Visioning Israel-Palestine: Encounters at the Cultural Boundaries of Conflict 9781501364624, 9781501364655, 9781501364631

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VISIONING ISRAEL-PALESTINE

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In loving memory to Uri Tomer who found peace elsewhere

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VISIONING ISRAEL-PALESTINE ENCOUNTERS AT THE CULTURAL BOUNDARIES OF CONFLICT

Edited by Gil Pasternak

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BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2020 Selection and Editorial Material © Gil Pasternak, 2020 Individual Chapters © Abdul-Rahim Al-Shaikh, Anna Ball, Simon Faulkner, Chrisoula Lionis, Gil Pasternak, Griselda Pollock, Rhoda Rosen and Sander L. Gilman, Edward W. Said, Ihab Saloul, Huw Wahl Copyediting by Pat FitzGerald For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on pp. xii–xiii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover image: ‘Éin Fuar’, January 1968. Reproduced courtesy of research participant. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN:

HB: 978-1-5013-6462-4 ePDF: 978-1-5013-6463-1 eBook: 978-1-5013-6464-8

Series: New Encounters: Arts, Cultures, Concepts Typeset by Refinecatch, Bungay, Suffolk To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

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CONTENTS

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Series Preface—New Encounters: Arts, Cultures, Concepts Griselda Pollock Introduction: Encounters at the Cultural Boundaries of Conflict Gil Pasternak

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Part I: Products of Conflict 1 A Country as a Map of Itself: On the Historical, Cultural and Theoretical Rendering of Palestine in Sobhi al-Zobaidi’s Part-ition (2008) Abdul-Rahim Al-Shaikh

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2 Laughter ‘In Between’ Time: Temporality, Iconography and the Burden of Proof in Palestinian Art after Oslo Chrisoula Lionis

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3 Impossible Intimacies: Towards a Visual Politics of ‘Touch’ at the Israeli-Palestinian Border Anna Ball

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4 Dreams or Nightmares: The Artworking of Return in And Europe Will Be Stunned (2007–11) by Yael Bartana (with Sławomir Sierakowski) Griselda Pollock

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Part II: Products in Conflict 5 Scandal! Images, Discourses, and the Image of Discourse that ‘Hurt People’s Feelings’ Rhoda Rosen and Sander L. Gilman

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6 Showcasing Conflict: Notes and Observations on Photographic Representation in Israel and Palestine Huw Wahl

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7 Visibility, Photography, and the Occupation: The Case of the Activestills Collective Simon Faulkner

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Contents

8 At Home with ‘Palestine’: Performing Photographs of the West Bank in Israeli Households Gil Pasternak

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9 Postmemory and Oral History: Inter-generational Memory and Transnational Identity in Exile Ihab Saloul

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Appendix | Invention, Memory, and Place Edward W. Said

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Bibliography List of Contributors Index

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Chapter 1

Sobhi al-Zobaidi, Part-ition, 2008, video installation (detail). Photo: courtesy of the artist. 1.2 Sobhi al-Zobaidi, Part-ition, 2008, video installation (detail). Photo: courtesy of the artist. 1.1

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Chapter 2

Taysir Batniji, Laughter, 2014, embroidery on fabric, 135 × 33 cm. Reproduced courtesy of the artist and Sfeir Semler Gallery. 2.2 Larissa Sansour, Nation Estate—Olive Tree, 2012, C-print, 75 × 150 cm. Reproduced courtesy of Larissa Sansour 2.1

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Chapter 3

3.1 3.2

Banksy, Palestine, 2005. Courtesy of Pest Control Office. Mona Hatoum, Grater Divide, 2002, mild steel, 204 cm × variable width and depth. Copyright Mona Hatoum. Courtesy of White Cube. Photo: Iain Dickens. 3.3 Simone Bitton, Wall, 2004, digital video, colour/sound, 100' (the Wall being manoeuvred into position). Courtesy of Wall: The Movie and Lifesize Entertainment. 3.4 Simone Bitton, Wall, 2004, digital video, colour/sound, 100' (a man climbs through barbed wire on his way over the Wall). Courtesy of Wall: The Movie and Lifesize Entertainment.

79 83 89

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Chapter 4

4.1

Yael Bartana, Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland manifesto, 2011 Poster, 70 × 100 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam.

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Illustrations

4.2

4.3 4.4 4.5

4.6 4.7 4.8

4.9

4.10

4.11

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Claude Lanzmann (1925–2018), Shoah, 1985, 566 mins, New Yorker Films: (a) Face of Chełmno survivor Simon Srebnik (1930–2006) returning to the camp; (b) Face of Chełmno survivor Simon Srebnik (1930–2006) outside the church. Chantal Akerman (1950–2015), ‘People walking in the street’, D’Est/From the East (1993), 16 mm, 107 mins, Icarus Films. Cover of Gustav Dalman, Hundert Deutsche Fliegerbilder aus Palaestina (Gütersloh: Verlag von C. Bertelsmann, 1925). Bracha Ettinger (b. 1948): (a) Hundert Deutsche Fliegerbilder aus Palaestina combined elements, nos 1–8, 1989, mixed media on paper, Plexiglas and metal. Courtesy of the artist; (b) Detail: Hundert Deutsche Fliegerbilder aus Palaestina no. 3, 1988 mixed media on paper, 28.8 × 21.8 cm. Courtesy of the artist. Bracha Ettinger Mamalangue—Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism no. 5 (one element), 1989–90, mixed media on paper. Courtesy of the artist. Yael Bartana, Summer Camp, 2007, 12' 48", LIMA; installation (four images, two from each of two installations). Courtesy of Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam. Yael Bartana, Mary Koszmary, 2007 (four stills), 16 mm film transferred to DVD, colour/sound; 10' 50". Produced with support from Hermès and Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw. Courtesy of Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam. Yael Bartana, Mur i Wieża, [Wall and Tower], 2009 (four stills), RED transferred to HD, colour/sound; 15 mins. Courtesy of Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam and Sommer Contemporary, Tel Aviv. Warsaw Ghetto Wall, 24 May 1941. Bundes Archiv Bild 101I-134-0791-30, Bild. Origin: Propagandakompanien der Wehrmacht—Heer und Luftwaffe. Photo: Ludwig Knobloch. Yael Bartana, Zamach [Assassination], 2011 (two stills), RED transferred to HD, colour/sound; 35 min. Commissioned by Artangel, Outset Contemporary Art Fund, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Netherlands Filmfunds, Zachta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw. Images courtesy of Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam.

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Illustrations

Chapter 6

6.1

6.2

6.3 6.4

6.5

6.6

People demonstrate in support of prisoners participating in one of the longest hunger strikes in Palestinian history. Ofer prison is located near Ramallah in the West Bank and run by the Israeli Prison Services. According to B’Tselem, Israel holds more than 4,500 Palestinians in jail on charges that range from stone throwing to deadly attacks on Israeli targets. Hunger strikes in protest at inhumane and abusive conditions, as well as detentions without charge or trial, have been growing over the past years. See the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, (accessed January 2013). Huw Wahl, Ofer Prison, West Bank, June 2012. Photojournalists photograph a boy dressed as Spiderman during the weekly protest in Nabi Saleh. Each Friday the village residents, joined by Israelis and foreign activists, try to march to their village spring, which has been confiscated by Halamish, the settlement in the top right of this photograph. The Israel Defense Forces use tear gas, rubber-coated bullets and a foul-smelling water canon nicknamed the ‘skunk canon’ to stop them. Huw Wahl, Nabi Saleh, West Bank, May 2012. Foreign activists photograph Palestinian children playing in a car while the community carries out agricultural work. Huw Wahl, South Hebron Hills, West Bank, May 2012. Palestinian photojournalists talk with local children during a quiet moment at a demonstration outside Ofer prison in support of prisoners on hunger strike. Huw Wahl, Ofer Prison, West Bank, June 2012. An Israeli photographer demonstrates framing in a project encouraging the Bedouin communities in southern Israel to document themselves through portraiture, as a way of building a political archive. The Israeli government regularly demolishes houses without permits in Israel as part of its policy of settling former nomadic Arab communities such as Bedouins in government-planned towns. Huw Wahl, Negev Desert, Southern Israel, June 2012. Foreign activists document agricultural work by Palestinian cave dwellers in the South Hebron Hills. The caves and residential dwellings are regularly destroyed by Israeli forces

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Illustrations

6.7 6.8

6.9 6.10 6.11 6.12

claiming they do not have permits to live there. Palestinian and foreign activists provide help by building houses out of breezeblocks, which are also quickly knocked down. Huw Wahl, South Hebron Hills, West Bank, May 2012. A Palestinian activist films a Palestinian cave dweller in a temporary tent. Huw Wahl, South Hebron Hills, West Bank, May 2012. A Palestinian man is arrested following a protest against the Jerusalem Day march of the flags entering East Jerusalem. Jerusalem Day is the day on which Israeli nationalists celebrate the capture of East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War. The annexation of East Jerusalem by Israel has never been recognised by international law. Huw Wahl, East Jerusalem, Israel, May 2012. Young people from a Bedouin community take photographs of a house recently demolished by the Israeli forces. Huw Wahl, Negev Desert, Southern Israel, June 2012. A foreign activist photographs a Palestinian child playing in a car. Huw Wahl, South Hebron Hills, West Bank, May 2012. An arrest at a protest against the Jerusalem Day march of the flags entering East Jerusalem. Huw Wahl, East Jerusalem, Israel, May 2012. View from a bus leaving Qalandiya checkpoint as it enters Israel alongside the separation barrier. Qalandiya separates the West Bank from Jerusalem; only Palestinians with special permits are allowed to enter Israel. Huw Wahl, Qalandiya Checkpoint, Israel, June 2012.

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Chapter 7

7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5

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Activestills display in protest camp on Rothschild Boulevard, Tel Aviv (August 2011). Photo: Simon Faulkner. Activestills display, ‘Bethlehem—Trapped’, from June 2007, Tel Aviv (June 2010). Photo: Simon Faulkner. Damaged Activestills display, ‘Jerusalem—Expelled’, Tel Aviv (June 2007). Photo: Simon Faulkner. Detail of Activestills display, ‘Bethlehem—Trapped’, Tel Aviv (June 2007). Photo: Simon Faulkner. Activestills display in protest camp on Rothschild Boulevard, Tel Aviv, covered with Gilad Shalit banner (September 2011). Photo: Simon Faulkner.

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Illustrations

Chapter 8

8.1

‘Éin Qelt—1968’, January 1968. Reproduced courtesy of research participant. 8.2 Wadi Qelt/Nahal Prat, January 1968. Reproduced courtesy of research participant. 8.3 ‘Under the waterfall’, January 1968. Reproduced courtesy of research participant. 8.4 ‘Éin Fara’, January 1968. Reproduced courtesy of research participant. 8.5 ‘Anatot’, January 1968. Reproduced courtesy of research participant. 8.6 The Wailing Wall, 1 August 1967. Reproduced courtesy of research participant. 8.7 Tulkarm, 1967. Reproduced courtesy of research participant (original in colour). 8.8 Ruins of Sebastia, 1967. Reproduced courtesy of research participant (original in colour). 8.9 Tulkarm, 1967. Reproduced courtesy of research participant (original in colour). 8.10 ‘Éin Fuar’, January 1968. Reproduced courtesy of research participant. 8.11 Ruins of King Abdullah Bridge in the Jordan Valley, 1 August 1967. Reproduced courtesy of the research participant.

222 222 223 224 224 225 227 227 229 231 235

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The initial ideas for this book emerged at the conference Insight Palestina: Images, Discourses, and the Image of Discourse, held at the University of Leeds in 2012 and planned in collaboration with the University of Huddersfield. I would like to thank Steve Swindells (Director of Research in the School of Art, Design and Architecture at the University of Huddersfield), Eva Frojmovic (Director of the Centre of Jewish Studies at the University of Leeds) and Griselda Pollock (Director of the Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory and History at the University of Leeds) for their generous intellectual support and financial contribution to the organisation of the event. I would also like to express my gratitude to all conference participants and to thank members of the conference advisory board, Verina Gfader, Juliet MacDonald and Catriona McAra. The process of compiling and editing Visioning Israel-Palestine has made a relatively long journey. I would therefore especially like to thank Simon Faulkner, Sander L. Gilman, Griselda Pollock, Rhoda Rosen and Ihab Saloul, who were part of the project from its early days and continued to believe in it throughout. Their persistence and unconditional support was one important source of inspiration to persevere, even when all odds were stacked against the task in hand. As the book was meant to be published by I.B. Tauris (before the publishing house merged into Bloomsbury Publishing), I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to I.B. Tauris Senior Editor Philippa Brewster, for the very same reason. For the help, advice and the assistance they offered me at different stages, I want to extend my thanks to Mahmoud Abu Hashhash (Director of the Culture and Arts Programme at the Qattan Foundation in Ramallah), Nir Cohen (Head of Film Programming for UK Jewish Film and co-editor of the international journal Jewish Film and New Media), Carol Zemel (Professor Emerita of Art History and Visual Culture at York University, Canada), Tamar Garb (Durning-Lawrence Professor in the History of Art at University College London) and Jeremy E. Taylor (Associate Professor in Modern Asian History at the University of Nottingham). Gil Pasternak, Editor, 2020

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Acknowledgements

A similar version of Chapter 3 by Anna Ball previously appeared in Journal for Cultural Research 16/2–3 (2012) as an article entitled Impossible Intimacies: Towards a Visual Politics of “Touch” at the Israeli-Palestinian Border and is reproduced by permission of the publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd. The text by Edward Said first appeared in the journal Critical Inquiry 26/2 (2000) and is reproduced by permission of the editor-in-chief, W.J.T. Mitchell, and Chicago University Press. Critical Inquiry 26 (Winter 2000) © 2000 by the University of Chicago. 0093-1896/00/26020009$02.00. All rights reserved. The authors and publishers are grateful to all individuals and organisations who have granted permission to reproduce the images in the volume. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use copyright material but if for any reason a request has not been received, the copyright holder should contact the publisher who will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.

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SERIES PREFACE New Encounters: Arts, Cultures, Concepts Griselda Pollock

How do we think about visual art these days? What is happening to art history? Is visual culture taking its place? What is the status of Cultural Studies, in itself or in relation to its possible neighbours—art, art history, visual studies? What is going on? What are the new directions? To what should we remain loyal? NEW ENCOUNTERS: Arts, Cultures, Concepts proposes some possible ways of thinking through these questions. Firstly, the series introduces and works with the concept of the transdisciplinary initiative. This is not a synonym for the interdisciplinary combination that has become de rigueur. It is related to a second concept: research as encounter. Conjoined, transdisciplinary and encounter mark the interaction between ways of thinking, doing and making in the arts and humanities. Each of these modes retains distinctive features associated with their own disciplinary practices and objects: art, history, culture, film, photography and practice. Yet new knowledge is produced when these different ways of doing, making and thinking encounter each other across—and this is the third intervention—concepts. Concepts circulate between different intellectual or aesthetic discourses and cultures, inflecting them, sharing common questions but approaching them in distinctively articulated practices. The aim is to place these different practices in productive relation to each other, mediated by the circulation of concepts. We stand at several crossroads at the moment in relation to the visual arts and cultures, historical and contemporary, and to theories and methods of analysis. The Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory and History (CentreCATH) was founded as one experiment in thinking about how to maintain the momentum of the intellectual cultural revolution in the arts and humanities that characterized the last quarter of the twentieth century while adjusting to the different field of analysis created by it and to the constantly shifting economic, political and social ground on which we precariously stand in conditions of globalization and liquid modernity dominated by neoliberal reason. xiv

Series Preface

In the 1970s–90s, the necessity, or the intrusion, according to your position, was Theory: a mythic concept with a capital T that homogenized vastly different intellectual undertakings. Over those decades, research and practice in the arts and humanities was undoubtedly reconfigured by the engagement with structuralist and poststructuralist theories of the sign, the social, the text, the letter, the image, the subject, the post-colonial and, above all, difference. Old disciplines were deeply challenged and new inter-disciplines—called studies—emerged to contest the long-established academic divisions of knowledge production. These changes were wrought through specific engagements with Marxist, feminist, deconstructionist, psychoanalytical, queer and postcolonial theory. Texts and authors were branded according to their theoretical alignments. Mapping produced divisions between the proliferating models. Could one be a Marxist and a feminist while drawing on psychoanalysis queerly? A deeper split, however, emerged between those who, in general, were theoretically oriented and those who apparently did without theory: a position that the theoretically minded easily critiqued. Being atheoretically positivist is, of course, a theoretical position. It simply did not carry a novel identity associated with the intellectual shifts of the post-1968 university. The impact of ‘the theoretical turn’ was creative; it has radically reshaped work in the arts and humanities in terms of what is studied (content, topics, groups, questions) and also how it is studied (theories and methods). Yet some scholars came to argue that work done under such overt theoretical rubrics was becoming tired; theory constrained the creativity of the new generation of scholars familiar, perhaps too familiar, with the legacies of the preceding intellectual revolution that can too easily be reduced to Theory 101 slogans (the author is dead, the gaze is male, the subject is split, there is nothing but text, etc.). The enormity of the initial struggles—the paradigm shifting—to be able to speak of sexual difference, subjectivity, the image, representation, sexuality, power, the gaze, postcoloniality, textuality, difference, queerness fades before a new phase of normalization in which every student seems to bandy around terms that were once, and in fact still are, challengingly difficult and provocative. Or worse. It is clear that bandying indicated that at least something of this intellectual and theoretical revolution was still—even in an etiolated form—part of public discourse. Recent events have shown how the terms of critical thinking from feminist to postcolonial theory are not part of general discussion, even as they reappear on the media stage in the wake of new scandals of sexism and racism. Outrageous acts of sexual harassment and abuse are greeted, however, not with knowing acknowledgement of their structural place in xv

Series Preface

a patriarchal culture of asymmetrical power relations but as the signs of a surprising number of ‘badly behaved’ individual men. Where is the sense that facing revelations of such an order necessitated a political-critical analysis rather than surprise and celebrity ‘outing’? Theory, of course, just means thinking about things, puzzling over what is going on, reflecting on the process of that puzzling and thinking. A reactive turn away from active engagement with theoretical inquiries in the arts and humanities is increasingly evident in our area of academe. It is, however, dangerous and misleading to talk of a post-theory moment, as if we can relax after so much intellectual gymnastics and once again become unthinking couch potatoes. The job of thinking critically is even more urgent as the issues we confront are so complex, and we now have extended means of analysis that make us appreciate even more the complexity of language, subjectivity, symbolic practices, affects and aesthetics. So how to continue the creative and critical enterprise fostered by the theoretical turn of the late twentieth century beyond the initial engagement determined by specific theoretical paradigms? How does it translate into a practice of analysis that can be constantly productive and critically self-reflexive? The New Encounters series argues that we can go forward, with and beyond, by transdisciplinary encounters with and through travelling concepts. The notion of ‘travelling concepts’ was proposed by Mieke Bal, the leading feminist narratologist and semiotician, who launched an inclusive, interdisciplinary project of cultural analysis in the 1990s with the books: The Point of Theory: Practices of Cultural Analysis (Amsterdam and New York: University of Amsterdam Press, 1994) and The Practice of Cultural Analysis: Exposing Interdisciplinary Interpretation (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999). In founding the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis (ASCA), Bal turned the focus from our accumulating theoretical resources to the work—the practice of interpretation—we do on cultural practices, informed not only by major bodies of theory (that we still need to study and extend) but also by the concepts generated within those theories that now travel across disciplines, creating an extended field of contemporary cultural thinking. Cultural analysis is theoretically informed, critically situated, ethically orientated to ‘cultural memory in the present’ (Bal 1999: 1). Cultural analysis thus works with ‘travelling concepts’ to produce new readings of images, texts, objects, buildings, practices, gestures and actions. In Travelling Concepts in the Humanities: A Rough Guide (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), Bal argues that concepts, formed within specific theoretical projects, move out of—travel from—their own originating site to become tools in the larger domain of cultural analysis. xvi

Series Preface

Their interplay produces a process that seeks to create a space of encounter between the many distinctive and even still disciplinary practices that constitute the arts and humanities: the fields of thought that puzzle over what we are and what it is that we do, think, feel, say, understand and live. In 2001, a Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory and History was founded at the University of Leeds, with initial funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, to undertake what we defined as a ‘transdisciplinary initiative’. We brought together, to advance research in and between, distinct but inter-relating areas of fine art, social, feminist, queer and postcolonial histories of art and critical cultural studies—three areas that seem close and yet can be divided from each other through their distinguishing commitments to practice, history and theory respectively. CentreCATH was founded when visual studies/visual culture were contesting art history and inventing a new field. It was a moment of intense questioning about what constitutes the historical analysis of art practices as the increasing interest in the contemporary moment seemed to eclipse historical consciousness. It was a moment of puzzling over the nature of research through art practice, and of reassessing the status of the now institutionalized Cultural Studies. CentreCATH responded to Mieke Bal’s ASCA, therefore, with its own exploration of the relations between history, practice and theory in art and visual culture through engagement with transdisciplinary cultural analysis. This concept took its inspiration from the renewed studies of the unfinished project of Kulturwissenschaft proposed by Jewish German art historian Aby Warburg at the beginning of the twentieth century. Identifying five urgent but expanding research strands that are, at the same time, concepts—a) social hospitality, class and alienation; b) musicality/aurality/textuality; c) architecture of philosophy/philosophy of architecture; d) indexicality and virtuality; and e) memory/amnesia/ history—CentreCATH initiated a series of encounters (salons, seminars, conferences, events) between artists, art historians, musicologists, musicians, architects, writers, performers, psychoanalysts, philosophers, sociologists and cultural theorists (see : especially Archive). Each encounter explores a range of differences: feminist, Jewish, postcolonial, ethnic, sexual, politico-geographical, historical. Each acknowledges different ways of thinking and knowing in creative practice and critical thought. Each book in this new series is the outcome of this transformative and transdisciplinary research laboratory. Transdisciplinary means that each author or artist enters the forum with and from their own specific sets of practices, resources and objectives whose own rigours provide the necessary basis for a specific practice of making or analysis. xvii

Series Preface

While each writer attends to a different archive—photography, literature, exhibitions, manuscripts, images, bodies, trauma, sound, space, and so forth—they share a set of concerns that defy disciplinary definition, concerns with the production of meaning, with the production of subjectivities in relation to meanings, narratives, situations, with the questions of power and resistance. The form of the books in this series is itself a demonstration of such a transdisciplinary intellectual community at work. The reader becomes the locus of the weaving of these linked but distinctive contributions to the analysis of culture(s). The form is also a response to teaching, taken up and processed by younger scholars, a teaching that itself is a creative translation and explication of a massive and challenging body of later twentieth-century thought, which, transformed by the encounter, enables new scholars to produce their own innovatory and powerfully engaged readings of contemporary and historical cultural practices and systems of meaning. The model offered here is a creative covenant that utterly rejects the typically Oedipal, destructive relation between old and young, old and new, while equally resisting academic adulation. An ethics of intellectual respect—Spivak’s critical intimacy is one of Bal’s useful concepts—is actively performed in engagement between generations of scholars, all concerned with the challenge of reading the complexities of culture. (See Gayatri Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999)). One of the five key research strands pursued within CentreCATH is Memory, History, Amnesia. The time-space forming the topic of this volume, Visioning Israel-Palestine: Encounters at the Cultural Boundaries of Conflict, edited by Gil Pasternak, certainly engages profoundly with all three terms and their agonized and powerful entanglement in lived experience, political struggle and imaginative reconfiguration of past, present and future. This volume brings together artists, writers, curators and scholars, working across film, image, text, performance art practice and cultural theory, all of whom have profound investments in the future of the hyphenated space implied by two historically and traumatically conjoined names that refer to place, nations, peoples and concepts. The proposition is that, faced with an entangled past and a tortured present, the cultural work of imagination between past and future, between memory and vision, is not a cultural luxury. It is vital. Cultural practices neither displace nor solve political issues. They bring to the fore the subjectivities, memories and affects that texture the lived experiences of those formed, defined, hurt, empowered, subjected and subjecting, who constitute the xviii

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complex, diverse communities that the political designations may obscure. Artistic and cultural practices produce, rework, recast, invent narratives and formulations, in image, word and gesture, through which to understand historical and changing subjectively lived realities. They also enact imaginatively the two terms—conflict and borders—that frame the political reality and the imaginative realm of Israel-Palestine. In his wideranging introduction, Gil Pasternak explains the already freighted significance of the ordering of the two terms, their hyphenation and the complexity that lies within the choice he made in discussion with the participating authors, to present this collection under this title. Visioning indicates an analysis of images, visual and textual, as representations, as projections, and above all, as works of transformative imagination. The core argument is that cultural practices of this doubling of image and imagination have a role to play, at once as another form of historical writing of the relations encoded in Israel-Palestine as a historical product and present enigma, and as a thought-provoking, emotion-changing contribution to shifting boundaries of conflict culturally. The writings are testament to a conviction, argued here in the reprinting of a major text by Edward Said, that cultural practices can not only be effective. They are, in fact, necessary components of both analysis and transformation. Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory and History University of Leeds 2020

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INTRODUCTION Encounters at the Cultural Boundaries of Conflict Gil Pasternak

The right of Israelis and Palestinians to a place and a space in IsraelPalestine, Edward Said reminds his readers in a text he published in 2000, has been primarily fought over through cultural production.1 Considering fiction, photography books, poetry and scholarly publications as examples, Said explains that, at least since the 1970s, Israelis and Palestinians (as well as other Jews and Arabs) have turned to cultural production to promote understandings of the Israeli-Palestinian land as the exclusive historical home of one of these peoples and not the other. Whether supporting the Israeli or the Palestinian national cause, these understandings are the results of various interplays between canonical historical narratives, their imagined or assumed relation to a specific geography and innocent or more conscious inventions of traditions that help bridge and merge accepted histories and speculative perceptions. As Said makes clear, however, through this process, Israeli and Palestinian nationalists, their supporters, as well as many of their opponents, have utilized various cultural media to conjure up both Israeli and Palestinian collective memories of separation. According to Said, these collective memories reject or repress numerous sources that demonstrate that ‘[e]verywhere one looks in the territory of historical Palestine, Jews and Palestinians live together’.2 Bearing in mind the tenacious reality the two peoples have experienced in Israel-Palestine, at least since 1948, he understands their wish to be seen in separation from one another as well as their refusal to acknowledge each other’s long-lasting relation to the land. Equally, however, he thinks that ‘Israelis and Palestinians are now so intertwined through history, geography, and political actuality that it seems to me absolute folly to try and plan the future of one without that of the other’.3 The ground truth, in other words, is that neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians can imagine any other place in the world as a home, and their collective identities and aspirations are, in fact, conditioned by each other’s. In Said’s view, they must for this reason learn to acknowledge and open up to each other’s subjective memories and narrations of the historical past. Only by doing so will they potentially be prepared to accept each other’s presence in the same piece of land and find a way to share it without feeling threatened or intimidated by the other. Said observes, 1

Visioning Israel-Palestine

however, that the attitude Israelis and Palestinians developed towards one another, under the influence of their exclusive national narratives, has ‘closed these two unequal communities of suffering to each other’.4 In this situation, he believes, there is little hope for reconciliation and coexistence, solution and peace. Taking Said’s words seriously means that anyone creating cultural products about the past and present conditions of life in Israel-Palestine must assume some responsibility for the lives that both Israelis and Palestinians will be able to live in the future. It also means that only the making of cultural products aimed at opening the Israeli and Palestinian communities to one another may lead them to acknowledge the difficult experiences that underpin the collective memories of each other, and find ways to bridge the emotional abyss that currently still separates them as nations. As Said suggests, if it is indeed the case that the cultural products that Israelis and Palestinians have created and employed as a means to fight off each other’s claim to Israel-Palestine have conditioned the ways in which each side and its supporters understands the other, anyone interested in seeing a peaceful end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must promote the dissemination of cultural products capable of enabling Israelis and Palestinians (as well as their associated communities in the diaspora) to encounter each other, away from the theatre of national politics. There, where the established, mainstream national cultures of their peoples are at least momentarily suspended, Israelis and Palestinians could exert influence on memory, place, and invention, not for the purpose of exclusion but rather ‘for liberation and coexistence between societies whose adjacency requires a tolerable form of sustained reconciliation’.5 Visioning Israel-Palestine opens up one such nonconformist space with the intention of forming a common alternative position to the culture of exclusion that has dominated Israeli and Palestinian national and social politics. To this end it focuses on intersections of cultural production and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, paying specific attention to cultural products that reframe violence, destruction and the controlled separation of Israelis and Palestinians as significant, but also as significantly limited manifestations of the realities the conflict has triggered. Understanding the conflict through encounters with explicit or implicit Israeli and Palestinian atrocities can no doubt assist in increasing familiarity with the extreme living conditions that often underpin the experience of the two peoples. Visioning Israel-Palestine recognizes their common wish to embed their pain and suffering in cultural products as a way to commemorate loss, resist power politics and cultivate community and public support. At the same time, craving to guard against the slippage of such cultural works into banal objects of curiosity and ahistorical registers of violence, 2

Encounters at the Cultural Boundaries of Conflict

Visioning Israel-Palestine turns to questions about cultural products and productions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order to bring into view the conflict’s dynamic and evolving reality that political discussions and public debates tend to suspend for rhetorical impact. In attending to cultural products that exist alongside and beyond the conflict’s mechanisms of violence and separation rather than to those that take them for granted, Visioning Israel-Palestine introduces a variety of insights into the ways Israelis, Palestinians and their related communities in the Jewish and Palestinian diasporas experience, understand and respond to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As neither Israelis nor Palestinians adhere to one coherent and unifying set of social and political principles, however, and because a relatively large portion of the Israeli population comprises individuals of Palestinian descent who accepted Israeli citizenship after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, Visioning Israel-Palestine also demonstrates the intrinsic ambiguities and unclear definitions of ‘Israeli’ and ‘Palestinian’ identities. It subsequently expands the visibility of the experiences that the conflict has affected and of the environments that it penetrated. At the same time, turning to ethnography, oral history and research methods from academic disciplines and scholarly fields such as art history, literary studies, visual culture, cultural studies, photographic history and museum studies, the various chapters in Visioning Israel-Palestine foreground opportunities for Israelis and Palestinians to encounter each other’s diverse identities beyond national confines, at the cultural boundaries of the conflict. Cultural encounters

Paralleling the often inexplicit characteristics of the physical boundaries that separate Israel from Palestine and Palestinians from Israelis, the cultural boundaries of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict materialize in tangible sites and ephemera through which the supposed members of one of the peoples acknowledge the perceived presence of members of the other, thereby giving them a distinctive yet contingent form of expression. Owing to their embedded capacity to establish connections as well as divisions between one perceived people and the other, no matter how superficial, Visioning Israel-Palestine considers these sites and ephemera as cultural products. Coupled with the realities they help shape, these are products that the authors in the volume analyse. To appreciate the significance of cultural production to the realities and enactment of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we first need to consider where and how we encounter the conflict in our own everyday life. I want 3

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to start thinking through this question with reference to the production of this volume in order to draw attention to the ambiguous definitions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to the lack of consensus about the specific sides it involves. Through this discussion I also wish to clarify the intended meaning of the title of this volume, and explain why each of the following chapters may occasionally employ a different set of terms to discuss what may otherwise appear to be the very same condition of conflict between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. As the various contributing authors began sending their texts for this publication, it became clear that each of them associates the terminology of conflict with a significantly different set of variables, including, for example, the prevalence of unbalanced power relations between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, the integrity of their historical national identities and collective traumas, the Zionist colonization of historical Palestine, Israeli state practices and practices of Palestinian resistance and the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank (the Occupied Territories). As I explain below, such concerns do not always complement each other. Not only that, any solution proposed to the worries raised by one is unlikely to resolve another. Looking at the conflict as a condition determined by the Israeli and Palestinian struggle over power may betray Israeli-Palestinians who enjoy more social and political rights than Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, while still not quite the same quality of rights as JewishIsraelis.6 Engaging with the conflict through analysis of the strains and circumstances that affected its emergence—such as the Zionist project, the British Mandate, the Holocaust, the Nakba or the June 1967 war— may enrich one’s knowledge of the historical background of the conflict, but it can also detract from the present living conditions of those who never had the option to avoid becoming absorbed into its reality.7 Treating the conflict as the result of a battle between perpetrators (Israelis or Palestinians) and their victims (Israelis or Palestinians again) can demonstrate the moral and human price that it compels Israelis and Palestinians to pay, at the same time as it can trigger calls to fight violence and oppression through the employment of additional violent strategies and more forceful forms of oppression.8 Lastly, considering the conflict to be about the Occupied Territories—namely, about the Palestinian right to national self-determination within the boundaries of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip—suggests that the Palestinian people have otherwise no legitimate right to historical Palestine, more broadly.9 All these examples make it clear that Israelis and Palestinians have certainly lived through significantly difficult times with each other, to say the least. More to the point, however, each constitutes an intervention in 4

