History's Broken Wings: "Narrative Paralysis" as Resistance to History in Amos Gitai's Film <i>Kedma</i>

Abstract

Amos Gitai's deconstruction of the Zionist historical narrative in his film Kedma (IL/FR, 2004) generates a narrative paralysis-by displacing events, disconnecting them from both their real referents and from their normal temporal sequence. This paralysis is tantamount to a post-traumatic rhetoric that marks the historical condition, one in which the movie was created as posttraumatic. This rhetoric can be read as subversive because it undermines the linear and teleological hegemonic narratives of both the film and the Zionist ideology that it recounts. The post-traumatic condition is, therefore, political. Thus, the film suggests alternative, if not redemptive, modes of employment that may work through the trauma and create a return to reality. Kedma belongs, in terms of its structure, to the road movie genre and, as such, is essentially based on movement. It follows the progress of Jewish Holocaust refugees from their European countries of origin, via the ship that brings them to shore, to the Land of Israel, to a military clash with the Arabs, and to Jerusalem. In the course of this voyage, the refugees, as film characters, are expected to participate in the cinematic plot that epitomizes the Zionist narrative: they must forget their erstwhile traumas, overcome the memories of the Diaspora, jettison the Jewish characteristics of their identity, fight the Arabs, and thus be transformed from passive Jews to warring Hebrews who