The discourse of homeland: the construction of Palestinian national identity in Palestinian secularist and Islamist discourses

Abstract

Nationalism is a notoriously complex, slippery notion that has been the subject of much scholarly debate and scrutiny. The last two decades, however, had seen a proliferation of methodological orientations which emphasized the socially constructed nature of national phenomena. The conception of nation as an ‘imagined community’ highlights the active role of discourse through which notions of national homogeneity, historic continuity and shared present and destiny are constituted, re-constituted and inculcated in and through discourse, often by a nationalist and engaged intelligentsia. Informed by the work of Wodak and colleagues [(1999). The discursive construction of national identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press; (2007). Commemorating the past: The discursive construction of official narratives about the rebirth of the second Austrian republic. Discourse & Communication, 1(3), 337–363], the present study examines the construction of the ‘homeland’ in Palestinian nationalist discourses. Drawing on a corpus of Palestinian constitutive documents, including political speeches and national tracts, this article probes into the constituent themes of Palestinian national identity as expressed and consistently presented in Palestinian official secularist and Islamist discourses. In particular, the study draws attention to the discursive processes through which a common Palestinian identity is forged and the similarities and ideological tensions between secularists and Islamists in the construction of the ‘nation’.