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the circle of forces that give national, social, political or historical meaning to the relational link between Israelis and Palestinians. Put differently, they demonstrate the susceptibility of the terminology of conflict to cultural production, subsequently evidencing the influence of cultural products on enactments of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Not only does the diverse terminology used to refer to the conflict frame its realities around different, frequently conflicting sets of concerns and considerations, it often also finds symbolic expression in the way scholars, the media and activists signify the conflict—sometimes consciously, in others by habit. Although initially it did not cross my mind to dedicate a section of this introduction to the structures and perceived meanings of the forms of reference used to denote the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, the insistence of contributors to the volume to point to the conflict by using different linguistic formulations convinced me otherwise. And even though, admittedly, no such taxonomy could necessarily be exhaustive, those used regularly are easy to identify. Some participants in the debate about the question of Israel, Palestine, Israelis and Palestinians prefer to speak of the ‘Israel/Palestine conflict’. The stroke separating the words ‘Israel’ and ‘Palestine’ can mean a split between two geographically specific political systems or visions that compete with one another.10 Equally, it is often used as an indication of the attempt to maintain balance between Israeli and Palestinian accounts concerning the accusations and blame that Israelis and Palestinians throw at one another as nations.11 If the meaning of this form of reference is not already ambiguous enough, authors and commentators also tend to use the stroke separating ‘Israel’ from ‘Palestine’ to signify their desire to shift attention from the narratives constructed by the relatively secured national entity of Israel towards the experiences felt or voiced by the people of the less protected Palestine nation.12 The order in which the words ‘Israel’ and ‘Palestine’ or ‘Palestine’ and ‘Israel’ appear can also matter. Some participants in the debate place ‘Palestine’ first and ‘Israel’ second, to increase the representational visibility of Palestine as a means to render the challenges facing the Palestinian people more noticeable.13 By employing this form of reference, they also commonly wish to remind us that Palestine existed before the State of Israel. Placing ‘Israel’ before ‘Palestine’ would therefore seem like an attempt to distort history and facilitate the Israeli state’s symbolic and physical suppression of Palestine. Indeed, situating ‘Palestine’ first is a politically loaded strategy, partly geared towards conventionalizing counteractive grammar. As such, it is intended to compel us to call into question more established, conservative terminology, and become cognizant of its ideological complexities. 5

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Albeit with numerous exceptions, literature on the conflict more commonly tends to arrange ‘Israel’ and ‘Palestine’ in an ascending alphabetical order and authors deploy a hyphen between the names of the two conflicting entities. In these instances, the term ‘Israel-Palestine conflict’ usually signifies a reciprocal relationship between Israel and Palestine. The hyphen asserts that the existence of one is concurrently haunted and conditioned by the histories and realities created by the other.14 It also unites Israel and Palestine, not to dismiss their struggle with one another but as a means to clarify that, presently, the two names may in fact refer to the same space, or at least to two virtually overlapping and inseparable places. Most commonly therefore, popular and scholarly literature on the conflict speaks of ‘Israel-Palestine’ as the locus of the conflict as well as a means to refer to the sides it involves. The title of this very volume is derived from the same prevalent practice, as Visioning Israel-Palestine takes issue with the cultural forms commonly used to package the conflict for public consumption. For a similar reason, this introduction and various chapters in the volume refer to ‘the IsraeliPalestinian conflict’ as an interrelated term that circulates regularly in debates about the relation of Israel and Palestine, the relationship between the Israeli and the Palestinian peoples, and also regarding historical and perceived Israeli and Palestinian identities. It must be noted at this point that many of the conceptual issues I have raised so far are replicated in debates and scholarship about other conflict zones. While the current volume pays specific attention to the case of Israel-Palestine, the fact that similar types of challenges and problems recur in the context of the cultures and cultural politics of other conflicts suggests that its approach to cultural products may be employed to study other cultures of conflict, and the studies it features can be used for comparative scholarship. It must also be noted, however, that explicitly or more implicitly, numerous scholars, publicists and activists prioritize the use of other terms than ‘conflict’ in the context of the struggle between Israel and Palestine. Specifically wishing to emphasize the oppression of the Palestinian residents of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, they tend to employ terms such as ‘the Palestinian Occupied Territories’ and ‘the Israeli occupation’.15 This terminology aptly describes the current state of affairs in these parts of the country, although the prolonged stay of the occupying Israeli military forces has meanwhile resulted in the creation of Jewish-Israeli settlements and new homes; namely, in a condition more akin to colonization than occupation per se.16 Still, the terminology of occupation raises a set of additional challenges, as it is limited in its ability to account for the history of IsraeliPalestinian relations prior to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, in which Israel 6

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captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Gaza Strip from Egypt. Omar Jabary Salamanca, Mezna Qato, Kareem Rabie and Sobhi Samour explain in a special issue of the journal Settler Colonial Studies that: . . . the trend towards studying the occupation often internalises it as an ontological category distinct from the larger structures of Israeli settler colonialism. The occupation imposes boundaries on space and time; and categories, discourses, and materialities that are embedded in colonial power relations are operationalised in this literature. The Green Line, the border between Israel and the Palestinian reserves, is one example of this phenomenon: it has become a powerful symbolic and material signifier that enforces, and takes for granted, the fragmentation of the Palestinian polity. With few exceptions, it is a line that is rarely crossed in scholarly accounts of Palestine—in either direction. Different Palestinian populations have come to be represented as isolated, analytically separate, pieces of an impossible puzzle. In addition, the focus on the second stage of colonisation, the 1967 occupation, emphasises settlement by Israelis in the West Bank and absolves previous generations of Zionists and Israel itself of settler colonialism.17 The terminology of occupation, in other words, implies Israeli and Palestinian acceptance of a two-state solution as the most desirable resolution to the conflict, at the same time as it conceals numerous challenges that underpin the reality and experience of the conflict on the ground. Let me unpack this idea by explaining that the division of the land and the allocation of a designated territory for both of the two nations may alleviate the living conditions of Palestinians and Jewish-Israelis living in the Occupied Territories, as the establishment of a Palestine State within these territories would mean an end to their military occupation and possibly also an agreeable split of the land between its Jewish-Israeli and Palestinian residents. However, the two-state solution—a political solution mostly limited to the post-1967 borders—is unlikely to improve life for Israelis or Palestinians elsewhere. It may, for example, worsen the social status of Israeli-Palestinians. Already, at the time of writing, some Jewish-Israelis claim that Arab countries should absorb the Palestinians as citizens. It is not so hard to imagine how much louder these voices might become once a Palestine State is established away from where IsraeliPalestinians live today. Not altogether unrelatedly, it has been noted that 7

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a two-state solution is likely to lead to the dismissal of the question of the rights of diaspora Palestinians (those who lost their homes in Palestine during the Nakba), not least the question of their right to return to live in what is today the State of Israel.18 Jewish-Israelis living within the 1967 borders are also not protected by the two-state solution. It is easy to picture the Israeli social sphere turning into the locus of an open ethnic struggle if, after the establishment of a Palestine State, Jewish-Israelis refuse to accept Palestinian-Israelis as equals amongst equals. Visioning Israel-Palestine brings together scholars who engage with cultural products related to Israeli-Palestinian relations before, during and after 1967. For this reason, the volume’s subtitle and the majority of the chapters still adhere to the terminology of ‘conflict’, intending to allude to the broadly perceived state of colonization, resistance and disagreement that has arguably conditioned the lives of Israelis and Palestinians in Israel-Palestine at least since 1948. In studying cultural products that encapsulate private and social renditions of the various historical stages of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Visioning Israel-Palestine is able to trigger encounters with experiences of the conflict that transpired in IsraelPalestine and in the Jewish and Palestinian diasporas virtually throughout its almost century long history. The volume as a whole also alludes subsequently to some of the challenges raised by any discussion equating Palestine with the Palestinian Occupied Territories and by any debate perceiving a two-state solution (geographical partition and ethnic separation) as the ideal conflict resolution for which Israelis and Palestinians allegedly long. Conflicting boundaries

Inasmuch as the various forms of reference used to describe the IsraeliPalestinian conflict have regulated a significantly different set of ideas about the realities, experiences and imaginations that the conflict entails, tangible and intangible cultural products made by Israelis, Palestinians and others have determined what aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have become visible and known, where, how and also to whom.19 Exhibitions and public displays, films and videos, photographs, archives, cartoons and literature have been used to communicate, interpret, analyse and also fuel the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since its very beginning.20 It is through the realities they shaped that the conflict has been made manifest for those who live in and away from Israel-Palestine alike. Especially owing to the emergence of new technologies and the proliferation of the media they have given birth to since the late twentieth century, the 8

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visibility of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has increased virtually worldwide, and the boundaries between its national, political, humanitarian and social imaginaries have become blurred.21 Coupled with the increased mobility of people and cultural products across international landscapes around the globe, in the early twenty-first century the conflict’s perceived realities have become ever more diverse, in the region and beyond. Whereas similar to any other perceptible occurrence, cultural products maintain a complex relationship with reality and the notion of Realism, they still perform a significant role in the manufacture of values, worldviews and forms of ethical consciousness. The endeavours of states, political institutions and NGOs to manage the cultural sphere and its visible spectrum through the persistent establishment of physical and virtual exhibition spaces constitute clear demonstrations of the prominence that cultural products enjoy in the national, political and social environment.22 Whether they claim to represent national beliefs or to be records of daily actualities, their contribution to the development of attitudes towards Israelis, Palestinians and the conflict more broadly must therefore not be underestimated. As the following chapters demonstrate, the cultural products made by Israelis, Palestinians and others most often exist within and alongside diverse assemblages of discursive commodities that enable them to supplement, challenge and construct understandings of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—and shape its experience at the very same time. Explicitly used to influence policies or presented as mere reflections of lifeworlds, these cultural products do not exist outside the conflict, as if they were its mere witnesses, but they emerge, operate and reside within its frontiers. In understanding cultural products as dynamic and influential actants that concurrently expose, extend and blur the boundaries of cultural environments, Visioning Israel-Palestine distances itself from conceptualizations of ‘culture’ as an unvaryingly distributed and timeless set of standardized and regimenting traditions, behaviours, customs and practices. Instead, it adopts the view that: culture is a fuzzy set of basic assumptions and values, orientations to life, beliefs, policies, procedures and behavioural conventions that are shared by a group of people, and that influence (but do not determine) each member’s behaviour and his/her interpretations of the ‘meaning’ of other people’s behaviour.23 Interlinking the experience of culture with individual experience, according to this position cultures can be learnt but also created, passed 9

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on from ancestors as well as from contemporaries. For this reason, cultures emerge and exist not only within ancestral, ethnic or national groups, but they can also, as anthropologist and sociologist Kevin Avruch explains, ‘derive from profession, occupation, class, religion, or region’.24 Following this logic, any individual inevitably personifies, reworks and perpetuates not one but a range of cultures. As a number of the chapters in this volume demonstrate, thinking of culture and perceived cultural environments this way can prove particularly rewarding in the context of the IsraeliPalestinian conflict as it can illuminate variables in Israeli and Palestinian approaches towards the conflict, which national and politically privileged Israeli and Palestinian cultures tend to mask. To further the illumination of such variables and facilitate encounters of Israelis and Palestinians at the cultural boundaries of the conflict, the studies presented in Visioning Israel-Palestine largely embrace the gradually emerging refusal to perceive the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a coherent reality conditioned exclusively by Israeli and Palestinian attitudes to national sentiments and formal politics of power. Scholarly literature on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict traditionally revolves around the so-called national and Marxist historiographical paradigms, studying (contested) national histories and endeavours, on the one hand, and critically analysing issues concerning social, economic and political sovereignty, on the other.25 As such, these historiographical paradigms tend to evade issues relevant to individual, social and political diversity to clear the way for the study of the macro realities affected by formal national and state politics. Dina Matar and Zahera Harb, for instance, explain that, precisely for this reason, the national and Marxist historiographical paradigms ‘tend to underplay the complex multi-vocalities and the diverse experiences and memories that reside within each individual and within the collective, and which have shaped and continue to shape contemporary and lived experiences of state and nationhood’.26 In their view, neither of the two paradigms can provide satisfying analytical descriptions of the complexities usually underpinning conflicts. This is because conflicts rarely develop under one unchanging set of circumstances and numerous other factors and subjectivities may also play fundamental roles in their evolution. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one such example in their view. Engaging with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while suspending the national and Marxist historiographical paradigms offers the possibility of bringing to light the other circumstances, factors and subjectivities that condition its many realities, whatever they may be. Looking at a wider range of the everyday realities of the conflict alongside the ways in which ordinary individuals experience and transmute them also opens up the opportunity of studying less traditional cultural practices and 10

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environments through which the conflict is visualized, told, fought against and negotiated. It must be remembered in this context that, despite their physical separation in some parts of Israel-Palestine, Palestinians and Israelis are, in fact, already living together, in relation to one another and even amongst each other, in Israel-Palestine and in other parts of the world. Based on personal feelings and emotions, thoughts, activities, desires and anxieties, the many ties they have cultivated over the years exceed traditional forms of identification pertaining to national and ethnic background, class and religious beliefs. The suspension of the national and Marxist paradigms in considerations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can therefore make more room for reflection on the people who have lived through the ongoing struggle, whether in Israel-Palestine or in the Jewish and Palestinian diasporas. For the very same reason, authors in the volume tend to suspend critical evaluations of Israeli and Palestinian political leaders, national policies and politically motivated violent behaviours. While critical cultural production around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict generated a body of knowledge and opinions about its perpetrators and communities of suffering, it has done little to nurture informed understandings of the conflict’s complex day-to-day realities away from the centre of oppression and violence. Recognizing, analysing and criticizing the forms of oppression, intimidation and aggression that to a great extent dictate the nature of life in Israel-Palestine is no doubt a necessary step that must be taken to influence change in the relationship between the Israeli and Palestinian nations. As Raymond Geuss observes, however, in his study of the concept and history of criticism, criticism ‘is a luxury good that has showed itself to be in practice almost completely ineffective’.27 Even if one chooses to disagree with Geuss, it would still seem necessary to acknowledge that the continuous manufacture of cultural products dedicated to criticism runs some significant risks when considered in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In supporting one side and abandoning the other, for instance, this approach runs the risk of mirroring the rhetoric of formal political debates. As persuasion largely depends on the communication of simplified poignant messages, formal political debates about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must take issue with conspicuously precarious realities—violence and suffering are often the most obvious themes. Formal political debates about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict consequently neglect the human diversities, historical densities and emotional complexities involved in the realities it plays out. The criticism they most often avow to voice in the name of justice subsequently fuels the continuation of the very hostilities they claim to confront head-on. 11

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Another risk facing cultural products dedicated to criticism of Israelis and Palestinians is that the more conventional they are, the less critical and stirring the message they carry becomes. Once institutionalized, they no longer depart from common views and values.28 The continual delivery of critical messages may therefore amplify expressions of disapproval, conventionalize them and increase exposure to the values and realities they claim to represent. At the same time, this practice also normalizes mere condemnation as the ultimate means to confront these realities, thus detracting from the need to attend to the actual difficulties, challenges, fears and anxieties that incite maltreatment and violence in IsraelPalestine. The many condemnations that state leaders, political movements and international committees have issued in light of some of the intolerable, damaging actions that Israelis and Palestinians have carried out against one another can be considered as telling examples in this context. Inasmuch as one may indeed identify with the principles they articulate, and even feel passionate about them, in reality they have made little if any practical difference at all to the living conditions of the people at the heart of the conflict—Palestinians or Israelis. Take, for example, resolution 2334, which the United Nations Security Council adopted on 23 December 2016 while I was still jotting down some thoughts for this introduction.29 In essence, it criticizes the ongoing establishment of Israeli settlements within the West Bank and East Jerusalem, at least partly with a view to preventing the further colonization of the occupied land so that a two-state solution remains an option. Admittedly there are legal ramifications to the Security Council’s approval of the resolution. Three years later, however, when these lines were revised, resolution 2334 made no practical difference to the reality in Israel-Palestine and still entailed neither sanctions nor coercive measures to compel Israel to cease the establishment of settlements beyond the Green Line (the 1967 border). Furthermore, as I explained earlier, a two-state solution may not necessarily be the desirable conflict resolution for Palestinians nor for Israelis. Resolution 2334 and similar ones, therefore, stress the urgent necessity to take into consideration not only the aspirations of Israeli and Palestinian diplomats but also the practical and emotional needs of those whom they claim to represent. Keeping Edward Said’s insights in mind, if one is interested in transcending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one must replace mere criticism of one side or the other with in-depth scrutiny of cultural products that play a role in its multi-layered realities.30 Although in light of the acts carried out by the perceived members of one people or the other the study of cultural products may seem less of a priority, the acts that some Israelis and Palestinians carry out against each other may seem 12

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indistinct and their value inarticulate, unless considered through some reference to the cultural products that preoccupy these people’s thoughts, feelings, emotions and behaviours. Analysing the perceived meanings of the conflict’s cultural products, coupled with the social and political work that they do, can clarify how Israelis, Palestinians and their related dispersed communities—as peoples, but mostly as individual subjects—see one another, feel about each other and comprehend the aims and objectives of the other. In engaging with this and related issues, the studies in this volume demonstrate that, becoming familiar with this array of lifeworlds can anchor the signifier ‘Israeli-Palestinian conflict’ to the lives and realities experienced by those whom it affects daily. Producing knowledge and understanding of their wishes, needs, dreams, concerns and aspirations, Visioning Israel-Palestine expands the limited range of the realities of the conflict that commonly dominate polemic debates on life in Israel-Palestine in order to cultivate a vision for Israeli-Palestinian coexistence. Cultural boundaries as diplomacy cultures

Suspending criticism alongside the national and Marxist historiographical paradigms that have largely dominated the study of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict throughout its evolution is liberating. But it also raises some methodological challenges. Once we cease understanding the conflict as a battle exclusively underpinned by differing national values, sociopolitical interests or competing moral principles, the conflict’s cultural products gain a level of autonomy. They become less susceptible to nationally and politically monolithic interpretations, losing their otherwise perceivably obvious meaning as symbolic ammunition against the Israeli or the Palestinian side. While this condition defuses the indoctrinating potential of the conflict’s cultural products, it equally leaves them unable to independently betray the nature of their relationship to the realities experienced in Israel-Palestine, neither by Israelis nor by Palestinians. If the suspension of criticism and the national and Marxist historical paradigms cannot by itself offer any alternative systematic way to understand the role that cultural products may be playing in the ongoing conflict, scholars looking beyond these methodologies must answer some questions if they still intend to turn their attention to the cultural products of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. How might we go about unpacking the cultural products of the conflict without assuming that each speaks for one nation or against another? Can we consider them as informative sources about the lived experience of Israelis and Palestinians or regarding 13

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Israeli-Palestinian relations at all? If so, what kinds of insights might they be able to present? By themselves, cultural products remain largely mute. If they carry any messages at all, they become clear and meaningful either through social and other discursive framings or when one such product becomes absorbed into relational exchanges, whether on its own or as part of a broader array of products. Studies of cultural products related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have so far been chiefly confined to academic disciplines and fields for which cultural products form the main set of research interests. Art history, communication studies, literature and cultural studies are but a few obvious examples. Here, the tendency has often been to use analysis of their representational content and material properties in evaluations of their social implications. Two common, usually overlapping sets of research trajectories have been employed to this end. One steers scholars to consider subjective encounters, namely the relationships that cultural products enter with their users and audiences in specific sociopolitical settings. Designed to assist them in unpacking cultures through concentrated attention on cultural products that seem to construct, structure and legitimate the predominant values of the cultures that made them, it considers cultures as relatively stable, portraying them as unifying media. This research direction, therefore, offers some insights into the narratives, situations, power structures and milieus in which cultures form and transform, while being equally limited in its ability to enable broader engagements with questions concerning the role that cultural products play in affecting long-lasting adjustment, change, even transformation within the cultural environments that enclose them. Another and even more common research effort guides scholars to unpack the meaning of cultural products, primarily by bringing them into dialogue with other social and cultural phenomena that unfold around them. This trajectory often necessitates consideration of particular regional, social and political dominant specificities, but it might subsequently lose direct connection with the thoughts, feelings and experiences of the diverse individuals and communities who have shared time and space with these products. Any analysis must be limited by temporality and any meaning-making activity must draw on some generalized and thus also generalizing theoretical axioms. Yet, as these research trajectories tend to avoid explicit discussion of the reciprocity of culture and actual tangible or intangible realities, they rarely help unpack the broader ecosystems affected by the presence and circulation of the products they analyse. It should therefore not be surprising that some scholars in disciplines such as history and 14

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political science may reiterate the question of the efficacy of cultural products as informative sources. Indeed, scholars in historical and political science have traditionally refrained from taking cultural products into serious consideration.31 Although, since the late 1970s, especially cultural historians have gradually challenged this habit regularly, dominant research conventions in these disciplines have largely tended to disqualify the integrity of cultural products as research sources, most often owing to their questionable origin, inconspicuous sociopolitical significance, and also for their evasive meanings, ambiguous values and debatable implications. This has been even more obvious with regard to non-textual and non-verbal cultural products and others that emerge and operate outside the regimenting spaces dominated by formal social institutions, such as state and national archives. As a consequence, with only some inconsequential exceptions, historical and political scientists have usually adhered to the study of the written word, from formal letters and diaries to official documents and historical publications. The turn of the twenty-first century, however, saw historians and political scientists developing more and more interest in making a leap to embrace cultural products as sources capable of positioning us closer to the visual and material realities of those who have made and encountered them. This approach has opened up various innovative exploratory spaces in which otherwise less obvious experiences and forms of knowledge of past and present cultures can become more accessible. Explaining how, in his view, the study of cultural products such as artworks, television programmes, photographs, film and visual digital media may enrich the study of world politics, for instance, international relations scholar Roland Bleiker writes: Aesthetic sources can offer us alternative insights into international relations; a type of reflective understanding that emerges not from systematically applying the technical skills of analysis which prevail in the social sciences, but from cultivating a more open-ended level of sensibility about the political. We might then be able to appreciate what we otherwise cannot even see: perspectives and people excluded from prevailing purviews, for instance, or the emotional nature and consequences of political events.32 The growing recognition of cultural products and modes of cultural production as rich informative research sources has not yet resulted in their full, confident absorption into the various research fields in historical and political sciences. Instead, it led to the formation of the academic 15

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subdisciplines of visual history and visual politics, which tend to consider the visual world not necessarily as the main object of their study but rather as the most immediate manifestation of the material world and the spaces that it forms for mediated international, intercultural and interpersonal interaction. Subsequently more and more historians and political scientists pay due attention to intersections of cultural products with historical narratives, social environments, emotional experience and political processes. Presently, however, historians and political scientists focusing on the study of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through explorations of its related cultural products are still difficult to find. Visioning Israel-Palestine is partly an attempt to change this reality without giving up on the methods that scholars have used to study cultural products and modes of cultural production since the so-called theoretical turn that swept Western academia in the late twentieth century. In placing rigorously analytical studies of multiple cultural products and productions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict together, the volume constructs a mosaic of conflict-related thoughts, feelings, emotions, impressions and memories that a range of ‘Israeli’ and ‘Palestinian’ subjects locked into the spaces in which the conflict is enacted and made manifest. The mixture and complexity of the insights encapsulated in this mosaic undermine the common appreciation of the conflict’s cultural products as mere ahistorical national statements or expressions of political power, reframing them as interconnected, active individual portals into diverse lifeworlds that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has affected in concrete social environments and at different moments. In this way, Visioning Israel-Palestine situates the conflict’s cultural products within the micro-, historically and politically specific ground realities of their emergence, circulation, interpretation and multiple de/activations. It makes evident their qualities as effective historical and sociological sources for theoretical and empirical studies alike, at the same time as it facilitates exchange of knowledge and ideas about the range of realities dominating the lives of Israelis and Palestinians, in Israel-Palestine and in the Jewish and Palestinian diasporas. Entitled ‘Products of Conflict’, the volume’s first part is dedicated to discussions of distinctive cultural products that emerged from within the everyday experiences of the conflict itself, most often as direct responses to personal and collective memories, specific historical events or the imposition of new political realities. The chapters endeavour to provide historically and politically informed analysis of cultural products ranging from films, videos and installations to sculptures, paintings and text, exposing the cultural tendencies and experiences that triggered their making along with the renditions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that they entail. Through such discussions, contributions to this part of the 16

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volume exhibit the dynamic cultural history of the conflict. In so doing, they demonstrate its implications for the ways one might understand how Israeli and Palestinian identities transform over time and what living within the cultural boundaries of the conflict might mean more broadly. Abdul-Rahim Al-Shaikh discusses the implications of the gap that prevails between the political and cultural maps of Palestine by examining the work of Palestinian artist Sobhi al-Zobaidi, who spent most of his life in a refugee camp by Ramallah. In his artistic practice, al-Zobaidi extensively draws on his biography as a means of exploring Palestinian identity, history and collective sense of trauma. Focusing specifically on Part-ition, an installation piece that al-Zobaidi completed in 2008, Al-Shaikh relates his analysis to the consequences of the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995. At the time, world leaders praised the courage of Israeli and Palestinian officials for negotiating with each other despite years of struggle. The agreements they reached were seen by the international community as fair foundations for true peace. However, the very same agreements in fact shattered the dream of many Palestinians to return to the borders of ‘historic Palestine’, or at least to be able to live once again within the landscapes of its memory beyond the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Tracing the transformations of the political and cultural map of Palestine, Al-Shaikh demonstrates how, especially since Oslo, they have informed the interests and aesthetic strategies of Palestinian artists. Chrisoula Lionis discusses the growing use of humour in Palestinian art. She shows that, especially since the failure of the Oslo peace process in the second half of the 1990s, leading Palestinian artists have turned to laughter to communicate the circumstances of the Palestinian people. Analysing artworks by Taysir Batniji, Khaled Hourani, Emily Jacir, Larissa Sansour and Amer Shomali, she argues that the laughter embedded in their pieces is an indicator of decline in nationalist hope inasmuch as it facilitates non-didactic narrations of Palestinian history and the cultivation of empathy towards the Palestinian national cause. Lionis also argues that funny Palestinian artwork strengthens identification amongst Palestinians of all walks of life and their bond with anyone believing in the right of Palestinians to a place in Israel-Palestine. It could therefore be said that she recognises the infectious laughter often triggered by funny Palestinian artwork as a relatively new cultural manifestation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Anna Ball considers the Wall that the State of Israel constructed along much of its eastern border as a potent visual signifier of the divisive, 17

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restrictive and intrusive ways in which the occupation of the West Bank touches the everyday lives of Palestinians. Explaining that Arab visual culture has taken issue with the practical and representational meaning of the Wall virtually since its building began, Ball explores the complex politics of encounter and representation that circulate around this border in Mona Hatoum’s sculpture Grater Divide (2002) and in Simone Bitton’s film Wall (2004). Through her discussion, Ball provides us with many insights into the way in which the West Bank Wall has restructured social and interpersonal relationships amongst the Palestinian residents of the West Bank. At the same time, her analysis of Hatoum’s and Bitton’s artworks demonstrates how discursive and cultural boundaries might be negotiated and crossed—in Israel-Palestine and beyond. Griselda Pollock closely analyses Yael Bartana’s 2007–11 film trilogy . . . And Europe will be Stunned. The trilogy narrates the establishment and early life of the Jewish-Polish Renaissance Movement that Yael Bartana founded, in collaboration with Polish political intellectual Sławomir Sierakowski, to call upon the ‘historical other’ to return and thus mitigate the risks of ethnic exclusivity. Pollock argues that the three films position their viewers between past and present, Europe and the Middle East, Israel and Palestine. They employ the heritage of totalitarian cinematic tropes and genres to unsettle the dangerous ideologies of nationalism and enact new forms of transnational, inter-generational and radical solidarity, cooperation and transformation. Through her analysis, Pollock demonstrates how Yael Bartana refashions the ways in which Jewish/ European and Israeli/Middle Eastern imaginaries might be understood, from the burden of the past to the possibilities and necessities of new futures in Israel-Palestine. Directly expanding the scope of the investigations from the first part of the volume, its second part revolves more specifically around the power of cultural products to affect the nature of tangible social, political and cultural manifestations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Entitled ‘Products in Conflict’, it largely considers instances in which some of the conflict’s cultural products have become absorbed into distinct dynamic processes concerning memories, representation and experiences of everyday life, politics and national space in Israel-Palestine. The contributors trace the active participation of exhibitions, public displays, paintings, photographs and oral histories in the duplication and perpetuation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, analysing the work that some of the conflict’s cultural products have done in a variety of historical moments and across time. In doing so, they demonstrate how the conflict 18

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has become manifest in spaces such as museums, city centres, newspapers and the privacy of ‘Israeli’ and ‘Palestinian’ households, both within the geographical boundaries of Israel-Palestine and in the Jewish and Palestinian diaspora. Sander L. Gilman and Rhoda Rosen focus on the 2008 exhibition Imaginary Coordinates, mounted at the Spertus Museum—a self-labelled ‘Jewish space’ in Chicago. Imaginary Coordinates displayed antique maps of the Holy Land that came from ‘Christian’, ‘Jewish’, and ‘Muslim’ sources, alongside contemporary artworks made by ‘Israeli’ and ‘Palestinian’ women artists, mapping the conceptual ground of the Middle East. The maps and artworks all undermined the received categories of religious, national and cultural difference. A scandal resulted over the appropriateness of such a presentation in a Jewish museum. This, the authors argue, highlighted how much the identity politics of an imagined Middle East was reflected in its various diaspora settings and forced a public rethinking of what ‘Jewish’ in a Jewish museum should look like in the twenty-first century. This chapter thus elicits the question of what Middle Eastern identities mean in a diaspora setting permeated by images from present-day Israel-Palestine. Huw Wahl’s contribution considers the Israeli, Palestinian and international making of photographic images that tend to dominate popular imaginations and imaginaries of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Indeed, unlike the limited access and preconceived impact of museum displays, photography is perhaps the most versatile and pervasive medium used to document as well as visualize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its effects. Looking specifically into the representational practices employed by photojournalists and political activists, Wahl presents a photographic essay that he composed in 2012, when he shadowed some of them on both sides of the Green Line. He juxtaposes 12 photographs of the practitioners at work alongside verbal reflections on the various roles photography plays in mediating and structuring Israeli-Palestinian relations. Wahl shows that the realities depicted in photographs pertaining to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are themselves very often responses to the presence of photographers and cameras. While this does not make them less genuine in any way, Wahl wants us to enter into a more complex layer of engagement with the knowledge and understanding of the conflict through consideration of whatever else is happening around camera operators at the same time as they are striving to produce iconic images of military oppression, civilian rebellion and human suffering. The result highlights the many professional conventions and subjective national and 19

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political considerations that inform the work ethics of camera operators in the region. Simon Faulkner’s chapter zooms in on the photographic work of the Israel-Palestine-based photographic collective Activestills, exploring a selection of its street exhibitions on display between 2006 and 2014. Presented on walls and other urban surfaces primarily in the city of Tel Aviv, the exhibitions consisted of large-scale photographic images captured by the collective in the West Bank. They were intended to insert scenes of the occupation into the Israeli domain of public life with a view to affecting Israeli opinion about the way in which the State of Israel treats the Palestinians. Analysing how Israeli subjects responded to the existence of the images that they now encountered at the living heart of the Israeli urban environment, Faulkner suggests that the photographs created the visibility of the occupation that Activestills aspired to foreground but that its impact remained potential rather than actualized. Gil Pasternak’s chapter offers additional insights into the multiple roles played by photography in the sociocultural embodiment of the IsraeliPalestinian conflict. Looking into the emergence of photographic cultures in Israel of the post-1967 war period, Pasternak focuses on the participation of photographs that Jewish-Israelis captured within the West Bank in performances and celebrations of Israel’s 1967 war victory. Jewish-Israelis started flooding into this territory only a week after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war ended. Commonly carrying cameras, they subsequently took photographs in spaces that had just returned to accommodating more prosaic activities than armed conflict. Drawing on archival research and ethnographic work with local participants, Pasternak demonstrates that the photographs that Jewish-Israeli citizens captured in the West Bank of that period informed their understanding of Israel’s claimed right to this territory alongside their perception of its Palestinian residents. Portraying the lives that the photographs have lived in the Jewish-Israeli household since that time, Pasternak argues that they helped Jewish-Israeli citizens cement their perceived historical relationship to the West Bank at the same time as they reassured the itinerants, their friends and families that their morality was intact, the situation in the country safe and their relationship with the Palestinians affable. Ihab Saloul also engages with questions concerning the relationship between personal memory and ongoing lived experiences of the IsraeliPalestinian conflict. He turns to oral history, however, in order to attend to the activity of remembering and its possible fragmentation in the 20

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context of historical disaster and exile as a means to discuss the development of diasporic Palestinian identities. He closely analyses cross-generational Palestinian oral narratives of al-Nakba, demonstrating that the value of oral history goes beyond its function as a research methodology capable of refining other approaches to the narration of the Palestinian past. When such narratives are disseminated among exilic Palestinian communities, he argues, they have just as much to do with post-Nakba experience as with the Catastrophe itself. Indeed, while Saloul’s investigation considers recollections of memories of historic Palestine, it shows how they shape the ways in which new generations of diaspora Palestinians imagine the traumatic past and understand its significance to their lives in the present. While each chapter in the volume may be read as a mere textual rendering of the conflict’s cultural boundaries, when read together they perform a space in which ‘Israeli’ and ‘Palestinian’ similarities converge and differences peaceably coexist. Unavoidably, Visioning Israel-Palestine must be seen as another articulation of the conflict’s cultural boundaries, but nevertheless one that creates a sphere for ‘Israelis’ and ‘Palestinians’ to encounter each other away from the otherwise separating cultural territories currently demarcated by the majority of dominant Israeli and Palestinian political leaders. In presenting opportunities to observe, question and reconfigure the many evolving faces of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the volume turns its cultural products into facilitators of diplomacy across its conflictual cultures. I would therefore like to suggest that Visioning Israel-Palestine expands the conflict’s historical imagination, and fosters empathetic, creative thinking about possibilities of cultivating a better future for the people of Israel-Palestine.

