, or condemned, or held up as an object lesson for the sake of others’ educational benefit, something of potential value, educationally, has been sacrificed. (Burbules, 2004, p. xxviii)

All speech is not free, as Boler (2004) also argues, in response to whether some hostile voices are tolerated or not in the classroom. If all speech is not free, then a pedagogical approach needs to contextualize conflicting historical narratives, outlining what can be tolerated or not and why. This approach is undoubtedly full of emotional discomforts for students and teachers alike; however, an interrogation of the affective politics of teaching should help to ensure that teachers and students, as critical design experts, bear witness to all voices in the classroom, even when there are obvious emotional costs (Boler and Zembylas, 2003). The second implication concerns an imperative need among teachers working with children from different communities (often rival ones) to increase their competence in dealing with conflicting historical narratives at both the “cognitive” and “emotional” levels (without implying any dichotomy between the two; see Zembylas, 2005). This competence can be developed in part through teacher education that pays attention to the emotional complexities of teaching conflicting historical narratives. For example, there are a number of pedagogical strategies that teachers can undertake to make the teaching of such narratives more effective, as the literature on teaching controversial issues suggests (e.g., see Barton and McCully, 2007; McCully, 2006; Oxfam, 2006). These include dealing with emotions (including the teachers’ own emotions) and encouraging empathetic understanding with others, as well as focusing attention on problem-solving, critical thinking and multiple perspectives, all in the context of critical dialogue. Emphasis on critical dialogue provides a useful pedagogical tool for untangling the complexities of any hegemonic treatment of memory. When criticality and dialogue are absent, it is not recognized that critical dialogue is essentially “unfinalizable” in the present (Olick, 2007). This idea provides the pedagogical resources and tools to treat collective and individual memory as a relational process of constituting culture, not as a reduction mechanism of individual experience. In addition, it seems important for teachers to give critical consideration to the close relationship between essentialist perspectives of identity, memory and the larger sociopolitical context. Teachers can learn not only

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to acknowledge and explore the disturbing feelings an event evokes, but also to construct the curriculum to support all students in dealing with open wounds and mourning, without reproducing the status quo (Berlak, 2004). Collaborative teaching (e.g., what happens in integrated bilingual schools) is an opportunity to create greater safety for those teachers who feel silenced or fearful that their intentions might be misperceived by educational authorities or parents. This collaboration, however, can be more productive if teachers’ attachments to national ideologies are somewhat relaxed (Bekerman and Maoz, 2005). Furthermore, more attention can be given to children’s personal narratives and their links to national discourses. This suggestion is in line with pedagogical considerations about children’s ages and their needs and interests, such as the need for the curriculum to be adapted to their knowledge and experience. If we (educators, scholars, researchers, citizens) are to find new, healthier, more just ways of living with others, perhaps it will help to do so “through the process of speaking about the past, and through exposing the wounds that get concealed by the ‘truths’ of a certain history” (Ahmed, 2004, p. 201). In this manner it might be possible to practice alternative visions of affective spaces and communities (Gandhi, 2006) in schools – practices that are grounded in solidarity, human vulnerability and social justice.

What’s next? Certainly, a radical change in the perspectives of teachers and students and their educational activities is needed, but it would be unfair to blame them for not acting always as critical design experts. After all, they are not policy makers and they do not have the power to dismantle identity, memory and reconciliation boundaries. Yet, events such as those we shared in this book tell us something valuable in terms of teaching, learning and curriculum making in places of conflict. They emphasize the need to look always for small openings; these openings are essentially pedagogical spaces which highlight how we educate children in ways that enable them to offer something therapeutic and progressive in the adult world. These openings do not provide any permanent “solution” to the problem of how teachers must deal with conflicting historical narratives. Instead, these openings are becomings, opportunities and possible alternatives, beginnings rather than endings. The final three chapters of the book revisit for one last time each of the three main constructs that accompanied us throughout – that is, memory,

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identity and reconciliation – and make an attempt to summarize what we have learned while identifying these small openings that we have talked about. Each chapter sheds light on each of these constructs – always in relation to the other two – and makes a last holistic rendition of their meanings and consequences in practice.

12

Memory and forgetting A pedagogy of dangerous memories

It is difficult to assert how much (if at all) history and memory are needed. Too much seems to paralyze us; too little seems to disconcert us (Borges, 1996; Sacks, 1985). Even when one is convinced that the main reason for existing conflicts among individuals and nations has more to do with the distribution of resources than with any psychological concerns, we need to recall that resources come in plenty of forms and can be material as well as symbolic in nature (Humphreys, 2005). We do give primary importance to material ones, but given our field of research (education) symbolic ones become prominent. Although the areas where we come from have conflicts based on particularly material resources (e.g., land), symbolic issues also need to be addressed for peace to be reached. We have hinted in previous chapters that a concept which provides a different understanding to the question of how much (if at all) history and memory are needed is the notion of dangerous memory, that is, memory which is disruptive to the status quo (Ostovich, 2002, 2005). Dangerous memories are threatening to official memory and the vested interests of the nation state as well as its investment in essentialist identities. Our purpose in this chapter is to revisit some of the previous chapters and further explore the potential of using the construct of dangerous memories to theorize “small openings.” These small openings, we argue, are valuable to teachers and students as critical design experts to navigate through contested narratives in troubled societies. Admittedly, the premise on which the notion of “dangerous memories” rests – that is, the importance of raising critical awareness of the role of memory in the everyday lives of those living in troubled societies and the link between memory and contested narratives – is not new; that premise, however, is not the most important contribution of this chapter. A more important contribution is the analysis of the radically different meanings of dangerous memories in the two sites we explore in this book (i.e., Israel and Cyprus), and the implications of the complex workings of dangerous memories for educational settings. These differential meanings have the advantage that they are not locked into perceptions that memories 196

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simply “control” individuals or that the political dynamics seek to control individuals by shaping their memories. After we briefly discuss the meaning and significance of dangerous memories in educational settings of troubled societies, we revisit some of the stories shared in earlier chapters and (re)interpret them through the lens of “dangerous memories.” In particular, we discuss how dangerous memories work in relation to the hegemonic powers that aim to sustain collective memories and in what ways teachers and students as critical design experts can utilize dangerous memories. The different workings of dangerous memories in the two settings we come from suggest that collective memories of historical trauma are not simply “transmitted” in any simple way down the generations (see Sorabji, 2006), although there are powerful workings that support this transmission. Rather, there seems to be a lot of ambivalence in the workings of memories, so that under some circumstances teachers and students as critical design experts may create openings for new solidarities with others (perceived as “the enemy”). Dangerous memories As pointed out in previous chapters, group-based identities are usually essentialized, static and tribalistic, because they are built on the notion of separating the “good us” from the “bad them” (Hill, 2000). Dangerous memories are potentially subversive to those identities and may create new narratives and identities that do not retain essentialism. Needless to say, there is not a particular kind or source of memory that is dangerous per se (Ostovich, 2005). The danger is in the practice (i.e., action) of remembering the past in new ways that are disruptive to taken-forgranted assumptions about a group’s identity; these ways establish new understandings of personal and collective identities that enable solidarity (Dyson, 1994). Dangerous memories, therefore, are not a particular kind or function of memory that can be isolated and defined, points out Ostovich (2002, 2005); rather they are “a disruptive practice of and from memory” (2002, p. 239, added emphasis). Any memory can become dangerous when it resists hegemonic historical narratives. Consequently, dangerous memories are neither simply individual nor collective but political in the sense that they involve power relations, revealing the patterns of violence and suffering at work. A dangerous memory, for instance, is a memory that breaks through what is assumed to be “true” – e.g., that Jews and Palestinians or Greeks and Turks have always been and will always be enemies – and exposes events and experiences that reveal new and “dangerous” insights for the

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present hegemonic situation. That is, a dangerous memory enables solidarity by not appealing to past understandings of identity or ideological narratives but by recognizing shared historical experiences as well as the heterogeneity of those experiences (Hill, 2000), such as the experience of “common vulnerability” (identified in Chapters 8 and 9). These memories are also dangerous to national/state educational attempts to subsume the past into unified narratives that establish further dichotomies between “us” and “them.” The German political theologian Johann Baptist Metz has offered a detailed theorization of the notion of dangerous memories, building on some of Walter Benjamin’s work (see Metz, 1972, 1980). Deeply aware of the connections among memories and identities, Metz offers a profound critique of taken-for-granted memories and the mechanisms through which such memories encourage feelings of fear, anger and revenge towards others. As he states: “Identity is formed when memories are aroused” (1980, p. 66). In particular, Metz (1972, 1980) argues that there are two categories of memories. In the first category, memory is simply the recollection of the past, but it is a selective memory; it remembers the past only from the perspective of self, thus perpetuating the status quo. In the second category, memory interrupts fixed historical narratives by acknowledging the powerfulness of human suffering. All humans as subjects are located in suffering; thus, through memories of suffering – that is, dangerous memories – the taken-for-granted narratives are interrupted. As he writes: There are memories in which earlier experiences break through the centre-point of our lives and reveal new and dangerous insights for our present. They . . . show up the banality of our supposed “realism.” They break through the canon of all that is taken as self-evident . . . [and] subvert our structures of plausibility. Such memories are like dangerous and incalculable visitants from the past. They are memories we have to take into account: memories, as it were, with future content. (1972, p. 15)

Dangerous memories are disruptive because they call for solidarity with others on the basis of common suffering and common humanity. Such disruptions act as dangerous memories when we remember events of the past that question our consciences and assumed horizons; “dangerous,” then, takes the meaning of challenging, critical and hopeful while propelling individual and collective consciousness into a new process of narrativization. Reclaiming forgotten connections with others involves acts of compassion, self-criticality and resistance to the status quo. As we are trapped in egotistic and ethnocentric mentalities, dangerous memories interrupt our endless cycle of selfishness, and open up our eyes

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to the suffering of others as well. As Metz (1999) notes in the context of violence and hatred in the former Yugoslavia, [T]he memory of suffering became a shroud for the whole nation and a stranglehold on any attempt at interethnic rapprochement. Here a particular people have remembered only their own suffering, and so this purely self-regarding memoria passionis became not an organ of understanding and peace, but a source of hostility, hatred and violence. (p. 230)

