The Meanings of Cosmopolitanism in the ‘First Hebrew City’: Zionism, Migration, and Modern Metropolitan Culture in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, 1909-1936
This article traces the history of Tel Aviv(-Jaffa)’s projection as a ‘cosmopolitan’ city. It defines cosmopolitanism and charts out different layers of meaning it has acquired over time, dividing these into ‘ethnonational,’ ‘imperial,’ and ‘post-national’ interpretations. Newspaper articles and arc...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | deu |
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Karl Franzens-Universität Graz
2024-05-01
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| Series: | Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://resolver.obvsg.at/urn:nbn:at:at-ubg:4-50323 |
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| Summary: | This article traces the history of Tel Aviv(-Jaffa)’s projection as a ‘cosmopolitan’ city. It defines cosmopolitanism and charts out different layers of meaning it has acquired over time, dividing these into ‘ethnonational,’ ‘imperial,’ and ‘post-national’ interpretations. Newspaper articles and archival documents are analyzed to demonstrate that Tel Avivs founders rejected cosmopolitanism in its ‘ethnonational’ interpretation. After the ‘Jaffa Riots’ (1921), however, the township’s leaders embraced an ‘imperial’ cosmopolitanism, positing it as worldly, globally integrated, and Western. The origins of Tel Aviv’s present image as a cosmopolitan city, sporting progress and participating in a globalized urban culture, reach back to these days. Yet today, for those who support ‘post-national’ and ‘post-colonial’ renderings of cosmopolitanism, Tel Aviv cannot be ‘cosmopolitan’ due to its exclusion of Jaffa’s Arabs. These debates shed light on Zionism’s complex historical relationship with (ethno)nationalism and colonialism and on Israel’s conflicted identity between the universal and the particular. |
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| ISSN: | 2413-9181 |