Notes 1. Edward W. Said, ‘Invention, memory, and place’, Critical Inquiry 26/2 (Winter, 2000), pp. 175–92. Said’s complete text is also reproduced as an Appendix in this volume, pp. 264–82. 2. Said: ‘Invention, memory, and place’, pp. 191–2 3. Said: ‘Invention, memory, and place’, p. 191 (emphasis in the original text). 4. Said: ‘Invention, memory, and place’, p. 192. 5. Said: ‘Invention, memory, and place’, p. 191. 6. See, for example, Alexander Bligh, The Israeli Palestinians: An Arab Minority in the Jewish State (London: Frank Cass, 2003); Dov Waxman and Ilan Peleg, Israel’s Palestinians: The Conflict Within (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 21

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7. See, for example, Jonathan Schneer, The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (New York: Random House, 2010); Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate (London: Little, Brown, 2000); Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oxford: Oneworld, 2006); Noga Kadman, Erased from Space and Consciousness: Israel and the Depopulated Palestinian Villages of 1948 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2015); Nur Masalha, The Palestine Nakba: Decolonising History, Narrating the Subaltern, Reclaiming Memory (London and New York: Zed Books, 2012); Michael B. Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). 8. See, for example, the discussions in: Ilan Pappé and Jamil Hilal (eds), Across the Wall: Narratives of Israeli-Palestinian History (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2010); Meir Litvak (ed), Palestinian Collective Memory and National Identity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Robert I. Rotberg (ed), Israeli and Palestinian Narratives of Conflict: History’s Double Helix (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006). 9. See discussions of this and related issues in: Petter Bauck and Mohammed Omer (eds), The Oslo Accords: A Critical Assessment (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2016); Edward W. Said, The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After (New York: Pantheon Books, 2000). 10. Yair Wallach, ‘Trapped in mirror-images: the rhetoric of maps in Israel/Palestine’, Political Geography 30/7 (2011), pp. 358–69; Benny Morris, One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009); Joel Kovel, Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine (London: Pluto Press, 2007); Oren Yiftachel, Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). 11. Ilan Pappé (ed), The Israel/Palestine Question: A Reader, 2nd edn (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007). 12. Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ophir, The One-State Condition: Occupation and Democracy in Israel/Palestine (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012); Sarah Schulman, Israel/Palestine and the Queer International (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012); Elia Zureik, David Lyon and Yasmeen Abu-Laban, Surveillance and Control in Israel/Palestine: Population, Territory and Power (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011); Lisa Hajjar, ‘Human rights in Israel/Palestine: the history and politics of a movement’, Journal of Palestine Studies 30/4 (Summer 2001), pp. 21–38. 13. David Lloyd, ‘Settler colonialism and the state of exception: the example of Palestine/Israel’, Settler Colonial Studies 2/1 (2012), pp. 59–80; Julie Peteet, ‘Words as interventions: naming in the Palestine – Israel conflict’, Third World Quarterly 26/1 (2005), pp. 153–72; Joanna C. Long, ‘Rooting diaspora, reviving nation: Zionist landscapes of Palestine–Israel’, Transections 34/1 (2009), pp. 61–77; Joanna C. Long, ‘Border anxiety in Palestine–Israel’, Antipode 38/1 (2006), pp. 107–27; Marwan Bisharah, Palestine/Israel: Peace or Apartheid: Occupation, Terrorism and the Future, 2nd edn (London: Zed Books, 2002). 14. Neil Caplan, The Israel-Palestine Conflict: Contested Histories (Chichester: WileyBlackwell, 2010); David Newman, ‘The geopolitics of peacemaking in IsraelPalestine’, Political Geography 21/5 (2002), pp. 629–46; Norman G. Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (London: Verso Books, 1995).

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15. Ilan Pappé, The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories (London: Oneworld, 2017); Nir Gazit, ‘State-sponsored vigilantism: Jewish settlers’ violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories’, Sociology 49/3 (2015), pp. 438– 54; Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation (London: Verso, 2007). 16. Azoulay and Ophir: The One-State Condition; Edward W. Said and David Barsamian, Culture and Resistance: Conversations with Edward W. Said (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2003), p. 33. 17. Omar Jabary Salamanca, Mezna Qato, Kareem Rabie and Sobhi Samour, ‘Past is present: settler colonialism in Palestine’, Settler Colonial Studies 2/1 (2012), pp. 1–8, p. 3. 18. George Bisharat, ‘Right of Return: Two-State Solution Again Sells Palestinians Short’, 28 January 2004, (accessed 7 April 2017). 19. Gil Z. Hochberg, Visual Occupations: Violence and Visibility in a Conflict Zone (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015); Simon Faulkner, ‘On Israel/Palestine and the Politics of Visibility’, in Katarzyna Marciniak and Imogen Tyler (eds), Immigrant Protest: Politics, Aesthetics, and Everyday Protest (New York: State University of New York Press, 2014), pp. 147–67. 20. See, for example, Anastasia Valassopoulos, ‘The international Palestinian resistance: documentary and revolt’, Journal of Postcolonial Writing 50/2 (2014), pp. 148–62; Ilan Danjoux, Political Cartoons and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012); Stéphanie Latte Abdallah, ‘UNRWA Photographs 1950–1978: A View on History or Shaped by History?’, in Issam Nassar and Rasha Salti (eds), I Would Have Smiled: Photographing the Palestinian Refugee Experience (Jerusalem: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2009), pp. 43–65; Edward W. Said, After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives, photographs by Jean Mohr (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986); Walid Khalidi, Before Their Diaspora: A Photographic History of the Palestinians, 1876–1948 (Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1984). 21. Ariel Peled, ‘The first social media war between Israel and Gaza’, Guardian, 6 December 2012, (accessed 15 May 2017); Alex Spillius, ‘Israelis and Palestinians in first Twitter war’, Telegraph, 15 November 2012, (accessed 15 May 2017); Miriyam Aouragh, Palestine Online: Transnationalism, the Internet and the Construction of Identity (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2011); Vít Šisler, ‘Palestine in Pixels: The Holy Land, Arab-Israeli conflict, and reality construction in video games’, Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 2/2 (2009), pp. 275–92. 22. See, for example, Lina Dencik and Stuart Allan, ‘In/visible conflicts: NGOs and the visual politics of humanitarian photography’, Media, Culture and Society 39/8 (2017), pp. 1178–93; Simon Rocker, ‘A cultured way to celebrate Israel’s 70th Anniversary’, Jewish Chronicle, 20 November 2017, (accessed 3 December 2017); Peter Beaumont, ‘Yasser Arafat museum to open in his Old West Bank headquarters’, Guardian, 8 November 2016, 23

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(accessed 2 May 2017); Ghada Karmi, ‘The “long journey” to Palestine’, Al Jazeera, 9 December 2013, (accessed 2 May 2017). 23. Helen Spencer-Oatey, ‘Introduction’, in Helen Spencer-Oatey (ed), Culturally Speaking: Culture, Communication and Politeness Theory, 2nd edn (London: Continuum, 2008), p. 3. 24. Kevin Avruch, Culture and Conflict Resolution (Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1998), pp. 5–6. 25. Rebecca L. Stein and Ted Swedenburg, ‘Popular Culture, Transnationality, and Radical History’, in Rebecca L. Stein and Ted Swedenburg (eds), Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), pp. 1–23. See also Nadim N. Rouhana, ‘Decolonization as reconciliation: rethinking the national conflict paradigm in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 41/4 (2018), pp. 643–62. 26. Dina Matar and Zahera Harb, ‘Approaches to Narrating Conflict in Palestine and Lebanon: Practices, Discourses and Memories’, in Dina Matar and Zahera Harb (eds), Narrating Conflict in the Middles East: Discourse, Images and Communications Practices in Lebanon and Palestine (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013), pp. 1–14, p. 5. 27. Raymond Geuss, Politics and the Imagination (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), p. 185. 28. For one discussion of the efficacy of criticism see Gavin Butt (ed), After Criticism: New Responses to Art and Performance (London: Blackwell, 2004), p. 5. 29. Ben White, ‘A symbolic resolution against Israeli settlements’, Al Jazeera, 25 December 2016, (accessed 5 January 2017). 30. Said: ‘Invention, memory, and place’. 31. For broader discussions see, for example, Ludmilla Jordanova, The Look of the Past: Visual and Material Evidence in Historical Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Roland Bleiker, Aesthetics and World Politics (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 18–47; Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001). 32. Bleiker: Aesthetics and World Politics, p. 2.

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PART I PRODUCTS OF CONFLICT

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CHAPTER 1 A COUNTRY AS A MAP OF ITSELF On the Historical, Cultural and Theoretical Rendering of Palestine in Sobhi al-Zobaidi’s Part-ition (2008) Abdul-Rahim Al-Shaikh

For Sobhi al-Zobaidi, and all al-Safiriyya Refugees Palestine, Palestinians and Palestinianism have been subjugated to several colonial partitions throughout the ongoing long period of colonial rule. This harsh reality of partitioned Palestine has been explored in a great deal of literature focusing on political, and social aspects, but rarely focusing on cultural and artistic interventions. This chapter explores the transformations of the Palestinian map in light of the unimaginative paradigm shifts that emerged in the aftermath of the Oslo Accords. Taking the artwork of Sobhi al-Zobaidi as a primary model, I investigate how the idea of a map has informed an artistic tendency of fragmentation in contemporary Palestinian art. The fate of the map, as a sentimental object for every Palestinian, seems to be greatly influenced by the fate of Palestinian identity and the cause of Palestine. Through analysis of an index of intertextualities that link the work of al-Zobaidi and literary works by Jorge Luis Borges on a thematic, technical and aesthetic level, I aspire to explain al-Zobaidi’s subversive act of tearing the map of Palestine apart when it fails to guide towards the land of Palestine, lost in the Nakba of 1948. I also explore the thread of truth connecting the shared history of struggle by indigenous peoples against the grand colonial partitions in terms of events, structures and consequences. My focus on al-Zobaidi and his work stems from his interest in map representation. As a Palestinian refugee, al-Zobaidi’s biographical reflections permeate all his works in a unique amalgam that presents an intimate genealogy of Palestinian identity with its grand classics of the land, the people and the narrative. Al-Zobaidi represents a ‘negative instance’, in a Baconian sense (as in Bacon’s Novum Organum), in Palestinian in-flux-culture when the failure of the national movement has led art into the maze of emerging Palestinian subjectivity where ‘neo-Palestinian-ness’ claimed the scene. Having little affinity, or even tolerance, towards the infused international rhetoric of 27

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humanism and world citizenship, al-Zobaidi refuses to subscribe to the registrar of ‘citizens’ in the new Palestine that needs no heroes, to borrow the Brechtian proximity (as in Brecht’s Life of Galileo). This ‘new’ was no longer Palestine, but rather ‘a Never-Palestine’ kind of geography that called upon a new nomadic cartography, when a de-Palestinized geography, demography and historiography prevailed. A nomadic Palestinian?

Sobhi al-Zobaidi was born in Jerusalem in 1961 and was raised in alJalazon refugee camp (north of Ramallah) in a family which was forced to leave al-Safiriyya village near Jaffa after it was ethnically cleansed in 1948. He is an independent Palestinian artist, writer, filmmaker and producer of award-winning documentary films focusing on Palestinian refugees and the politics of memory and amnesia. He studied economics at Birzeit University, and cinema both at New York University and at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. As a Palestinian, much of his work is inspired by his passionate advocacy for Palestinians who suffer various kinds of trauma resulting, directly or indirectly, from the Israeli settler colonial regime and its draining consequences. Al-Zobaidi founded reFugee Camp Productions in 1996 to demonstrate the actual diversity and complexity of Palestinians, a reality that often surpassed representation. Al-Zobaidi’s great interest in uses of the map in the realms of the political and cultural imagination is evident in his films, artworks and theoretical writings. To explore his map, I interrogate a trifecta of sources that he produced between 1998 and 2009, including theoretical articles on cinema, photography and digital media, films and the artwork Partition (2008), which was exhibited in several international venues.1 Utilizing a wide range of literature, al-Zobaidi engages with theoretical debates to explore rich examples from the Palestinian condition showing how technology informs the reproduction of personal and collective identities, in particular the land and the map that led to no-land. Throughout, al-Zobaidi negotiates a complex understanding of space: objective, subjective, intensive, extensive, smooth and striated. Yet, in his work and reflections on the map, he wavers between two fundamental perceptions of space: one experiences space as discourse, as organizer, a master plan, a war machine. The other experiences space as an extension of the body, where movement, motion, and repetition are made possible and so subjectivities are formed and a sense of identity.2 28

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These divisions and perceptions have inspired artists to respond to the colonial deformation of the indigenous landscapes by employing a ‘new cartography’ in terms of medium, form and matter.3 The map has been used in the art of indigenous peoples in several countries as a visual response to map transformations imposed by colonial powers. While these works were read as oriental exotic artefacts, either within personal collections or the museums of the European empire(s), the indigenous artists employed them as a means of upholding their collective memory of the pre-colonial era.4 The map has been used, misused and frequently abused to reflect the historical construction of the people, either within the terrains of the West or in the less fortunate colonies that constituted both the subject of history and its victims. In the Palestinian context of this genre of art, the poetics and the politics were brought together to challenge the stereotypical constructs within recipient audiences, as there is a ‘very private map’ for each Palestinian where the artwork is capable of amalgamating the artistic and the political to send an existential signal to the ‘enemy’. There is a plethora of literature on the politics of partition.5 Here, however, I focus specifically on the Palestinian context, and to explore these interrelated topics, I look into the political history of the Palestinian map, Palestinian cultural history of map representation and also at al-Zobaidi’s theorization of the relationship between history and the map of Palestine. Part-ition I: the political history of the map

The map of Palestine has its own story in the collective imagination of its downtrodden people throughout their history of resistance. While this study does not aspire to a genealogy, I want to use this section to discuss the Palestinian interest in the map as part of a national theology that dates back a century. I therefore highlight four watershed moments that contributed to the emergence of the map of ‘Historic Palestine’. While two moments narrate the British colonial legacy—the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement followed by the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the 1947 Partition Plan for Palestine—the other two depict the rise and fall of Palestinian nationalism as represented in the 1968 Palestinian National Charter and its abrogation in 1996. To explore the first moment, Salim Tamari made a link between the emergence of what came to be known as ‘Historic Palestine’ and the rise of Palestinian nationalism in the early 1900s. The map of Palestine produced between 1916 and 1924 reflects the changing conception of Palestine.6 The emergence of ‘the publication of Filistin Risalesi (1915), as 29

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a country-wide survey by the Eighth Army Corps almost one hundred years ago’, not only calls for reflection and evaluation but also highlights the significance of this particular territory.7 This almanac, according to Tamari, stems from a particular focus on the region, Filistin, which, although not an administrative unit in the empire per se, and ‘besides its military logistic objective as a country survey’, was distinguished by its rich cartographic content, which included separate political, topographical and ethnographic charts.8 In addition to the ideological allure of the Holy Land, the imperial interest in Palestine was translated in colonial terms by the release of both the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Balfour Declaration. Tamari asserts that ‘the redefinition of Palestine’s boundaries was aimed in part at pre-empting this segmentation’.9 The fact that Filistin Risalesi, in much of its topographic and demographic data, draws on French and British military ‘country books’ of the Holy Land and suffers from a degree of Orientalist imagery in its conception of religious and ethnic minorities did not make Palestine ‘less Ottoman’. However, the competition of the colonial desires and settler colonial plans, as seen in Balfour’s official commitment to Zionism, produced the prototypical map of ‘Historic Palestine’ as early as 1917. The significance of Tamari’s work originates in its affirmation that the mapping of Palestine was at first directed by military and colonial surveys then became informed by settler colonial desires. This has also been affirmed by leading ‘revisionist’ Zionist arguments, emphasizing the osmosis between the Western imperial project and its Zionist offspring. The maps of the British Empire constituted a base for the Zionist name commission(s), both in renaming the Palestinian landscape (the symbolic) as well as for the actions of the Zionist forces in occupying the land (the territorial).10 Meron Benvenisti goes even further, affirming that ‘map making is one of the specialized intellectual weapons by which power could be gained, administered, given legitimacy, and codified’.11 Throughout these studies, the imperial powers are shown to entice their land surveyors and cartographers to mark the ‘unknown’ terrains as terra incognita, and to colour them pink as a sign of their predetermined and inevitable annexation by the colonial power. As for the second moment—the Partition Plan for Palestine of 1947— and its centrality in the Palestinian narrative, including the formulation of the political map, it was a consequence of the colonial divisions of 1917.12 To understand the dynamics through which these two moments led to the Palestinian Nakba of 1948 and how they permeated the Palestinian tragedy and contributed to the rise and ‘fall’ of Palestinian nationalism, I wish to turn to Edward Said’s legacy to provide a contrapuntal reading of the colonial event of the grand partitions of 1947. In a tribute to Eqbal 30

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Ahmad, Said provides a thorough analysis, yet an accommodating set of solutions, while addressing the unresolved geographies and embattled landscapes of 1947. Rethinking the post-colonial pathology of power, Said asserts that while the French and the Portuguese were ‘aggressive in resisting nationalisms that their presence [. . .] has partially engendered’, the British chose to ‘divide and quit’, as put by Radha Kumar.13 They gave up control by dividing the territory between contesting communities. Said believes that British colonialism is directly responsible for all that followed. While partitions were the original sins of the British, the complicit settler-colonial movements, like Zionism, are at the heart of these sins. However, Said goes a step further in problematizing the partition, not only as a historical event but also as an ongoing colonial structure that informs the political and cultural imagination. Analysing the Palestinian Nakba, Said states that post-partition histories cannot be all-containing given the complexities of the demographic makeups and mosaic memories. However, Said earlier identified the ‘question of Palestine’ as a conflict over an ‘idea’, for Palestine itself is a much debated, even contested notion between Palestinians—‘the presence’ (as an indigenous people)—and Zionism—‘the idea’ (as a settler colonial movement with a Euro-American political warden and epistemic nexus).14 Given this, the heart of the Palestinian struggle against Zionism was a fight against the exclusivity of its narrative and the hegemonic material instruments Zionism used to realize it. This recalled precisely a synthesis of a counternarrative, stemming from the Palestinian presence on the land in a diverse and inclusive manner. Through this perception, Said’s neologism of ‘Palestinianism’ became not only his compass for defending ‘Palestinian presence’ vs ‘Zionist interpretation’ but also the only possible and relatively fair solution of the Palestinian plight carried out by ‘a political movement that is being built out of the reassertion of Palestine’s multicultural and multireligious history’.15 This assertion was meant to transcend chauvinistic nationalism to become a defensive one by which Palestinians do not produce a replica of the Zionist dream—namely, remaining only the opponents and victims of Zionism—but represent an alternative. Palestinianism, then, is presented not only as a counternarrative to the Zionist Orientalist idea, but also as an antithetical political programme from which the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) rhetoric benefited a great deal, and what became the post-1967 political agenda articulated as a secular democratic state in all of liberated Palestine. Based on such a programme, the ideal solution for the question of Palestine was a state in which all individual and communal rights are based on citizenship as a secular concept, with no supremacy granted to anyone on 31

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the basis of religion or ethnicity.16 This programme was formulated in the Palestinian National Charter of 1968, which identified its goal as the creation of a secular democratic state in Palestine in which Muslims, Christians and Jews would enjoy equal rights and duties. This charter represents the third moment in the emergence of the political map of Palestine. Articles 1–9 define the ‘grand classics’ of Palestinian identity by defining the land, the people and the narrative. While in particular Article 2 explains that ‘Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit’, Articles 19 and 20 consider the Balfour Declaration, the British Mandate of Palestine and ‘everything that has been based upon them’ (i.e. the Partition Plan of 1947), ‘null and void’.17 The 1968 challenge to the Zionist ‘idea’ did not last for more than six years, and its collapse marked the fourth and last moment of transformation of the map of Palestine. After Yasser Arafat’s prominent speech—‘The Gun and the Olive Branch’, at the United Nations General Assembly in 1974—the PLO gained vast international solidarity and recognition as the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.18 However, this moment marked the most dramatic shift towards ‘Palestinian Orientalism’ when the PLO dropped its secular democratic strategy in favour of the Palestinian National Authority Programme.19 The conception of the map changed accordingly. The signing of the Oslo Agreement and the abrogation of the Palestinian National Charter by the Palestinian National Council held in Gaza in 1996 were the icing on the cake as the final dominos fell, given the implications of the adoption of the ‘National Authority’ programme in 1974 and the Declaration of Independence of 1988, both leading to the grand concisions made in Oslo in 1993.20 Burdened with this gloomy reality, Said sought refuge in fiction to explain, or perhaps justify, this collapse. He understood that any conversion or departure from this realm of Palestinianism, including the demarcation of the national map in its ‘mandated’ form and with the implications presented herewith, should be identified with the Zionist Orientalist enterprise—that is, taking part in what I call ‘Palestinian Orientalism’. Said reminds us of Jorge Luis Borges’ story Funes the Memorious, about a man endowed with a capacity for the total recall of everything and the ability to notice and retain every detail he ever saw [. . .] Nevertheless [. . .] he was not very good at thinking. To think is to ignore, to forget, to generalize, to abstract.21 Said’s critique of Funes denounces the mythos of national memories and warring identities within partitioned landscapes paralysed into immobility. 32

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Said’s archetypal model here was South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which managed to ‘partly forget the past without reducing its dissonances’.22 He praises the role of the intellectual collectives in rerighting histories and fostering counter-memories. Said advocates legal secular struggles without falling into the trap of Funes’ nightmare: total recall or amnesia. To disavow exclusive non-identities, Said recalls Fanon’s prophecy of ‘the need to convert “national consciousness” into “social consciousness” ’, in addition to the works of authors such as Bernal, Hobsbawm and Whitelam.23 Said stresses Eqbal Ahmad’s notions of battling identities as ‘communities of suffering’, which bears a great resemblance to Mahmoud Darwish’s notion of ‘humanizing history’, by which he appeals for sharing the land of the myth when sharing the myth itself is not attainable. While Darwish expounds that ‘resisting occupation is not only a right, it is a national and human duty that transforms us from the condition of slavery to the condition of freedom’, he is still aware of the necessity to liberate the Palestinians from colonialism, the Israelis from colonial desire.24 Within such a longed-for reality, Darwish concedes, no one would have a monopoly on God, land or memory in spite of the fact that we know that: history is neither fair nor elegant, but our task, as humans, is to humanize history, as we are simultaneously its victims and its creation [. . .] But we have an incurable malady: hope. Hope in liberation and independence. Hope in a normal life where we are neither heroes nor victims.25 As for Said, still, ‘only through remembrance can painful memories be overcome and forgotten’ and ‘new types of universalism’ applied.26 To recap, one should concede that the first and the second historical moments in the map-making of Palestine controlled by colonial desires seem to have affected the political and the cultural imagination, and also led to the most crucial and remembered event in modern Palestinian history—the Nakba of 1948. Since then, the partition of Palestine has been inscribed on the Palestinian land, its map and the imagination of the two by all Palestinians. Edward Said once described this dialectic by affirming that: in the history of colonial invasion, maps are always first drawn by the victors, since maps are instruments of conquest. Geography is therefore the art of war, but it can also be the art of resistance if there is a counter map and a counter strategy.27 33

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The second and the third historical moments, however, represented not only the rise and fall of Palestinian nationalism but also the emergence of a de-Palestianized Palestine in cultural representation. The four interconnected moments, one may say, has produced a quasi-partitioned ‘nation-estate’ of Palestine, provoking Mahmoud Darwish’s cynicism to cry out: How large the revolution, how narrow the journey. How grand the idea, how small the state!28 Part-ition II: Cultural history in the map

The representation of the map of Palestine may not be less transformative in the visual arts compared to its political history. Still, the ‘very private map’ of Sobhi al-Zobaidi that he created in his installation Part-ition (2008) represents an archetypal case, given its political, cultural and theoretical background. The title of the installation, Part-ition, encapsulates the material and the conceptual description of the piece. It is an installation including a video projection alongside a paper map of Palestine dis-membered into 72 pieces, made into placards each 7.3 × 7.3 cm (Figs 1.1–1.2). The cards (some face up, showing parts of the map, and the rest face down) are displayed in six columns and 12 rows on a

Figure 1.1 Sobhi al-Zobaidi, Part-ition, 2008, video installation (detail). Photo: courtesy of the artist. 34

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Figure 1.2 Sobhi al-Zobaidi, Part-ition, 2008, video installation (detail). Photo: courtesy of the artist.

rectangular brown Formica table, with two wooden retro chairs. While the cards occupy almost two-thirds of the surface of the table, three pieces of white A4 paper are placed at the head of the table, each containing the ‘how to play’ instructions typed in black ink in three languages: English, French and Arabic (this changed depending on where the work was exhibited). The five rules of the ‘Memory Game’ read: • flip over any two cards, if they reveal two contiguous geographies, you win those two cards; • if they don’t, you need to remember the location of those two cards and the geographies they contain; • if you don’t know Arabic, re-imagine geographies as empty landscapes, let colours, lines, shapes or God, guide you; • winner is the player who makes up the largest contiguous geography; • if you are desperate to win, you can cheat, steal or get rid of the other player and take their cards. In addition to the explicit rules, the piece contained a moving statement by al-Zobaidi (also in three languages) that explains the story of the map that was once a national icon. It is projected onto a wall behind the table with the map, in a darkened room of the exhibition. This projection forms 35

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the video component of the installation. The artwork was displayed in the group exhibition Never-Part as part of Masarat Palestine: Season of Contemporary Palestinian Culture in Brussels in 2008, as well as in the international exhibition Taswir: Pictorial Mappings of Islam and Modernity at the Martin-Gropius-Bau Museum in Berlin, in 2009–10. In his moving statement, al-Zobaidi narrates the fate of the partitioned map of Palestine in reality, in politics and in imagination. At the age of 13, he joined the voluntary work committee in al-Jalazon refugee camp, which was devised to foster nationalist morale within the dispossessed community. Participating in voluntary work in the nearby Birzeit refugee camp in the summer of 1974, al-Zobaidi encountered Hasan, a young Palestinian refugee in his early 20s, who seemed to be an earnest and articulate communist. Hasan invited al-Zobaidi ‘to his humble home, which consisted of two UNRWA-built [United Nations Relief and Works Agency] rooms’, where he ‘saw a huge map hung on the wall. The room was almost empty, a small bed, a cheap Formica table, few books, and a black and white picture of his deceased father hung opposite the map’.29 Mesmerized merely by seeing, for the first time in his life, a map of Palestine that large, with no mention of Israel and with all the Palestinian villages and towns present, al-Zobaidi explains in his statement that he was further enthralled by his host’s generosity when he ‘took the map off the wall, folded it nicely, put it inside a plastic bag and gave it to [him] as gift’. In what seems to be another script to one more of al-Zobaidi’s travelogue, he narrates the melancholic odyssey of the map that was hung on a wall of his room in the refugee camp as well as of the metropolitan cities to which he commuted for 20 years. Upon his ‘re-turn’ to Palestine at the advent of the Oslo Accords, al-Zobaidi never hung the map on the wall again.30 The Oslo moment seems to have created an existential threshold for the Palestinians to face their lasting loss of places and spaces. Hence, in his statement al-Zobaidi reveals: ‘I felt embarrassed with the map, as if I didn’t want it to see me anymore, or see what was going on. I kept it hidden inside books, in drawers, in suitcases and old briefcases.’ The gloomy realties of besieged Palestinians in the aftermath of the Oslo moment transformed the map of Palestine from a valuable token and unrealized dream to a burden and a Kafkaesque absurdity. It ceased signifying the geographies it once represented, a realization that forced al-Zobaidi to free himself from its tyranny. With bitter feelings of loss and the tragic fate of Hasan, his communist alter ego, and millions of his fellow dispossessed Palestinians, al-Zobaidi decided to dismantle his obsession with a map that had lost its mission. He concludes his statement declaring: 36

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I wonder what would Hasan think if he found out I have kept his map for over 30 years and now I come to the conclusion that the only way to keep it is to tear it apart. But if he finds out and asks me why, I am prepared to tell him I can no longer hide this map, I can’t hang it nor can I display it. I would explain to him that instead of showing me the way, this map shows me how disorientated and lost I have become. I’d tell him that the gap between the map and the geography it represents, has become so vast that I need to reconcile the two. In the way of the Chinese cartographers in Jorge Louis Borges’s story, I wanted to re-produce the map with the exactitude of its geographies. In a political tone, Charles Michel, the young Belgian Minister of Development Cooperation, tried to depoliticize the entire cultural endeavour of Masarat, which included al-Zobaidi’s work, by drawing a ‘decaffeinated’ Palestine. ‘Avoiding the Manichaean view and discouraging images commonly conveyed to us by the media’, and ‘raising itself to the human level, to that of the dramas that trouble it and the hopes that inhabit it, the Never-Part exhibition’ in his view ‘has chosen to reveal a little-known Palestine, a real-life land, seen from within and told from a compelling and intimate angle’.31 The aim of such cultural events in the European context, deemed ‘human’, becomes ‘essential’ for the Palestinians to join the club of ‘universal values’ and to become ‘citizens of the world’. Such a ‘positive image of [a de-Palestinised] Palestine’, is constructed in neoliberal terms that go along with the political and economic projects that prioritize the ‘development discourse’ over the liberation discourse among Palestinians. Of course, the motives and rationales for such discourse are bluntly affirmed in such statements. The words of Mahmoud Darwish, Paul Dujardin, the General Manager of the project of Masarat Palestine, and Etienne Davignon, Chairman of the Board of Directors, and Fabienne Verstraeten, the organizer of Masarat Palestine, convey a similar message regarding the Never-Part exhibition, ‘reminding us of the universality of the human condition, shows the way of man among men’, for ‘Palestine is not limited to Palestine, it obtains its artistic legitimacy from a wider human space’.32 Art is represented as a liaison between the individual and the collective, and such grammar is used here as a means of de-politicization of the Palestinian cause in a blunt manner, where the individuality of the ‘mundane’ becomes a vehicle to eclipse the collectivity of ‘national’, in spite of the fact that both are Palestinian. Al-Zobaidi’s map became an artwork titled Part-ition and was exhibited at two international venues between 2008 and 2010. The first exhibition, titled Never-Part: Histories of Palestine, was held in Palais des Beaux-Arts, 37

