‘Emergency Regulations: Our Autobiography’: Shulamit Hareven’s <i>Many Days</i> as Fictional Autobiography/Autobiographical Fiction

Abstract

This paper discusses Many Days (2002), the autobiography of the Israeli writer Shulamith Hareven. This autobiography is by no means a classical retrospective narrative; rather, it is a reconstruction of narrative through a lifetime of work. Towards the end of her life, Hareven turned to the corpus of her work and extracted from it diverse materials: fiction, prose and political essays. She proceeded to compile this material into one narrative, which she deemed an autobiography. This narrative is examined in light of its Israeli context and in light of feminist theory of autobiography. Both of these approaches enable an investigation of the tension between the public and private spheres and between the individual I and the collective We. Hareven, who was active throughout her life in the Israeli public sphere, as a writer and essayist as well as a military officer and peace activist, constructs her own narrative as parallel to the collective Israeli national narrative. Hareven effaces the borders of the creation of the personal by the collective and the creation of the collective by the personal. She positions the collective as representative of her private narrative and deems herself representative of the collective. Hareven took on this position of spokesperson during her life through her actions and her writing. Her autobiography, which was written at a turning point, facing the death of the author and the crisis of the Israeli collective (due to political circumstances, namely the occupation), serves both as a retrospective testimony and as an operative testament. As a testament, Many Days calls for a dialogue of narratives in order to begin a process of healing within the Israeli collective and within the Middle East region.