Following the spirit of the political theology of Metz means that the patterns of past violence and hatred may be subverted, and solidarity with adversaries can be inspired through the memory of common suffering with others. What constitutes such a solidarity is empathizing with the sufferings of others, grounded in “feeling with” the others’ suffering. Undoubtedly, the cultural circulation of memories of others’ suffering does not always result in formations of solidarity. Therefore, the conditions of possibility for solidarity must also be interrogated because empty empathy (Kaplan, 2005) threatens to slide through the doors. Relating to others’ suffering, for example, without sentimentalizing them is a daunting task (Zembylas, 2008b). The challenge for educators and their students is how to learn to hear and recognize what is painful. But such hearing and recognition is not possible if victimhood is claimed as one’s own. On the other hand, as shown in some of the events and stories described here, insisting on absolute symmetry of victimhood has the danger of neutralizing suffering and leaving power relations intact. To learn how to hear and recognize the other’s pain without insisting on categorizing his or her suffering is what creates new openings for solidarity. As Metz (1980) writes: “It is in . . . solidarity that memory and narrative . . . acquire their mystical and political praxis” (p. 229). This idea also suggests a radical questioning of the collective memories that are taken for granted. It is this solidarity that offers a way out of the sanitized narratives of selective memories within which the narrow “us” is barricaded against the fearful “them” (Ashley, 1998). On a personal level, this solidarity requires a constant openness to and criticality of one’s self and transformation, and a willingness to recognize one’s connections to another’s suffering – through attention to their memories of suffering such as listening to their stories and working with them to alleviate suffering. In this way, we begin to see ourselves as interdependent and vulnerable to injustices. In fact, to use Benjamin’s (1968) terminology, what is missing in cases in which victimhood is claimed as one’s own is anamnestic solidarity. Anamnestic solidarity with others – victims too – engages students and teachers, as critical design experts, with a self-critical and

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committed reappraisal of collective memories, and prevents the unreflective and instrumental appropriation of hegemonic historical narratives (Duvenage, 1999; Pensky, 1989). As Pensky argues, this criticality means abandoning conventional forms of collective memory and identity and anchoring relationality with others in telling the stories of those who suffered. But how easy is it to abandon conventional forms of collective memory and identity and engage in a praxis of memory grounded in solidarity with the other’s suffering? As we revisit some events analyzed in earlier chapters, we want to show how meanings of memory are often co-opted by the nation state and negate efforts to engage in anamnestic solidarity and reconciliation. The aim, however, is not simply to confirm that this happens but to search for these small openings we have talked about earlier; that is, for opportunities and spaces that could turn students and teachers as critical design experts away from hegemonic historical narratives towards their critical interrogation. Revisiting contested historical narratives: in search of small cracks and openings We revisit here two events from previous chapters. The first one comes from the teachers’ workshops in Israel (Chapters 4 and 5) and the other one comes from a students’ discussion in a private international high school in Cyprus (Chapter 7). Both events show how individuals work with their memories to gain an understanding of the past. Our interest in revisiting these events is to delve into another layer of understanding about what makes memories so difficult to overcome and how teachers and students as critical design experts can formulate openings that transform the hegemonic ways with which collective memories are remembered. Teachers’ workshops in Israel As discussed in Chapters 4 and 5, teachers were offered opportunities to think about issues they might in the past have found difficult to raise in the presence of representatives of the other group. Soon, it became obvious that teachers – Jews and Palestinians alike – were able to cover many contentious issues in the Palestinian-Jewish conflict, but this was done as if their participation in the joint educational experiment had made no difference other than the fact that issues were put on the table seemingly, though painfully, with ease. The issues raised pointed in the direction of a “fearful” symmetry; each argument raised on one side was countered on the other. The conflict was attached to the existence of two narratives – symmetrical and oppositional.

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Jews were the ones who mostly feared speaking openly about historical and present issues in the mixed group with Palestinians; they felt that if they became critical their criticism would serve as “ammunition” to the Palestinian side. Jews, even those involved in a bilingual multicultural educational initiative, expressed traditional Zionist perspectives, as if their working in the context of the integrated initiative had not influenced them (almost) at all. Though critical of some of the behaviors of the Israeli armed forces, for the most part they justified their activities both in the past, during the war of 1948, and in the present intifada. Most surprising, however, was that even the critical insights presented by the scholars teaching at the workshop, which clearly pointed at a wide agreement among historians about the historical “facts,” and related to most of the official Jewish Zionist history presented at schools regarding the events of 1948 as mythical, did not seem to allow for much change in the positions of the teachers. Jewish teachers’ discomfort testified to their ambivalence about coming to terms with their memories of what happened in the past. Jewish teachers attached themselves to a historical deterministic perspective (what was will be – Jews have been persecuted and will be persecuted, if they are not careful enough). They also expected symmetry on various levels. They wanted, for example, the Palestinians to condemn “terrorism” unconditionally, terrorism as understood from the Jewish perspective; thus in a way they expected Palestinians to recognize the 1948 war as the Archimedean point from which the discussion should start and, following this reasoning, expected Palestinians to put their effort as Jews did after the Holocaust (their own Archimedean point of departure) into reconstructing their community instead of continuing to struggle for recognition as a people. In a sense they were asking them to forget the Nakba, while forgetting the Holocaust was the one thing they themselves were not ready to do. Palestinians contested the Jewish expectation for both symmetry and asymmetry: symmetry regarding the present political situation in Israel and its conflict with the Palestinian people; asymmetry regarding the non-equivalence between the way Jews suffered in the Holocaust and the way Palestinians suffered at the hands of Jews. Odd as it may sound, one has to search for openings in teachers’ sense of ambivalence in order to advance a radically different understanding of memories. Clearly, this is not easy to do, because collective memories seem to resist efforts to disrupt the status quo. Although Palestinians’ suffering is put forward as a potentially subversive element, the Jewish teachers’ fixed memories of the past subsume this suffering into a unified narrative of a Jewish-only victimhood. In other words, memories of Palestinian suffering are treated asymmetrically in comparison to

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memories of Jewish suffering. It is in this sense that memories of the Palestinian suffering as well as the Palestinians’ refusal to condemn terrorism constitute “dangerous” memories for Jewish teachers’ attempts to subsume the past under predefined structures of collective identity. The mechanisms of memory in the national culture of Israel prove to be very powerful and difficult to break through. Nevertheless, dangerous memories here are translated into challenging and discomforting memories, despite the fact that there is not much space left for transformation. We will further analyze the implications of this idea after we revisit another example, this time from the other site of our work, Cyprus. Students’ discussion at a private international school in Cyprus In the case study from Cyprus in Chapter 7, the hegemonic narrative about Greek-Cypriots-the-victims and Turks-the-perpetrators dominated Greek-Cypriot students’ talk in a religious class and brought up very strong negative emotions against their Turkish-Cypriot classmates (not present in class during this discussion). However, there were a few Greek-Cypriot students who emphasized that despite past trauma and suffering, students from both conflicted communities could move forward and create a different future. For these students, traumatic memories of the past – transferred essentially by parents to the new generation, since these students were unborn at the time of the 1974 war in Cyprus – seemed to take on a new life, enriched by recent memories (e.g., friendship experiences with Turkish-Cypriot classmates). For the Greek-Cypriot students who remained stuck in the hegemonic narratives of past trauma, this transcendence was unthinkable, because all Turkish Cypriots were defined as members of an enemy group rather than as “human beings.” On the other hand, there was a small group of students who, despite the painful memories with which they had grown up for most of their lives (e.g., through schooling and the education they received from their refugee parents), found some space to navigate their memories toward a different path – the path of friendship and solidarity with the so-called “enemy.” This discontinuity, this interruption of things-as-usual, constituted another example of the formation of “dangerous memories.” For the few Greek-Cypriot students who seemed to take this different path, past memories were contested by recent ones in which their personal everyday interactions with the “enemy” revealed new “dangerous” insights. Their memories became dangerous from the moment they began to question the hegemony of past beliefs and emotions that had been taken for granted. This danger was more obvious in the clash

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with the rest of the students who found the new insights threatening and absurd. Everyday interactions with Turkish-Cypriot classmates questioned the things that were perceived as self-evident in the past (e.g., perceptions about the Turkish Cypriots as perpetrators only). Unavoidably, the newly discovered resistance to collective narratives put dangerous demands on the present and brought conflict with those students who remained faithful to hegemonic collective memories. But did this attempt on the part of this small group of GreekCypriot students demand some “forgetting and moving on from a new foundation . . . ?” (McKnight, 2004, p. 150). If yes, what kind of forgetting was necessary to create new solidarities with the adversary? To put this more generally: Are there any forms of forgetting that, while not requiring amnesia, lead to new directions which do not remain stuck in past historical categorizations? These are challenging questions, and the “tool” of dangerous memories does not improve the situation for our teachers and students as critical design experts. Forgetting is usually criticized for attacking the nation’s foundations or for denying foundational memories (such as the Holocaust in Israel or the Turkish invasion and occupation in Cyprus, for example). However, is it possible perhaps that some forms of forgetting (compared with others) might provide new insights into solidarity with the other? As Ricoeur (2004) and Eppert (2006) argue, it is less about an issue of remembrance vs. forgetting than it is about some forms of remembrance vs. other forms of remembrance and some forms of forgetting vs. other forms of forgetting. In other words, it is not that the unjust past and the suffering are being forgotten. Rather it is the anger and the hatred that are being forgotten, so as to enable space for reconciliation. Certainly, this seems to be the case with the few Greek-Cypriot students who argued for a different position toward their Turkish-Cypriot classmates. These students did not want to forget past suffering, yet they wanted to also remember the suffering of the other side. So in a sense they chose to forget a unilateral narrative of history – to forget the lessons of their schooled past that told them they cannot forget but must fight against “the Turkish enemy” (must, in other words, remember to continue hating the other). These students, through the efforts of the teacher, had an opportunity to choose to forget their enmity and move forward. In this way these students and their teacher truly behaved as critical design experts. Revisiting the two cases through the lens of dangerous memories Although the two cases discussed here take quite different directions in terms of the meanings and implications of dangerous memories, they

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both show the ambivalence and the challenges of considering dangerous memories in teaching/learning about contested historical narratives. On one hand, the case from Israel suggests that it might be difficult for the idea of dangerous memory to work in places where hegemonic powers strive tremendously hard to sustain past traumas (i.e., the Holocaust); present essentialist meanings about memory and identity so much supported by the nation-state apparatus constitute machineries which seem hard to work against. On the other hand, the story from Cyprus indicates that despite the powerful hegemonic workings of collective memories, there might be openings for dangerous memories here and there. While these openings are small and may not subvert the powerful status quo altogether, their local consequences should not be underestimated. Therefore, it is important to explore the sociopolitical and educational conditions under which dangerous memories may or may not facilitate the work of teachers and students as critical design experts. Here we share three such conditions. First, it is important not to read the two cases in a polarized manner, that is, the case from Cyprus as an example of an opening to dangerous memories and the Israeli case as the opposite. The differences between the cases should first be interpreted in terms of the fact that not only are we speaking about different individuals, but we are also speaking about individuals experiencing very different socio-historical contexts. These differences are also connected with the ways the contexts allow for the organization of engagements with past memories, present realities (demographic and other) and future potential expectations. The Cypriot reality has organized a society fully divided, despite the ease of restrictions in movement in recent years. Many Greek Cypriots still refuse to cross the checkpoints and visit the other side because they refuse to show passports in order to “visit” their own country. The Greek-Cypriot adolescents who participated in the discussion presented in Chapter 7 grew up learning to resent and even hate Turkish Cypriots. For many Greek-Cypriot students at this international private school the Turkish-Cypriot presence was met at best with apathy and at worst with resentment and hatred, a reminder that while injustice continued against Greek Cypriots (from their perspective), there were serious implications for intercommunal encounters. The Israeli context, on the other hand, is organized around the existence of a subjugated indigenous minority and a Jewish majority. From this perspective, while individual encounters might and do occur, they become more or less available and are shaped according to contextual constraints. For Israeli Jews the presence of the Palestinian citizens of