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Brussels, 19 October–11 November 2008, and curated by Jack Persekian as part of Masarat Palestine: Season of Contemporary Palestinian Culture, with the participation of 12 Palestinian artists.33 Persekian ‘asked each artist for a piece of work that has stayed with them’, for he ‘wanted to know what it is that makes them keep it’ and ‘to investigate—how does an artist come to life?’34 The map that al-Zobaidi dismembered is represented through a semimemory-game on a Formica slippery table. The map is neatly cut into 72 pieces arranged as a collection of game cards in two face-down parallel rows. Each of the seemingly non-political ‘players’ of the game flips two cards, disclosing parts of the hidden map each time. If the first player is lucky enough, the two cards match, winning the territory, otherwise s/he should yield to the other player, who does the same until the entire country is won by the player with more penitence, persistence, devoutness or perhaps guidance from God, as stated in the ‘rules of the game’. As sensed throughout the statements of the artists, curator and conveners, the exhibition was meant to project a zero degree of sloganeering, propaganda and political rhetoric, yielding to more personal histories of the artists.35 The second venue for Part-ition was the international exhibition Taswir: Pictorial Mappings of Islam and Modernity, curated and conceptualized by the renowned philosopher and art critic Almut Bruckstein-Çoruh and organized by the Berliner Festspiele at the Martin-Gropius-Bau Museum in Berlin, 5 November 2009–18 January 2010. The exhibition was also fostered by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin and the German Foreign Office, in cooperation with Ha’atelier-Werkstatt für Philosophie und Kunst.36 Palestine was present in Taswir through the work of three other cosmopolitan Palestinian artists. Mona Hatoum, Taysir Batniji and Maliheh Afnan, who showed their work along with 50 other artists from 22 countries. Within contemporary artist positions that encompass graphics, drawing, painting, photography, video art, installation, sound and sculpture, pieces conventionally known as ‘Islamic’ and/or ‘Middle Eastern’ objects were exhibited in a manner that permeated the three major themes of the exhibition: calligraphy, ornament and miniatures. In a similar manner of the conveners of the Never-Part exhibition, Bruckstein-Çoruh’s commentary on the diverse origins and positions of the artefacts represents an attempt to ‘create a poetic documentary in which classical traditions correspond with contemporary ones in a fractal, fragmentary and subjective manners’.37 Nevertheless, this articulation was not indifferent to the problematic times during which the exhibition was held. ‘At a time when public discussions of Islam often amount to divisive polemic’, said Bruckstein-Çoruh, ‘an exhibition, Taswir [. . .] uses Islamic 38

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forms of visual expression to celebrate the universality of art, and its role in that shared human endeavour called civilization’.38 Part-ition, occupied the smallest space in Taswir. As in Brussels, alZobaidi cut the map of Palestine into 72 playing cards, each 7.3 × 7.3 cm. He left some pieces face up (showing parts of the map), and others face down. Then he set the ‘rules of the game’ for the spectators through pieces of A4 paper laid out at the edge of the glass box in which the installation was placed: participants were to rearrange this labyrinth puzzle on their own. If the first spectator did not manage to rearrange the piece to form the actual map, the next one forced them into a gesture of movement so a new cycle of violence and counter-violence was practiced on the inanimate map and its referential geography. The re/shuffling continued until the map conformed to the fates of time and space lost by the Palestinians in their battle for freedom, return and self-determination, alas by foreign ‘players’. However, the museum’s administration was not comfortable with ‘the rules of the game’ and did not leave even the ‘Part-ition/ed’ map alone. The map was imprisoned in a dry aquarium, rendering the piece out of reach for visitors, except for the statement, written by al-Zobaidi as described earlier, attached to the edge of the glass box. The politics of museum administration reminds us of the crude joke told about the exhibition of the prototype manuscripts written in Braille, where the manuscripts were framed under glass so that the blind could not touch and the viewers could not read! Al-Zobaidi suggests that the statement was necessary to explain the fact that we usually surround ourselves with objects, images and narratives that help sustain memories. The objects we don’t part with are loaded with tension and emotion. Yet these objects/images we refuse to let go of, function like fetishes, they help cover our vulnerabilities, they shield us. This is why you highlight in your comments the traumatic aspect in the parting process. The text is an integral and important part of the work, it explains how the map belongs to a geography and world that no longer exists, it is a map of a world that has disappeared.39 Throughout his answers to a brief interview conducted during the Masarat festival in 2008, al-Zobaidi asserted that his contribution to the exhibition was not a rupture between himself and a sentimental object he had possessed for decades as a means of catharsis, but rather a rupture with the unhealthy and fake intimacy with an object that has been betrayed by reality in terms of space and time. ‘Reworking’ the relationship with the 39

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object of the map, for al-Zobaidi, entails reworking the relationship with its referential system: a Palestine that has changed and has become far out-of-reach after almost seven decades of partition in 1947. This particular rupture is part of the dialectic of presence/absence that shapes Palestine, Palestinians and Palestinianism. Yet al-Zobaidi strongly believes in the notion that the ‘destruction of the map does not resolve the relationship between geography and fiction. It doesn’t bring a sense of closure, rather it re-invents the wound’.40 This indicates that, by reopening the wound, the artist is, rather, attempting to seek healing, a sort of dialectical ‘return’ in a form of ‘parting’. The artist takes the spectator back to the event of 1947 Partition Plan for Palestine in a coherent political statement: a map that does not grant its holder the ability to reach its actual geography is no a map, hence there is a necessity to part from it and to tear it apart. Al-Zobaidi reinforces this political stance by borrowing from the legacy of Jorge Luis Borges, to rid the map from its burdens and to liberate himself from the burdens of the map. Mahmoud Darwish once praised the wisdom of Abu al-‘Ala al-Ma‘arri (973–1057), who was a blind philosopher and poet, stating: ‘I saw Ma‘arri expel his critics from his poem: I’m not blind to see what you all see, vision is a light that leads to nothingness [. . .] or madness.’41 Yet Borges’ fictional surreal worlds, which were reinforced by the hereditary blindness in his family (that never led him to madness, but quite often to nothingness), enabled him to master the cynical treatment of human fantasies as a critical account of reality, with all the cruelty of its fabrics of violence. At the end of his statement, al-Zobaidi explicitly encodes Borges’s cynicism, from his short story Del Rigor en la Ciencia, into the Palestinian discourse of the vanishing map.42 Al-Zobaidi does so through an exchange with Borges in which he shows a great deal of protest, blame and eventual aesthetic ‘enmity’ to the map. In Borges’s one-paragraph short story there are allusions to Lewis Carroll’s novel Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, and to the poem ‘The Hunting of the Snark’, in particular where the protagonist narrates tales about his country, in which nobody ever drowns.43 In that world, the largest map considered really useful would be on a scale of six inches to the mile. Although this country had learnt map-making from his host nation, it took it much further, having gone through maps that were six feet to the mile, then six yards to the mile and then 100 yards to the mile—and finally, a mile to the mile. The farmers said that if such a map were to be spread out, it would block out the sun and crops would fail, so the project was abandoned, hence the cartographers suggested using the kingdom as a map of itself. Among other absurdities in that 40

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world was the impossible voyage of an improbable crew to find an inconceivable creature, ‘the Snark’ (seemingly an allegory for the search for happiness), guided by the leader of the voyage with his map—a blank sheet of paper. The voyage, with such a map, induces various feelings of loss, frustration and bafflement in a long tragic odyssey. As for Borges, the story narrates: In that empire, the art of cartography attained such perfection that the map of a single province occupied the entirety of a city, and the map of the empire, the entirety of a province. In time, those unconscionable maps no longer satisfied, and the cartographers’ guilds struck a map of the empire whose size was that of the empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following generations, who were not so fond of the study of cartography as their forebears had been, saw that that vast map was useless, and not without some pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the inclemencies of sun and winters. In the deserts of the west, still today, there are tattered ruins of that map, inhabited by animals and beggars; in all the land there is no other relic of the disciplines of geography.44 Al-Zobaidi seems to employ this aesthetic absurdity that mocks both history and geography to transcend the territorial ‘art of cartography’, for the sake of the ‘art of the land’, which seems to be somewhat mythical and imprinted within the matrix of national theology. Such a treatment outwardly reads as a reinforcement of Palestine as a historical land rather than a political territory. Al-Zobaidi is earnest and quite clear in denouncing the map, which was stripped of much of its accuracy in the aftermath of the partition of 1947, without any feelings of remorse or regression. However, what is behind dismantling the map beyond alZobaidi’s political rhetoric? Is it a condemnation of an ‘original map’, emerging as a by-product of competing colonialisms on his Palestine? Is it a protest against the deprivation of the right to geography for his fellow Palestinians? Is it a scream for a ‘permission to narrate’ the right cartography as part of his Palestinianism? Only contrapuntal reading of al-Zobaidi’s oeuvre would provide adequate answers. Part-ition III: The theoretical history behind the map

To understand the politics that led al-Zobaidi to produce such a Partition, his political, theoretical and artistic views on the ‘grand classics’ of his individual and collective identity (the land, the people and the 41

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narrative) should be investigated. In his ongoing artistic and theoretical endeavour to come to terms with the results of the crude dialects between spacelessness, time and memory, al-Zobaidi nearly always takes his own odyssey, to challenge the stagnation and rigidity of the traditional political powers and contribute to developing a cultural politics of resistance. In his trailblazing commentary ‘Tora Bora Cinema’, al-Zobaidi highlights the uniqueness of the nature of the Palestinian settler-colonial landscape in existential terms.45 He interrogates Palestinian films produced between 1995 and 2005, documenting a pseudo-national transition that produced a new Palestine and, more so, a new Palestinian: displaced, de-centred and spaceless who, in order to survive, must not remember. Living such a new reality, Palestinians underwent a collective paranoia and amnesia, negotiating an existence under oppressive regimes of power that intensified their perpetual disorientation. Losing the essence of the cause (by abrogating their 1968 National Charter) and the land of the cause, most notably due to Israel’s segregation policies against the Palestinians, they became an archetypal collective antithesis of Borges’s Funes, so to speak. This dilemma—of a people with a geography that has been constantly transformed and disappearing since 1948—has changed the Palestinians’ conception of their place and space altogether. To combat this, al-Zobaidi argues that ‘Palestinians resort to poetic and imaginary means such as those found in the arts, religion, and digital media’.46 Suffering a life with(in) prison cells, roadblocks and space-blocks in their Bantoestans, Palestinians, a people of inmates with a divers hierarchy, sought refuge in imaginary spaces to supplement their immobility and inability to possess the space of their identity. Within such a condition, memory internalizes geography. Both as a recollection of the past as (the lost paradise) and the dealings of the present as (the forbidden one), memory ceased corresponding to geography. However, safeguarded by its own dysfunction, memory is conceived by Gilles Deleuze as a ‘fundamental split in time, that is to say, the differentiation of its passage into two great jets, the passing of the present and the preservation of the past’.47 While al-Zobaidi is more inclined to the philosophical illustration of the Palestinians’ disorientation in their space, the political dimension is not absent from his theoretical agenda. On the one hand, he employs the exchange between Edward Said and W.J.T. Mitchell regarding the madeup space resulting from an invention of both memory and geography, given that ‘the Zionist memory had succeeded in emptying Palestine of its inhabitants and history, turning its landscape instead into an empty space’.48 Hence, the act of Zionist counter-memory had converted Palestine, to a model of a socially-constructed geography in which ‘their memory’ had succeeded in displacing ‘ours’, and ‘their’ invented landscape 42

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had succeeded in eclipsing ‘ours’ in a unique settler-colonial lingering moment. On the other hand, al-Zobaidi refers to the Deleuzian philosophical conception of the ‘power of the false’ where a ‘crystalline regime of the image’ emerges as a result of the collapsing normal sense of space or ‘sensory-motor schemata’.49 This sensory-motor schemata, according to Deleuze, is located in a ‘hodological space’ which corresponds to paths travelled rather than distances measured, a feature that differentiates it from the mathematical space in that it corresponds to the factual human experience, be it physical or psychological. The collapse of the sensory-motor schemata entails a great deal of disorientation where we cannot move from one point to another and cannot go back, if we were lucky enough to move.50 Attempting to localize the Afghan Tora Bora as a site, a performance and a metaphor, al-Zobaidi reads the ‘images’ causing the state of a forced disorientation inflected upon the Palestinians within their ‘Hollow Land’.51 He uses the term ‘image’ to refer not ‘just [to] visual image or representation of a thing’ but rather in line with Henri Bergson’s conceptualization of the term ‘image’, where it means ‘an existence placed halfway between the “thing” and the “representation” ’.52 In a commentary on his own ‘memories of incarceration, of being made immobile and absent’, al-Zobaidi goes a step further, to describe Palestine between fiction and the real.53 He utilizes Nurith Gertz and George Khleifi’s conception of the ‘roadblock movies [. . .] around which identities clash, power is practiced, and struggles take place’ where ‘an obstacle, which, most often is overcome metaphorically or defied by use of the camera’.54 In a deeper reading of the Zionist policies of segregation, al-Zobaidi discusses not only ‘the crisis, but memory itself ’ in the ‘space block movies, where no camera tricks can overcome the obstacle’.55 Tora Bora became a popular term in Palestine among taxi drivers to designate the dangerous passages and treacherous geographies between Palestinian localities cut off by the Israeli roadblocks, apartheid wall and other means of settler-colonial violence. Such a ‘Ford-transit shuttle’ reality was captured by the national poet Mahmoud Darwish in his poem titled la Shai’a Yo‘jibony [Nothing Pleases Me], reflecting the most literal and figurative locked-up sense of a trip with unknown destinations, for both possibilities always equally exist. The line forks and one never knows which way one will end up—dead, arrested, or free. Palestinian Tora Boras are very much like the ‘last sky’ in Darwish’s poem. They are last possible movement before decay and death, the last possible space, the body. It is my body that moves me through Tora Bora, and everything outside my body is hostile: the air, the space, 43

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everything is threatening [. . .] Tora Bora is a passage, a crack, a flight, or a leap. It is anything but death [. . .] Palestinian Tora Boras are different from Ben Laden’s. Ours are on the surface. We hide inside our bodies and not inside the earth. And we weave our space as we go, constantly reconstituting ourselves in relation to changing geographies [. . .] Erased from the surface, not seen, this is how Israelis want to see Palestinians. In short, the Zionist project in Palestine is, from the position of Palestinians, spacio-cidal, in that it annihilates places that are the sources of Palestinians’ orientation in the world, of movement and repetition, of memory.56 Providing a thorough reading of Edward Said and Hamid Dabashi’s reading of the Palestinian struggle of in-visibility, al-Zobaidi concludes his analysis of the Palestinian Tora Bora geography by expounding that: Palestinians who live under Israeli occupation do not have this space, while Palestinians who live in Israel have the space, but they struggle with their memories as whether to conceal or to practice those memories. Palestinians in exile have neither space nor memory. What they have is a virtual image of Palestine as a ‘lost paradise’, a fixation of some sort through which they live and relive their ‘postponed drama of return’ as Said described it in After the Last Sky. In exile, Palestine is a hallucinatory space that is malleable but that can only accommodate memories of things past and not of things present. Palestinians in exile can only live in the past when it comes to Palestine, while Palestinians in Palestine can only live in the present moment.57 Living for the last 70 years while losing their land/scape, Palestinians also suffered a transforming conception of their nationhood as a people. AlZobaidi examines the theoretical dynamics based on how Palestinians managed to combat their loss, resorting to new technologies (like art, cinema and digital media) to construct both personal and collective identities.58 Born to a refugee family, al-Zobaidi bore the burden of a lost paradise along with his downtrodden people. Palestinians always had to face the inventions of the Zionist settler-colonial project inflected upon them. In addition to emptying the land of its indigenous people, this project invented a landscape with Biblical qualities ruled by a ‘double temporality [that] governs the mythic image of the holy landscape. It is both the place of origin and the utopian prospect of the future, always fleeting beyond the present.’59 Nevertheless, al-Zobaidi does not leave this ‘temporality’, 44

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which deformed the Palestinian landscape, without qualification. He is alerted by Frederic Jameson ‘to the deformation of space when observed from the standpoint of time, of time when observed from the standpoint of space’.60 Attending to Jameson’s caution, and understanding his ‘deformation’ as the collapse of the space and time into each other, alZobaidi always searches for hospitable spaces where Palestinians, as a unique type of nomad, bypass the strained politics of spatiotemporality. For him, cinema, art and the internet have allowed the production dispossessed with a virtual right to geography and collective remembrance. In such a context, memory is not conceived (in relation to space) to be the stuff of the past. Instead, al-Zobaidi contributes to the framework that accommodates multiple temporalities where Palestinian memory is conceived ‘as something that is malleable, inventive and discursive, and as located in a hodological space where the loss or collapse of which results in the collapse or dysfunction of memory’.61 As an ‘artist of memory’ in Frances Yates’ sense, yet with many more multiplicities, al-Zobaidi believes that memory enables us ‘to be somewhere else at any time’ by connecting ‘our material bodies with the immaterial rest’.62 He introduces Bergson’s conception of memory ‘not a[s a] meditative activity of the brain, but a force of and on the body’.63 In doing so he negates the possibility of having a memory that acts as a ‘reservoir of images’.64 Instead, he combines the actual and the virtual as suggested by Deleuze of the memory-osmosis between the exterior and the interior, the body and the external world. Since ‘memory is a virtual image contemporary with the actual object, its double, its “mirror image” ’, Bergson locates memory on the surface of the body, in the sensory-motor schemata, while Deleuze locates it in a hodological space.65 To relate this argument to al-Zobaidi’s act of tearing the map apart, we should follow Deleuze’s conclusion regarding the collapse of hodological space that leads to the collapse of sensory-motor schemata causing the infamous feeling of disorientation. Facing such a collapse, al-Zobaidi gives voice to the Palestinian collective feeling: When I leave my home and I cannot go back to it, and when I leave my city and I cannot go back to it, and when I leave my country and I cannot go back to it, I am a man with no path. This moment when legal and causal connections fail to take me back, I resort to everything else. I leap, invade, imagine, fantasize and remember. I take any route possible.66 If we combine this understanding of the location of memory in such a process with that of Walter Benjamin’s moment of ‘constellation’,67 we get 45

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closer to understanding how different images can be connected neither causally nor chronologically. Within a non-progressive history unfolding like rosary beads in an ‘empty and homogeneous time’, the present becomes ‘the time of the now’ where different temporalities co-exist to bring history face-to-face with memory: the first ‘unfolds like rosary beads’, while the latter becomes a ‘leap in the open air of history’.68 Situating himself with/in such a ‘leap’, al-Zobaidi believes that Israel not only invented a settler-colonial landscape but also tried to invent a Palestinian who does not belong to this landscape—an amnesic Palestinian in a deformed landscape. This anti-Funes Palestinian, be it inside what became so-called-Israel proper or in the West Bank and Gaza, was unable to reconnect with their fellow Palestinians or their stolen land until after the Naksah (setback) of 1967. Al-Zobaidi describes such bitter moments in the eyes of his father during their first visit to the ethnically cleansed village al-Safiriyya in the mid-1990s, where the lasting flow of images of their ‘lost paradise’ encountered reality. Such a reality was brought back under scrutiny in 2007 in light of a new publication describing the Palestinians’ hardships caused by the Israeli police forces. It was prepared by the UNRWA Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the occupied Palestinian territories in which: all signs for roads and paths are replaced with their effacement. This is a legend for a map that leads to nowhere, a map without routes, paths, or roads—ultimately a map that points to no geographical, habitual or social spaces. This is a legend for a space that is totally striated; this legend points to no hodological space, but to the obstacle and only the obstacle.69 Based on this, al-Zobaidi thinks that Palestinians, whether within historic Palestine or in the diasporas, are fated to face a sort of disorientation squeeze ‘out’, ‘in’, but never ‘back to’ their Palestine. Such a reality was captured by the Palestinian philosopher Hussein al-Barghouthi as the ‘double schizophrenia’ of Palestine and the Palestinians together.70 This ‘indescribable experience’ that cannot be reduced to figures, facts, maps or metaphors, according to al-Zobaidi, was captured by Edward Said who asserted that: no single Palestinian can be said to feel what most other Palestinians feel: Ours has been too various and scattered a fate for that sort of correspondence. But there is no doubt that we do in fact form a community, if at heart a community built on suffering and exile.71 46

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Employing his theoretical dicta in examining the internet, al-Zobaidi concludes that Said’s ‘scene’, Benjamin’s ‘constellation’ and Deleuze’s ‘sequence’ are ‘traumatic time-images of space that are produced in the aftermath of death, destruction and dispossession’.72 Al-Zobaidi’s proposal of the internet as a spatial model that allows for the existence and interaction of such discontinued lives is inspired by Deleuze and Guattari’s conceptualizations of the renowned rhizome and nomadology.73 Informed by Buchanan’s analysis of the internet being very much like a rhizome, al-Zobaidi goes a step further, to deem Palestinians ‘digital nomads’ who possess all the attributes of dispossessed people: Palestinians are not nomads, but they are more than migrants: they are refugees, exiles, deportees, martyrs, or in prison. Palestinians possess principal characteristics of the nomads, they ‘mix with them in many ways’ despite differences in causes and conditions. It is also tempting to think of Palestinians as nomads because, and due to, their resistance and revolution they revive a nomadic potential; Rhizomatic spaces are hospitable to nomadic thoughts and forces; this is how I think of the Internet as hospitable to Palestinians.74 Examining an image of his father taken before 1948 back in his village al-Safiriyya, with the football team, al-Zobaidi provides an exclusive analysis of a website that serves as an example of Palestinian internet use that merges the theories he utilized earlier. Palestineremembered.com was initiated in the diaspora in 2000 and illustrates the lively and inhabitable aspects of the internet. According to al-Zobaidi, this site not only provides ‘Palestinians with a place where they can practice collective remembrance’,75 but is also a venue in within/in which they enter the registrar of triumph in claiming a victimhood that has for long time been overshadowed by our oppressor’s victimhood and national narrative. Throughout, al-Zobaidi conceives the essence of the question of Palestine as a struggle fought by the national movement of the Palestinian indigenous people and against Zionism as a settler-colonial movement that succeeded in establishing the pariah state of Israel within its EuroAmerican political warden and epistemic nexus. Yet he attempts to crystalize this narrative through his artistic enterprise both in art and cinema. Within this context, he attempts to answer the question of the escape of paradise, not from paradise, in his earliest film, My Very Private Map (1998). Al-Zobaidi explores the escaped paradise wavering between two memories: the memory of the fathers who were ethnically cleansed from al-Safiriyya, and the memory of their dispossessed offspring in the 47

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diaspora. The intercultural film was made to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba in 1998, focusing on the feelings of loss and regret of Palestinians who were forced to leave their homes during the grand exodus of Palestinian history.76 He interviewed a number of refugees, including his father, asking ‘them to describe their lives before and after the Nakba, using images from UNRWA archives to accompany their voices’.77 Reflecting on the still images used in film, al-Zobaidi reiterates that the reconstruction of the Palestinian narrative enables a resurrection of an indigenous history that has been ‘entirely eluded in the UNRWA narratives’.78 According to al-Zobaidi, this represents a case of Benjamin’s ‘leap in the open air history’ within the complex fabric of dialectics between the past and the present. Here, yet again, al-Zobaidi reminds us of how documentary films and archival footage intervene in history, putting Edward Said’s ‘aesthetic of the invisible’ into play, for the struggle of Palestinians as an attempt at visibility, at inscribing their present in the world, somehow in response to the Zionist project’s ambition of making Palestinians disappear by constantly sending them to places from which they don’t come back.79 This, perhaps, give us the fullness of meaning of Mahmoud Darwish’s often quoted stanza: ‘We travel like everyone else, but we return to nothing. As if we were a path of clouds.’80 The same applies to his film Crossing Kalandia (2002), shot at the most intensive times of Al-Aqsa Intifada of 2000 (between August 2001 and July 2002), when the Israeli desire for destruction reached its peak in the Palestinian towns. Al-Zobaidi reinforces these themes, employing the historical incongruity of the birth of his daughter coinciding with Palestinians’ commemoration of the Nakba on 15 May 2002. The film interrogates the theme of ‘the incommensurability between the language and experience of Israel (independence) and Palestine (catastrophe)’, where the politically charged nature of recording and documenting the quotidian, of the remembrance of things present, is pervasive [. . .] It is as if the existence of the melodic, extraordinary in such times, can, on occasion, overshadow the cacophony of explosives.81 Inspired by the relatively recent paradigm shift in Palestine studies towards settler-colonial and indigenous studies, al-Zobaidi seems to reaffirm the diagnosis of the Palestinian Nakba as an ‘event’ and a ‘structure’ at once, 48

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where the ongoing tragedy is evident in both the daily life of the Palestinians and the diverse means of representation.82 A nomadic Palestine?

Throughout his films, artworks and theoretical writings, al-Zobaidi’s odyssey as a Palestinian refugee who survived his people’s ongoing Nakba represents a nomadic life par excellence. However, interpreting such a political agency and poetic enterprise in re-presenting the Palestinian tragedy, often con/fuses the ‘personal’ with the ‘individual’ in a world that favours the universal neoliberalism over nomadism. Given this, fathoming the fate of al-Zobaidi’s map, after interrogating his own accounts, requires a thorough reading of the mainstream interpretations in the post-Oslo era on the political, cultural and artistic levels, not to mention the international rhetoric that accompanied the Palestinian individual and collective transformations infusing the grammar of humanism and world citizenship. While Palestinians witnessed the construction of a new attempt at a national political body in the form of the Palestinian Authority (PA) of 1994, the role of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) of 1968 became less clear and more controversial: from the one-state solution to two states, to the Palestinian state on part of the historic homeland. That is, while Palestinian political discourse since the establishment of the PLO was rhetorically a rights-based discourse, the establishment of the PA rendered this discourse dormant, and Palestine itself became a metaphor. Therefore, Palestinians created new modes of resistance and took new initiatives to emphasize their rights, gaining tremendous international attention, in particular through the ‘magical’ logic of humanism. This political process, often misleadingly descried as ‘peace process’, led to de-Palestinianizing the cause, which itself led to five devastating consequences.83 First, it transformed the national movement from an inclusive liberation movement into a deviant nationalism within an ‘authority’ without authority, serving as a proxy for its colonizers. Second, it altered the Palestinian imagined community by excluding three groups from the demographic make-up of Palestine: Palestinian Jews, Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinian refugees who are yet to enjoy their right of return based on UN Resolution 194.84 Third, it turned the nascent Palestinian civil society from being part of an anti-colonial national movement into a decolonization movement of compradors and mediators in a quasi-state condition. Fourth, it shifted the concern from preserving Palestinian collective memory by adopting politics of remembrance to 49

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implementing politics of amnesia. Fifth, it left the door wide open to political initiatives for solving the question of Palestine, such as ‘the state for all its citizens’, the ‘one-state solution’ and so forth. Mahmoud Darwish’s poetic locutions, whether poetry or prose, represent an indispensable passage for imagining such transformations at the intersection between poetics and politics. During the Israeli invasion of Palestinian towns at the peak of the al-Aqsa Intifada in 2002, Darwish wrote his documentary poem halat hisar [A State of Siege], succinctly encapsulating the Palestinian state of affairs.85 The poem does not claim to count victories, for in war no one wins, but, rather, the party that has experienced fewer losses is named ‘triumphant’, while the one with more losses is called ‘defeated’. Darwish never gave in to defeat but declared himself a Trojan poet, skilled in counting losses and celebrating rising from the ashes.86 He describes the Palestinian losses in succession in terms of people, houses and trees, followed by a structural loss in consciousness, taste and judgement as they appear in the poem, the play and the unfinished painting. The first set of losses has been heavily over-analysed in political terms and the events related to that era. However, the latter set of losses essentially went without notice. The subject matter of this chapter—that is, decoding the structural defect that has been afflicted upon the ‘unfinished painting’, constitutes a trope of ‘the unfinished national project’ of liberation that has been explored earlier. In the post-Oslo era, there has been a lasting gap between the different forms of transformations: while there has been a revival of the artistic representations of the historic map as a national icon within popular discourse, it is almost abandoned within the official discourse on the levels of the political programme and the emblematic presence of the map in the national icons and symbols. This disparity entails a transformation not only in the geography but also in the demography and the historiography of Palestine. Hence, the construction of the map and its new referential terrains adheres to the conventional political rhetoric of the Palestinian national movement that abandoned the historic map for a shrunken Oslo map. Meanwhile, the reconstruction of the map beyond the mainstream of the establishment took the form of transnational forms utilizing a cluster of heterotopias and heterochronias to keep the map alive. Considering the transformations of the map within the Palestinian political imagination reveals two dominant modes of imagining the map/ space: the geometrical space that ruled the political re-presentations of the map of the ‘new Palestine’, and the existential space that dominated the cultural re-presentations of the ‘new Palestinian reality’, not necessarily that of the ‘new Palestinian’, who seems to master nomadism not only as 50

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a rhetorical exercise but as a strategy of survival that has been rarely traversed. These two modes were not a matter of choice for either the establishment or the anti-establishment but were, rather, a special type of ‘loyalty’ on the part of each to their particular. Still, the map of Palestine invoked in the visual arts in the post-Oslo era in general and in al-Zobaidi works in particular, has witnessed dramatic shifts in terms of themes, techniques and aesthetics. On a thematic level, the rationale behind choosing the map as an artifact revolves around the central event in Palestinian memory—the Nakba of 1948, which claimed the land of the map, its people and, to a certain extent, its narrative. However, the centrality of the Nakba did not position itself as a singular historic event that occurred once and faded away but rather as an everlasting provocation within the national collective memory of all Palestinians. Therefore, deconstructing the events of the Nakba of 1948 and its representations on the ground and in artworks of al-Zobaidi was directed towards understanding and re-presenting the modes of ‘defeat’ that have been inflected on the ‘grand classics’ of the Palestinian identity: geography, demography and historiography. Such a reading would envision the Nakba as a dialectical means of fixation and negation of the Palestinian self through two projects that are contradictory and complementary at once: the project of the triumph of Zionist ‘interpretation’ and the project of defeat over the Palestinian ‘presence’, to use Edward Said’s prominent diagnosis in his earlier work, The Question of Palestine. On a technical level, most of the works of art that utilize the map of Palestine tend to use installation as a technique that represents a retreat from considering the map as a solid reference for Palestinian material and verbal rhetoric.87 Although al-Zobaidi’s Part-ition represents a unique case of nomadic art, there has been a harsh critique, not only for the use of the medium of installation by Palestinian artists but also for the institutional, cultural, artistic and spatial conditions in which these artists have manoeuvred in terms of using matter, medium and form. This triangle, according to some art critics, has been completely intertwined with a desolidified and fragmented cultural and political matrix that failed to undo the paradoxes within the Palestinian communal self.88 Such a failure has led art, artists and audiences into the maze of the emerging Palestinian subjectivity where ‘neo-Palestinian-ness’ claimed the scene. Such politics have led to a great deal of chaos in dealing with matter, medium and form in national, artistic and commercial treatment and commodification. No one denies the involvement of the establishment and the newly emerging cultural institutions in the post-Oslo era in forming, reforming and often deforming the original national discourse 51

