The Knowledge of Zionism. Form and Function of Knowledge and Science in Zionist Journalism and Literature

Andreas Kilcher and Alexander Alon
Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation

Knowledge and science played a prominent role in the formation of Zionism around 1900. The realisation of the goals of political Zionism increasingly required scientific and technical knowledge; cultural Zionism, in turn, went hand in hand with projects in the cultural sciences and humanities and provided fundamental reflections in relation to knowledge and its cultural-political function. The close ties to the scientific knowledge of modernity were said to be able to give Jewish modernity a new, national dimension between assimilation and diaspora.

Against this background, the research project aims to examine the form and function of knowledge and science within Zionist journalism and literature from the emergence of the Zionist movement in the second half of the 19th century to the time of the founding of the state around 1945. It is assumed that the constitution of a decidedly 'Zionist knowledge' can be examined above all at the level of scientific conceptions, their journalistic concretisation and their literary negotiation - hence the localisation of the object in journalism and literature. The 'knowledge of Zionism' is not only determined by political pragmatics, but also essentially by rhetorical, aesthetic and poetological modes of writing. The aim is to work out how the idea, conception, conceptualisation and functionalisation of knowledge can be characterised in Zionist knowledge processing and communication.