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Israel is perceived as a threat, a potential fifth column, a continuous reminder that someone else holds a claim to the land they inhabit and, last but not least, a reminder that among them sit representatives of their feared “enemies,” the Palestinians outside the borders of Israel in the Palestinian Authority and other Arab countries. For Greek Cypriots, Turkish Cypriots have been less available until recently (when the checkpoints opened) and yet they have always been perceived as a threat or a reminder of a threat more or less immediate. Second, to the differences above we should add the immediate context in which the encounters take place. For Greek Cypriots such as the students in this international private school, there were encounters with Turkish Cypriots in everyday school life; however, not all GreekCypriot students have this opportunity. While Greek-Cypriot students were accompanied by the burden of “history” and much “memory,” the opportunity for interaction allowed some students at this school to formulate a different perception about Turkish Cypriots, one that was not stuck in past history and collective memory. On the other hand, the encounter between Jews and Palestinians took place in an organized formal setting, a training program for teachers in integrated bilingual schools. The themes they were discussing were directed towards the innermost fibers that compose the conflict – the historical narratives which for each are essential to justify their claims. Indeed other options could have developed, but in educational settings steeped in troubled societies the burden of the official history dissemination seems to allow for little other than what took place. The encounter between adults in Israel as well as between adolescents in Cyprus took place between “groups” and the collective national identity seemed to prevail, except in a few cases where some adolescents showed glimpses of not being caught in the official narratives. Finally, the comparative consideration of the two cases provides insight into the complex “layering” of witnessing the other’s suffering and acknowledging the other’s victimhood. Layering is the process of how dangerous memories take shape and form across different times and contexts. It is not enough to understand how to place one layer of dangerous memories on top of another; the task is to explore what happens between the layers, in the layering itself. In Israel, for example, memory is grounded on suffering, that is, the suffering of the Jews; it always seems as if the struggle is who suffered more. The example from Cyprus shows a different kind of layering concerning the witnessing of the other’s suffering. Some Greek-Cypriot students insist on seeing their Turkish-Cypriot classmates as “human beings,” as children who have no responsibility for the Greek-Cypriot trauma. The students’ everyday encounters and the

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friendships that evolve enable a different kind of layering in the development of dangerous memories and their potential to create some sort of new solidarity. A pedagogy of dangerous memories What are the pedagogical implications of the complexities and nuances of dangerous memories – as the two above cases show – for engaging students and teachers, as critical design experts, with the difficult issues of remembrance, forgetting, history and identity? In other words, how (if it is possible at all) can dangerous memories create cracks and openings in places where hegemonic powers work tremendously hard to sustain powerful traumatic memories? Is this something feasible or even desirable? Undoubtedly, to examine aspects of remembrance and forgetting and draw them out of taken-for-granted perceptions into a critical realization of the relationality with others is an immense pedagogical challenge (Simon, 2005; Simon et al., 2000; Zembylas, 2007). This examination, as the above two cases suggest, demands self-criticality that begins with a critical analysis of historical circumstances and memories, their connection to the present, and the recognition of the other’s suffering. But even when the space for dangerous memories is provided – admittedly a difficult task – there is no assurance that any transformation will take place. The concept of dangerous memories was widely cited in education discourse in the 1990s, especially through the writings of Giroux (e.g., 1992, 1997). Here we want to build on this work and push further the argument that dangerous memories may constitute new social and emotional spaces in classrooms and schools that inspire solidarity through the memory of common suffering and common humanity. These ideas are discussed below, offering a base for critical understanding in the practice of memory through gesturing to some of the conditions that might be necessary for such a solidarity to be actualized. It is important to recognize also that the same traumatic memories may produce different outcomes. For the Zionist movement (Porat, 2004a) the Holocaust became the definitive justification in their claims for an independent state and their positioning as the only victim, while the ultraorthodox Neturei Karta saw in the return to Zion a rebellion against the divine decree of exile that would lead to exposure to further divine retribution (Boyarin and Boyarin, 1995; Ophir, 2000). Similarly, for the Greek Orthodox Church and the Greek-Cypriot right, the Turkish invasion was another example indicating that Turkey is an inherently barbaric and expansionist country and the only available option is

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resisting this barbarism and fighting back; in contrast the Greek-Cypriot left-wingers who had the best relations with Turkish Cypriots in the past, and sometimes found themselves victims of right-wing nationalist violence, adopted a discourse of rapprochement and reconciliation with Turkish Cypriots (Constantinou and Papadakis, 2001; Papadakis, 1998). The workings of essentialist meanings about collective memories are so deeply ingrained in a nation’s foundations and are cited so many times throughout many levels of society (Kumashiro, 2002) that it is just too difficult to create openings. Yet, as Kumashiro argues, it is possible to “supplement” these citational practices with new meanings that do not necessarily “repeat” essentialist histories. As the openings show in the case of the private international school in Cyprus, developing a critical awareness of dangerous memories may begin to alter the citational practices that constitute hegemonic beliefs. Nevertheless, if we are going to de-essentialize both identity and memory, then it is important to utilize dangerous memories as a means of questioning citational practices. The following are some ways that teachers and students as critical design experts may or may not accomplish this. First, it is important to establish a systematic praxis of dangerous memory – that is, to create a set of commitments to and actions which clarify specific small openings concerning certain forms of remembrance and forgetting. In the examples we shared, there were opportunities to bring dangerous memories into the classroom or workshops; in other sociopolitical situations that might not be the case. There might be danger, for example, to the careers and lives of participating teachers and students. In addition, dangerous memories, our cases show, are unsettling enough for students and teachers to enable “supplementation” through a reworking of one’s relationships to the world and others. The results may range, but nevertheless a reworking of relationality is in progress. For example, both teachers in Israel and students in Cyprus had difficulties establishing relationality with the other. But despite these difficulties an exchange with the other worked out. The ambivalence felt by participants in both cases was constitutive of this effort; the end result was ultimately unknown. The fact that the case of Cyprus left us with some hope because some students were able to follow a different path did not imply that the situation was necessarily transformed. What is important, in our view, is that teachers and students as critical design experts need to try hard to escape from remaining prisoners of collective memories. Freeing ourselves from collective memories, or at least approaching them critically, deconstructing them and reconstructing them, is not

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solely the task of formal educational activities. These activities are necessary but require the support of multiple sociopolitical sites ready to engage in a similar quest. The praxis of remembering suffering is precisely an attempt to formulate the pedagogical conditions of possibility so that students and teachers may disrupt egocentric goals. In general, it is important for teachers and students, as critical design experts, to move beyond thinking of collective memories as the primary source of information about the past. Dangerous memories offer an interesting alternative: In stressing the importance of critical understanding in the practice of various forms of remembrance and forgetting, the praxis of remembering that suffering is common might become a medium for opposing an unreflective account of the past. Even in the case from Israel, things are not as gloomy; as soon as the asymmetry is identified, the resulting disruption initiates a conversation that leads somewhere else. In the case from Cyprus, the interaction with “the enemy” makes some students see the other’s side suffering and victimhood too. It is not that the structural constraints are not present any more; on the contrary, they are there as powerful perhaps as ever, managing to reproduce the system quite successfully. New insights, however, become personal and meaningful for some students – these are the insights that lead these students in new directions. It follows from the disruptive character of dangerous memories that getting “to know” the past does not mean “controlling” it. Instead, “knowing” requires an act which “re-cites and re-sites what one has learned – not only about what happened to others . . . but also (and this is key) what one has learned of and within the disturbances and disruptions inherent in comprehending the substance and significance of these events” (Simon et al., 2001, p. 294). In Simon’s (1993) terms, dangerous memories may serve as “insurgent commemoration” or “countercommemoration” in offering disruptive alternatives. Such an approach takes seriously a non-totalizing view of the past without the naive acceptance that the past determines who we ought to be (Duvenage, 1999). Through the case from Israel it is shown how challenging this process is, because it is really hard to escape from some foundational memories; on the other hand, the case from Cyprus suggests that despite these challenges there is no lack of cracks and hopeful openings. In any case, both examples teach us that the praxis of memory requires an anamnestic solidarity with others who have also suffered and thus precludes any simplistic closure based on “our” narratives. The pedagogical implication of anamnestic solidarity in light of dangerous memories is the responsibility to question forms of remembering and forgetting and not set them as polar opposites, but provide spaces for telling heterogeneous stories,

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despite the seemingly insurmountable difficulties. If there was a “guide,” then, to how teachers and students could “invent” dangerous memories in schools, here are three key elements: (a) de-essentialize memory and identity; (b) create opportunities for anamnestic solidarity; (c) highlight common suffering and common humanity, whenever it is possible to do so. To reiterate our argument here: The issue is not about remembrance vs. forgetting. A pedagogy of dangerous memories, if it may be so called, neither presupposes nor ends in any polarity between remembrance and forgetting; on the contrary, it presupposes a form of recollecting past suffering (Krapp, 2005) and thus takes us to the limits of memory and forgetting, but the recollection of past suffering is not only fixed on “our” suffering. This is why it may be argued that the praxis of memory based on suffering “is a modification of forgetting that does not affect the irrevocable, nor repress its memory” (Krapp, 2005, p. 191). Dangerous memories (like any other introduction of elements into a system) force the system to recalibrate, to restabilize, to readapt and to reconfirm in order to reach homeostasis – this is the power of new knowledge (in our case dangerous memories). Again, working with dangerous memories is never a guarantee of success, but they set the system in motion and with motion (not stasis, death) new opportunities are opened up. These opportunities are the possibility of renegotiating meaning through the repositioning of self in dialogue. In the specific case of Zionist Israel this could mean the opportunity to move from the position of victim as a cultural construct produced and supported by multiple tools of (state) production to one which allows Palestinians to be seen as victims too. Similarly, in the case of Cyprus this could also mean the opportunity to abandon the immovable categories of Greek Cypriots or Turkish Cypriots as the only “victims,” while the historical category of “perpetrators” is always saved for the other community. Concluding remarks We have argued here that dangerous memories are not about forgetting vs. remembrance but constitute instead a widening of memory to include the other’s memory. This is an interesting idea to consider – an idea that is oppositional to claims that amnesia may be required to move on. To put this differently, dangerous memories constitute inclusive memories that oppose the dichotomy between forgetting/remembrance. Some forms of forgetting (e.g., hatred) and other forms of remembrance (e.g., the other’s suffering) may be needed to overcome hostility. That is, even some purposeful forgetting does not eliminate memory, but allows the

