Zionist founding narrative fused insurrectionary counterhistory with the civilizing colonial burden.

Evidence

Israel came to be seen as an exemplary instance of what Michel Foucault, though in a different context, memorably has called “counterhistory,” as a historical narrative of insurrection, against the grain, establishing itself in the face of formidable and threatening power directed against it. Israel is forged out of a “biblical history of servitude and exiles,” as a “history of insurrections” against state-imposed or -sanctioned injustices. In this, Israel held out hope and the promise of justice prevailed. Its founding narration, in short, is a complex of the history of struggles (Foucault uses the term “race wars” but it is clear from the examples he cites that he really has in mind group, even class, struggles) in which Jews were invariably the quintessential pariah, they who did not belong, but mixed with the civilizing European imperative, the white man’s burden, of what I have characterized as “racial historicism.” — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 562

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Goldberg’s own concept of ‘racial historicism’ and to Foucault’s ‘race war’ lectures on the society must be defended.
• DEFINE: Introduces Foucault’s ‘counterhistory’ as a tool for reading national founding narratives.