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of liberation regarding the public sphere and its artefacts, for that is no exception in such a post-colonial condition. However, the protest and outcry is directed towards the ‘triumph’ of these agencies in winning the battle of defining the public sphere, empowered by the international agents and their neoliberal and ‘humanist’ grammar, the major milieu of the visual arts, and confining public aesthetics in such a narrow and reductionist manner. The aesthetics, or rather the poetics per se, of the artworks that have employed the map of Palestine show that these works leaned towards the idea of loss represented with a great deal of fragmentation, shrinking, burning and escaping from Paradise, to the extent of having Paradise itself escape and convert into a white void. While al-Zobaidi, in his exchange with Borges, bore witness to this new political reality of the ever-eclipsedPalestine and dismantled-Palestinian, he never gave up on the artistic distinction drawn between ‘paradise lost’, the ‘homeland’ and a possible ‘state on part of the homeland’ in which Palestinians, according to Darwish’s ‘humanized history’ have hope ‘[. . .] in a normal life where we are neither heroes nor victims’.89 However, it is clear that al-Zobaidi did understand that the dismantling of the Palestinian hero in the mainstream discourse of the political elite and the cultural gauche caviar contributed to the eclipsing of Palestine as a geography, a demography, and a historiography. When al-Zobaidi came to this realization—that this political culture did not only dismantle the military hero but rather dismantled the cause of heroism-Palestine as it was crafted in the Palestinian National Charter of 1968—he was not only an artist who employed the map but insisted on being its historian in both theory and practice. Hence, he did not surrender to the registrar of citizens in the new Palestine that needs no heroes, for it was no longer Palestine but rather ‘a Never-Palestine’ kind of geography that called upon a new nomadic cartography. This moment of resistance to the map annihilation was captured in Mahmoud Darwish’s poem Saqata al-qitar an al-kharita [At the Station of a Train Which Fell Off the Map], in which he invoked the map and its land in the same manner dealt with by al-Zobaidi—that is, the yearning for return in a moment of parting, to a country that has no map, for it is the map of itself—a nomadic map.90 Notes 1. See Sobhi al-Zobaidi, ‘Tora Bora cinema’, Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media 50 (2008), (accessed 12 January 2018); ‘Digital nomads: between homepages and homelands’, Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 2 (2009), pp. 293–314; ‘Memory, documentary and history’, in Issam Nassar and Rasha Salti (eds), I Would Have Smiled: Photographing the Palestinian Refugee Experience (Beirut: The Institute of Palestine Studies, 2009), pp. 101–11. See also Sobhi al-Zobaidi, My Very Private Map (Jerusalem: reFugee Camp Productions, 1998), (23 min.): sd., col.; 1/2 in. format(s), videocassette; Crossing Kalandia (Jerusalem: reFugee Camp Productions, 2002), (52 min.): sd., col.; 1/2 in. format(s), videocassette. 2. Al-Zobaidi: ‘Tora Bora cinema’. 3. William J. Rankin, After the Map: Cartography, Navigation, and the Transformation of Territory in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). 4. For further information, see: Rhoda Rosen, Mapping Dystopia: Maps, Museums and the Nation (Chicago, IL: University of Illinois, 2009; Ana P. Rull, Land Grant Painted Maps: Native Artists and the Power of Visual Persuasion in Colonial New Spain (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). 5. For extensive literature on the partitions resulting from the British colonial legacy, see: James R. Akerman (ed), Decolonizing the Map: Cartography from Colony to Nation (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2017); Sumantra Bose, Contested Lands: Israel-Palestine, Kashmir, Bosnia, Cyprus and Sri Lanka (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007); Esther Charlesworth and John Calame, Divided Cities: Belfast, Beirut, Jerusalem, Mostar, and Nicosia (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009); Joe Cleary, Literature, Partition and the Nation-State: Culture and Conflict in Ireland, Israel and Palestine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Ghislaine Glasson Deschaumes and Rada Iveković (eds), Divided Countries, Separated Cities: The Modern Legacy of Partition (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003); T.G. Fraser, Partition in Ireland, India, and Palestine: Theory and Practice (London: Macmillan, 1984). 6. Salim Tamari, ‘Shifting Ottoman conceptions of Palestine: Filistin Risalesi and the two Jamals—Part I’, Jerusalem Quarterly 47 (2011), pp. 28–38. 7. Tamari: ‘Shifting Ottoman conceptions of Palestine—Part I’, p. 29. 8. Salim Tamari, ‘Shifting Ottoman conceptions of Palestine: Filistin Risalesi and the two Jamals—Part II’, Jerusalem Quarterly 48 (2011), pp. 6–16. 9. Tamari: ‘Shifting Ottoman conceptions of Palestine—Part II’, p. 13. 10. Meron Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948, trans. Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000). See also Abdul-Rahim Al-Sahikh, ‘The Columbus syndrome and the veiling of Palestine: a genealogy of the Israeli politics of toponymy of the Palestinian landscape’ [in Arabic], Majallat al-Dirasaat al-Filistiniyyah [Journal of Palestine Studies] 21/83 (2010), pp. 78–109. 11. Benvenisti: Sacred Landscape, p. 44. 12. For further information, see ‘Resolution 181 (II). Future Government of Palestine’, (accessed 12 January 2018). 13. Edward Said, ‘Unresolved geographies, and embattled landscapes’, Annual Eqbal Ahmad Lecture, Alternative Radio, 17 September 1999, (accessed 12 January 2018). 53

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14. Edward Said, The Question of Palestine (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), pp. 9–10. 15. Edward Said, The Politics of Dispossession: The Struggle for Palestinian SelfDetermination, 1969–1994 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), p. 3. 16. Said: The Question of Palestine, p. 53. 17. ‘The Palestinian National Charter: Resolutions of the Palestine National Council July 1–17, 1968’, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School, (accessed 12 January 2018). 18. See Yasser Arafat, ‘The gun and the olive branch’, Yasser Arafat Foundation, (accessed 12 January 2018). 19. For further information, see Maher Al-Charif, Al-bahth ’an Kiyan: Dirasah fi Al-Fikr Al-Siyasi Al-Filistiny 1908–1993 [in Arabic] [The Search for an Entity: A Study in the Evolution of the Palestinian Political Thought 1908–1993] (Nicosia: Center for Socialist Research in the Arab World, 1995). 20. Faisal Hourani, ‘The Palestinian National Charter and its stature in the development of the Palestinian political thought’ [in Arabic], Sho’un Filistiniyyah [Palestinian Affairs] 97 (1997), pp. 9–32; Shafiq Al-Hout, ‘The impact of the Palestinian National Charter’s abrogation on the future of the Palestinian people and its cause’ [in Arabic], Majallat al-Dirasaat al-Filistiniyyah [Journal of Palestine Studies] 26 (1996), pp. 31–40; Faisal Hourani, ‘The Palestinian National Charter: the abrogation session—a special report’ [in Arabic], Majallat al-Dirasaat alFilistiniyyah [Journal of Palestine Studies] 26 (1996), pp. 50–62. For further information about the National Authority programme see Hind Khoury, ‘Between now and then: a more realistic view of Palestinian history and identity’, Palestine/ Israel Journal 22/23 (2017), pp. 59–63; Faisal Hourani, ‘What’s needed is a new Palestinian charter that takes into consideration the present and the needs of the future’ [in Arabic], Majallat al-Dirasaat al-Filistiniyyah [Journal of Palestine Studies] 26 (1996), pp. 41–9. 21. Said: ‘Unresolved geographies’. 22. Said: ‘Unresolved geographies’. 23. Said: ‘Unresolved geographies’. 24. Mahmoud Darwish, ‘An incurable malady: hope’, al-Ahram Weekly 280 (4–10 April 2002), (accessed 12 January 2018). 25. Darwish: ‘An incurable malady’. 26. Said: ‘Unresolved geographies’. 27. Edward Said, Peace and its Discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace Process (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), pp. 27–8. 28. Mahmoud Darwish, Diwan Mahmoud Darwish, II (Beirut: Dar al-‘Awdah, 1994), pp. 76–7. 29. Sobhi al-Zobaidi, Part-ition, Never Part Exhibition, Birzeit University Virtual Gallery, 2009, (accessed 12 January 2018). 30. In the Palestinian post-Oslo lexica ‘return’ does not have the same connotation as that in the 194 UN Resolution, granting the right of return for all the Palestinian 54

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refugees to their home. Mahmoud Darwish elaborated on the difference, asserting that ‘Ji’to wa lam ‘asil. Raja’to wa lam ‘aod’ [I came, but did not arrive. I re-turned, but did not return]. In addition, Darwish considered the only ‘true return’ to be to his hometown—to al-Birwah in Galilee, and not to the West Bank or Gaza, and the same is true for the six million Palestinian refugees in the diaspora. For more on this see Mahmoud Darwish, In the Presence of Absence [2006], trans. Sinan Anton (New York: Archipelago, 2011), p. 130 31. Charles Michel, ‘Introduction to the Never Part Exhibition’, 2008,

(accessed 12 January 2018). 32. Paul Dujardin, ‘Introduction to the Never Part Exhibition’, 2008. 33. For more information, visit the website of the Virtual Gallery at Birzeit University, (accessed 12 January 2018). 34. Saffina Rana, ‘The art of conflict: city-wide festival brings visions of life in Palestine to Brussels’, Flanders Today, 29 October 2008, p. 9, (accessed 12 January 2018). 35. ‘Never Part Exhibition’, 2008. 36. For more information on the Taswir exhibition, see Almut Sh. Bruckstein-Çoruh and Hendrik Budde (eds), TASWIR: Islamische Bildwelten und Moderne (Berlin: Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung GmbH, Berlin und Berliner Festspiele, 2009); Emma Gradin, Unveiling the Subject—Art Mediation and Representation (A Case Study on Taswir – Pictorial Mappings of Islam and Modernity) (Stockholm: Konstvetenskapliga Institutionen-Stockholms Universitet, 2010), (accessed 12 January 2018); and also visit the exhibition website, (accessed 12 January 2018). 37. Bruckstein-Çoruh and Budde (eds): TASWIR , pp. 11–12. 38. See ‘Taswir: pictorial mappings of Islam and modernity’. 39. Al-Zobaidi: Part-ition. 40. Al-Zobaidi: Part-ition. 41. Mahmoud Darwish, Mural [1999], trans. and intro. Rema Hammami and John Berger (London: Verso, 2009), p. 19. 42. Jorge Luis Borges, ‘On Exactitude in Science’, [1960] in Collected Fictions Jorge Luis Borges, trans. Andrew Hurley (London: Penguin Books, 1998), p. 325. 43. Lewis Carroll, The Annotated Hunting of the Snark [1876], ed. Martin Gardner, illus. Henry Holiday and others, intro. Adam Gopnik (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006). 44. Borges: ‘On Exactitude in Science’. 45. Al-Zobaidi: ‘Tora Bora cinema’. 46. Al-Zobaidi: ‘Tora Bora cinema’. 47. Gilles Deleuze, Dialogues II [1977], trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), p. 151. 55

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48. Edward Said, ‘Invention, memory, and place’, Critical Inquiry 26/2 (2000), pp. 175–92, p. 188; and see also: W.J.T Mitchell, ‘Holy landscape: Israel, Palestine, and the American wilderness’, Critical Inquiry 26/2 (2000): pp. 193–223. 49. Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image [1985], trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Caleta (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), p. 127. 50. Al-Zobaidi: ‘Tora Bora cinema’. 51. ‘Hollow Land’ is a concept coined by Eyal Weizman to describe Israel’s mechanisms of control and the transformation of Palestine into an artifice in which all natural landscape and built features serve as instruments of occupation and tools of control and domination. Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation (London: Verso, 2007). 52. Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory [1896], trans. N.M. Paul and W.S. Palmer (New York: Zone Books, 1991), p. 9. 53. Al-Zobaidi: ‘Tora Bora cinema’. 54. Nurith Gertz and George Khleifi, ‘Palestinian roadblock movies’, Geopolitics 10/2 (2005), pp. 316–34. 55. Al-Zobaidi: ‘Tora Bora cinema’. 56. Al-Zobaidi: ‘Tora Bora cinema’. See also Mahmoud Darwish, La Ta‘tather ’amma Fa‘alt [Don’t Apologize for What You’ve Done] (Beirut: Riad El-Rayyes Books, 2004), p. 85. 57. Al-Zobaidi: ‘Tora Bora cinema’. See also Hamid Dabashi (ed), Dreams of a Nation, with a Preface by Edward Said (London: Verso, 2005), p. 18. 58. Sobhi al-Zobaidi: ‘Digital nomads: between homepages and homelands’, Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 2 (2009), pp. 293–314 59. Mitchell: ‘Holy landscape’, p. 213. 60. Frederic Jameson, ‘The end of temporality’, Critical Inquiry 29/4 (2003), pp. 695–718, p. 698. 61. Al-Zobaidi: ‘Digital nomads’, p. 299. 62. Al-Zobaidi: ‘Digital nomads’, p. 297; See also Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1966). 63. Al-Zobaidi: ‘Digital nomads’, p. 297 64. Bergson: Matter and Memory, p. 237. 65. Deleuze: Dialogues II , p. 150. 66. Al-Zobaidi: ‘Digital nomads’, p. 299. 67. Walter Benjamin, Illuminations [1940], trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968). 68. Benjamin: Illuminations, pp. 260–1. 69. Al-Zobaidi: ‘Digital nomads’, p. 302. 70. Hussein al-Barghouthi, Al-Dhaw’ al-’azraq [The Blue Light] [2002], trans. AbdulRahim Al-Shaikh (Beirut: Arab Institute of Reserch and Paublishing, 2004), p. 85. 71. Edward Said, After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives, photographs by Jean Mohr (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986), p. 5. 56

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72. Al-Zobaidi: ‘Digital nomads’, p. 305. 73. Al-Zobaidi: ‘Digital nomads’, p. 305. See also Gilles Deleuze and Gilles and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia [1972], trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1987). 74. Al-Zobaidi: ‘Digital nomads’, p. 307. See also Ian Buchanan, ‘Deleuze and the internet’, Australian Humanities Review 43 (2007), pp. 1–19. 75. Al-Zobaidi: ‘Digital nomads’, p. 312. 76. For more information on intercultural cinema, see Laura Marks, The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000). 77. Al-Zobaidi: ‘Memory, documentary and history’. 78. Al-Zobaidi: ‘Memory, documentary and history’, p. 113. 79. Al-Zobaidi: ‘Memory, documentary and history’, p. 101. See also Edward Said’s preface to Dabashi: Dreams of a Nation, p. 18. 80. Mahmoud Darwish, Tadhiqo bina al-Ardh [Earth Presses Against Us] [1986], in Unfortunately It Was Paradise, Selected Poems, trans. and ed. Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché with Sinan Antoon and Amira El-Zein (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003), p. 9. 81. Omnia El Shakry, ‘Remembrance of things present, longing for things future: review of Sobhi al-Zobaidi, Crossing Kalandia’, American Anthropologist 106/1 (2004), pp. 152–3. 82. Examples of the paradigm shift in Palestine studies towards settler colonial and indigenous studies include, for example, Elias Khoury, ‘Defeat and the ongoing Nakba’ [in Arabic], Majallat al-Dirasaat al-Filistiniyyah [Journal of Palestine Studies] 111 (2017), pp. 22–30; ‘The ongoing Nakba’ [in Arabic], Majallat al-Dirasaat al-Filistiniyyah [Journal of Palestine Studies] 89 (2012), pp. 37–50; and ‘The question of the Nakba: the struggle between presence and interpretation/Edward Said and the question of Palestine’ [in Arabic], al-Karmel 82 (2005), pp. 46–55. 83. I coined the term ‘tunnel condition’ to describe these transformations explaining the state of affairs of the post-colony condition in Palestine in the post-Oslo era. This condition is not pre-colonial, colonial or post-colonial, but rather a ‘tunnel condition’ that seems to have acquired the evils of all three. For further details, see Abdul-Rahim Al-Shaikh, ‘Palestine: the tunnel condition’, Contemporary Arab Affairs 3/4 (2010), pp. 480–94. 84. See https://www.unrwa.org/content/resolution-194. 85. Mahmoud Darwish, The Latest Works (Beirut: Riad El-Rayyes Books, 2004), p. 206. 86. Abdul-Rahim Al-Shaikh, ‘The political Darwish: in defense of little differences’, Journal of Arabic Literature 48 (2017), pp. 93–122. 87. Abdul-Rahim Al-Shaikh, ‘Deconstructing installation: the transformations of the Palestinian national map in the Palestinian visual artifact’, Tabayyun—The Arab Journal for Intellectual and Cultural Studies [in Arabic] 5 (2013), pp. 123–54. 88. Esmail Nashif, ‘Images of the Fragmented’, in Mahmoud Abu-Hashhash and Nicola Gray (eds), Transitions: The Young Artist of the Year 2006—The Hassan Hourani Award (Ramallah: A.M. Qattan Foundation, 2008), pp. 24–31. 57

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89. Darwish: ‘An incurable malady’. 90. Mahmoud Darwish, I Don’t Want This Poem to End—The Last Collection of Poems (Beirut: Riad El-Rayyes Books, 2009), pp. 25–34. A full English translation of the poem, by Sinan Antoon, is available at (accessed 12 January 2018).

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CHAPTER 2 LAUGHTER ‘IN BETWEEN’ TIME Temporality, Iconography, and the Burden of Proof in Palestinian Art after Oslo Chrisoula Lionis

In this age of accelerated globalization and intensified international mobility, many of us find ourselves occupying spaces between ‘here’ and ‘there’. For those who are fortunate enough to hold the right passport, these liminal spaces are typically associated with airport transit lounges. For others, born in particular places and to particular parents, these spaces take on a different permanence as ‘host’ countries, camps and detention facilities. And yet, a familiar social experience cuts across the chasm that separates these spaces, wherein when one happens to come across a stranger who calls the same place home, one of the first things they do is share a joke about where it is that they are from. It is in these, often brief, exchanges that we perform a clear litmus test of our identities, indicating to others not only our social openness towards them but also, perhaps more importantly, our possession of shared cultural information and collective identity. Humour thus serves to rapidly draw a line of connection between people who are otherwise strangers, forging a swift sense of intimacy grounded by a sense of a common understanding of the world. Laughter shared between those compatriots can therefore be understood as akin to sharing a code of cultural distinctiveness. Philosopher Simon Critchley poignantly describes exchanges of this sort, writing that ‘we wear our cultural distinctiveness like an insulation layer against the surrounding alien environment. It warms us up when all else is cold and unfamiliar’.1 Critchley’s observation sparks an even deeper and more particular question: What, then, is the capacity for laughter of people such as the Palestinians, who face an experience described with that heaviest of words—exile? Which is also to say, what does humour achieve in the face of generations of dispossession, refugeedom and the experience of collective trauma? Humour and temporality

Theories of humour have long suggested a connection between the experiences of ambivalence and anxiety alongside that of laughter. Within 59

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this framework of humour, laughter is generated through a perceived incongruity, wherein a text is found to be both attractive and repulsive. These concurrent responses build a tension that is argued to be relieved through laughter.2 This form of ambivalence underwrites the humour of the aptly named work Laughter (2014) by Gaza born artist Taysir Batniji. Contextualized in the gallery space as being a work by a Palestinian artist, Laughter (Fig. 2.1) encourages a first impression of being a piece of traditional Palestinian embroidery. Measuring over a metre in length and featuring a deep red coil reminiscent of an arabesque pattern, the work is as equally aesthetically gratifying as it is menacing (i.e. are those, in fact, red curls or is it a jagged edge?). Surrounded in exhibition by Batniji’s other largely lens-based works, the piece seems an anomaly for its adherence to folk representations of Palestinian culture. At least, this would be the typical response for non-Arabic-speaking audiences, who are, in effect, initially locked out of the laughter in the work. For an Arabic reader, the coil of embroidery would immediately be recognisable as repetition of the Arabic letter ‘‫( ’ﻩ‬pronounced ‘ha’) thus, when translated, creating a text that reads ‘hahahahaha’. Synonymous with virtual responses of laughter on social media and instant message services, this record of laughter signifies contemporary, transnational, mobile and immediate forms of cultural production and expression. In so doing, the work brings together two demotic forms of cultural output typically left out of the high art circuit: craft/folk traditions and everyday forms of online humour. Drawing a line between those who can and those who cannot literally ‘read’ the work, laughter in response to the

Figure 2.1 Taysir Batniji, Laughter, 2014, embroidery on fabric, 135 × 33 cm. Reproduced courtesy of Taysir Batniji and Sfeir Semler Gallery. 60

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piece comes in accordance to familiarity with the codes and signifiers it plays with; that is to say, both Arabic language and Palestinian craft traditions. Significantly, Laughter operates not only through linguistic ambivalence but also ambivalence centred on issues of temporality. Offering a gentle mimicry of Palestinian craft and perhaps even parodying the reverie toward Palestinian folk traditions, Laughter signifies a collision between temporalities, with ‘timelessness’ on the one hand (folk traditions), and contemporaneity on the other (viral instant forms of communication). This is of particular importance given the fact that, historically, scholarship on Palestinian cultural production was dominated by an emphasis upon folk traditions (particularly food and crafts like embroidery), the result being that they hold the lion’s share of substantial published research produced over previous decades. Though my intention here is in no way to denigrate the importance of these traditions and their scholarly analysis, I am wary of the political problems that may spring from such an emphasis. Namely, the notion that Palestinian culture is ancient and/or static, and the ways in which emphasis on folk traditions may suggest an attempt to return to an irretrievable past. Literally layering the transnational, mobile and contemporary over forms perceived as fixed, traditional and folkloric, Laughter finds its power in its ability to capture a sense of what is arguably a unique Palestinian experience of ‘in-between’ time. To unpack this, it is necessary to understand that issues of temporality rest at the heart of the Israel/ Palestine conflict. Both in theoretical and in practical political terms, time is as equally at the core of Palestinian resistance as it is of Israeli domination. In the most obvious sense, this is clear in the ways both Israelis and Palestinians harness claims of indigeneity and a ‘timeless’ connection to the landscape of the Holy Land as a means of verifying their right to the land. For Palestinians, with the experience of ongoing exile and the continued denial of the right of return, time is understood as forming around the temporal chasm of the Nakba. Within this gap, life exists on borrowed time between a homeland that was and one that is in the making; an experience that sociologist Rosemary Sayigh described as depriving Palestinians of the ability to ‘live’ time.3 This unique temporal relationship is described poignantly by political scientist Amal Jamal, who points out that prominent Palestinian thinkers (namely Mourid Barghouti, Edward Said and Mahmoud Darwish) have each stated that ‘permanent temporariness’ is a state that characterizes Palestinian life. Striking to the heart of this, the national poet of Palestine Mahmoud Darwish asked ‘Are you what you were, or what you are now?’4 Here, Darwish critiques a Palestinian cultural emphasis on life ‘before’ the 61

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occupation of historical Palestine. This process of fixation on a life ‘before’ is, of course, not unique to Palestinians. As a people subject to colonial violence, Palestinians have arguably been engaged with what Franz Fanon described as a ‘special battlefield’, wherein the search for a national past before colonization is a process of personal and collective rehabilitation that looks towards a period before the misery of the present as a means of rising against ‘self-contempt, subjection and abjuration’.5 Whilst Fanon’s statement may ring true across diverse colonial experiences, it perhaps holds a particular valence for a people whose land was not only occupied but whose existence has also been systematically denied: a situation that was politically and materially the case for Palestinians. This is evident, for example, not only in well-known Zionist catch-cries such as ‘a land without people, for a people without land’ or comments by Israeli political heroes such as Golda Meir, who famously claimed that Palestinians ‘did not exist’, but in ongoing illegal settlements and systematic attempts at erasure of Palestinian presence in the landscape through programmes of the Jewish National Fund.6 Against the weight of this, Palestinians have been put into a position where they have had to continually literally and symbolically ‘prove’ not only their connection to the land but also, in fact, their very existence. Edward Said taps directly into the incessant anxiety produced by such a burden by explaining that, for Palestinians, there seems to be a belief that ‘the moment you stop telling the story, the whole thing will just disappear’.7 The denial of Palestinian history and culture (and the proliferation of stereotypes) is also amplified by a fragmented understanding of the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict. This fragmented understanding of history is described arrestingly by author Ghadi Karmi, who explains that the conflict is typically presented as a series of news sound bites that do not allow a listener to hear the story from the beginning; that is to say, from the Nakba.8 In the case of art history, this return to the beginning forms the impetus behind serious historical re-evaluations of Palestinian art published over the last decade. Prior to the seminal work of artist and art historian Kamal Boullata, discourse frequently accepted the view that Palestinian art only emerged following Al-Nakba.9 The inherent problem with this stance is twofold and extends beyond mere historical inaccuracy. Firstly, it suggests that forms of cultural modernity did not exist amongst the Arab population of historical Palestine, re-enforcing a view that only with Zionist influence did Palestinians embrace modernity. Secondly, this claim overlooks forms of Palestinian nationalism evident in art before 1948, thus strengthening propagandistic claims that Palestinian national identity emerged only after the foundation of Israel.10 62

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That having been said and, although cultural production, modernist aesthetics and nationalist discourse is clearly evident in art prior to 1948, the humour of contemporary Palestinian art centres on iconography established in the wake of the occupation of historical Palestine. Only with an understanding of how the iconography of Palestinian art was established, and the ways in which it reflects changes in Palestinian collective identity, is an art audience provided with the possibility of accessing the humour that characterizes much of contemporary Palestinian art. In other words, only with an understanding of Palestinian history are audiences capable of breaking through the line of humour that demarcates ‘insiders’ from ‘outsiders’. Iconographies of ‘Palestinianness’ and ‘Palestinianism’

Recent chronologies of Palestinian art typically rest upon key historical moments from the last century. These moments, which I have elsewhere described as ‘critical junctions’, each spurred a significant shift in Palestinian identity and, in turn, cultural output.11 These junctions are the Balfour Declaration, the Nakba, the Battle of Karamah, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the Oslo Accords. Of these five junctions, it is those of Al Nakba and Al-Karamah that are most acutely responsible for ushering in new forms of Palestinian collective identity and nationalist iconography. To illustrate the significance of the junctions, we might consider how depictions of Palestinians, some of the most misrepresented people on earth, are typically divided into two dichotomous groups: suffering refugees and violent militants. Despite the obvious deficiencies of these stereotypes, the Palestinian agency integral to these characterizations and the role of art in their proliferation is rather surprising. The first of these characterizations—that of refugee—came, not surprisingly, as a result of the Nakba. Responsible for the exile of 80 per cent of the Arab population of historical Palestine (approximately one million people), the Nakba meant that the experience of refugeedom became the defining experience of Palestinians across social orders. Those who managed to stay in the newly formed Israel became subject to a continuing legislative campaign of discrimination that provided a constitutional base for the depopulation of Palestinian land.12 Palestinians displaced outside Israel to neighbouring ‘host’ nations (approximately 800,000) found themselves facing legislative forms of discrimination while, at the same time, their host governments fought for who would politically ‘represent’ the Palestinians. Void of political self-representation, treated as foreigners and referred to too often as the ‘refugee problem’, 63

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Palestinians were faced with what historian Rashid Khalidi describes as an ‘existential test’ of whether they would remain together as a united people. Ironically, as Israel transposed a new form of Jewish national identity over the Holy Land engaging in systematic ‘memoricide’, the Nakba re-ordered Palestinian social relations to such an extent that it created, as Khalidi notes, a tabula rasa for the re-establishment of Palestinian identity.13 This tabula rasa necessitated a visual expression of collective Palestinian identity: a task picked up primarily by artists working and living in exile in Beirut. For numerous economic, political and cultural reasons elucidated upon with great care by Kamal Boullata, art production in the city flourished, meaning that for a time (until the Lebanese civil war) Beirut became a ‘surrogate’ political cultural Palestinian capital.14 Cultural production in this period established an iconography of ‘Palestinianness’ centred on a nostalgic view of both land and life in historical Palestine and a representation of the traumatic experience of exile. Consisting primarily of popular folk metaphors (peasantry, olive trees, citrus fruit, woman as embodiment of the landscape), this iconography operated as a counter memory to the Israeli national project. Although this iconography bolstered a sense of sumud (steadfastness in the face of adversity) by suggesting a unifying unbreakable bond to the land of Palestine, it also re-enforced a collective identity hinged on the most dehumanizing experience of Palestinian history, that of refugeedom. For the generation that followed those who experienced the Nakba, there was a political and psychological urgency to establishing an identity and ideological framework that transcended both the trauma and humiliation of occupation. For the generation of the revolution (the jeel al-thawra), this meant harnessing a transition from ‘Palestinianness’ to ‘Palestinianism’.15 Although it remains difficult to pinpoint the beginning of the revolution historically, it is generally understood to have taken place between 1965 and 1968, springing from the thirst for political selfrepresentation within the pan-Arab movement, resistance to Israeli occupation and a revolt against social and economic oppression enforced by ‘host’ nations. In art historical terms, however, it is the Battle of AlKaramah that signals a transition into revolutionary aesthetics. On the spectrum of battles and operations that make up the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict, the March 1968 Battle of Al-Karamah (formally named by the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, as ‘Operation Inferno’) caused relatively few casualties and is often entirely overlooked in historical accounts of the conflict. Taking place after the defeat of the June/Six-Day War, the battle occurred along the Jordan River, where Fatah had established guerrilla bases for the infiltration of the West Bank. 64

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The significance of the battle rests in the fact that Fatah’s fedayeen engaged Israeli forces despite knowing that to do so would mean certain suicide.16 Notwithstanding the fact that Palestinians (and the Jordanians who fought alongside them) were completely outnumbered by personnel and Israeli weaponry at Karamah it was, in fact, the Israelis who were forced to withdraw after suffering more casualties than they had anticipated. Heralded as a victory throughout the Arab world, stories of the fedayeen’s heroism spread quickly and radically shifted the Palestinian role ‘from potential politicization into political action’, ushering in a period of Palestinian political agency anchored in militancy.17 The success of Karamah was to build a new national identity which recovered the mythology and narrative of resistance, inclusive of the Arab revolts of 1936–39. Consequently, Palestinians began to see themselves as people who have always struggled against occupation and oppression and, as a result, Palestinians of all social orders began to take part in national politics and resistance.18 Almost immediately after Karamah, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) began a systematic deployment of art and film as a means of advancing revolutionary identity and ideology. With an emphasis on the reproduction of images as political posters, works by artists (notably Ismail Shammout and Sliman Mansour) became fixtures in Palestinian homes and workplaces around the world. Establishing an iconography fixed on revolutionary motifs, including the figure of the freedom fighter, the keffiyeh, and the Palestinian flag, this jeel-al-thawra established iconography of ‘Palestinianism’ that is today still clearly visible in demotic forms of cultural production such as political posters, street art and graffiti. Where the critical junctions of the Nakba and Al-Karamah can be understood as being responsible for creating the visual lexicon of collective identity, it is the final junction—that of Oslo, the official start of the socalled peace process—that sees a marked influx of humour in cultural output. This turning point can in one sense be understood as signalling a total abandonment of ‘Palestinianism’. In Chapter 1 of this collection, Abdul-Rahim Al-Shaikh effectively demonstrates how the loss of ‘Palestinianism’ reflects what he describes as a ‘Palestinian Orientalism’, where the post-1967 political agenda of striving toward a secular democratic state in all of Palestine was replaced in favour of a Palestinian National Authority programme. Hinging on the abandonment of all other previous resolutions, far from establishing an end to the conflict, the Declaration of Principles (commonly referred to as the Oslo Accords) placed Palestinians in what is arguably the worst period in their history. A set of agreements rather than binding resolutions, the Accords (first in 1993 and later in 1995) failed to address Israeli settlements, Palestinian 65

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land confiscation and the right of return. Further still, responsible for the division of Palestinian land into areas A, B and C, the Oslo Accords in effect laid the groundwork for the Bantustanism that currently prevails in the Territories.19 Put simply, the ‘temporary’ measures agreed upon as a means of establishing a Palestinian state have gone from the original agreement of a few years to the better part of three decades. Humour in-between time

It is for these reasons that Oslo is often referred to as a tragic joke. For our purposes here it is useful to think through this comparison a little more deeply. To do so, we should consider what humorologists commonly describe as ‘incongruity theory’. The incongruity theory of humour suggests that laughter comes as a result of a defiance of our expectations. Take, for example, the structure of jokes most are familiar with, where a long meandering story is told, leading to what we call a punch line. The punch line marks the moment where our expectations are fractured, and as a result we laugh. It would seem that Oslo was a punch line for Palestine, the end of a long narrative of resistance, national construction and political turmoil; the moment the world expected would bring about peace in the region. Instead, Oslo delivered to the Palestinians a cruel punch line, one that denied expectations and hopes, reshaping identity and leaving them to live in a perpetual waiting period. Given the clear failure of Oslo, we might ask ourselves what good actually came from the Declaration of Principles? In the domain of art, in practical terms, Oslo heralded a new era of foreign investment in Palestine (albeit problematically tied to non-governmental organization (NGO) influence), allowing for increased cultural funding and international projects, education opportunities, and art events.20 Perhaps far more significantly, though, Oslo marked a moment when the world, however problematically, viewed footage of Arafat and Rabin shaking hands as a concrete validation of a Palestinian claim over the land and, by proxy, a resounding acceptance of Palestinians as a distinct cultural and national group. This has, in effect, provided the space for cultural practitioners to problematize nationalist discourse and critically engage with both the politics and aesthetics of ‘Palestinianness’ and ‘Palestinianism’. This space for critical engagement has been amplified by a steady decline in nationalist politics. In the years since the Accords, the power of the Palestinian Authority has become increasingly appreciated internationally as anaemic, being deliberately placed in the hopeless position of essentially managing its own civilians in the service of Israel’s 66