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overcoming of hatred, resentment and violence. However, the situation is complicated, as the case from Israel shows, when forgetting is used to further establish the existing asymmetries between groups. Nevertheless, it is important to consider Ricoeur’s (1999) words that “the duty to remember is a duty to teach, whereas the duty to forget is a duty to go beyond anger and hatred” (p. 11). Forgetting, adds Eppert (2003, 2006), is bound up not only with obligation, but also with an obligation implicated in reconciliation. In traumatized societies, forgetting past suffering is not only impossible but also undesirable; however, an important issue is whether there are any windows left to provide a different interpretation for the “responsibility” to remember the past. Here Ricoeur and Eppert move round forgetting and thus challenge us not to fixate ourselves on the weight of memories – dangerous or not. Such an idea does not question the significance of dangerous memories, but it certainly puts them in perspective. We are asked to consider, therefore, how teachers and students as critical design experts can create spaces that enable critical scenes of dangerous memories – not memories that freeze our relationality with others. Admittedly, creating such spaces in the classroom is not easy and signifies the need to establish new affective connections with others. It is precisely in the possibility of such connections that teachers and students as critical design experts are invited to acknowledge the others’ testimonies of trauma and suffering. A critical engagement with testimonial narratives means that teachers and students have to decide how to become critical witnesses of these testimonies (rather than merely spectators, consumers or tourists) and consider how these testimonies change (if they do) their feelings about the others. What we argue for at this point is that what might be needed is not for the victim to be understood, recognized and included (or not only this) or for the victimizer to become more sensitive and understanding, but for both to understand and feel the world differently, as a result of “feeling with” the other’s suffering. For example, feeling with the other’s suffering (empathy) can be a productive mode of social engagement in which examining testimonies can work round emotional impasses and generate trust and connectivity. At the same time, we need to acknowledge that this empathy is not always achievable or even a successful means for solidarity; in fact, it could just as easily be conceived as a means of exclusion and dissensus. For example, the goal is not symmetry in the acknowledgment of suffering – that is, “we” suffered, “they” suffered; we all suffered. Instead, the other’s stories need to be witnessed, not absolved. Essentially, this is what some Palestinian teachers ask of Jews; it is also what the majority of

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Greek-Cypriot students fear will happen, if they become more receptive to Turkish-Cypriot stories. To put it in a nutshell: Action that connects us with others, in which a new “we” (that is not uncritically accepted) is always engaged in changing our taken-for-granted assumptions, stands in the sharpest possible opposition to the business of memory, which operates in egotistical terms. The hegemonic educational mechanisms in both Israel and Cyprus are led by a self-reinforcing ideology that oscillates between the isomorphic oppositional rhetoric of “to remember” and “not to forget.” The “victim” does not feel (morally) obliged in any manner to recognize the other’s pain or offer forgiveness, thus aiming at sustaining his or her power which emanates from victimhood. To stick to their position, the victimized need a “fixed” remembering which denies the “true” nature of remembering (always in oscillation with forgetting). Not surprisingly, forgetting and forgiveness are intimately connected in that both involve a directive of returning, offering back (i.e., forget and forgive). A fixed remembering – that is, the Holocaust (in Israel); the Turkish invasion of 1974 (in Cyprus) – constitutive of a denial to forget and allowing for a denial of forgiveness helps sustain a (political/ideological) position that maintains conflict. Forgetting would allow for giving back the conquered lands (in Israel); remembering would also mean offering back the acknowledgment of the other side’s pain and suffering (in Cyprus). There is an immediate need to qualify the requirement to (selectively) forget by specifying the use of remembering. When we point critically at remembering, we do not refer to the remembering which honors/recognizes memory for the sake of its weaving into a narrative that legitimizes Israel’s or Cyprus’s present existence. For instance, in the case of Israel, accepting a material settlement with the German government does not necessarily mean that the Holocaust victims are forgotten; it just means that, within the complex and transient events of developing life-story, spaces have been opened for a renewed dialogue, hopefully now fed by a memory which honors the past and offers guidance towards a better future. Along the same lines, in the case of Cyprus, acknowledging the pain of the other side does not diminish one’s own pain; on the contrary, common suffering opens spaces for a new political situation in which possibilities for overcoming the past, without forgetting it, are offered. Rorty (1989) argues that in order to feel solidarity with people we consider different from “us,” we need to find ways to notice our similarities with them and negotiate new and critical interpretations of “we.” A pedagogy of dangerous memories can be useful in the development of

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shared meanings created through intersubjective encounters. The focus of dangerous memories is not only on understanding the other, but also on developing critically shared meanings with the other as the basis for relationship growth; this is precisely how a praxis of memory grounded in suffering is constituted.

13

De-essentializing identity

As we argued in the introductory part of this book, peace education seems to be mostly guided by discourses which strongly emphasize “identity.” This is done almost without problematizing identity as a possible unnatural construct and or an artificially naturalized one. Instead, identity is assumed to be a given, a pre-existing category, as shown poignantly through the narratives and practices of teachers and students in several chapters of this book. As we reiterate below, the concept of identity and the coming into being of the political organization of the nation state are intimately related and should be taken into serious consideration when trying to understand the possible outcomes of peace educational efforts, as well as the educational strategies that should be adopted to improve them. For this to happen, teachers and students as critical design experts need to engage in the strategy of problematizing this intimate relationship and eventually de-essentializing identity. The aim of this chapter, then, is to analyze further what we can learn from this strategy in peace education frameworks. Adults and children: their differential concerns about identity The various events described in this book have in common the political context from within which they evolve; that is, they are all produced in societies which are still in or are slowly moving out of situations of intractable conflict. These conflicts involve states or other actors with a long sense of historical grievance, polarized perceptions of hostility and enmity; they also involve intangible issues such as values, beliefs and identity. As the events shared in the book clearly show, the attitudes of adults and children seem to reflect very different approaches and understandings to the construct of identity and its relevance within the social context which foregrounds it. Many adults in the two societies we come from appear concerned when children do not demonstrate awareness of their religious or national identities; yet at least in the school context these 213

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categorizations seem to be of little concern to the children themselves. These adults seem to be captive to hegemonic perspectives of an identity which is somewhat essentialized and reflects deep-rooted issues that stand at the basis of the protracted nature of the conflict they are trying to resolve. Children, not yet fully socialized into the historical realities which gave birth to the conflict, seem not to hold to an understanding of identity as a boundary marker, especially not one which delimits their spheres of social contact. Adults, on their part, have gone through extended periods of socialization and enculturation. Through these processes, self-identification has become inextricably intertwined with a group identity, for which conflict is a key link between individual and group psychology, because the suffering caused in such cases is a result of the intentional action of one group against another (Zinner and Williams, 1999). Intentionality partly explains the role of collective pain in the construction of a shared identity (Tajfel and Turner, 1986), collective history and the politics around identity and memory. The “enemy’s” intentions to cause horrible acts of violence connect the individual to his or her large group with a profound sense of belonging: Individual identity is subsumed in the group (Petonito, 2000). Teachers, though involved at present in initiatives geared towards changing these perspectives, are still heirs to an identity that is linked to a dehumanizing tradition which persists in their immediate contexts. Dehumanization, the process by which people are viewed as less than human, is accompanied by a wide range of negative emotions such as contempt, hatred or fear. Thus the most powerful way of forming an us-and-them mentality is to idealize one’s own group identity and demonize others. Idealization and demonization are accomplished through “myth-making” – accounts which justify the negative evaluation of other groups and glorify one’s own nation (Aho, 1994). In this sense, there is no recognition of heterogeneity among the other (Blee, 2002); all Jews or Palestinians, all Greeks or Turks, are rendered the same through feelings of hatred. In essence, each group “delegitimizes” (Bar-Tal, 2003) the actions and beliefs of the other, and regards all members of the enemy group as “evil, malevolent, immoral and inhuman” (p. 83). Waller’s (2002) study of communal conflict illustrates the polarizing nature of narratives about the other: Instead of judging other people across a broad spectrum running from good to bad, we make extreme categorical judgments based on the polar opposites of “good us” versus “bad them.” Our cause is sacred; theirs is evil. We are righteous; they are wicked. We are innocent; they are guilty. We are the victims; they are the victimizers. It is rarely our enemy or my enemy, but the enemy – a usage of the

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definite article that hints of something fixed and immutable, abstract and evil. (p. 243)

What needs to be considered is how this us-and-them monological divide might not be something “natural” and yet often becomes perceived as such. The examples we shared in this book show that for teachers involved in initiatives towards changing past perspectives, it is not easy to overcome their identity position as historical actors, yet at the same time we need to keep in mind that not all children or adults are the same. Consider, for instance, the Greek-Cypriot religious teacher, who was the one not to essentialize the other. The difficulties of overcoming historical positions are not only related to individual constraints but also have to do with the educational setting within which teachers function. These settings often seem to carry what could be understood as contradictory messages; they express both a desire to create a peaceful and democratic society where all groups can coexist, and also a desire that the steps taken will not debilitate the hegemonic group identity. We believe that the tension between these two desires creates a dangerous paradox which might threaten the success of such educational initiatives, with the consequence being that the us-and-them divide is never overcome. While the intentional dehumanizing effort of one group against the other might be relaxed through the educational practices implemented in some schools, the ongoing emphasis on the in-group identity might end up reinforcing it. The call for a politics of identity is not much more than a mirror image of that same political process which erased identity by universalizing it. Just as dominant groups in the culture at large insist that the marginalized integrate by assimilating to dominant norms, so within some practices of identity politics dominant subgroups may, in theory and practice, impose their vision of the group’s identity onto all of its members or construct them again as “others.” This should come as no surprise, as pointed out in Chapter 8, when considering that education is a social process itself shaped by the same social forces we are trying to change. When confronting this problem we immediately realize that, if possible at all, change is no easy task. The haunting question which lies at the core of this analysis, then, and indeed any analysis of identity formation and issues of difference, prejudice and conflict, is whether schools and teachers really are in a position to model the children’s perspective of backgrounding ethnic (or other) identity when in fact society (and therefore the children’s parents etc.) foregrounds it. How do we deal with the reality that this longer

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and more sophisticated socialization process which inevitably happens in the lives of all children will have a huge effect on the “innocence” of children’s disinterest in social and political nuances? In search of solutions We want to state upfront our first thoughts towards a possible solution by offering a brief example. Imagine a child belonging to one of the groups in conflict approaching a teacher and asking: What is a Jew, a Palestinian, a Greek or a Turk? Given present realities, the teacher may be inclined to offer as a response some culturally descriptive and benevolent characteristics of the group in question. Though this response might seem appropriate for accommodating perspectives expected from a cross-cultural initiative, we believe that in the long run it sustains the basis on which the conflict developed first, and thus is inappropriate if a solution to the conflict is what we seek. We believe a better answer to be a correction of the epistemological basis which, though potentially unknown to the child, substantiates his or her question. Thus, a more appropriate answer might be that Jews, Palestinians, Greeks or Turks are not an (essentialized/natural) “what,” but a “when” and/or a “how” (a becoming). The above idea exemplifies the epistemological transformation we believe needs to take place in adults’ (notably, educators’) understanding of the world and its conformation for it to allow for change in the latter. The various events presented in this book point at the troubles that peace/coexistence educational ideologies seem constantly to create in spite of the efforts of what are undoubtedly earnest, honest initiatives. The difficulty comes from approaches premised on the existence of clearly differentiated identities and cultures. These perspectives, as pointed out in earlier chapters, hold to traditional positivist outlooks that see identity as a neatly packed item carried in the head of passive individuals, somewhat fixed and isolated and in need of education so as to be sustained. It also holds to a modernist perspective of identity, which it considers as reified, rather than as an open-ended, ever-emerging process, and as representing a set of permanent and unchanging items, texts, norms and ideas. Along these lines students need to become knowledgeable about the canonical culture so as to be able to function “properly” within it. This monologic modern stand (Sampson, 1993b; Todorov, 1984) is characteristic of Western developments in which self and knowledge have been abstracted and disembodied, thereby creating a story about “the things known” rather than the knower’s own specificity. So powerful has monologism become

