THE CONTRARIETIES OF ISRAEL - AN ESSAY ON THE COGNITIVE IMPORTANCE AND THE CREATIVE PROMISE OF BOTH AND/

This article speculates on the place of contradiction in the symbolic construction of the world. There has been much anthropological work on the ubiquity of symbolic classification in human society and culture, but insufficient attention has been paid to the contradictory as a de sirable cognitive resort: to playing with, and denying, symbolic class ifications at the same time as assuming them. Juxtaposing literary the oretical and empirical sources, the article therefore outlines a thesi s concerning the importance, the prevalence and the purpose of recours e to the contradictory as a conscious feature of the use of language. Construing the existence or 'words', of 'communities' and of 'individu als' can be seen as attempts symbolically to define, make singular, li mited and congruous what is at the same time recognized to be multiple , unlimited and incoherent. Empirical evidence for the thesis is provi ded by an account of contemporary American immigrants in the State of Israel.