Summary
The genre to which Shtetl Colonialism: First and Last Impressions of Indigeneity by Colonised Colonisers connects the case of Israel, following Gabriel Piterberg, as the framework in which the East European Jews are understood as victims of internal colonialism and their rapid transformation into colonialist victimisers in Palestine can be analysed and evaluated ethically (Shtetl Colonialism: First and Last Impressions of Indigeneity by Colonised Colonisers, PDF p.4-6 / printed p.42-44).
Details
- Pappé adopts it while accepting Ellah Shohat’s critique of the term postcolonial in full: its ahistorical and universalising nature, its implication that colonialism is over, and its failure to leave political agency (PDF p.5 / printed p.43).
- Its explanatory promise in the article: a better historical perspective on where to locate Israel today, and an explanation of why Israel is immune from any depiction as a settler colonialist or apartheid state in the Western mainstream media and academia (PDF p.5).
- Within the genre, the transformation is marked not by its occurrence — the Puritans and Huguenots in North America underwent it too — but by its historical period and pace, in particular after the Holocaust (PDF p.6-7 / printed p.44-45).
- Pappé returns to it near the close: the transformation into victimisers occurred while the early group was still poor, hence postcolonialism is the best prism through which one can understand how subaltern oppressed groups become so quickly and absolutely oppressive (PDF p.17 / printed p.55).
Related pages
Shtetl Colonialism: First and Last Impressions of Indigeneity by Colonised Colonisers, Gabriel Piterberg, Ellah Shohat, Shtetl Colonialism, Settler Colonialism