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in modern times that it is no longer experienced as a standpoint but is assumed to be “natural.” Indeed educators speak this modern language as if it were a “given” not to be doubted or questioned. However, natural it is not. It is important to remember that the development of these monological perspectives can easily be traced to the processes of modernization with their twin functions of the centralization of power and its development into both colonialism and the solidification of the nation state (Bhabha, 1990; Elias, 1991; Foucault, 1994; Gellner, 1997) – the main force behind present intractable conflicts. For identities and cultures to become available for exploitation in conflict situations, they need to be functional in given contexts. As such, they come into being in societies which define them and organize them. Identity/culture helps individuals and groups to be situated. Yet, a stipulation is in place. The monologic pattern of identity/culture construction is paradoxically dialogical and based on the negation of otherness. In this sense, any two particular groups have built their specific identity/culture through a dialogue which negates the other. A “natural” inclination when searching for a theoretical path which could be taken in order to help overcome these monologic perspectives consists of suggesting the possibility of adopting an approach in line with post-structuralist perspectives which emphasize the historically constructed nature of identity and culture. From our point of view, although potentially liberating, the post-structuralist path is not an option for it overlooks the fact that, even when constructed, cultural and identity categories are consequential and guide policy implementations and the practical allocation of resources. As such they seem to be ultimately threatening for they might bring about unwanted results. Post-structuralist perspectives might momentarily offer a brief respite to those who have been marginalized by the system, but do not carry the potential to change the system. In other words, we question whether, even if the educator succeeds in leading his or her student to understand and to become aware of the constituted “nature” of his ascribed identity, this insight can by itself make a difference in his or her life. We also question whether putting the emphasis on the part of the student in the constitution of the cultural context which in its turn constitutes his or her identity can in any way offer solace from distress. We maintain that believing this to be so points at the hidden positivist assumptions we fear might be concealed in post-structuralist perspectives too. That is to say, disguised in the post-structuralist constructivist discourse lurk positivist perspectives that still acknowledge a self/nature–other/nurture dichotomy. In short, telling a student that his or her identity is constructed and that the world that surrounds him or her (the cultural context) is equally

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constructed will not deliver the goods for recovery, for these arguments are still based on positivist dichotomies and thus are, by themselves, unable to bring about change from our theoretical perspective. We posit that only when conceptually starting from the in-between and metaphorically working outwards into the individual and society can a dialogic approach truly be constructed. We have recently considered what has come to be called postpositivist realism (Moya and Hames-Garcia, 2000). This view, though acknowledging post-structuralist critiques, realizes that goods and resources are still distributed according to identity labels, be they ethnic, national or religious. Our approach asks for the realization that post-structural theoretical conceptualizations, though true in that they seem to serve as a better description of the ways we experience and shape our present environments, might not influence the world to the extent that these theories presume. Post-structuralism might be theoretically “right,” providing a good description of an empirical world, but it is no stronger than the powerfully constructed “reality” of a consequential hegemony which significantly affects our lives and sets the limits for where we can live, whom we can marry, what educational and employment opportunities are available to us, and the location of the boundaries of that which is considered to be “normal.” If so, acknowledging “reality,” as if working within a positivist perspective, while epistemologically wrong, might be the best way to start. Allowing for the recognition of the work that identity and culture do in real life might soothe the suspicions our arguments may raise (for they might be misunderstood as denying the consequentiality of identity and cultural categorical use in “reality”), as if saying, “indeed you are right: identities and cultures do exist and they are clearly consequential.” Denying objectivity might be theoretically necessary, but the question of suffering is not theoretical – at least not for those who suffer. Though the foundational account of objectivity should rightfully be critiqued, we want to suggest that it is necessary to sustain what is epistemically valuable in the concept (Mohanty, 1997, 2000). From a postpositivist realist perspective, objectivity is to be understood as theoretically situated. Postpositivist realism acknowledges the mediated nature of language and reference, but it also argues that we can still come to know something about the world, to distinguish truth from error, fact from fiction and even the normal from the pathological. From this perspective, objective knowledge is gained not by rejecting all forms of bias (which is the positivist take) but rather by examining and taking them into account. Education needs to consider, given the contextual situation, the epistemic bias which can be uncovered, and alternative paths to take in the intervention. Thus, we should be aware that when post-structural perspectives “mirror”

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positivist ones in becoming totally relativistic (as opposed to objectivistic), both become rather irrelevant in educational work. While acknowledging positivist limitations, a realist post-structural approach attempts to effect change in the world. The outcome of such an approach should work by defining the new uncovered perspectives as challenging the present world through the shaping of new normative theories of social relationships and arrangements. We might ask, for example: What types of economy and technology would better help a human world? What types of transformations do we need in our values and behavior? How can social institutions, such as schools, make a real difference in the lives of the poor or underprivileged? Still, although this strategy should be functionally useful, we should be aware of the price we might pay when acknowledging its influence on our educational work. That is to say, we should not work towards instilling/strengthening in students modern positivist perspectives of problem identification through idealist, essentialist and causal visions, subtly disguised or not, in our discursive practices in education. By this we mean that we should try not to allow “reality” to confuse us as to what the problem is. The great danger in acknowledging “reality” is confusing it with that which points at the pathological (the affirmation or negation of identity) as its problem, thus usually failing to offer a solution because of remaining attached to a monological perspective. The question is clearly how to make us all aware that we all partake in the constitution of the problem and thus become constitutive of its solution; that is to say, how can we help realize the dialogical nature of that which is monological? The need for a radical change in educators’ perspectives From our perspective, a relevant path implies a radical change in educators’ perspectives and their educational activity. The individual mind can no longer be the goal of these activities. Instead, we ought to consider and analyze the interactional practices and strategies through which all involved in contextual activities allow identity and culture to make their appearance. Simply stating this as a fact will not suffice. We first need some criteria which can be accepted by all and that are “objective” but do not rest on the positivist underpinnings of objectivism. Such criteria could be achieved through an educational process directed at questioning: Who in our societal context are exploited? Who are powerful and who powerless? Which cultural patterns carry symbolic power (HamesGarcia, 2000)? Who are labeled as “other”? Who defines the norms and categories?

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The move suggested falls in line with perspectives developed in anthropology (Varenne and McDermott, 1998) which try to adopt a cultural analysis perspective – that is to say the gaining of skills on how to read/describe the world through careful observation and recording of practical activity. This perspective in turn allows for a shift from the individual or the socializing group as the crucial analytic unit for (educational) analysis to the processes and mechanisms of producing cultural contexts through social interaction. And finally, this process leads to a new articulation of major policy issues related no longer to identity/culture and its components (the individual, texts etc.) but to the analysis of particular identities/cultures and how these are produced/ constructed in the particular context of particular societies. Looking at the world in this way, seriously and critically, means being open to finding new criteria through which to name categories and their phenomena. The process could be liberating in that it could bring about the understanding that identity and culture are not necessarily the right criteria through which to describe the world, its inhabitants and events; not that they do not necessarily exist or are only hegemonic constructs, but that though they are legitimate, they need not result in individual suffering. Such an answer represents an attempt to move from learning the fixed and isolated, the reified and abstract, the modern/positivist and monologic (Sampson, 1993b; Todorov, 1984) to learning the fluid, changing, negotiated in concert among co-participants in complex socio-historicalpolitical contexts. Yet we realize this to be a necessary step but not a sufficient one. By itself it cannot achieve much. Putting an emphasis on the constructed/constituted nature of identity does not offer solace for the suffering arising from a marginalized status or confer any benefit arising from a centered status. Our educational efforts need to go further. They need to bring the social to predominate over the ideological, without ignoring the power relations involved that often make the social and the ideological difficult to distinguish. We need to help our children to become ingenious about the ways social categories are constructed and the ways in which their work is engineered in society. We need to teach our students to become critical design experts – explorers who uncover the ways society is organized and have the knowledge and skills to envision an alternative “design” of this society. If successful, we might come to appreciate the primacy of the interactional, procedural and material over the idealized and reified categories in shaping the ideologies on which legal and political structures are founded and to which definite forms of social consciousness (identity/ class/culture) correspond. We want to emphasize the importance of problematizing the identity boundaries that are created, thus opening minds

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to the potential of collaboration rather than individuation. We also want to highlight concoction as the true secret of human/humane work (culture) as opposed to the establishment and maintenance of policed and institutionalized borders which serve in the preservation of that which is considered normal. Untying these problems involves finding ways to offer our students literacies with which to evaluate the world. In Burkean terms, we offer “dramatism” (K. Burke, 1969): the realization that the relationships between life and theatre are not metaphorical but real, and that the understanding of symbolic systems holds the key to the understanding of social organization. This literacy requires abundant theory and rich descriptive faculties in order to uncover and cope with the complexity of the sites and social phenomena that we expect the students to interpret. Thus they need familiarity with a variety of disciplines and discourses. They need an economic discourse for discussing commodities, supplies and management; an aesthetic discourse, for architecture, advertising and display; a political discourse, for bodies, policies, planning and discipline; a historical discourse, for change in organization, consumption and community. They also need interpretative discourses to articulate understandings of each of the texts and their necessary intertextuality in practice, which, in concert, create culture. Also, critical pedagogy, although not monolithic, can promote educational experiences that are transformative, empowering and transgressive (Giroux, 1988, 2004; Kincheloe, 2004; McLaren, 2003). From Freire’s “pedagogy of the oppressed” to bell hooks’s “education as the practice of freedom” and Giroux’s notion of “teachers as intellectuals,” critical pedagogy keeps at its center the questioning of how power relations operate in the construction of knowledge, and how teachers and students can become transformative democratic agents who learn to address injustice, prejudice and unequal social structures. Essentially, then, at the most basic level, critical pedagogy is about improving the learning and life opportunities of all students, notably the typically marginalized ones (Cochran-Smith, 2005; Delpit, 1995; Irvine, 2003; LadsonBillings, 1994). Yet, it is important to remind the reader that we refer to critical pedagogy now adjusted to conflict and post-conflict situations (see Chapter 3). This is a critical pedagogy that also takes into consideration the troubled knowledge that both sides of a divided community bring to the table and does not leave behind the aims of transforming those who carry the burden of such knowledge. As we emphasized in the introductory part, it is important not to rush to take one side, without implying that any injustices are tolerated. Teachers and students as critical design experts

