Uriel Abulof - àåøéàì àáåìåó

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The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
- Oscar Wilde

Research

"Small Peoples" PhD Dissertation (approved 2007)
Ethnonational Existential Uncertainty: Israeli Jews, Quebecois and Afrikaners
Academic Supervisors: Dr. Avraham Sela and Dr. Sasson Sofer

Small peoples. The concept is not quantitative; it points to a condition; a fate; small peoples do not have that felicitous sense of an eternal past and future; at a given moment in their history, they all passed through the antechambers of death; in constant confrontation with the arrogant ignorance of the mighty, they see their existence as perpetually threatened or with a question mark hovering over it; for their very existence is a question.
-- Milan Kundera, Testaments Betrayed

Czech author Milan Kundera describes a phenomenon, as yet unstudied, invaluable to the understanding of both ethnicity and security. This phenomenon – ethnonational existential uncertainty – is the focus of my dissertation, which examines what Kundera terms “small peoples”: ethnic communities that lack a “sense of an eternal past and future”. My aim is twofold: to expose this phenomenon and to explore its bases. The main case study is the Jewish people in Israel; The Afrikaners in South Africa and the Qu?b?cois in Qu?bec/Canada serve as comparative cases.