| Abstract | The reasons for Peace Now's apparently counter-intuitive and counterproductive -- one may even say politically suicidal -- course of action have much to do with the intricate relations between myth and modernity, which have been addressed by the most prominent thinkers on these issues. Mythical beliefs were regarded as characterizing the irrational, emotional, "dark" side of human nature, and it was believed that they were destined to disappear with the enlightened age of modernity. The German thinker Ernst Cassirer suggested a systematic binary opposition between mythos and logos, with an evolutionary process leading from one to the other.(1) In the field of collective memory there is much discussion on the transformation in historical consciousness that has accompanied, and even defined, the modern age.(2) French historian Pierre Nora has followed Maurice Halbwachs in making a clear distinction between "memory" and "history," claiming that "memory" implies viewing the past as an integral part of the present, with the same principles that shaped the past also being at work in the present. History, on the other hand, implies a clear and final boundary between past and present, when the past becomes, to use David Lowenthal's spatial metaphor, "a foreign country." History objectifies the past and strips it of the enchantment needed to manufacture mythological tales.(3)
The case of [Emil Grunzweig]'s commemoration adds an interesting perspective to these research trends. Peace Now activists, who served as his "reputational entrepreneurs,"(14) were faced with these questions of how to preserve a problematic past, downplay the uncomfortable aspects of the story, and how best to manufacture myth for a critical and skeptical audience. While the issues raised by the new research on collective memory were indeed relevant to their dilemma, they also had to tackle an older question, which had been assumed to have long been put to rest by research on the topic: to what extent mythic thinking is at all possible in the modern age, when scientific knowledge (including the "science of history") is considered as the hegemonic mode of reasoning, and university-accredited professions hold high social and moral status. Peace Now thus encountered the problem of constructing "memory" at a time when that very concept is constantly being eroded by "history" and "scientific rationality," a process in which the movement itself has a crucial stake.
It seems that Emil Grunzweig was transformed into an "anti-myth" simply because the option of mythmaking no longer exists for a modernist movement operating in a postmodern cultural environment. The conferences which are held to commemorate Grunzweig's death can therefore be seen as a critical comment on mythmaking practices whose significance lies not in the content of the various lectures but rather in the very structure of academic discourse which implies that all myths arc contestable, including those of the organizers themselves. Thus, the very form of the conference-as-ritual where, ideally, the strongest argument shall prevail, embodies the main idea that Peace Now seeks to convey to the Israeli public: the rejection of myth and the legitimacy of a multiplicity of narratives in any society. The conference-as-ritual metaphorizes Emil Grunzweig as a "person," a whole human being and an irreducible entity. Mythic narration tends to reduce biographies to a few basic themes and reconstruct them according to preestablished lines. In Grunzweig's case, Peace Now attempted to keep the "original" biography intact. Indeed, it was the idea of consecrating the right of the individual to an untampered biography that underlay the choice of this particular form of commemoration. Thus, when biographical details were mentioned, "problematic" facts were not omitted, and at times were even accentuated as though to prove the movement's respect for the integrity of the whole person. Grunzweig's story consisted of broken patterns, unfinished matters and inner contradictions, a story that was interrupted by an untimely and senseless death. Facts about his personal life (his being divorced), his academic career (his unfinished doctoral dissertation) or his residential status (his leaving a kibbutz and living temporarily in Jerusalem) were told without being woven into a coherent narrative. It was accepted and understood that a person's biography is essentially incomplete, contains numerous contradictions and belongs only to the person him/herself. The movement has no right to appropriate the biography, either during or after the member's lifetime.
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