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need to be critically engaged with the emotional aspects of their troubled knowledge; taking sides too early will make it impossible to confront and transform this emotional knowledge in constructive ways. To sum up, critical pedagogy and dramatism can take the following forms in the contexts we have discussed. First, teachers and students as critical design experts need to base programs for developing community relations on an exploration of the role of identity and culture in real life. Second, teachers and students need to challenge the notion of identity and culture as categories for describing the world. Third, teachers and students need to develop the skills of cultural analysis rather than “knowledge” of the characteristics of the other; that is, start not with the other as a given but with collaborative processes that dismantle rather than maintain existing categories. Finally, efforts need to be redirected from a focus on the other towards collaborative efforts for change for a better world. In short, a school student should not be labeled Palestinian, Turk, Jewish or Greek. What we are suggesting is that efforts should be directed at the sphere of daily localized and contextualized interactions in their historical trajectories, trying to identify the specific practices, discursive and material, that enable them. We should be aware of the ways through which teachers ask questions, give feedback, speak the “correct language” and decide on the criteria for identifying students. These practices are skillfully enacted daily, so as to allow for the identities/cultures of individuals to be organized and identified. The struggle for nation building in our schools, the discourse of individuality in our media, the unequal distribution of resources in our society, and many other deeply entrenched perceptions and their consequent practices have first to be identified and described, and then offered to all the interactants as tools through which change, if so desired, might be achieved. The theorizing effort undertaken also implies returning to children’s perspectives. These are shown to be less dependent on pre-packed categories to organize their social worlds. Children, though not ever free from contexts in which adults play a central role, seem to be able to organize subcultures which at least for some time are free to develop with no high disciplinary cost. Adults even at times rejoice in children’s normative mistakes, at least in those areas which they believe “time will correct,” such as language pronunciation and use. Yet Western psychologized perspectives are also responsible for the view of children as innocent and developing towards adulthood as if a novice avidly learning to become “old.” This perspective, heir to the same Western tradition which we criticized above, also needs to change. Plenty of research has demonstrated the powerful subcultures children organize (Harris, 1998;

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Hirschfeld, 2002); sustaining these cultures is something adults need to consider, especially when it offers the possibilities of overcoming some of the greatest ailments which trouble our society and are conducive to intractable conflicts. Recognizing the children’s subculture, and supporting it through teachers’ activities guided by the theoretical perspectives delineated, might offer this chance (Bekerman, 2009c). Both dangerous memories and de-essentializing identity, as analyzed in the previous and this chapter, offer suggestions regarding the need to historicize and contextualize/localize the issues involved. Through both of these ideas, we ask teachers: to create opportunities for children to understand context and practice; to ask about when, how and with whom, rather than simply what; to teach children to read the world and how its realities – identity, or memory/history – are constructed and what consequences these constructions have; to work with children to design better alternatives to prejudice and conflict. In short, we ask teachers and students to sustain their roles as critical design experts.

14

Designing different paths for reconciliation pedagogies

We often speak as if what we see and criticize is a result of a “mistake” in the system, and thus we are left with no option but to blame it on the system and/or the curriculum designers. But what if these things we do not like are not mistakes but “achievements” of the system – a system which wants to sustain conflict or the power of the nation state (or any other absolute master) untouched and for its own benefit? If we adopt this position, some will say that we are conspiracy theorists. We are not. We argue that the world is more complex than just a conspiracy. That is why more detailed research is needed. The more we know about details, the more we know about possibilities for change. The key to change is in knowing the details. The more we move away from the idea of psychologized perspectives of peace education into the materiality (i.e., the details) of conflict and peace, the better the chances we have for change, if change is what we are after. The main points which have been raised in this book and run contrary to the accepted theory and practice in peace education are the following three. Firstly, the (at times) perceived failure – or dissatisfaction with the products – of peace education has little to do with the quality of individual teachers or students and much to do with the quality of the systems we (all) cooperatively construct. Failing to understand this means confusing failure with what are adaptive moves to local and global systemic circumstances. Secondly, Western positivist paradigmatic perspectives in the social sciences are responsible for the present educational perspectives which guide peace educational theory and practice. Change will only be available after these paradigmatic perspectives are abandoned. Changing this means revising our basic appreciation of the individual, of identity/culture and of the learning process. It means realizing that they all are interactional, contextualized and historicized processes rather than isolated inside (individual), static and well defined outside (culture), and specific-task oriented and measurable transmissions (education). 224

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Lastly, if the above points are correct, those involved in peace education would do well to look for educational solutions in the organization of present Western world politics rather than in the limited parameters of their school settings or the solitude of their teachers’ or students’ minds. When looking inside schools we should be looking at practices and not abstracted individual minds and their assumed values. This idea implies paying serious attention to children and allowing ourselves to be influenced by their (possible) different perspectives. It also means trying to be critical enough of our own positions so as to try to prevent ourselves from inculcating them in our children – realizing the responsibility we all bear in helping change the world. The above three points are further analyzed below to elaborate how teachers and students as critical design experts may begin to design a different path for reconciliation pedagogies – one that is not stuck to the taken-for-granted assumptions we have attempted to deconstruct in this book.

Toward reconciliation pedagogies As we have emphasized throughout this book, we believe that peace education is neither productive nor relevant, if it is considered as a subjectmatter area similar to the way mathematics or science were understood not too long ago. This is so because: first, peace education is not a thing (a reified knowledge which can be transmitted); second, peace education is a set of activities in the world and not a set of abstract ideas in the mind; and, third, if we overlook the previous two points, we fall into the same epistemological mistakes of the West which has idealized, conceptualized (as fixed) and psychologized that which is human and its education. The main difficulty is that being trained as we (teachers, students, academics, policy makers etc.) have been in the West, we find it very difficult to deal with a “thing” without giving it a “proper categorical” name; we seem to fear that if we do not speak about “peace education” as such we will lose an area of specialization and thus go unrecognized or delegitimized in the academy. Being called a “dilettante scholar” in peace education, for instance, is not a mere “construction”; it has very real consequences (e.g., being left without research budgets). This is similar to the use of other categories such as “memory” and “identity”; all these categories are undoubtedly constructed, yet they are very consequential. In a sense we are pointing to concentric circles which have to be confronted in their complexity, again something that social scientists and educational policy makers seem not to appreciate. What we say about peace education or identity or collective memory as “subjects” to be taught is the same as

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we say for peace education or identity or collective memory as subjects of research. One of the issues which has preoccupied us in this book is the power of the nation state to organize and freeze general categories (e.g., the “Jew,” the “Greek”) as generalizable and immutable categories that denote intergroup differences. However, when we have a Greek-Cypriot mourner speaking about common suffering and humanity with Turkish Cypriots, we see an example of big categories breaking apart into smaller ones and showing differences that the nation state wants to keep silent. An important implication of engaging in this analysis, therefore, is that teachers and students as critical design experts need to deal practically with this issue by making sure they never give in to these big categories, and try to break them apart. Furthermore, throughout the book we have attempted to say something about the psychologized rhetoric which through the development of the West, modernity and the nation state has come to dominate the way we see the world in general and education in particular. Traditional psychologized perspectives are lacking in that the reality of the nation state is not sufficiently accounted for by the disciplines that substantiate them – primarily psychology. Michael Billig (1995) fittingly points to the flattened topography of identity theorizing shaped by the fact that nationalism is overlooked by identity theoreticians and made, by default, functionally equivalent to other types of identity. Reicher and Hopkins (2001) urge the social sciences to recognize the crucial influence of national structures in the shaping of group identities and culture. These perspectives fail to recognize that these categories, though at times functional, are generated under conditions which have been shaped by the nation state’s “genetic” code; the code which has molded the problem that the well-intentioned cross-cultural educational initiatives and their theories seek to overcome (Bekerman, 2002b). These perspectives can thus be seen to be detrimental to social theory in general, and more so to that which is concerned with educational initiatives such as the one under examination. In this sense, we are critical of Western epistemology and its domination in our general interpretation of the world and more specifically education. This epistemology is responsible for describing the world in particular ways; these ways are grounded in abstractions about the internal minds of individuals and the external characteristics of cultures. What we argue, however, is the need to re-ontologize what has been epistemologized; that is, we emphasize the need to materialize abstractions and ask about their consequences in everyday life. In other words, we are asking whether and how (if it is possible) we can re-ontologize

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educational rhetoric. To reiterate what has been emphasized earlier: We wish to convince people that the important things are not “in the details” but “the details themselves.” And, if this is true, in a way we are trying to get researchers, teachers, policy makers and students (e.g., to convince teachers to do this with their students in terms of pedagogy) to read the details of the world, to try to understand how the world is built/constructed, instead of trying to find what stands “inside” or “behind” things. We want all of us to become critical design experts, as we have been arguing throughout the last part of this book; that is, to be able to recognize and critique how the world is designed and how it can be redesigned, if it is reimagined. Highlighting dangerous memories and de-essentializing identity are two of the strategies we described in previous chapters as examples of how to become critical design experts. In describing these examples, we have insisted on dealing with the little things rather than the big ones. The details, the materiality of things, and the practices rather than the abstract ideas and the policy decisions constitute the focus of our interest; that is precisely why we speak about cracks (little ones) and small openings. Another major issue in this book has been the observation that young students seem to have different understandings of the world when compared with teachers. We offer examples of this when we talk about teachers’ workshops and show teachers recognizing this difference. Children in these cases seem to be less essentialist than teachers – especially, younger children are even less essentialist. Yet, we have complex data showing nothing to be absolute, for we also have examples (e.g., in Cyprus) of older children speaking the language of adults in terms of essentializing identity and an adult (teacher) trying to speak the (non-essentialist) language of children. This is important for it prevents us from essentializing age (young children are “good” – older children are “bad”) and it also opens up possibilities which have nothing to do with developmental issues but have a lot to do with material experience and some distance (or brief escape) from hegemonic powers. At the same time, we make a strong point about developmental psychologized perspectives. In a sense, this is another opportunity to show the close connection between the development of psychology and the nation state. Developmental perspectives replicate other phenomena in the world such as “Orientalism,” for whose adherents the “primitives” are the non-Westerns, while for developmentalists the children are the “primitives.” It is for this reason that we call attention to children’s epistemologies – which when they are really young seem to be less of an epistemology and more of an ontology. What this argument offers is just another example of the complexity of the concentric circles we talked