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occupation. There are clear signs that we are teetering on the edge of shifting the status quo generated by the Declaration of Principles (for example, Palestine’s non-member observer status at the United Nations and admission as a full member of UNESCO—the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). Patience has indeed worn thin for, around the world, Oslo is being understood as providing the cannon fodder for the Israeli political strategy of staging Palestine as both ‘temporarily occupied’ and the eternal ‘Jewish homeland’, creating a situation where Palestinians are ‘governed as though temporary human beings’.21 Put differently, therefore, Oslo is now clearly understood as creating—in both geographical and temporal terms—a ‘temporary’ Palestine that, in effect, systematically denies Palestinians their futurity. The issue of denied future is evident across the broad spectrum of contemporary Palestinian art. As is made clear by Ihab Saloul’s contribution to this volume in Chapter 9 (specifically in his discussion of postmemory and the ‘catastrophized subject’), ongoing Nakba-ization means that, in spite of the diversity of Palestinian geographical and generational lived experience, exile remains a defining feature of Palestinian identity. Thus, although the lived impact varies depending on place of residence and passport/ID, the denial of futurity ultimately cuts across all Palestinian life, whether in the Occupied Territories, Israel, Europe or elsewhere. In art practice, this denial of futurity is a feature particularly prominent in the work of London-based artist Larissa Sansour, whose multidisciplinary practice operates in a blurry space between utopian and dystopian views of Palestine’s future. Notable for the engagement of humour noir as a means of providing an evaluation of Palestinian collective identity and the ongoing pertinence of nationalist signifiers, Sansour’s work frequently engages a trope that envisions Palestine as a space of permanent and ongoing occupation. This is clear in the artist’s 2009 work, A Space Exodus.22 Exhibiting Sansour’s characteristic conflation of popular culture references and the aesthetics of science fiction cinema, the five-minute video work takes the audience on a journey through space with the artist as she becomes the first Palestinian to land on the moon. The work begins with Sansour attempting to make contact with her base in Jerusalem whilst saying, ‘Jerusalem, we have a problem’, followed closely by ‘no, we are on track’. No sooner does the astronaut explain this and lose contact with ‘home’ than she finally arrives on the moon. Featuring her landing on the surface of the moon against the recognizable score of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (altered with arabesque chords), with a suit consisting of boots with upturned toes and emblazoned with both the Palestinian flag and traditional (fellahi) embroidery, this moment 67

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generates both an expression of political empowerment, and humour through an incongruity between putting together a reference to icons of Western pop culture (namely the score of A Space Odyssey) alongside signifiers of Palestinian culture (fellahi embroidery and the Palestinian flag). However, feelings of levity are quickly rendered ambiguous the moment the astronaut plants the Palestinian flag on the moon and proclaims that ‘that is one small step for Palestinians, one giant leap for mankind’. It is in the moment of this proclamation that the image of flag planting on the moon—a symbol of political empowerment—becomes transformed into a reality of despair and political disillusionment. Here, Sansour conveys the notion that ‘victory’ for Palestine and for humankind more broadly entails a complete divorce not only from the Holy Land but also from Planet Earth itself. The work thus calls attention to the ongoing denial of the right to return, continuing land confiscation, and the collective impact of exile. However, it does so whilst also drawing on the personal history and current situation facing Sansour who, although born in Jerusalem, is, at the time of writing, prevented from visiting and is thus left with only memories of the city.23 This is but one example of how Sansour, who often features in her own works, collapses personal and collective understandings and experiences of Palestine in her practice. Another way that the artist achieves this is by deliberately calling upon the iconography of a gynomorphic landscape, where the land of Palestine is transformed into a nurturing woman. Where in the past this gynomorphic motif (for example, in the work of artists like Ismail Shammout and Sliman Mansour) clearly linked the body of woman/Palestine to the land itself, Sansour provides a dystopian and geographically dislocated body. This is clear in the video and photographic work Nation Estate (2012).24 Again featuring the artist (and with cameos from her siblings), the work relegates Palestine to a giant skyscraper that holds most Palestinian cities and political and religious landmarks. Presenting a future where Palestinian dispossession and land confiscation continues, Nation Estate (Fig. 2.2) presents a vision where ‘Palestine’ is relegated to being a giant skyscraper. Surrounded by the ‘real’ Jerusalem and placed on the Haram Al-Sharif/Temple Mount, the skyscraper resembles part airport, part government building and part virtual theme park. Drawing attention simultaneously to stalled peace negotiations and acceleration of Israeli military control, as well as making a comparison between housing estates and Palestinian refugee camps where the density of living necessitates that generation after generation build on top of each other (upwards rather than outwards), Nation Estate in effect accelerates 68

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Figure 2.2 Larissa Sansour, Nation Estate—Olive Tree, 2012, C-print, 75 × 150 cm. Reproduced courtesy of Larissa Sansour.

the modes and processes of contemporary occupation. With cities and landmarks each taking a separate floor, connected by an elevator that operates as a conduit between spaces in ‘Palestine’, the work also provides a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the NGO-ization and neoliberal transformations in Palestine post-Oslo.25 Sansour explains that, for her, the employment of science fiction is an ideal tool ‘in the face of such acceleration [of occupation] and direct confrontation with an abject reality’.26 Despite its terrifying view of the future, the ‘acceleration’ of the occupation represented in the work generates equal parts despair and humour. To understand how it achieves this, it is useful to return to Simon Critchley’s analysis of humour and temporality. Critchley argues that humour is produced by ‘the disjunction between duration and the instant, where we experience with renewed intensity both the slow passing of time and its sheer evanescence’.27 The work thus produces a kind of humour that operates as a temporal ‘snap’, collapsing the space between the past, present, and future. This snap is most evident in the appearance and appropriation of the now highly politicized and heavily reproduced 1936 Visit Palestine poster by artist Franz Kraus. The original poster, published by the Tourist Development Association of Palestine, depicts an idealized Jerusalem replete with urban dwellings, lush greenery and the most recognizable of Jerusalem landmarks – the Dome of the Rock. Part of what is known as the ‘recruit Zion’ genre, the poster was produced as a means of encouraging 69

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the migration and support of Jews prior to the foundation of Israel. In previous decades, however, the poster was heavily reproduced by Palestinians and is frequently found in Palestinian homes and workplaces around the world. The reason for this is that the poster makes clear the historical development of Israeli nationalist mythologies of Jerusalem as an eternal Jewish capital. On an obvious level it does this by featuring the Dome of the Rock (sacred for Muslims) and, by proxy, Jerusalem as belonging to Palestine rather than to Israel. However, considered further, this has the effect of complicating both ethnic and nationalist claims over historical Palestine, making clear the ways in which the region accommodated diverse cultural groups including Arabs, Jews, Ottomans and new immigrants from Europe. In Sansour’s rendition of the poster, the Dome of the Rock has been replaced by the nation estate skyscraper and the words ‘visit Palestine’ removed in favour of the darkly humorous ‘Nation Estate: Living the High Life’. Where Sansour’s poster encourages us to visit Palestine (or what is left of it in the future), artist, designer, and filmmaker Amer Shomali’s appropriation of Kraus’ poster invites the viewer to visit Palestine in the present. It does this through the inclusion of the Wall. Stretching for more than 700 km and isolating Palestinian cities, towns and villages, the Wall is described (depending on one’s political position) by a plethora of names, including the Separation Barrier/Security Fence/ Apartheid Wall. Allegedly built by Israel to provide security against the threat of terrorism, the Wall has become synonymous with the occupation for the ways it prevents Palestinian movement and for its instrumentalization as a tool for annexation of Palestinian land inside the occupied West Bank. Appropriating the poster to include the Wall, Shomali’s Post-Visit Palestine (2009) thus makes clear not only the incongruity of nostalgic associations to Palestine for those in exile but also the impossibility of reaching ‘Palestine’ (as represented by Jerusalem) for those in the Occupied Territories. Shomali and Sansour both employ humour as a means of asking a politically existential question: namely, if the geography of Palestine disappears and its landmarks become inaccessible, then where or what is Palestine? This approach is also mirrored in the work No News from Palestine (2007) by Ramallah-based artist Khaled Hourani. Essentially consisting of a series of unwritten postcards, all without stamps and each labelled ‘Post Card Palestine’, No News from Palestine functions by emphasizing the fact that the fame of the Occupied Territories comes as a result of their frequent appearance as a topic of news coverage around the world. However, rather than narrate news of political unrest or Palestinian resistance or victimhood brought about as a result of Israeli brutality, the 70

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postcards of No News from Palestine appear to report no news whatsoever. Instead, they merely list the location of each postcard’s accompanying photograph and the date. Not only do the postcards lack depictions of scenes of political unrest but they also fail to feature any of the notable places or landmarks typically associated with Palestine. Most of the photographs within the postcard series are from Ramallah, yet they do not feature the city’s well-known landmarks of Al-Manara Square, Arafat’s Tomb, the Palestinian Authority (PA) headquarters or Arafat Square. Instead we find a pastry display from a bakery, an assortment of glassware from a restaurant, people going about their everyday business and parked taxis. In one sense, then, No News from Palestine might be argued to actually represent ‘news’ from Palestine; however, this news is that of the banal and everyday. Stripping Palestine of sensationalism, glorification and nostalgia, No News from Palestine operates with a humour that ‘defamiliarizes the familiar’.28 One of the greatest potentials of humour is said to be its ability to ask us to take stock of our assumptions by turning them on their head. This is because humour is capable of making surreal and strange the facts, situations and behaviours we take for granted and perceive as normal. No News from Palestine, however, takes the humour of defamiliarization to a second stage of progression by asking us to appreciate that the representation of the ‘real’ Palestine is already defamiliarized. Harnessing a deliberate political opacity, No News from Palestine highlights the multiple dimensions of impossibility for ‘accessing’ Palestine, whether for those living in exile, Palestinians in the West Bank, or for those around the world whose perceptions of Palestine are clouded by religious and political imaginings of the Holy Land. Where the impossibility of reaching Palestine is represented metaphorically in the works of Sansour, Shomali and Hourani, this is a task taken up quite literally in the work Sexy Semite by Emily Jacir. Laughter as return to ‘ethnos’

Between 2000 and 2002 a peculiar set of personal advertisements appeared in the Village Voice newspaper. These all seemed to have been placed by Palestinians seeking romantic liaisons with Jewish readers. Often appearing alongside each other, these advertisements ran along similar lines, with each seeking a Jewish reader willing to possibly marry a Palestinian and thereby facilitate a return to the homeland using the Israeli Law of Return. After two years these advertisements were picked up by the media as being suspicious, and with the failure of the Village Voice to make contact with 71

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the individuals who placed the personals, some media outlets went so far as to speculate that they were part of a Palestinian terrorist plot.29 Far from terrorist activity, the advertisements were, in fact, a relational artwork named Sexy Semite by Emily Jacir. The artist created the work by commissioning 60 Palestinian participants to place these advertisements with two simple guidelines: firstly that each advertisement should reference the Palestinian right to return, and secondly that they should use the word ‘semite’, thereby undermining the association of the term as pertaining only to Jews. One advertisement, for example, reads: ‘Palestinian Semite in search of Jewish soul mate. Do you love milk & honey? I’m ready to start a big family in Israel. Still have house keys. Waiting for you.’ Initially appearing as innocent adverts, the texts take on a different character when installed in an exhibition or when featured in international art publications. In these contexts, they are stripped of their ambiguity and revealed as a distilled tongue-in-cheek commentary on the continued denial of the right of return. Contextualized by the gallery space, each advertisement appears as though a parody of genuine newspaper personals. It does this by drawing from acronyms characteristic of personals, including LTR (long-term relationship) or SKG (seeking), and clichéd personality descriptors such as enjoying walks on the beach, enjoying sunsets, etc. These clichés are also set alongside stereotypes of Palestine and Israel in each advert, including suggestions that applicants enjoy olives, falafel, the land of milk and honey and the like. More than that, however, the adverts were also loaded with references more particular to Palestinian nationalist signifiers. These included references to citrus fruit, the mention of house keys and a description of the city of Acre with the Palestinian name of Akka rather than the Israeli Akko. The inclusion of these national signifiers in the work makes the initial advertisements in the Village Voice instantly recognizable to particular readers as a humorous act of multifaceted political subversion. This includes the subversion of the intended purpose of these personal advertisements and extends to an undermining of Israeli political claims of ownership and historical connection to the land and denial of the Palestinian right to return. Interestingly, the humour of these advertisements might also be appreciated not only by those sympathetic to the Palestinian ‘cause’ or those familiar with Palestinian history and nationalist signifiers but also the very groups ‘targeted’ by these advertisements. Which is to say that where a ‘general’ readership may remain oblivious to the political impetus and national signifiers harnessed in the advertisements, recognition comes from both Palestinians (and their supporters) and those who are, in effect, the ‘butt of the joke’: 72

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Israelis, Zionists, and Jewish readers unsympathetic to Palestinian claims over the land and their right of return. The difference in this instance is an appreciation of content as humorous or dangerous and offensive. For Palestinians (and to a certain extent for those who stand in solidarity with them), laughter precedes the context of the gallery because these banal objects are immediately understood as cultural signifiers and therefore do not require framing devices or contextualization. The immediacy of understanding of the humour within each artwork reinforces Simon Critchley’s assertion that ‘having a common sense of humour is like sharing a secret code’.30 Put differently, although we might appreciate that having a sense of humour is a universal human trait, humour is undoubtedly context specific and, importantly, it serves as a form of cultural insider knowledge.31 Understanding this, Sexy Semite is marked by a humour that reinforces a sense of collective identity and is, as Critchley argues, an indication of laughter’s ability to return individuals to a circumscribed ‘ethos’ and ‘ethnos’. Using the term ‘ethos’ as it is understood in the Ancient Greek sense, Critchley elaborates on the connection between laughter and ethos by exploring how humour validates not only a shared understanding of custom and place but also disposition and character. With this in mind, humour is said to be the vehicle that connects us strongly to a particular place and leads us to predicate characteristics of that place while attributing certain customs and dispositions to its inhabitants. Humour therefore takes us back to the place where we are from, whether that is our neighbourhood or the nation.32 In other words, laughter returns us to our ethnos. Mirroring this, in an interview with Salman Rushdie in 1986, Edward Said elaborates on the idea that there are certain codes by which Palestinians recognize each other.33 To illustrate his point he discusses the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 where, as a form of psychological warfare, the Israeli military broadcast their interrogations with Palestinian ‘terrorists’. The particular point of interest for Said was the fact that recordings of these interrogations were circulated among Palestinians in Lebanon as a form of entertainment. The humour of these recordings is illustrated by Said, who reads out a transcript wherein a prisoner performs, or rather over-performs, his Palestinian identity for his Israeli interrogator. This exchange is reflective of a humorous strategy of ‘over-identification’ evident also in Sexy Semite, where humorous so earnestly mimics normative forms of discourse that it becomes difficult to discern whether it is political ridicule or support.34 I would like us here to elaborate upon the concern flagged at the beginning of this chapter: namely the notion that humour creates a sense 73

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of belonging to a group whilst validating the possession of shared cultural information. This is a sentiment examined in one of the most seminal historical texts ever produced on the subject of humour—Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic—in which Henri Bergson observed that ‘our laughter is always the laughter of the group’.35 Bergson then goes on to suggest that the experience of shared laughter can travel through a wide circle of people, yet the circle of laughter nonetheless remains closed. The ‘circle’ of humour to which Bergson alludes is contingent on a shared understanding of the world and, consequently, a shared appreciation of humour. When looking at humorous contemporary art from sites of occupation and crisis, Bergson’s observations raise an important question: Who makes up the group that is laughing? Humour and the burden of proof

If we are to concede that laughter is dependent on a shared experience of the world, it is also therefore contingent on a sense of identification, and in many instances, a sense of collective identity. Knowing this, the humour within art practice can then be said to draw out two circles of laughter; the larger of these is that of international art audiences and the smaller is made up of members of the cultural group. Within this smaller circle, laughter is transformed into a test that probes the boundaries of identity (keeping insiders in and outsiders out), whilst re-enforcing a shared sense of history and connection to place. The ability of humour to demarcate a sense of insider-/outsiderness is of particular pertinence for artists from sites of conflict. This is because these artists are often under pressure to narrate trauma as a means of authenticating experience and performing cultural capital for the voyeuristic gaze of the art market. They are thus subject to what philosopher Jacques Rancière described as a distribution of genre. For Rancière, the world is divided between those who can and those cannot afford the luxury of playing with images, and in such a world, Palestinians ‘can only offer the bodies of their victims to the gaze of news cameras or to the compassionate gaze at their suffering’.36 Humour is one of the few forms capable of fracturing the distribution of genre outlined by Rancière. This is because through its ability to draw out circles of insider-/outsiderness, humour provides artists with a strategy that obfuscates any attempts at didactic narration whilst subverting a potentially voyeuristic gaze at the suffering of others. As Palestinian art continues to have strong presence in the international art circuit, and histories of Palestinian art emerge at a hitherto 74

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unprecedented rate, a critical evaluation of the politics of narration is now clearly urgent. This is perhaps most obvious in the scandal surrounding Israeli art historian Gannit Ankori’s monograph Palestinian Art (2006), which was heavily criticised by Kamal Boullata as an act of plagiarism and cultural appropriation by the ‘occupier’.37 The Ankori scandal reveals that the (re)telling of art history must involve a self-critical analysis of who has the permission to narrate. As a Greek-Australian involved in this field of research, I am acutely aware of these politics. Importantly, however, it is humour that has been vital in this regard, continuing to operate as a litmus test of my understanding, encouraging me to dig further (politically, historically, culturally) to ‘get the joke’, while also making clear that there are some spaces I can never enter and there are things I will never know— and that perhaps this is as it should be. There is a basic politics of humour which, although slippery, draws a line of differentiation between laughing at and laughing with others in the face of suffering. Today the political stakes are incredibly high and it is anyone’s game. We need to place our ideological frameworks, our understandings of our collective identities and the ways in which we facilitate cultural exchange under constant scrutiny. We need to embrace laughter for this. It would appear that Aristotle was right when he asserted that humour is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humour, and that any subject which does not bear raillery should be considered as suspicious.38 This is a sentiment that holds particularly true for artists who carve a critical space for thinking through urgent and politically fraught existential questions. In the case of Palestine, humour is vital in the struggle for liberation, self-determination and the reconciliation of collective trauma, for as artist Amer Shomali explains, ‘a nation who cannot make fun of its wounds cannot heal them’.39 Acknowledgements

This chapter has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie SkłodowskaCurie Grant Agreement No 799087. Notes 1. Simon Critchley, On Humour: Thinking in Action (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 13. 2. Ted Gournelos and Viveca Greene (eds), A Decade of Dark Humour: How Comedy, Irony, and Satire Shaped Post-9/11 America (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2011), p. xix. 75

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3. Rosemary Sayigh, cited in Amal Jamal, ‘Conflict theory, temporality, and transformative temporariness: lessons from Israel and Palestine’, Constellations 23/3 (2016), pp. 365–77, p. 371. 4. Jamal: ‘Conflict theory’, p. 371. 5. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (New York: Grove Press, 1995), p. 210. 6. Carol B. Bardenstein, ‘Trees, Forests, and the Shaping of Palestinian and Israeli Collective Memory’, in Mieke Bal, Jonathan Crewe and Leo Spitzer (eds), Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present (Hanover, NH: University of New England Press, 1999), pp. 148–68, p. 158. 7. Edward Said, The Politics of Dispossession: The Struggle for Palestinian SelfDetermination, 1969–1994 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), p. xviii. 8. Ghada Karmi, ‘Israel’s dilemma in Palestine: the process, the failure and the prospect for a just and workable solution’, Sydney Ideas – International Public Lecture Series, public lecture, University of Sydney, 9 October 2007. 9. Gannit Ankori, Palestinian Art (London: Reaktion Books, 2006), pp. 15–16. 10. Kamal Boullata, Palestinian Art: From 1850 to the Present (London, Saqi, 2009), p. 41. 11. Chrisoula Lionis, Laughter in Occupied Palestine: Comedy and Identity in Art and Film (London: I.B.Tauris, 2017), pp. 15–72. 12. Ilan Pappé, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 145. 13. Meron Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948, trans. Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000), pp. 11–54; Rashid Khalidi, The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2006), p. 135. 14. Kamal Boullata, ‘Artists re-member Palestine in Beirut’, Journal of Palestine Studies 32/4 (2003), pp. 22–38. 15. Yezid Sayigh, ‘Armed struggle and state formation’, Journal of Palestine Studies, 26/4 (1997), pp. 17–32, p. 18. 16. Pappé: A History of Modern Palestine, p. 191; Abu Iyad (Salah Khalaf ), My Home, My Land: A Narrative of the Palestinian Struggle, trans. Linda Butler Koseoglu (New York: Times Books, 1981), pp. 57–8. 17. Sayigh: ‘Armed struggle and state formation’, p. 20. 18. Dina Matar, What it Means to be Palestinian: Stories of Palestinian Peoplehood (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), p. 111. 19. Meron Benvenisti, cited in Norman Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the IsraelPalestine Conflict (New York: Verso, 2003), p. 177. 20. Jonathan Harris, Global Contemporary Art World (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2017), pp. 154–80. 21. Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ophir ‘The Monster’s Tail’, in Michael Sorkin (ed), Against the Wall: Israel’s Barrier to Peace (London: The New Press, 2005), pp. 2–27, p. 11. 22. Larissa Sansour’s A Space Exodus is available online, (accessed 9 November 2018). 23. Larissa Sansour, cited in Lionis: Laughter in Occupied Palestine, p. 104. 76

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24. A clip from Larissa Sansour’s Nation Estate is available online, (accessed 9 November 2018). 25. Toufic Haddad, Palestine Ltd: Neoliberalism and Nationalism in the Occupied Territory (London: I.B. Tauris, 2018). 26. Larissa Sansour, cited in Lionis: Laughter in Occupied Palestine, p. 107. 27. Critchley: On Humour, p. 7. 28. Critchley: On Humour, p. 65. 29. Dorris Bittar, ‘Crossing boundaries – artist profile: Emily Jacir’, Canvas Magazine 31, December 2008, (accessed 13 February 2018). 30. Critchley: On Humour, p. 68. 31. Critchley: On Humour, p. 67. 32. Critchley: On Humour, p. 68. 33. Edward W. Said. ‘Edward Said with Salman Rushdie’, video recording, Writers in Conversation 28 (London: ICA Video, 1986). 34. Noelle J. Mole, ‘Trusted puppets, tarnished politicians: humor and cynicism in Berlusconi’s Italy’, American Ethnologist 40/2 (2013), pp. 288–99, p. 289. 35. Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (print on demand), 2011), p .6. 36. Jacques Rancière, quoted in John Kelsey and Fulvia Carnevale, ‘Art of the possible’, Artforum 45/7 (2007), pp. 259–69, p. 263 37. Joseph Massad, ‘Permission to paint: Palestinian art and the colonial encounter’, Art Journal 66/3 (2007), pp. 126–33. 38. Michael Billig, The Hidden Roots of Critical Psychology: Understanding the Importance of Locke, Shaftsbury and Reid (London: Sage Publications, 2008), p. 128. 39. Amer Shomali, cited in Lionis: Laughter in Occupied Palestine, p. 108.

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CHAPTER 3 IMPOSSIBLE INTIMACIES Towards a Visual Politics of ‘Touch’ at the Israeli-Palestinian Border Anna Ball

The 25-foot-high concrete walls at the Qalandiya checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah have come to assume a somewhat unexpected significance within Arab visual culture. In addition to their function as parts of the West Bank Wall, which occupies an iconic visual status within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they have also come to act as inscriptive surfaces for those forced into unwelcome intimacy with this most divisive of boundaries.1 Flags and fists, slogans and insults, statements of pain and loss written in both English and Arabic are all emblazoned on the Wall, serving as visual testimonies to the dissenting touch of the individual faced with the limitations of life under Israeli occupation.2 Yet in 2005, the attention of the international press was drawn to one particular image that had recently appeared on the Wall—the silhouette of a young girl clinging to a bunch of balloons, which seem to carry her up through the air and over the divide (Fig. 3.1). The stencil-style graffiti was unmistakably that of the British guerrilla graffiti artist ‘Banksy’, an enigmatic figure, real name unknown, renowned for his creative disrespect of private property and propensity for brash social critique.3 For the British media in particular, Banksy’s image appeared to represent a daring transgression of authoritarian boundaries, his physical and artistic touch upon the Wall serving as a form of transnational and experiential empathy. Indeed, there is much that is ‘touching’ about Banksy’s image, which juxtaposes the cold, stark materiality of the Wall with a whimsical portrait of childhood innocence in a way that is both poignant and provocative. And yet, during his trip to what Banksy described as ‘the ultimate activity holiday destination for graffiti writers’, one encounter shattered this illusion of intimacy.4 Banksy records how a Palestinian man approached him in order to comment that his work made the wall look beautiful. ‘Thank you’, Banksy replied. ‘We don’t want this wall to be beautiful, we hate it. Go home’, was the man’s curt response.5 Despite Banksy’s proximity to the wall, it would seem that something eluded his grasp; not the ability to touch but the ability to be touched by the border in a way that might 78

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Figure 3.1 Banksy, Palestine, 2005. Courtesy of Pest Control Office.

engender an empathetic visual intimacy with its spatial experience for the Palestinian subject. I begin with this account of Banksy’s ambivalent intimacy with the Israeli-Palestinian border because it is indicative of the complex politics of representation and interaction that circulates both in representations of the Israeli-Palestinian border in visual culture and in the attempt to theorize them through the lens of what might be termed an Arab cultural studies. Indeed, within the broader context of this volume on Visioning Israel-Palestine, the anecdote prompts a number of questions about how the architecturally realized and politically enforced ‘mechanisms of violence and separation’ – as the editor of this volume, Gil Pasternak, refers to them in his Introduction – now deeply entrenched in the IsraeliPalestinian landscape may come to assume dynamic, multivalent functions as they enter into the realms of visual cultural production. Equally, however, this encounter forestalls the privilege of discursive utopianism: as this man’s deeply affecting and indeed effective retort to Banksy reminds us, representational possibility cannot simply dissolve the materially manifest legacies of conflict. In order to address these complex intersections of the material and representational, the fixed and mobile and, ultimately, the possible and impossible, the following discussion adopts a focus on 79

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the nature of visual encounter with one of Israel-Palestine’s most enduring symbols of intractable conflict: the Wall. In doing so, it seeks a selfreflexive and ethically responsible mode of reading in line with the aims of this volume more broadly, whereby scrutiny of the dynamic interactions between conflicted landscape and cultural production might enable us to exceed what Gil Pasternak has described in the Introduction as the ‘culture of exclusion’ prevalent in physical and discursive constructions of the Israeli-Palestinian landscape to date. How, then, to move towards this understanding of the Wall as a site of complex affecting encounter? A useful first gesture is to take a step back in order to assess for a moment the Wall’s function not simply as architectural structure but as politically, militarily and psychologically charged border. Borders are multilayered signifiers within an Israeli-Palestinian context, and the question of subject position is implicated in any encounter with them. The dominant conceptualization of the border within Israeli cultural consciousness is that of the frontier, a zone that simultaneously pushes for increased territorial control and seeks to secure itself against the ‘alien’ presence of the Palestinian ‘other’.6 For Palestinians, meanwhile, borders are at one level intangible—sites of absence and erasure that testify to Palestine’s condition as a stateless nation.7 Yet, in other ways, they are highly tangible, manifested in the material presence of the numerous roadblocks, checkpoints, barriers and curtailments on spatial interaction imposed by the Israeli occupation within the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israeli state control of borders has become particularly visible with the construction of the Gaza Strip Barrier, a structure that has sealed Gaza’s border with Israel and has led to Gaza’s description as ‘the world’s largest open-air prison’, a situation compounded by the air, land and sea blockade imposed upon it by Israel; and in the West Bank, with the construction of the Wall that runs along its entire northwest face.8 Though it was originally claimed by Israel that this structure would run along the Green Line established in 1949, the actual construction of the Wall has seen Israel carve out numerous enclaves of West Bank land as its path has been adapted to incorporate Jewish settlements into Israeli territory, creating pockets of internal enclosure around many Palestinian towns and villages.9 Not only has the West Bank Wall therefore separated many Palestinians from their places of work, families and even land in West Jerusalem, forcing them into daily encounters with the humiliations, delays and uncertainties of the Israeli checkpoints that control passage into and out of the West Bank, but this Wall has also cordoned off individual Palestinian communities from one another, making travel and communication within the West Bank a trial in itself. Indeed, numerous boundaries exist within the West Bank, in the form of some 48 permanent 80

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barriers, seven manned control towers and 607 physical blockades, according to estimates in 2004—restrictions that are compounded by the complex system of permits that Palestinians are required to hold in order to pass out of or through the Occupied Territories.10 Borders therefore touch the lives of Palestinians in numerous ways and encroach on almost every aspect of their existence—from violations of their fundamental right to life (evident in the reports of ambulances refused passage through checkpoints, even when containing dying patients or women in labour), to the denial of normal routine for those who wish to travel to work, access resources or simply visit family, disruptions that have played a large part in bringing the Palestinian economy to a grinding halt.11 Small wonder, then, that the personal and tangible effects of the border have been portrayed in many different forms of Palestinian cultural expression, particularly through literary and filmic narratives that reveal the effects of the West Bank Wall on the ability of Palestinians to interact with one another and with the space around them.12 In such works, the touch of separate bodies has sometimes been used as a way to visualize affront to such boundaries, as in the sensuous encounters of two lovers at the Qalandiya crossing in Elia Suleiman’s Divine Intervention (2002), or through the touching of hands at the Lebanese-Israeli border in Mai Masri’s Frontiers of Dreams and Fears (2001), for example.13 The Wall itself often remains visually elusive in these works, however—a site that cannot be grasped in its material, emotive and intellectual entirety—and so remains an ominous backdrop or threatening presence rather than a point of focus. In recent years, though, several works in Arab visual culture have begun to take the West Bank Wall itself as their focus. Meditating on the Wall’s materiality, these works seek to generate a level of visual intimacy in their viewer that invites them to imagine, sense and even empathize with the intimate experiences of the Israeli-Palestinian border, forged from a number of different subject positions. To what extent do such works allow the viewer to touch, and to be touched by, the visuality and materiality of the Wall and its associated boundaries? What limits are crossed or instated, and what intimacies are engendered in the act of representation? Indeed, how do these works invite us to reflect on the nature of imagined encounter through the visual, in ways that might enable us to position ourselves astutely, respectfully and intelligently in relation to the structures of separation embedded in the physical and discursive landscape of Israel-Palestine? These questions find ready responses through critical analysis of two particular representations of the Wall—the first, Mona Hatoum’s sculpture Grater Divide (2002); the second, Simone Bitton’s documentary film Wall (Mur, 2004)—both of which employ what Laura Marks has termed a ‘haptic visuality’; that is, a 81

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‘visuality that functions like a sense of touch’.14 Drawing additionally on the cultural critic Sara Ahmed’s theoretical discussion of ‘touch’, the following discussion seeks to delineate the potentials for, and limits of, a conceptual and experiential intimacy that emerges through visual representations of the border, while also exploring the productive disciplinary and conceptual intimacies that such a discussion might generate in Arab cultural studies itself. What, then, might it mean to visualize ‘touch’ or to ‘touch’ through the visual at the Israeli-Palestinian border? In her article ‘Intimate Touches: Proximity and Distance in International Feminist Dialogues’, Sara Ahmed explores the possibility of a politicized notion of intimacy, and conceptualizes ‘touch’ as a tool within this.15 Touch, she points out, has a dualistic resonance in the English language. It can entail the physical contact of your body with another surface or the contact of another skin with yours; but, equally, it can describe the sensation of being affected or moved by something.16 The two are not always implicit in one another, although either may engender ‘intimacy’—a term that can be understood either as an emotive empathy or as the ‘abolition of distance’.17 Yet Ahmed does not assume that the intimacy produced by touch, either mental or physical, necessarily collapses boundaries: ‘Being touched’ does not overcome the distance which separates others (as discreet beings). Being touched suggests becoming closer to each other in which movement across the division of self–other may take place, but a movement which does not abolish the division as such.18 Ahmed’s understanding of touch can be related to the politics of critical engagement with visual representations of the Israeli-Palestinian border. Abstract, written engagement necessarily entails a move towards mental connection or empathy, instigated through critical and intellectual enquiry; but the very presence of words or images on the page and the touch of the reader’s hand on the surface of the paper reminds them of the divisions and distance between artist and viewer, border and representation, that remain in place. This does not mean that the attempt to ‘touch’ or ‘be touched by’ the border through textual or visual engagement is futile, however. Rather, an acknowledgement of the necessary limits of intimacy might lead to what Spivak, drawing on Levinas and Derrida, describes as ‘ethical’ and ‘responsible’ engagement. For Spivak, ‘ethics is the experience of the impossible’ not because ethical engagement itself is impossible, but rather because any act of exchange (exchange being the necessary prerequisite for responsibility and accountability, the touchstones of ethics 82

