Identities in flux
Arabs and Jews in Israel
pp. 150-166
in: Gilbert Weiss, Ruth Wodak (eds), Critical discourse analysis, Berlin, Springer, 2003Abstract
I am not a sociologist, nor a political scientist, nor a jurist, nor a specialist in the affairs of the Arab minority in Israel. Although I have some training in linguistics, especially in the pragmatic analysis of discourse, I suppose I was invited to participate in the interdisciplinary "think tank" that led me to write this chapter in my capacity as a practitioner of philosophy.1 As such, I — for one — don"t necessarily disregard the "facts", nor do I make a point of suggesting "unrealistic" ideas. But I can allow myself a measure of methodological freedom in taking some distance from strict subservience to a narrowly understood "realism". This freedom grants a philosopher the possibility of putting forth for discussion what seem to be fantastic or utopian proposals, if judged from the perspective of the present circumstances. It is my belief that, if such proposals meet the condition of being at least conceptually sound (that is, if they could exist in some possible world, where circumstances would be reasonably different), it is not unreasonable to hope that they may, ultimately, materialize. Even if they don"t, they may be worth elaborating, discussing and, eventually, fighting for.