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about earlier, showing that peace education cannot be seen as a subject but has to be seen as a changing holistic process of moving away from false epistemologies to pragmatic ontologies. Related to our call for pragmatic ontologies is the argument we make about “emotions” and “narratives” and our emphasis on externalizing these otherwise internalized issues/rhetorics. This point of externalization is very important, for, if we are right, the nation state offers us psychologized internalization and hides what otherwise would be easily identified as something that is worked at in detail, if we were trained as critical design experts. For example, we would realize that nationalism and patriotism are not inside people’s heads, but they are produced in popular culture, social practices, school ceremonies and so on. Therefore, we should be teaching people that everything which is thought to be internal hides the strategies and practices that creates it and we should be fighting against this, if we want the world to change a little. Clearly, this is not only related to peace education but it relates to the wider picture of criticality in the Western world that has become monological. Another point to which we want to briefly return is the issue of symmetry. We want to remind the reader how ridiculous it can become to insist on certain demands for symmetry – when, for example, there is the expectation/hope for many Arabs to have died at the hands of the Nazis so that Arabs can (supposedly) easily identify with the Holocaust atrocities. At the same time, we have to acknowledge the possibility that claims for symmetry are often linked to demands for recognition. Thus, for example, forgiveness may be offered as an exchange for symmetry when other forms of symmetry cannot be achieved (e.g., when lives cannot be returned – or returning territories can be too complex and compensation is offered). Forgiveness, as we mentioned earlier in the book, enters the scene when symmetry cannot make its appearance – not because people do not want to offer symmetry, but because nothing more can be done pragmatically. Consequently, there are limitations to what an educational system can do to promote contact with “others” or even to offer symmetry. Educational systems cannot offer symmetry lightly; they can introduce the complexities involved in demands for symmetry but they are not in a position to advocate symmetry in the absence of relevant political decisions and structures. A critical exploration of all the above issues is important if teachers and students as critical design experts are going to design an alternative path for reconciliation pedagogies – a path that challenges the boundaries that constructs such as identity and memory often set. If we buy into the notion that these categories exist and guide our lives – that is, we fall into the trap of the rhetoric of the nation state which can only survive by

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categorizing everything – then our traditional pedagogies will be rehashed and perpetuated unchanged. Part of the process of developing these alternative reconciliation pedagogies is focusing on the small issues as opposed to the big issues. Thus some teachers from our research focus on small issues not because they do not know the big ones but because they recognize the difficulties in the system. The teachers seem to contextualize things, as opposed to traditional schooling, which decontextualizes and abstracts things and people. Then it is again the teachers through their pedagogies who can extend practices of inclusion (as in the case of the Greek-Cypriot teacher of religion or the Jewish teachers who struggle to empathize with their Palestinian colleagues, and vice versa) and question the homogenization and dichotomization of categories through the powers of the nation state. Finally, we want to speak about memory and forgetting. In a sense we are speaking about two somewhat different (yet interrelated) strategies. One strategy is about trying to forget a little; maybe not to forget but to prevent the co-optation of memory by the nation state. The second strategy is what we earlier referred to as “dangerous memories,” that is, the memories that open up cracks. Both of these strategies are strongly connected to becoming critical design experts. Dangerous memories can constitute a similar pedagogical strategy as the de-essentialization of identity. The de-essentialization of identity does not necessarily mean its forgetting. We need to become able to work with ambivalence (insecurity regarding meaning), something that is clearly related to other issues we have raised, such as (clear and dichotomous) categorization. This implies also the need to move into a new ontology which understands that activity is what makes the difference, and that practices are distributed (are similar and different) in particular contexts and have real consequences. Final words In one of his famous stories entitled “Funes the Memorial,” Jorge Luis Borges (1996) doubted whether Funes could think. Thinking has to do with forgetting, he thought, and forgetting was the one thing Funes could not do. In Funes’s world, there were only immediate details which he could not forget, and so he died trapped in memory. True: no memory, no self; but this still does not imply an imperative to remain attached to hegemonic recollections. When we choose to do so, when we organize our institutional and public spheres in remembrance of past tragedies, we may be suspected of an attempt to rally support for particular interests, not necessarily those which support accommodation.

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Too much memory seems to have a monologic character; it seems not to recognize other recollections or the recollections of others and, if it is at all able to enter into dialogue, it does so through denial. The partial forgetting we are suggesting here implies shrinking memory into the individual sphere so as first to allow for the presence of other memories, hoping later to enter into dialogue with them. When flooded by memory, Funes lost his ability to think, to reflect; he drowned in almost immediate-past details. If we want to escape his destiny, we need to do some forgetting, without which reconciliation and coexistence seem to be unattainable. We might wish some day to find that woman created by Isabel Allende (1988) who, as in the story of Eva Luna, will offer (in our case) Palestinians and Jews, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, a new fortune for five coins of gold put in her hand, even if this fortune is to be invented from scratch. The fortune will be as good as that in the novels, extending from the day of their birth to the present, and all-inclusive, containing their dreams, hopes and secrets, the lives of their parents and siblings and also the history and geography of their land. Why do you hope for so much, you may ask? It is because the past history of Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots and the current fortunes of Palestinians and Jews have been full of blood and grief, and are a useless path on which to travel their lives, for they have been in so many battles that they have even forgotten the names of their mothers and are at risk of succumbing where they stand, becoming a fistful of ashes, as happens to those who have less than pleasant memories. Although we do not doubt that such a woman might exist, we doubt whether we can find her – we might need to do what is second best to changing memories: that is to say, change the structures which help create and sustain these memories. Our book has reiterated that schools are not spaces which can easily induce change, for they are not the ideal locations for political maneuvering. Thus, even with teachers as dedicated as those presented in this book, in order to overcome conflict and forward peace and reconciliation it seems as if only structural change might engender the space needed for some forgetting to take place. And yet an ongoing agonistics of taking responsibility for keeping critical dialogic possibilities open seems to be a pragmatic alternative that remains.

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Index

1948 war (War of Independence) 7, 60–1, 80–1 see also Nakba 1956 war (Suez Crisis/Tripartite Aggression/Sinai Campaign) 102 Ahmed, S. 116, 192 Al-Haj, M. 8, 76 Allende, Isabel 230 anamnestic solidarity 199–200 Anderson, B. 59, 149 Andrews, M. 168 Annan Plan 13 anthropological approach/perspectives 188, 220 anti-Semitism 7 apprenticeship 187 Arabs, Second World War casualties 153–4, 228 Arafat, Yasser 114, 127–8 discussions after death of 117–21, 130–1 interpretations of death of 129 Arendt, H. 165, 167, 175 Arnold, Matthew 49 Austin, J. L. 24 Bakhtin, M. M. 51–2 Bar-Tal, D. 57, 59, 75 Barkan, E. 55, 74, 82 Barnes, P. 168 Bateson, G. 37, 48, 73 Becker, A. L. 52 Beer Sheba 11 Bekerman, Z. 90, 129 Ben-Porath, S. 168 Benjamin, Walter 198, 199 Bennink, G. H. 57 Berlant, L. 162 Billig, Michael 226 Birdwhistell, R. 36 Bloody Christmas (Kanli Noel) (1963) 13 Boler, M. 193

256

Borges, Jorge Luis, “Funes the Memorial” 229–30 Brown, W. 146 Bruno, Giordano 53 Burke, K. 221 Burke, P. 55 Butler, Judith 136, 138–40, 146, 161, 162 Cairns, E. 81 Caluya, G. 146 Center for Bilingual Education in Israel 10 Central America, reconciliation efforts in 58 ceremonies 149–51 child psychology and Orientalism 110 children development of identity of 64 and emotional tensions in multicultural classrooms 117–26 and essentialism 227 organization of subcultures of 222–3 and personal narratives 194 and prejudice and discrimination 64 teaching to forgive 168 understanding of identity 22–3, 65–6, 213–14 see also critical design experts Christianity, and forgiveness 58 Cicero 53 coexistence 56–7, 66 Cole, E. 59 Cole, M. 36 collective belonging 115, 116, 121, 127, 129 collective memory 54–6, 66, 80–1, 87, 88, 200, 225–6 and collected memory 56 different interpretations of 205, 206–7 Greek-Cypriot 107, 200 and history education 84 Jewish 151

Index nationalized 66 and perpetrator–victim categorization 80–1 societal beliefs of 110–12 and teachers 65, 66 common vulnerability 138–40, 146, 162–3, 198 conflict in Cyprus 11–13 Israeli-Palestinian 6–7, 17 macro/micro perspectives 44–8 narrative perspectives 47 and societal beliefs 107 and stories 98 in USA 44 contact model (conflict) 46 context 36–7 Conway, B. 54 critical design experts, teachers and students as 22, 180, 186–7, 188, 189, 192–3, 194 and de-essentializing identity 213, 220, 222, 223, 227 and reconciliation pedagogies 225, 226, 227, 228–9 and utilization of dangerous memories 197, 199–200, 202–3, 206, 207–8, 210, 227 critical pedagogy 41–3, 221–2 critical theory 41–2 cultural analysis perspective 220 cultural curriculum 112–13 cultural development 188 cultural identities 188 cultural therapy 187–8 culture 49–50 and identity 32–3, 51 curricula influence of 14, 75–7, 84–5, 100, 111–13 forgiveness as part of 179–80, 181 Cypriocentrism 14 Cyprus conflict in 11–13 and dangerous memories 204 educational systems in 13–15 ethnic division in 12–13 Greek nationalism in 11–12 and identity memory and reconciliation 62–4 and immigration 17 multicultural classroom in 62–4, 121–2 official history 76 reunification plan 13 segregation 16–17

257 teaching of religion in 122–3 textbooks and curricula 76, 100 Turkish invasion of 12, 75, 105–7, 211 Turkish nationalism in 11–12 Zurich-London Agreement 12 see also Greek Cypriots; Turkish Cypriots dangerous memories 22, 196–200, 202, 206–9, 223, 227, 229 and Cyprus 204 and Israel 203–4 layering of 205–6 pedagogy of 209 dehumanization 14, 29, 148, 214–15 demonization 27, 214–15 Derrida, J. 136–7, 167, 168 Descartes 25 Devine-Wright, P. 110 dialogism 34 discourse 50–2 social 51–2 discrimination 64 Donnelly, C. 89–90 dramatism 221, 222 Druze 8 dualism 25 Dumont, L. 29 education development of mass 30–1 as solution for social problems 190–1 Elam, Y. 54 emotional pain 137 emotions 19, 114 ambivalent 20–1, 142, 149, 160–1 delegitimized 130–1 and historical narratives 192, 228 legitimized 130 political dimension of 115–16, 128–9, 192 and sociocultural theories 115–16 understanding of, in education 191 empathy 146, 160, 210–11 empty 199 Engle, K. J. 140 EOKA (National Organization of Cypriot Fighters) 12 EOKA B 12 Eppert, C. 36, 210 Erikson, E. 65 ethnic cleansing 28–9 ethnic estrangement 13 evil acts, forgiveness of 167

258

Index

Experimental School 10–11 externalization 228 Fenstermacher, G. 192 forgetting 55, 91, 229–30 and anger and hatred 202–3 and remembrance 209–10, 211 forgiveness 21, 58, 165–8, 211 context-sensitive 169 in education 168–70, 180–1 individual/national debate 173–4 just 179–80 and justice 176–7, 179 and recognition of suffering 171–2 and reconciliation 181–2 relaxed view (unconditional) 167, 168 or remembrance 174–6 strict (conditional) 168, 179–80 forgotten memories 97 Foucault, M. 51, 74, 84 Frake, C. O. 25 free speech, in classroom 193 Freire, P. 221 Gaza 7, 17, 174 Gedi, N. 54 Geertz, C. 37–8 gender identity 64 Gergen, K. J. 51 Giroux, H. A. 206, 221 Gobodo-Madikizela, P. 167, 178–9 “good descriptions” 25 Greek-Cypriot teachers and forgiveness 174–6, 180 and justice 176–7, 178, 179 Greek Cypriots and construction of narratives 13, 14 educational objectives of 14–15 interaction with Turkish Cypriots 205 missing persons 12, 105–7, 140–2 mourning by 140–2, 144–7 and multicultural schools 15 overcoming memories 202–3 religious identity of 16 resentment and hatred of Turkish-Cypriots 125–6, 204 right- vs. left-wing reactions to Turkish invasion 206–7 as victims 75 Greek nationalism 11–12 Greek Orthodox Church 206–7 Green Line 12–13, 101 group identities 30, 65, 197–8, 214–15