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for Spivak) necessarily entails ‘a sense that something has not got across [. . .] [something] remains “secret” ’.19 This ‘secret’ is that of individual, personal experience; something that can be spoken of but never passed on to the ‘other’ to the extent that it becomes tangible. Total intimacy of experience and understanding, then, is impossible. Yet this does not signal a failure of ethical engagement. Rather, it is precisely this ‘impossible intimacy’ that makes it possible to engage with the ‘other’ at an ethical level, whereby the acknowledgement of distance and difference prevents either individual involved in intimate exchange from assuming interpretive control within the encounter, attempting to speak ‘for’ the subaltern, as it were.20 ‘Ethical’ exchange, then, entails an ‘impossible intimacy’. How might this complex politics of ‘touch’ translate to the visualized border? Mona Hatoum’s sculpture, entitled Grater Divide (Fig. 3.2), presents particularly visceral possibilities of visual connection with the border. Created by the Palestinian artist in 2002, Grater Divide confronts the viewer with what might initially appear to be a somewhat absurd, yet strangely familiar, object: a giant grater, a larger-than-life rendering of the

Figure 3.2 Mona Hatoum, Grater Divide, 2002, mild steel, 204 cm × variable width and depth. Copyright Mona Hatoum. Courtesy of White Cube. Photo: Iain Dickens. 83

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kind of item commonly found in kitchens as a tool for finely slicing cheese or vegetables. Yet, through the gently subversive irony of its title, which calls attention to the politics of spatial and social division, Grater Divide also comes to serve as a complex symbol of the Israeli-Palestinian border, its strident metal structure conjuring the structure of the West Bank Wall in the imagination. The grating of which this giant structure is capable begins to pose altogether more painful possibilities of touch and intimacy. Hatoum’s sculpture, which stands at just over two metres high and is made from ‘mild steel’, bears a highly tactile, or ‘haptic’, visuality. Laura Marks writes that a sense of touch can be visualized through the use of sensuous materials or through a focus on the interaction of the body with the visual object.21 This is certainly the case in Hatoum’s sculpture. There is something coolly and brutally militaristic in her choice of metallic material, and the human-height scale of the work draws an immediate alliance between the ‘grater divide’ and the human body. Indeed, the immediate sensation evoked by her sculpture is the desire to recoil, for the sharp crenulations of the structure look as though they could slice the surface of an arm, leg or torso with ease. The sense of physical threat embodied in this seemingly benign, domestic structure conjures something of the ‘grating’ presence of the Wall in the everyday lives of Palestinians, as its scale and texture vividly evoke the bodily discomfort entailed in Palestinians’ forced intimacy with this structure, particularly at the checkpoint. As Eyal Weizman notes in his work Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation, many features of checkpoints are designed in ways that not only regulate the movement of bodies, but also create physical discomfort.22 At the permanent checkpoints in the West Bank, for example, travellers wait in passages enclosed by metal caging and soldiers control the rotation of turnstiles remotely. Not only are these turnstiles stopped every few seconds, often trapping people between the gates, but the metal arms of the turnstiles themselves have been reduced from the standard 75–90 cm to only 55 cm, ‘so that the turnstiles physically press against the passengers’ bodies, ensuring there is nothing beneath their clothes’.23 While the Israeli soldiers operating the checkpoints are concealed behind heavy bulletproof glass that reflects the sun, acting as a one-way mirror, Palestinian travellers are forced to endure extreme physical confinement and psychological stress. Thus, the checkpoint reflects a tension between the vulnerability of the Palestinian body, forced into contact with the border, and the dehumanized and mechanized touch of the Israeli state—qualities evoked by the uncomfortable juxtaposition of metallic material with the human scale of Hatoum’s sculpture. The border is therefore evoked through a process of substitution in Hatoum’s work. It is not physically represented, and yet its presence, 84

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and indeed the sensation of intimate proximity to it, emerges all the more forcefully through her suggestion of another absent boundary in this piece—the surface of the skin. This implicit embodiment of the border serves a deeply politicized function. As Sara Ahmed notes: ‘the skin functions as a boundary or border, by supposedly holding or containing the subject within a certain contour, keeping the subject inside, and the other outside’.24 This visual mimesis posits the limits placed and suffering inflicted on the physical body as intimately connected to the political construct of the border. Indeed, it is interesting to note that the intimate boundary is echoed in ‘border theory’ more broadly, particularly in the writing of the postcolonial feminist theorist Gloria Anzaldúa, for whom the border also bears the potential to wound at physical, cultural and psychological levels alike. The border is personified most vividly in her description of the ‘borderland’, a space which she locates in her own cultural context of the frontier between the USA and Mexico, but which she also identifies as a territory of the creative and psychological. In her seminal work Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Anzaldúa describes the borderlands as una herida abierta (‘an open wound’), at which she says: ‘the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms it haemorrhages again, the lifebloods of two worlds merge to form a third country—a border culture.’25 Anzaldúa’s image suggests the impossibility of healing so long as the border remains a site of friction and painful contact. This exacerbation of wounds offers a particularly provocative image of Israeli-Palestinian boundaries as sites at which the frequent erosion of civil liberties continues to aggravate the vulnerable human bodies that are pushed into unwelcome contact with them, and the imagery of haemorrhaging also reminds us that it is such activities that aggravate the radical margins of society and engender further bloodshed in themselves— even, at its most extreme, in the form of suicide bombing, that most violent rupture of the boundaries of the human body.26 Hatoum’s sculpture therefore evokes the immense pain and discomfort—both psychological and physical—that accompanies Palestine’s Israeli-enforced boundaries, through the construction of an embodied and tangible border. As Ahmed puts it: ‘if the skin is a border, then it is a border which feels’.27 Hatoum achieves this tactile intimacy through a sensuous potential rather than through its literal representation, establishing the ambiguous dynamics of both presence and absence that characterize Palestinian borders more broadly. The tangibility of the border is both within reach and just beyond the viewer’s grasp in this piece. There are further boundaries implicit in Hatoum’s work, however, that render the politics of touch in her work all the more ambivalent. These 85

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boundaries stem from Hatoum’s own subject position. Hatoum was born in Beirut in 1952, the child of exiled Palestinians who had been forced from Haifa during its bombardment in 1948.28 Hatoum was later exiled herself, as while she was on a short trip to London in 1975, civil war broke out in Lebanon and she was unable to return. Like many Palestinian creative practitioners, and indeed many Palestinians, Hatoum therefore occupies an ambiguous position in relation to Palestinian boundaries.29 While removed from physical contact with them, their ‘touch’ continues to resonate across space and time through the realms of a potentially traumatic cultural memory and identification, and borders remain sites that are, in part, felt through their absence. Hatoum’s level of removal from the border can be read through the pithy irony of her sculpture’s title, Grater Divide—a pun that functions specifically in English. This is significant in itself, as not only does this anglicization gesture towards Hatoum’s own intercultural status, but it also establishes the audience with whom she wishes to generate intimacy as Anglo-American, a deeply political act of border crossing in its own right. This pun also has other implications, though. At one level, its irony subverts the authoritarian gravitas of the border through the bathetic, even absurd form that it adopts in her imagination. The border becomes a culinary tool, an item of the everyday rather than the stuff of nightmares. This very familiarity also imbues it with a disturbing pathos, however. For the border’s metamorphosis into a domestic item suggests the way in which division permeates even the most private and routine realms of existence—the separations produced by borders and boundaries become as integral to the daily routine as preparing a meal. It is therefore the strange and estranged domesticity of this item that conjures, quite literally, a transgressive poetics of the unheimlich, what Freud describes as the ‘uncanny’ or, literally, ‘unhomely’.30 The sensation of the unheimlich is that of the familiar made unfamiliar, and it evokes a sense of extreme alterity or ‘otherness’ that is—to use a provocative term, given Hatoum’s own status as an exiled Palestinian—deeply ‘unsettling’. The ‘unsettling’ nature of the uncanny often derives from its link to what Kristeva describes as ‘abjection’—that is, the expulsion of that which is ‘disgusting’ or ‘strange’ from the boundaries of the body: substances such as blood, pus or sweat that alert us to the fragility of our mortality and estrange us from feeling ‘at home’ within our bodies.31 The domestic estrangement of Hatoum’s sculpture incites a sense of abjection in the viewer through its tactile surface that threatens to rupture the skin. Yet this potential for abjection can also be read in a politicized manner, as a reflection of the spatial expulsion of Palestinian subjects in the attempt to secure the boundaries of the Israeli state. From this perspective, it is Hatoum’s own 86

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body, as well as the collective Palestinian body politic, that assumes the status of the expelled ‘abject’, evoked as the intangible excess to the tactile border, the ‘foreign body’ viewed as repellent. Hatoum’s work therefore affirms Marks’ observation that ‘haptic visuality’ is a strategy that particularly appeals to diasporic subjects or those of an intercultural subject position through its potential to ‘evoke the particularly hard-torepresent memories of people who move between cultures, by pointing beyond the limits of sight and sound’; but here, Hatoum’s memory is far from nostalgic.32 Rather, the tactile surface of the sculpture and implicit presence of the skin as embodied boundary conjure the Palestinian border as a site of painful identification across space and time—one that continues to hold an uncanny fascination for her. Hatoum’s work presents complex possibilities of intimacy that are predicated on the sensuously imagined ‘touch’ of both artist and viewer with the border from which both are implicitly absent. From a cultural critical perspective, Hatoum’s work suggests the interesting possibility that the realm of the symbolic and metaphorical might conjure an emotive and experiential intimacy that allows the viewer not only to imagine touching, but also to feel directly touched by and emotionally connected to the border. Certainly, there are limits to the experiential intimacy that a work of art can achieve—the very act of representation entails a dialogue between artist and viewer in which, as Spivak’s model of ‘ethical singularity’ suggests, each subject’s unique sense of being can never be adequately grasped by their ‘other’, however intimate the exchange may be.33 Yet the ‘impossible intimacy’ offered through the visual nevertheless seems to inspire a more complex form of engagement with the Wall than Banksy’s brash assumption that to touch its physical surface is to gain representational authority for the Palestinian experience of it. Instead, it is the very ambivalence of Hatoum’s sculpture, its visual and physical distance from the Wall, that invites the viewer to meditate more carefully on what they sense through Hatoum’s structure, not physically but mentally. As Spivak puts it, this physical and cognitive distance from the experience of the ‘other’ in fact ‘only sharpens the sense of the crucial and continuing need for political struggle [. . .] not in the rationalist sense of “doing the right thing”, but in th[e] more familiar sense of [an intimacy that takes the form of ] “love” ’.34 Thus, the very impossibility of total intimacy makes it possible for the viewer to feel themselves touched, moved by Hatoum’s sculpture, despite their literal distance from the Wall and the experience of the Palestinian subject. As with all encounters with the border, though, Hatoum’s own subject position as a diasporic Palestinian is also relevant. Indeed, her own intimate knowledge of Palestinian experience connects her with an international 87

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community of displaced Palestinians who identify with Hatoum’s sense of painful encounter and estrangement from the Wall. The visual politics of Hatoum’s border, while connective, intimate and complex, also occupies a strongly oppositional stance that sits easily within the broader resistance to the Israeli occupation that exists within the Arab world. Yet the visual politics of the Israeli-Palestinian border in Simone Bitton’s film Wall (Mur, 2004) cannot be located quite so easily. Bitton herself bears an ambivalent intimacy to the Wall, and indeed to Israeli-Palestinian borders. Born in Morocco in 1955 to Jewish parents, she emigrated to Israel with her family in 1966 and, after completing her military service during the October War of 1973, moved to Paris to study film.35 Thus, Bitton’s identity can be defined as Mizrahi or Arab Jewish (i.e. a Jew from Arab Muslim regions), a group who, according to Ella Shohat, ‘[present] some challenges for Zionist scholarship [which sought to propagate the idea that] the New Jew paradoxically could live in the “East” without being of it’.36 The very concept of Mizrahi identity therefore troubles the binary boundaries between ‘East and West’, ‘Arab and Jew’ that have arguably been rendered tangible and visible through the construction of the Wall.37 Indeed, Bitton complicates these dualisms still further by citing her identity as that of both an Israeli and French citizen and as a Moroccan national. As a speaker of French, Arabic and Hebrew, and as both an Arab Jew and a Jewish Israeli, Bitton’s subject position can therefore be read as indicative of the heterogeneity that exists within the Arab world and, indeed, of the complex array of subject positions that are mobilized around the border. Bitton’s ambivalent relationship to Israeli and Arab borders serves as an important advantage in this documentary film, for her transcultural, cross-border identity sets her above the material constraints of the border and allows her a level of spatial freedom that is rarely enjoyed by Palestinian subjects while also enabling her to communicate across linguistic boundaries. Yet Bitton does not treat her privileged position with flippancy. Rather, she uses her ability to get close to the Wall as an opportunity to meditate upon its effects, and to seek out intimate accounts of what the Wall means for those on either side of it. To what extent, and in what ways, then, is Bitton able to ‘touch’ the Wall in this film, and what are the intimacies that it inspires? In sharp contrast to the punchy immediacy of Hatoum’s Grater Divide, Wall operates according to a much more meditative ‘haptic visuality’. At 100 minutes, Wall assumes the form of a contemplative documentary that follows part of the path of the West Bank Wall as it passes from the Israeli settlement of Gillo, just above Bethlehem, up to the Arab border town of Qalqiliya in the northwest region of the West Bank. The visual style of Bitton’s film lends a certain tangibility to the border in itself. As 88

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Bitton herself states in an interview with Elia Suleiman (included on the 2004 DVD release of Wall), the ‘weight of time’ afforded to the lingering shots of the physical barrier draws attention to and mirrors the ‘weight of the cement’ from which it is made, and Bitton’s slow-moving, uncut camerawork is experienced as a form of visual touch, the unhurried progress of the camera operating as the visual equivalent of Bitton running her fingers along the Wall. Fascinated by the materiality of its presence, Bitton gains access to the Wall in many places and in its many different forms. From the segments of concrete being manufactured at an Israeli concrete plant to the coils of barbed wire and 25-foot-high mesh fences, complete with sensors, her camerawork dwells on the highly textured surfaces, which she frames with the surrounding landscape just within shot and which offer a sharp and uneasy juxtaposition of the natural with the man-made (Fig. 3.3). Bitton also conjures sensory discomfort through the aural qualities of the film in the form of the high-pitched shrieks, groans and heavy thuds of the construction equipment being used to build the Wall, which is edited over long shots of the landscape at a high volume in order to create a disorientating sense of simultaneous proximity to and distance from the border. In what initially appears a divisive sensory strategy, Bitton therefore creates a split between sight and sound in this documentary, her

Figure 3.3 Simone Bitton, Wall, 2004, digital video, colour/sound, 100' (the Wall being manoeuvred into position). 89

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camerawork consisting of long, uncut panning shots of the barrier and of the surrounding landscape, which are overlaid with the narratives of those she encounters en route. Yet a complex intimacy with her speakers and with the Wall emerges through this strategy. Rather than turning the camera away from the Wall in order to reveal the speaker, Bitton continues to film the landscape, imitating their gaze as it must rest on the Wall from day to day. This sensitive response to the subject position of her speaker is replicated in her interview style, which also establishes an interesting intimacy, achieved not through an attempt to close distance, but to establish a respect for it. While Bitton invites her interviewees to speak, she is never interrogative, instead allowing her enquiries to be led by the speaker’s line of thought. ‘What’s the question?’, asks one interviewee, to which Bitton replies, ‘No question’. She is not seeking a singular response, but the open complexity of insights that her speakers can offer. This kind of interaction can be interpreted as a form of interactive ‘touch’ in itself, for, as Ahmed writes: ‘Speaking to’, as a form of touching, can be understood as beyond the desire to grasp or know the other. Here, getting closer leads not only to a recognition of distance between us, but the implication of that distance for the very possibilities of and in speaking itself.38 Bitton’s narrative interaction with her speakers appears to recognize and to respect the distance that exists between her and them. She refuses the position of the ethnographic ‘self ’ attempting to gain intimate access to the interior mind and world of the ‘other’. The result is, ironically, a greater intimacy with her interviewees who, when allowed space in which to speak on their own terms, open up to a significant degree. Just as Hatoum’s sculpture evokes a grating sense of division, the actual Wall also evokes suffering, both in its presence and in that which it constructs as absent. Within the West Bank, Bitton encounters several Palestinian farmers who have had portions of their land expropriated during the construction of the separation fence. One particular narrative, of a 60-year-old Palestinian man named Sharif Omar from Jayyous, suggests the psychological as well as material schism that this induces. Sensuously recalling the list of lush and prolific crops that he and his family have historically grown on this land, from olives to hazelnuts, grapevines to citrus fruit, he describes Palestine as ‘Allah’s Paradise’. Yet the Wall that is being built upon his land, ‘to prevent the touch between peoples’, as he describes it, transgresses the Green Line boundary that demarcates West Bank territory according to international law, and erodes a further 28 m into his land in order to ensure an ‘adequate’ distance from 90

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settlements on the other side of the Wall. For this man, the erosion of his land also signals an attempt at ‘expulsion in disguise’, for, given the paucity of Israeli work permits available to those in the West Bank and the consequent necessity of farming, the only solution would be for him to leave, were his crops to become inadequate. This encounter facilitates an intimate insight into the psychological stress as well as economic hardship that the Wall inflicts on many Palestinians who live in its presence.39 Yet Bitton also explores the ways in which an awareness of such hardships circulates beyond the boundaries of the Palestinian community through a meeting with a man named Schuli Dichter, an Israeli kibbutz member, who takes her across from the kibbutz, well past the Green Line, to the Wall, which has severed the West Bank village Qafin from most of its land. Dichter himself senses a pathos to Qafin’s situation, for the village’s sole source of livelihood is its olive crop and, the previous year, Dichter tells Bitton, the olives rotted on the trees, their owners unable to pick them. Dichter employs an interesting metaphor in order to describe the effect of the border not on the Palestinians, but on the Israelis: ‘This fence blocks the artery that feeds the Israeli heart’, he tells Bitton, in a radical acknowledgement of the barrier that the Wall presents to emotional as well as spatial intimacy. Yet Bitton also explores the sense of discomfort created for Israelis through the proximity of the Wall. In the Israeli settlement of Har Homa, situated on the other side of the Wall from Bethlehem, a man named Moti, who lives in the row of apartments nearest to the barrier, reveals his sense of fear for his wife and children. ‘I was 20 metres away from the last suicide bombing’, he tells Bitton; ‘We can’t live like this! We have children.’ In contrast to the official description of the Wall as a security measure designed to protect Israeli citizens, this man views it as an exacerbation of, rather than a solution to, the problem: ‘We need to negotiate’, he tells her. ‘It’s like a border: Jews here, Arabs there.’ Moti also makes the interesting recognition that the tension induced by the border is self-perpetuating: ‘They kill one of us, we attack Gaza and kill their children.’ This acknowledgement of reciprocity constructs an interesting level of imagined intimacy, despite the limits on (and indeed fear of ) physical contact described by Moti. Indeed, the desire for greater spatial intimacy emerges as a recurrent theme of Israeli and Palestinian narratives alike. In Matan, a town on the seam-line with the Palestinian village Habla, a man named Mouli has been campaigning to visit those on the other side throughout the Intifada in order to ‘get to know them as neighbours’. Even in Palestinian villages such as Jabara, which are closed off on both sides, or in Qalqiliya, right next to the border, intimacy rather than distance remains the solution: ‘We need to live together, and leave the rest to God’, states a Palestinian man named Bilal 91

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Mansour, his three children looking to the camera, their backs to the Wall. This image of contained and stifled childhood feels painfully at odds with the philosophical optimism of their father’s words. In stark contrast to all of these encounters, though, is Bitton’s interview with the director general of the Israeli Ministry of Defense, General Amos Yaron. Seated in Yaron’s office across from a broad wooden desk adorned with Israeli flags, Bitton assumes a more direct line of questioning about the ‘Separation Fence’, as he terms it, asking for clarification on the nature of it as a construct, on its political intention and on its effects. In every case, Yaron’s answers operate as a defensive barrier in themselves, as he employs official rhetoric designed to render the Wall both positive and intangibly abstract. Asked why it is built, he states that it is ‘an effective way to significantly reduce the penetrative capabilities of Palestinians who come to commit acts of terror in Israeli territory’. This ‘significant reduction’ of ‘penetrative capabilities’, he reveals, is achieved through the plethora of material barriers put in place at the Wall, which ‘more or less’ follows the Green Line. Consisting not only of a fence or wall on concrete foundations but also of two layers of barbed wire, a ditch and cameras, electronic devices and radars that sense when it is touched, the Wall allows ‘everything to be seen and heard’. This is the authoritarian intimacy of panoptic power, a closeness that dehumanizes rather than reaches out.40 Indeed, even when Yaron admits that the Wall damages the environment, he states that: ‘It is all the Palestinians’ fault [. . .] They won’t negotiate.’ Yaron’s officially abstracted view of the Wall enacts precisely that which Kristeva warns against when she writes: ‘Let us not seek to solidify, to turn the otherness of the foreigner into a thing. Let us merely touch it, brush by it, without giving it a permanent structure.’41 From this perspective, the Wall becomes a projection of colonial power, enacting Aimé Césaire’s description of colonization as a process of ‘thingification’, a way of making the ‘otherness’ of the Palestinian subject not only tangible, but reductive and dehumanizing.42 To what extent, then, does Bitton’s visual rendering of the Wall achieve an intimacy that transcends its ‘thingifying’ potential? The closing scene to the film consciously reveals the anxiety that circulates in Bitton’s encounter with borders, and her differentiation from the experience of those whom she films. In this scene, dialogue ceases and the touch of human bodies upon the Wall becomes her primary visual language. Panning from the skyline of Jerusalem to the rows of concrete blocks that demarcate East from West Jerusalem, Bitton films the sight of Arab men, women and children of all ages climbing up and over the barriers. Clearly on their way to work or to visit family, the everyday nature of their attire—a suit and tie for one elderly man; a patent handbag for a young 92

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woman wearing a hijab—creates a poignant contrast between their ordinariness and the extraordinary nature of the tasks that they are required to perform in order to go about their business (Fig. 3.4). One father precariously passes up a young baby to a stranger, who holds it while he helps his wife over the concrete and past the barbed wire. As the wife climbs, Bitton’s camera catches a fleeting glimpse of her leg beneath her long skirt, as her husband hauls her up, out of breath and sweating. The effect of this footage is deeply unsettling, for it reveals the physical vulnerability of those bodies forced to touch the border, and to be touched by it, in ways that exhaust and degrade—a position from which Bitton is set apart. In interview, Bitton herself recognizes the uncomfortable nature of the intimacy created through these visual encounters, which entails ‘inflicting humiliation in order to show suffering’. And yet, these acts of border crossing are also forms of defiance, ways of enacting what Michel de Certeau would term ‘tactical’ traversals of official space, which demonstrate the potential of human agency, will, resistance and opportunism to subvert the official regulations imposed on space, constituting ‘a proliferating illegitimacy [whereby they have] developed and insinuated themselves into the networks of surveillance’.43 Leaping over the Wall, one middle-aged man shouts to Bitton’s cameraman: ‘Film, brother: show them abroad! Show them how we jump.’ For Bitton, this is

Figure 3.4 Simone Bitton, Wall, 2004, digital video, colour/sound, 100ʹ (a man climbs through barbed wire on his way over the Wall). Courtesy of Wall: The Movie and Lifesize Entertainment. 93

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perhaps the most productive level at which visual intimacy functions— not through the attempt to capture, to replicate or to attempt to ‘grasp’ the other’s experience of the border in its entirety, but to recognize and to utilize her distance from the border as a site of privilege that can aid the visual passing of those other than herself across borders, albeit in purely visual terms, in the form of her film. For Bitton, a recognition of and respect for distance is intrinsic to generating an intimate empathy with the border and its crossers. As Ahmed writes: ‘Touching, as a temporary encounter with another, involves a movement closer [. . .] which does not grasp that other [. . .] The movement towards, in touch, is always already a movement away.’44 As Bitton demonstrates, the kind of touch achieved through mere proximity does not, in fact, serve to overcome distance or to render the authority of the border intangible. Rather, the kind of experiential and emotive intimacy that might truly be described as the ability to ‘touch’ others stems from a recognition of all that remains intangible in our visual encounter with the border: that is, the enduring divisiveness that it inflicts at the levels of experience and imagination for those who must exist in its shadow. The complex visual politics that emerges from Hatoum’s and Bitton’s works reveals that it is possible to ‘touch’ and to ‘be touched by’ the deeply politicized and highly personal construct of the border in many different ways. Hatoum and Bitton conjure radically different portraits of the border, yet both establish a deeply felt visual connection with it that renders apparent the simultaneously political and personal, material and metaphorical levels at which the border figures in their experience. Hatoum’s physical distance from the border does not prevent it from inflicting a deeply felt pain upon her, yet her distance also perhaps allows her to transform it into a witty visual pun, an object rescaled by her imagination; while Bitton’s physical proximity to the border does not guarantee her experiential ‘access’ to all that the border entails, yet she constructs a sensory and dialogic intimacy through her astute encounters founded on a respect for the individual and a recognition of their, and her, difference. The border therefore generates multiple forms of intimacy between artist, work and viewer alike. Indeed, it is significant to note that while certain linguistic barriers are implicated in both works—in Hatoum’s case, her use of the specifically English pun Grater Divide and in Bitton’s case, her dependency on the linguistic skills of her viewer, which dictate whether they, too, can understand interviewees’ comments in the original Arabic or Hebrew or are dependent on subtitles—these linguistic boundaries are also exceeded and transgressed through their careful visual languages of ‘touch’, which enable a more complex range of signifiers to circulate around the Wall as an inscriptive surface. Thus, the visual 94

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language of ‘touch’ seems to incite not so much an immediate connection as a more open process of différance for the viewer—a finite ‘reading’ of the border is constantly deferred and multiple interpretive possibilities continue to circulate.45 Crucially, however, neither work visualizes the border in a way that renders it purely abstract or intangible—its aestheticization does not serve to depoliticize it, but offers a medium through which politics is rendered tangible and personal. This recognition is significant not only in itself but also because it identifies a way of working beyond the dilemmas identified by Stein and Swedenburg in relation to the critical study of IsraeliPalestinian culture more broadly, whereby consign[ing] popular culture forms and processes to the margins of scholarly debate [. . .] has seemed a necessary response to the severity of the national conflict, the harsh violence of the Israeli occupation, and the enduring struggle for Palestinian national liberation.46 From this perspective, engagement with as divisive and as oppressive a construct as the Israeli-Palestinian border through visual culture might be viewed as deeply problematic. Yet Stein and Swedenburg challenge the notion that culture is a trivial field of study by suggesting that ‘the question of popular culture in Palestine and Israel is fundamentally one of politics and power’ and, consequentially, that cultural study might in fact ‘broaden our understanding of the [. . .] possible arenas and modalities of struggle’ rather than detract from it.47 Critical engagement with Hatoum’s and Bitton’s work reveals that this is, indeed, the case, for their visualizations of the border reveal rather than obscure the complex political subject positions and power dynamics that circulate around the border, and indeed offer a level of intimate empathy that cannot be derived from political discourse. In this, the affecting potentialities identified within Hatoum’s and Bitton’s works invite us to visualize Israel-Palestine in newly dynamic and self-aware ways. In particular, these works present visual cultural production as a medium through which it might be possible to destabilize many of the now-familiar cultural tropes that have come primarily to signify separation, conflict and violence in the imagined geographies of Israel-Palestine, and to read in a way that is attentive to the implicit potential for dialogue engendered by the visual. Thus, as in this volume more broadly, Hatoum’s and Bitton’s visualities affect newly complex, mobile modes of signification that, while remaining mindful of material context and ethical complexity, also provoke discursive interactivity. Their works invite us as scholars to refocus our gaze on the inevitable forms of encounter, as well as exclusion, that are prompted as 95

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Israel-Palestine’s conflicted landscape enters into the realms of visual cultural production. This is a recognition that might prove productive in the task of building an Arab cultural studies more broadly. While the realms of the political and of the cultural have often been treated as separate realms of enquiry within Middle Eastern studies in particular, these realms might be more intimately connected than previously assumed, and an Arab cultural studies might provide the ideal medium through which their points of overlap and intersection can be drawn to the fore. The visual representations of the border scrutinized here demonstrate this point with a particular clarity. As Hamid Naficy notes: ‘in recent years no region in the world has borne deadlier sustained clashes over physical (and discursive) borders than the Middle East’—and this is particularly the case in Israel and Palestine.48 Borders therefore occupy a central position and possess a potent symbolism within the political imagination of the Arab world, and yet it is through their fraught representation within visual culture that these otherwise abstract national boundaries come to assume intricate and intimate political resonances. Visual, imaginative and cultural engagement with the border therefore serves to extend, rather than to limit, the critical discussions of power and (inter)national identification that prove so pertinent to the Arab world. While this discussion has focused on the complex forms of visual connection that can be forged around a literal and specific (albeit ambiguous and contentious) border, such analysis also foregrounds the broader politics of connection that might be forged across discursive and cultural boundaries in the service of an Arab cultural studies. Visual culture offers, on the one hand, a medium that enables the artist to ‘reach out’ and to connect with others across national and discursive boundaries. Critical engagement with such work does not necessarily require theoretical tools that are somehow specifically ‘Arab’; indeed, the multiple representational possibilities that circulate in both Hatoum’s and Bitton’s works invite a cross-disciplinary approach that finds points of contact and connection between fields as diverse as psychoanalytic and postcolonial, literary and media theory, and might establish Arab cultural studies as an inherently transnational, transdisciplinary medium.49 On the other hand, however, it is important to note that the contact between such discursive arenas must not be forced—disjunctions as well as connections emerge within such discussions and, as in Hatoum’s and Bitton’s work, these forms of distance and differentiation are just as important to acknowledge as the ‘closeness’ of conceptual overlaps. In the case of the IsraeliPalestinian border, one such source of differentiation emerges in the contrast between the conceptualization of the border by Arab visual artists 96

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and by cultural theorists, particularly within postcolonial studies. As Michaelsen and Johnson write in their work Border Theory: The Limits of Cultural Politics, ‘the intellectual entry-point of the “border” is one of the grand themes of recent, politically liberal-to-left work across the humanities and social sciences’, where it has come to operate as a motif for intercultural encounter, as a metaphor for marginality and as a site of potential hybridity, all of which suggest the potential for the transgression of national boundaries, for the destabilization of the power dynamics between ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’ and, it is ultimately assumed, for greater personal and transnational intimacy.50 Located primarily within the realms of postcolonial studies, the border has therefore assumed a celebratory function as ‘the privileged locus of a better world’, and this metaphorical resonance as a site that both divides and engenders crossing has been widely translated into literary and film theory.51 While it is surely crucial to explore the conceptual possibilities of borders, the untrammelled optimism that marks these abstract academic insights lends them an air of cultural privilege that can be read as akin to Banksy’s own whimsical idealism. The realms of the cultural and the conceptual should not simply be viewed as escapist or as deconstructivist, for it is clear that, in contrast, Arab visual artists mobilize the Israeli-Palestinian border as a site of fraught, often painful contact and of an impassable disconnection between bodies and places, which must equally be acknowledged. The sensuously imagined, vividly tactile nature of Hatoum’s and Bitton’s works therefore invites intimate dialogues between artist and critic, subject and viewer, Arab visual culture and Arab cultural studies. Yet these works also reveal that a visual intimacy is possible only if the viewer acknowledges the complex distances and differences that accompany subject position and gaze and remains respectful of that which evades their experiential grasp—an intimacy that remains ‘impossible’. As Spivak reminds us, to do otherwise is to ‘touch’ with the desire to ‘claim’ the experience of the ‘other’ in a way that can never be ethical.52 This is a lesson that those who control the Israeli-Palestinian borders would do well to remember, for to seek to touch is an act that should stem from a desire not to possess but to connect, and it is sometimes just as important to respect the boundaries of an ‘other’ who is also always a ‘self ’—as it is to reach out across them. Acknowledgements

This article was originally published as an article entitled Impossible Intimacies: Towards a Visual Politics of “Touch” at the Israeli-Palestinian Border in a Special Issue of the Journal for Cultural Research on the subject 97

