The critical potential of commemorative journalism

Abstract

Previous studies of commemorative journalism have mostly stressed its integrative functionality and tendency to provide oversimplified narrations of the past. Correspondingly, this article explores the critical and at times subversive potential of commemorative journalism. It does so via the analysis of commemorative-photographic supplements, issued by Israeli dailies between 1968 and 2013. The study first identifies the storytelling building blocks used to construct the dominant commemorative narrative. Next, it illuminates three storytelling strategies – challenging the national voice, the national plot, and the national gaze – all contributing to an undermining of the national synecdoche. Finally, these findings are contextualized within the political and cultural rereading of the Israeli national past.