Halbwachs, M. 54, 112 Hamas 7 Hames-Garcia, M. R. 66 Harkin, M. E. 114 Hellenocentrism 14 historical memories 80–1 history education, and nation states 85 Hitler, Adolf 153 Holocaust 82, 87–8, 162, 163, 211 Palestinian/Jewish plight in 79–81 Holocaust Day 20, 82, 149, 150–5, 158, 160–1 hooks, bell 221 Hopkins, N. 226 Hussar, Fr. Bruno 9 “I do not forget and I fight” (Den Xechno kai Agonizomai) campaign 13, 14 idealization 214–15 identification with cause 73 identity 48–53, 65–6, 213 borders 60 categories, development of 29–30 children’s perspectives on 222–3 and culture monological/modernist perspectives 216–17 post-structuralist perspectives 217–19 de-essentializing 22–3, 188, 213, 223, 227 development of 64 differential concerns of adults and children 213–14 group 30, 65, 197–8, 214–15 individual 32–3 national 55–6, 83–5 politics 215 and postpositivist realism 218–19 and self 49, 50 and traditional positivist perspectives 216 information model (conflict) 46, 47 intergroup contact 53 intifada 7 Iraq 44 Israel curricula in 9, 75–6, 100 and dangerous memories 203–4 Declaration of Independence 7, 151 educational system in 8–9 identity, memory and reconciliation 59–61 and immigration 17 imposition of curfews in 101–2, 103–4

Index integrated Jewish-Palestinian education in 9–11, 73 mourning in 140, 142–7 national rituals and memorial ceremonies in 150–1; see also Holocaust Day; Memorial Day official history of 75–6 segregation in 16 separatist policies of 7–8 teachers’ characterization of 92–3 as victim 74–5 Israeli Independence Day 151, 158 Israeli-Palestinian conflict 6–7, 17 Jansen, J. 41–2 Jerusalem 10–11 Jewish curricula 9, 75–6 Jewish educational system 8–9 Jewish narrative 79–80 Jewish power asymmetry 79–80 Jewish teachers attempts to overcome strong sense of identification 90–3 deterministic perspective of 94–5 and forgiveness 171–4 identification with cause 73 overcoming memories 200–2 sense of victimhood of 87, 88 and victim–perpetrator narratives 77–83 Jews and expectations from Palestinians 87–8 identity of 75 and justice 176–7 and Palestinian threat 204–5 as victims of the Holocaust 152–5 see also symmetry/asymmetry; Zionists justice, before forgiveness 176–7, 179 Kafur Kara 11 Kafur Qassem 82, 101–4 Kansteiner, W. 54, 55 kibbutzim 8 ¨ Kizilyurek, N. 11 Kriesberg, L. 57 Kumashiro, K. 207 LaCapra, D. 114 language 24–6 languaging 52 Latin America, reconciliation in 58 learning, and living 34 Lebanon 17 linguistic meaning 52 Lomsky-Feder, E. 96 Lyotard, J. F. 74

259 MacIntyre, A. 49 Majd al-Krum 80–1 Makarios, Archbishop 12 Malkinson, R. 138 Mann, M. 28 martyrs 144 Marx, Karl 37 Maturana, U. 52 McDermott, R. 26 meaning 26, 37–8 linguistic 52 Memorial Day 20, 60–1, 149, 150–9, 160–1 and joint Nakba ceremony 90–1, 97 memory 22, 53–6, 114, 229–30 collected 56 forgotten 97 historical 80–1 and history 55 and national identity 83–5 selective 198 see also collective memory; dangerous memories; forgetting; remembering; remembrance Metz, Johann Baptist 198–9 Misgav 10 missing persons 12, 105–7 mourning of 137–8, 140–2 Mivtza Kadesh 102 monologism 34 Montgomery, K. E. 84 mourning and changes in family’s national identity 143–4 children’s emotional experience of 130–1 educational implications of 138 ethics of 136 nationalization of 20, 135, 141, 144–5, 161–2 as part of curriculum 20–1 politics of 135–40, 146–7 religious and familial support during 141–2, 143 in schools 148–9 sentimental approach to 162–3 as source of reconciliation pedagogies 148 Moya, P. M. L. 66 Museum of Barbarism 13 myth-making 214–15 Naas, M. 137 Nakba 7, 81, 82–3, 87–8, 155, 161

260

Index

Nakba Day 60–1, 157–8 and joint Memorial Day ceremony 90–1, 97 nation state 27–8 categorization of 226 development of 29–30, 52–3 development of psychology and 227–8 narratives and 84–5 national identity 55–6, 83–5 National Organization of Cypriot Fighters (EOKA) 12 nationalism 29–30, 52–3, 228 and identity theory 226 Nazis 152–5, 228 Neturei Karta 206 Neve Shalom 9–10 Nodelman, P. 110 Nora, Pierre 55 Northern Ireland 44 integrated schools in 9 official history 75–7, 88–90, 93–4, 100 Olick, J. K. 56 Ophir, A. 74 Orientalism 227 child psychology and 110 Ortega y Gasset, J. 25–6, 52 Oslo Israeli-Palestinian peace accords 10, 76, 117 Ostovich, S. T. 197 otherness 20–1, 116, 137, 149, 153–5, 190 Otis, Laura 53 Ottoman Empire 6, 11 Oxford English Dictionary 49 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) 7 Palestine, educational system in 8, 9 Palestinian curriculum 9 Palestinian narrative 79–80 Palestinian teachers attempts to overcome strong sense of identification 90–3, 94–5 and forgiveness 171–4 identification with cause 73 overcoming memories 200–2 sense of victimhood of 87 and victim–perpetrator narratives 77–83 Palestinians mourning by 140, 142–7 non-participation in Memorial Day ceremony 155–9 “right of return” 78 separatist policies against 7–8 stereotyping of 75–6 and victimhood 18, 88

see also symmetry/asymmetry Papadakis, Y. 76 Papastephanou, M. 169 Passover (Pesach) 59–60 patriotism 228 peace and reconciliation, homogenization of 27 peace education 26–9, 225–6 and political change 38–9 psychologized perspectives 28 and schooling 30–1 Pensky, M. 200 perpetrator–victim narratives 18, 71, 79–80, 85, 97–8 Plato 25 Podeh, E. 76 Popper, Karl 35 postpositivist realism 66–7 power relations 128, 131 and social identity 52–3 practice 37 prejudice 64 Quran 143 racial identity 64 racism 28–9 Ramadan 60 realistic group conflict theory 45 reconciliation 56–9 definition of 170–1 and forgiveness 165, 169–82 pedagogies 148, 225–9 role of education system in 59, 66 Reicher, S. 226 remembering 54–5 fixed 211 and suffering 208 remembrance 174 and forgetting 208, 209, 211 Reznik, J. 75 Ricoeur, P. 80, 203, 210 Ritchie, J. S. 97, 98 rituals 149–51 “Road Map” peace plan 117 Roe, M. D. 81 Rorty, R. 211 Rubin, S. 138 Russians, as victims of the Holocaust 154 Rwandan Commission on Unity and National Reconciliation 58 Ryle, G. 31–7 Sampson, E. E. 51 Sant Cassia, P. 138

Index schismogenesis 73 schooling, as agent of change 188–9 schools 30–1 and political emotions 128–9 Second World War, victims of 152–5, 156–8, 161 self, and identity 49, 50 self-categorization theory 49 self-victimization 87–8 shahids, creation of 143, 145 Sharon, Ariel 117 Shweder, R. A. 51 Simon, R. 208 Simonides 53 Sinai Campaign 102 small openings 95–6, 196 social discourse, mediational role of 51–2 social dominance theory 45 social identity, as product of power relations 52–3 social identity theory 49 social speech 51 socio-historical/cultural theory of development 51 South Africa 58 Truth and Reconciliation Commission 178–9 Spain, reconciliation in 58 speech communication 52 Sri Lanka 44 stories and conflict 98 Suez Crisis 102 suffering and intentionality 214–15 powerfulness of 198–9 recognition of 58–9, 95–6 recollection of past 209 and remembering 208 symmetry/asymmetry 17, 18, 20–1, 78–80, 87–8, 91, 94, 149, 153–5, 157–63, 164–5, 200–1, 208, 228 official history and prevention of 88–90 Tajfel, H. 45 Takei, M. 55 teachers and avoidance of difficult topics 104, 107 critical dialogue of 193 critical historical understanding of 90 and emotional complexities of historical narratives 192–4

261 and emphasis on collective vs. individual narratives 105–7, 108 and identification with cause 73 and identification with historical narratives 18–19 influence of knowledge and beliefs on children 89–90 influence on children’s socialization 89 and initiatives to change past perspectives 214–15 and large-group identity/collective memory 65 understandings of reconciliation and forgiveness 165, 169–82 see also critical design experts; Greek-Cypriot teachers; Jewish teachers; Palestinian teachers textbooks, influence of 14, 75–7, 84–5, 111–12 theory of mind 48 thick description 37–8 Thomas Aquinas 53 TMT (Turkish Resistance Organization) 12 Todorov, T. 81 traumatic loss coping patterns in dealing with 143 reporting of 142–3 Tripartite Aggression 102 troubled knowledge 41–2 Tulviest, P. 113 Turkey, invasion of Cyprus 12, 75, 105–7, 211 Turkish-Cypriot narratives 13 in multicultural schools 15 Turkish Cypriots 12–13 acknowledgement of victimhood 75 missing persons 12, 106–7 negative stereotypes 76 Turkish nationalism 11–12 Turkish Resistance Organization (TMT) 12 Tylbor, H. 26 understanding 35–6 universal cultural values 32–3 USA conflict in 44 violence in, after 9/11 139 utterance 52 VanSledright, B. 84 victimization, monopoly on 95–6

262

Index

victims/victimhood 87–8, 89 fear of symmetry and 79–80 and forgiveness 166–7 and power 18, 75–7, 81–3 vulnerability 138–40, 146, 162–3, 198 Vygotsky, L. S. 51 Waller, J. 214 War of Independence (1948) 7 Watt, I. 49 Weiss, M. 138 Wertsch, J. V. 113 White, P. 168

Wiesenthal, Simon 166 Wilson, D. E. 97, 98 Witztum, E. 138 Zembylas, M. 14, 15, 41, 76, 84, 86, 90, 99, 105, 116, 127, 131, 138, 140, 145, 163, 168, 180, 192, 199, 206 Zionists 6–7, 8, 16 colonization of Palestine 6–7, 16 educational ethos of 8 ethos of 81, 88 history of 95, 103, 201 response to Holocaust 206 as ultimate victims 74, 76