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of ‘Arab Visual Culture’, ed Anastasia Valassopoulos, 16/2–3 (2012): 175–95, reprinted by permission of the publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd, http://www.tandfonline.com. Many thanks to Dr Anastasia Valassopoulos, for her support and enthusiasm during the writing of this article; to Professor Caroline Rooney, for her stimulating readership of the article; to Dr Dalia S. Mostafa, for her linguistic advice on Arabic terminology and to the anonymous reader, who offered thoughtful and productive insights. Thank you to Mona Hatoum for her permission to reproduce the image of Grater Divide; to Simone Bitton and Lifesize Entertainment for their permission to reproduce stills from the film website for Wall and to Banksy’s Pest Control Office for permission to reproduce the image of Banksy’s work. Notes 1. The West Bank Wall, as it is termed here, is variously referred to as the ‘West Bank Barrier’, ‘Apartheid Wall’ or ‘Separation Fence’. The shifting semantics of this term point towards the variety of political attitudes towards this structure. ‘Separation Fence’, for example, is the term used by the Israeli authorities, the term ‘fence’ eliding the fact that much of it is made from concrete, while ‘Apartheid Wall’ or simply ‘Wall’ is used by those who oppose it as a form of ethnic and territorial segregation. For further discussion of the structure, see, Ray Dolphin, The West Bank Wall: Unmaking Palestine (London: Pluto Press, 2006); Isabel Kershner, Barrier: The Seam of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). It is worth noting that the Wall has become so visually iconic of Palestine’s occupation that the Palestinian artist Basel Abbas considers it to be ‘fetishized’ by the Western media. In conversation at the New Art Exchange in Nottingham, he described the frequent requests he received from American and European journalists writing about his work for him to pose in front of the Wall for publicity purposes. Basel Abbas, Ruanne Abou-Rahme and Eva Langret, ‘The Zone: artists and curator in conversation’, at New Art Exchange, Nottingham, 21 May 2011. 2. For further discussion of the prolific graffiti on the West Bank Wall, see Zia Krohn and Joyce Lagerweij, Concrete Messages: Street Art on the Israeli-Palestinian Separation Barrier (Ðrsta, Sweden: Dokument Press, 2010) and William Parry, Against the Wall: The Art of Resistance in Palestine (London: Pluto Press, 2010). 3. For examples of his work, see Banksy’s website, http://www.banksy.co.uk. 4. ‘Art prankster sprays Israeli wall’, BBC News, 5 August 2005, (accessed 12 April 2010). 5. Sam Jones, ‘Spray can prankster tackles Israel’s security barrier’, Guardian, 5 August 2005, (accessed 28 April 2010). This Palestinian man’s response to the necessary ugliness of the Wall bears an interesting parallel with the response of Israeli architects to its construction, who protested that no architectural professionals had been consulted on its design, resulting in it looking ‘ “clumsy and ugly” [rather than] “potentially as beautiful as the Great Wall of China” ’ (Nadav Sharagai, quoted in Eyal Weizman, 98

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Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation (London: Verso, 2007), p. 161. According to the architects, it was primarily the unattractive nature of the Wall that had incited such strong international opposition to it. 6. Joe Cleary, Literature, Partition and the Nation-State: Culture and Conflict in Ireland, Israel and Palestine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 147–8. 7. The definition of Israeli-Palestinian borders is a complex task. As it is not an independent nation state, Palestine does not have any self-determined borders. The desired or imagined borders to Palestine range from the boundaries that were proposed by the United Nations in 1948 for separate Israeli and Palestinian states, to proposals for a single Palestinian state and erasure of Israel, to the reverse. Borders have frequently fluctuated, particularly following the 1967 Six-Day War or Naksa, which saw Jordanian- and Egyptian-controlled Palestinian territories taken by Israel. For further information on the history of Israeli-Palestinian borders, see Charles D. Smith, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A History with Documents, 5th edn (Boston, MA: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2004), and for accounts of their enforcement, see Yehudit Kirstein Keshet, Checkpoint Watch: Testimonies from Occupied Palestine (London: Zed Books, 2006). 8. Mehdi Hasan, ‘No end to the strangulation of Gaza’, New Statesman, 6 January 2011, (accessed 3 January 2018). 9. Weizman: Hollow Land, p. 167. 10. Keshet: Checkpoint Watch, pp. 14–15. 11. Parry: Against the Wall, pp. 100 and 113. 12. Numerous Palestinian works of literature and film feature borders, but particularly famous works of literature include Ghassan Khanafani’s Men in the Sun, trans. Hilary Kilpatrick (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999), which records the traumatic cross-border flight of two Palestinian men, while films include Hani Abu-Assad’s Rana’s Wedding (2005), which dramatizes the difficulties that Rana encounters in traversing practical and social boundaries, to the extent that she is finally married at a roadblock near Jerusalem. For an excellent account of borders and border crossing in Palestinian film, see Nurith Gertz and George Khleifi, Palestinian Cinema: Landscape, Trauma and Memory (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), pp. 134–70. 13. For further critical discussion of the encounters between the lovers at the Qalandiya checkpoint in Suleiman’s film, see Anna Ball, ‘Between a postcolonial nation and fantasies of the feminine: the contested visions of Palestinian cinema’, Camera Obscura 23/3 (2008), pp. 1–33. 14. Laura Marks, The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment and the Senses (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), p. 22. 15. Sara Ahmed, ‘Intimate touches: proximity and distance in international feminist dialogues’, Oxford Literary Review 19/1–2 (1997), pp. 19–46. 16. This is a dualism that is also present in Arabic, in which the term lamss can refer to both a physical or emotional touch. Thank you to Dr Dalia Mostafa for this insight. 17. Ahmed: ‘Intimate touches’, p. 27. 99

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18. Ahmed: ‘Intimate touches’, pp. 27–8. 19. Gayati Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Translator’s preface and afterword to Mahasweta Devi, Imaginary Maps (1994)’, in Donna Landry and Gerald M. MacLean (eds), The Spivak Reader: Selected Readings of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 267–86, p. 270. 20. For further discussion of ‘ethics as the experience of the impossible’, see Sangeeta Ray, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: In Other Words (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 67–106. For Spivak’s iconic discussion of ‘the subaltern’, who within the context of this chapter might be understood as the inaccessible and voiceless Palestinian individuals who are absent from Bitton’s film, see Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Can the subaltern speak?’, in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1988), pp. 271–313. 21. Marks: The Skin of the Film, p. 162. 22. Weizman: Hollow Land. 23. Weizman: Hollow Land, p. 151. 24. Sara Ahmed, ‘Embodying strangers’, in Avril Horner and Angela Keane (eds), Body Matters: Feminism, Textuality, Corporeality (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), pp. 85–97, p. 91. 25. Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books, 1987), p. 3. 26. See Hilal Khashan, ‘Collective Palestinian frustration and suicide bombings’, Third World Quarterly 24/6 (2003), pp. 1049–67. 27. Ahmed: ‘Embodying strangers’, p. 91. 28. Gannit Ankori, Palestinian Art (London: Reaktion Books, 2006), p. 121. 29. A number of critics have noted that the practical constraints on artists, filmmakers and writers within the West Bank and Gaza, coupled with the long history of displacement that marks Palestinian existence, has led to a strongly transnational dynamic to Palestinian cultural practice. Consequently, creative work tends to be considered Palestinian if the practitioner bears this as their cultural heritage, whether or not they live within the Palestinian territories themselves. See, for example, Livia Alexander, ‘Is there a Palestinian cinema? The national and transnational in Palestinian film production’, in Rebecca L. Stein and Ted Swedenburg (eds), Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), pp. 150–73. 30. Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny [1919], trans. David McClintock (London: Penguin, 2003), p. 121. 31. Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), p. 3. 32. Marks: The Skin of the Film, p. 129. 33. Spivak: ‘Translator’s preface and afterword’, p. 270. 34. Spivak: ‘Translator’s preface and afterword, p. 270. 35. Chris Kutschera, ‘Palestine–Israel: “Wall” ’, Middle East Magazine, November 2004, (accessed 15 April 2010).

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36. Ella Shohat, Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), pp. 330–58, pp. 330–1. 37. Shohat, Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices, p. 332. 38. Ahmed: ‘Intimate touches’, p. 45. 39. This situation has become so common that a Palestinian Farmers’ Union has now been set up in order to campaign for protection of their land, water and access to markets at which to sell their products, all of which the Wall risks cutting off due to its enclosure of Palestinian towns. See the Palestinian Farmers’ Union website for more details, http://www.pafu.ps/. 40. See also, Weizman: Hollow Land, pp. 139–59. 41. Kristeva 1994, quoted in Ahmed: ‘Intimate touches’, p. 28. 42. Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972), p. 21. 43. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Randall (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988), p. 96. 44. Ahmed: ‘Intimate touches’, p. 28. 45. Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 3. There is an interesting parallel here with Raja Shehadeh’s autobiographical work, in which he offers a series of meditative reflections on the ways in which the meanings of seemingly fixed features of the landscape—boulders, valleys, trees—are thrown into a process of signifying flux through the construction of the Wall and settlements within the Palestinian landscape, which render the dynamics of ownership, belonging and power unstable and open to multiple interpretations. This is particularly evident in an encounter between Shehadeh and an Israeli settler, in which they debate the conflicting names of a particular wadi and clash verbally over their rights to and purposes for passage through this same spot, their interpretations subject to an endless play of différance. See, Raja Shehadeh, Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape (London: Profile Books, 2008), pp. 183–203. 46. Rebecca L. Stein and Ted Swedenburg, ‘Popular Culture, Transnationality, and Radical History’, in Rebecca L. Stein and Ted Swedenburg (eds), Palestine, Israel and the Politics of Popular Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), pp. 1–24, p. 1. 47. Stein and Swedenburg: ‘Popular Culture, Transnationality, and Radical History’, pp. 1–2. 48. Hamid Naficy, An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 31. 49. Indeed, it is interesting to note that I write as a Lecturer in Postcolonial Literature situated within an English Literature Department in the UK. My discussion of Arab visual culture—and not only the ‘narrative’ genre of film, but also the static conceptual medium of sculpture—should not be read as incongruous with this position, however. Postcolonialism in itself is an inherently interdisciplinary field of study dedicated to producing non-Eurocentric, egalitarian discussions across cultural and discursive boundaries alike. Certainly, there are contextual limits to this subject position, yet the counterbalance to such limits emerges through the idiosyncratic conceptual insights that the postcolonial literary theorist might 101

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contribute—for example, an approach to the border that acknowledges its ‘textual’ nature as an inscriptive surface on which conceptual dialogues are produced. Equally, the political and contextual specificities of Arab visual culture present important political moves against the homogenization of experiences such as diaspora or national identity, for example, within postcolonial studies itself. 50. Scott Michaelsen and David E. Johnson (eds), Border Theory: The Limits of Cultural Politics (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), p. 2. 51. Michaelsen and Johnson: Border Theory, p. 3. 52. Spivak: ‘Translator’s preface and afterword’, p. 270.

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CHAPTER 4 DREAMS OR NIGHTMARES The Artworking of Return in And Europe Will Be Stunned (2007–11) by Yael Bartana (with Sławomir Sierakowski) Griselda Pollock

The reform of consciousness consists only in making the world aware of its own consciousness, in awakening it out of its dream about itself, in explaining to it the meaning of its own actions [. . .] Hence, our motto must be: reform of consciousness not through dogmas, but by analysing the mystical consciousness that is unintelligible to itself, whether it manifests itself in a religious or a political form. It will then become evident that the world has long dreamed of possessing something of which it has only to be conscious in order to possess it in reality. It will become evident that it is not a question of drawing a great mental dividing line between past and future, but of realising the thoughts of the past. Karl Marx 18431 Art can sometimes play serious games with consciousness, rousing us from an oneiric condition into critical awareness by means of a paradox: a credible fiction. This epigraph from the early, pre-theoretical writings of a young Karl Marx sets up an opposition. A ‘mystical consciousness’, religious or political in form and unintelligible to itself (we might name it ideological delusion nowadays), submits to an analysis, which ironically begins to make possible the realization, the making real, of what is being dreamed: a future. Two opposing concepts of the dream are in play, however. We may be dreaming, hence not quite conscious, remaining enthralled to mystical thoughts, distracted inside and by ideology; this dream may be a nightmare we live daily. Or we may be dreaming consciously of a virtual, transformed future. My question here is this: Can cultural practices and artworking perform for us an analysis of consciousness that can balance imaginative, aesthetically-fashioned fiction with a historical urgency that reframes the past—remembered in art’s forms and transformed—to incite political action on behalf of the realization of a not-yet-imaginable future? In this chapter I examine the film trilogy And Europe Will Be Stunned, created by 103

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Israeli artist Yael Bartana (b. 1970) in collaboration with Sławomir Sierakowski and groups of volunteers. Projected full screen in separate spaces in a single installation, the trilogy of films is composed of Mary Koszmary/Nightmares (single channel video, installation, 11 mins, 2007), Mur i Wieża/Wall and Tower (single channel video and sound installation, 15 mins, 2009) and Zamach/Assassination (single channel video and sound installation, 35 mins, 2011).2 Each film lays out an aspect of the Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland (JRMiP), a movement initiated by Yael Bartana in collaboration with Polish political intellectual Sławomir Sierakowski (b. 1979), founder of Krytyka Polityczna (Political Critique), the widest movement of left-wing intellectuals, artists and activists based in Poland (with branches in Ukraine, Germany and Russia). As a project, the Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland challenges histories of racism and nationalism. It imagines political alternatives approached through a novel realization of politico-aesthetic practice. The manifesto of JRMiP (Fig. 4.1) speaks of healing ‘our mutual trauma—Polish and Jewish—by reaching back into the past and into the ‘Zionist phantasmagoria’ in order to re-imagine a world of migration and displacement, welcoming different kinds of ‘settlers’ who will be the ‘embodiment of our desire for another history’, a history that ‘never took the course we wanted’. It concludes with its mantra countering nationalist homogeneity: With one religion we cannot listen. With one colour we cannot see. With one culture we cannot feel. Without you we cannot even remember. Join us and Europe will be stunned. Bartana’s work with Sierakowski relocates the space of imagination and critical re-examination of multiple historical legacies in contemporary Poland, as it now after 1989, struggles with itself, when the nationalist right (xenophobic, homophobic, anti-feminist, often anti-Semitic) battles with its democratic intelligentsia. Indeed, such a battle for the political soul of the country is as true for Israel as it perhaps is also for Palestine, reminding us that the politics of aesthetics and the aesthetics of politics concern a long experiment in creating and sustaining the conditions of human, social and plural living that the modernist-nationalist experiment may never deliver. We need not only to awaken from the dream of nationhood that has become a nightmare, but we also need to do real work to imagine and thus build other futures, dialectically, dialogically, and creatively confronting the ruinous delusions of our present.

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Figure 4.1 Yael Bartana, Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland manifesto, 2011 Poster, 70 × 100 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam.

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Yael Bartana’s work is thus addressed indirectly to the Reality (in the psychanalytical sense) of her Middle Eastern present—the topic of this volume. But her work also curves time to ‘return’ to a heavy past that lines the national dreams of Israel, that may, however, ‘return’ now as an indirect route to a future. The future has to be made, both by artists dreaming and analysing and by artworks that induce changes of consciousness through the collaborative work involved in the actual making of the fictions that Yael Bartana dares to realize in staged documentary. The wager her work makes involves triangulating the imaginative and real spaces held between the slash Israel/Palestine with a third space, a partner in another slashed pair she places on screen: Poland/ Israel, which cannot be excluded from the imaginative foundations of the place, the history, the trauma held in the linguistic neologism this volume seeks to examine. Before I undertake a close reading of each element of the trilogy to assess what, borrowing from Bracha Ettinger, I shall call its artworking, I need firstly to place Poland in both the Israeli Jewish and the European Jewish imaginary.3 ‘Over there’

In an interview in 2007 with the British liberal newspaper The Guardian, Israeli novelist David Grossman (b. 1954) reflected on his recently published novel, See Under Love. The opening section of the novel tells the story of a small boy, Momik, growing up in the newly formed State of Israel during the 1950s. He is surrounded by adults, his parents included, who are survivors of the Shoah. Still traumatized, yet often compulsively speaking to each other of their recent experiences and family losses, these anguished adults fall silent when the child is around, leaving him to try and make sense of the fragments of their speech that he gleans even as he is immersed in the affective weight of what they will not say in his hearing. Unbounded dread inheres in a phrase he overhears repeatedly—‘the Nazi beast’—which is interpreted by the child, his imagination shaped by children’s stories, as a creature that he literally tries to grow, in secret, from various insects and creepy crawlies he collects, so that he can finally vanquish the beast and thus ease the perplexingly troubled adults around him. The ‘Nazi beast’—and at the same time, all the missing people whose names were heard in snatched conversation or daily on Israeli national radio when a ten-minute slot was devoted to a public broadcast of names of lost relatives being sought—is associated with another recurring but puzzling phrase: ‘over there’. Grossman explains: 106

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It is interesting to note that in Hebrew, Yiddish and every other language they speak, when Jewish people refer to the Holocaust they tend to speak of what happened ‘over there’, whereas non-Jews usually speak in terms of ‘what happened then’. There is a vast difference between there and then. ‘Then’ means in the past; ‘then’ enfolds within it something that happened and ended, and is no longer. ‘There’, conversely, suggests that somewhere out there, in the distance, the thing that happened is still occurring, constantly growing stronger alongside our daily lives, and that it may re-erupt. It is not decisively over. Certainly not for us, the Jews.4 Of course, ‘over there’ refers generically to a geographical Europe. It is, however, a more specific time-space. ‘Over there’ is an invocation of the home before 1939 of over half of European Jewry, three million of whom once lived in Poland (and its related territories). As Grossman is suggesting, however, this other place is not only a past (a lost history) but also, a nowspace, an imaginative presence. While ‘what happened then’ suggests a past that might one day fade as time erodes its intensity, ‘over there’ is a shadow-place that is carried where-ever you go and is perpetual. And Europe will be Stunned—Tropes of Return between Israel and Poland in Three Conversations

The trilogy by Yael Bartana addresses the shadow-space ‘over-there’ by going to contemporary Poland and starting a radical movement that proposes a ‘Jewish Renaissance in Poland’. The first exhibition of the three-part film trilogy took place in the summer of 2011 at the 54th Venice Biennale, under the title And Europe Will Be Stunned. The international artworld was indeed stunned, because Yael Bartana, an Israeli artist, had been selected to represent Poland, to be shown in the Polish national pavilion, the first ever non-Polish artist to do so.5 Yael Bartana’s grandparents came from Poland. She is thus removed from ‘over there’ by one more generation than was David Grossman’s central character Momik. In an interview with the curator Charles Esche, Bartana is asked: ‘Why Poland?’ I think it is very much connected to Israel, but I wanted to create a new laboratory—a new place to explore, experiment. What I initially felt is that Poland and Israel have a lot of things in common. We have to deal constantly with our reality and history. So does Poland. Perhaps many other places too, but these issues are quite specific in 107

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Poland [. . .] And I have to say that when I went to Poland, I felt very connected to the place at some strange level. It’s something I never felt before in the Netherlands or Sweden [. . .] In Poland, it was really a deep, metaphysical, emotional link. I could feel the place. If I could not feel connected on that level, I would not have stayed there working for four years. There was something there that attracted me so much that I really wanted to open all the wounds. On an intellectual level, it was about knowing that this place was used by the State of Israel to such a large extent. It was connected to this whole machinery of Zionism and the Holocaust.6 Given this shocking and profound gesture made in the twenty-first century, it is necessary to situate Bartana’s ‘return’ to Poland in three artistic/cinematic conversations that form a multi-generational framework for the trope of return, of the return of the repressed, and of overlaid time-space of ‘over there’. The first conversation in the history of art/cinema for Poland in Jewish memory is clearly the monumental nine-and-a-half-hour film, Shoah (1985), created by Claude Lanzmann between 1974 and 1985 (with newly edited elements of his archive appearing up to the last years before his death in 2018). Shoah opens with the director bringing Simon Srebnik back to Chełmno—a child survivor of the death camp situated in that Polish village—from Israel, where Lanzmann had ‘found’ him? (Fig. 4.2a & 4.2b). The entire structure of the film is, moreover, built around a double movement. Firstly, there are Lanzmann’s own journeys to Poland and Israel during the making of the film. Secondly, in his interviews with survivors, Lanzmann invites them to return in person, or through the memories he prompts them to speak in their own words, to their pasts in that place.7 Lanzmann’s film re-travels the actual landscapes of Poland to re-inscribe the landscape of the Shoah, re-peopling its darkest places with faces and voices forever marked by what they lived there. The film Shoah, however, forms part of a trilogy, with two other films, one titled Why Israel (1973), made 25 years after the foundation of the Jewish state, and the other titled Tsahal (1994), a five-hour rumination on the Israel Defense Forces. These films are often overlooked because of the monumental significance of Shoah. Yet the relay between Poland and Israel is built into Shoah and across the trilogy. The second conversation I want to initiate is with a film made in 1993 by Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman (1950–2015), titled ambiguously D’Est/From the East (16 mm, 107 mins). It was exhibited as one element of her innovative turn to installation, Bordering on Fiction, at the Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis in 1995. There, the film D’Est was screened cinematically 108

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(a)

(b)

Figure 4.2 Claude Lanzmann (1925–2018), Shoah, 1985, 566 mins, New Yorker Films: (a) Face of Chełmno survivor Simon Srebnik (1930–2006) returning to the camp; (b) Face of Chełmno survivor Simon Srebnik (1930– 2006) outside the church.

in a room adjacent to large space populated with 24 television monitors on podiums arranged in eight triptychs. Computer-controlled streaming looped selected scenes from the film that moved across this forest of screens. D’Est registers the artist’s filming journey to the East when she moved eastwards from Berlin to Moscow through Poland, from where her Jewish family had come, and on through Ukraine. During this filmed passage through Eastern Europe, Akerman discovered an uncanny familiarity with aspects of this place, hitherto unknown to her, some of whose foods and even customs it seemed had been trans-generationally transmitted to a child growing up in Belgium, feeling ‘different’—the legacy, she thought, of the linguistic and religious culture of her grandfather’s Orthodox Jewish world. Without premeditation or consciousness, Akerman’s characteristically long takes of rural Poland cinematically reveal to the viewer a landscape almost unchanged by the previous 50 years. It also makes visible a landscape haunted by absence—Jewish absence—while many elements of daily life in contemporary Poland shared unexpected commonalities with the artist’s displaced Jewish culture that she knew from her Belgian Jewish home. In the text spoken by the filmmaker as a retrospective moment on the journey and the film she had made that forms the solitary 25th screen set a little apart in its own space in the installation, Chantal Akerman revealed that her sense of Jewish historical ‘difference’, deriving from her mother’s unspoken trauma of surviving Auschwitz, where her own mother had been murdered, repeatedly impressed itself as the artist filmed many haunting scenes of daily life that she witnessed in post-Soviet Eastern European cities in the 1990s. Recurring in several scenes created by static filming or long travelling shots filmed from a moving car is the pathos 109

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and even foreboding and anxiety evoked by the people walking in the streets with packages, people waiting for buses and trains (Fig. 4.3). And slowly we all realize that it is the same thing that is revealed. A little like a primal scene. And the primal scene for me, although I fight against it and end up in a rage. I have to face facts. It is far behind and always in front of all images barely covered by other luminous or even radiant ones [. . .] Once the film is finished I said to myself, ‘so, that’s what it was; that again’.8 Captured by a past she came to recognize only by travelling through and filming a present-day Eastern European landscape in the wake of 1989, Akerman found herself encountering a time-space full of the spectres of the past, embodied, however, in the faces and gestures of today’s survivors of Stalinism and post-Stalinist Soviet communism. Akerman’s distinctive use of slow travelling or long-held shots as she journeyed across Poland and beyond produced an encounter with what I would name ‘the returning repressed’, always-already there. In filming, Akerman discovered the traumatically transmitted family past before 1945 surfacing in the look of the present of these places and spaces post1989 to which she was coming for the first time while sensing she was, in some troubling manner, returning.

Figure 4.3 Chantal Akerman (1950–2015), ‘People walking in the street’, D’Est/From the East (1993), 16 mm, 107 mins, Icarus Films. 110

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A third mode of the artworking of return has been created by Israeli artist, Bracha L. Ettinger (b. 1948), who has worked in Britain and France and now lives between Tel Aviv and Paris. Her early work, influenced by the impact of Lanzmann’s Shoah and the negation of archival or figurative visual representation, involves the interrupted use of a broken photocopying machine producing new surfaces onto which she then paints and draws in abstract but evocative gestures she names hand-thoughts. These works create palimpsests of, while bending, time-space. Although like Grossman she belongs to an earlier generation of Israeli artists than Yael Bartana, Bracha Ettinger has long been reflecting deeply on the contemporary issues of Israel and Palestine in the context of the inherited Jewish/Polish/European histories of both. In an artist’s notebook from the 1980s, published in 1993, she registers in fractured prose her anguished responses to the landscape of Europe she was discovering through her own migration to Europe. The heart of Europe must be saved. The desert of Europe and all this white space. Light doesn’t bother it at all, but neither does it do much for poor Europe. The desert and Europe: I travel in black and white and violet. On the rails I am a grain of iron.9 Europe possesses her as she paints its space, feeling herself in and on the iron rails of the terrible transports. But this swings back to the link she carries in her own body and psyche. Her earliest paintings were nucleated landscapes scattered with fractured bodies, heads reduced to skull-like husks, death spread across an emptiness bleached by a terrible light. Europe and the desert of Judea. Israeli-European archaeology. The earth and all that filth underneath; underneath–Europe must be looked at. During every journey I see the green everywhere; and I see the filth underneath. Nature, and all that it has swallowed. The plain desert: blessed drought, or drought wounded.10 Thus, Europe must be looked at in conjunction with the desert of Judea, a Judea that is at once a wounded people and a real place. Europe appears in retrospect to the child of the Shoah, a child who is born into a coinhabited but segregated landscape of disaster, Israel/Palestine as doubled spaces themselves co-traumatized and co-affected. Ettinger’s aesthetic process involves an interrupted use of a photocopying machine. Significantly, this machine has no lens. It is not, therefore, a surrogate eye such as we associate with the camera. A photocopier simply interprets mass or void in the image it scans with light into an electrically magnetic charged field that attracts powdered black grains onto the copper cylinder over which paper is then rolled. The resulting image is not so much a copy 111

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of the original as the transformation of a camera-created image into materialized, mechanically deposited residue. The artist interrupts the process by breaking open the machine halfway through its cycle, before it has used heat to seal the grains into the approximation of the original photograph submitted to the machine. By preventing heat sealing, she displaces the original, analogue and indexical photograph from which she started, to translate it into materialized, grainy trace of a historical moment that becomes the ground for her own painterly or graphic gestures, signs of her embodied presence at this newly created threshold with the past. Ettinger dedicated several years to using this new method, often resubmitting the papers carrying such traces repeatedly, so that traces of different images accumulate. These layered image traces on paper she then assembled into combinations, which were usually, not always, hung vertically and in suites of two or three. One set of works to which she returned repeatedly was analogue photographs taken in 1917, published in 1925 as Hundert Deutsche Fliegerbilder aus Palaestina [Hundred German Aerial Views from Palestine], by the German Palestine Institute (Deutsches Palaestina-Institut) (Fig. 4.4).11 This is a volume of very early military aerial photography, taken in wartime by the German Luftwaffe overflying their allies’—the

Figure 4.4 Cover of Gustav Dalman, Hundert Deutsche Fliegerbilder aus Palaestina (Gütersloh: Verlag von C. Bertelsmann, 1925). 112

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Ottoman Empire’s—territories, which were then being contested by the British.12 These original Fliegerbilder, aerial photographs, belong, therefore, to the imperial moment of twentieth-century European history when the European powers became interested in and ‘carved up’ the ‘Middle East’ among themselves, notably after the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. They also demonstrate military deployment of photographic technologies that enact the distanced look of disembodied gazing on effectively unpopulated land. This machinic aerial gaze requires no contact with the humanity that lives on land below and depends upon it. Thus, perceived from afar, territory is simply the target for bombs. Writing of the technologies of a second world war, Paul Virilio writes of this complex: The fusion is complete, the confusion perfect. Nothing now distinguishes the functions of the weapon and the eye; the projectile’s image and the image’s projectile form a single composite. In its tasks of detection and acquisition, pursuit and destruction, the projectile is an image or ‘signature’ on the screen, and the television picture is an ultrasonic projectile propagated at the speed of light.13 As one of the earliest commentators on this body of Ettinger’s work, art historian Rosi Huhn drew attention to the significance of the date of the Hundert Deutsche Fliegerbilder—1917.14 On 2 November 1917, British Prime Minister Arthur Balfour (1848–1930) wrote his famous declaration, sent as a letter to Baron Walter Rothschild (1868–1937), in which he promised British support to the Jewish people in the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine.15 Within two years, as a result of the Treaty of Versailles, this ‘space’, Palestine, became a territory ruled by a British Mandate that lasted until 1948, when David Ben-Gurion, Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization and Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared the independence of the State of Israel as the British prepared to withdraw in the wake of the United Nations Partition Plan for Israel and Palestine. Today that air space, once patrolled by a German air force in 1917, is controlled by the Israeli air force, maintaining its military supremacy in the air with new technologies for aerial surveillance and targeted strikes.16 Mixing the German words, the name Palaestina, and other images of aerial views of stadia (reminiscent, as we shall soon see, of the iconic use of a stadium with all its resonances in Bartana’s first film, Mary Koszmary/ Nightmares), Ettinger layered these traces and painted the resulting paper with gestures of her brush that at once evoked and materially resisted the distanced and targeting gaze (Figs 4.5a & 4.5b). The palimpsest of Ettinger’s 113

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(a)

(b)

Figure 4.5 Bracha Ettinger (b. 1948): (a) Hundert Deutsche Fliegerbilder aus Palaestina combined elements, nos 1–8, 1989, mixed media on paper, Plexiglas and metal. Courtesy of the artist; (b) Detail: Hundert Deutsche Fliegerbilder aus Palaestina no. 3, 1988 mixed media on paper, 28.8 × 21.8 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

visual field created the collision of historical and personal time through layering the paper passing repeatedly through the interrupted photocopier so that bears both the imprint of the 1917 Fliegerbilder and equally granulated traces of her family photo album. Born into the political reality of a multi-layered space in 1948 as the child of displaced Polish-Jewish survivor-parents from the Shoah, the artist uses her time-disrupting technique of multiply layered spectral traces of a past momentarily indexed by an image to place her own child self upon a field marked by the German gaze upon Palaestina—a colony soon to change imperial masters. This aesthetic method further unsettles temporalities and spatialities when, in one series of papers, the artist places her own image as an ‘Israeli’ child born in 1948 as if looking forward to, or from behind, the image of her very modern European parents, born in Poland, striding down a street in Łódź in 1938 as still free metropolitans, even as the future into which they walk so confidently will soon collapse into that city’s infamous ghetto—the longest lasting of the Third Reich (Fig. 4.6). The repeated passes of single papers through the machine inverts the temporal sequence of parent coming before their child so that the five-year-old appears to be watching them, looking from behind towards the past of a couple, yet to become her parents, while also watching over their youthful pre-war hopefulness. 114

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Figure 4.6 Bracha Ettinger Mamalangue—Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism no. 5 (one element), 1989–90, mixed media on paper. Courtesy of the artist.

Transmitted trauma inhabits the present of the artist-child of survivors with memories of what she, the child, did not experience. Yet the image creates a compassionate holding of her parents’ destroyed past within her gaze. The method enables Ettinger formally to prompt our reflections on both the overlaid, cross-inscribed historical experiences of politically shaped places and the psychological transmissions and trans-crypted memories of lost presents and blighted futures of which the child is the caring keeper.17 In its constant return to various sites of pre-war Europe, notably Poland, through a photographic archive both personal (her parents in Łódź) and public (an image of mass execution of women in October 1942 or the 1917 Fliegerbilder), Ettinger’s artworking, however, interrupts time, stopping it in its own mournful and material encounter by seeking to create the dialectical image of this history that is also her present. At once a register of a historical process of overlaying in the multiple passes of the process of making her works with the photocopic dust and a broken machine, Ettinger’s palimpsestic works are also imaginative acknowledgements of the very immediate condition of an Israel-Palestinian situation, which the artist presents as a condition of co-inhabited space and cross-inscribed trauma. 115

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Once deciphered and affectively registered through a reading of the process and effect of Ettinger’s artworking (her neologism for the psychoaesthetic transformative work art does), such affectivity points to a way to think a future for two peoples in Israel/Palestine that goes beyond the notions of delimited territorial possession. Her work contributes to the aesthetic creation of a methodology for displacing a slash of division by imaginatively layering time and space and suggesting an always-already co-inhabited and co-affected time-space that is not bounded by lines on the ground.18 These three works—film, installation and visual art—initiate a conversation about the trope of return/no-return, in which then and there—the past—are viewed from the present at the time of making. Journeys to the place interrupt and render complex the gap of time that places past events in history. Being in the place, touching its earth, seeing its inhabitants, or evoking the past through technologies of vision and representation have been explored in these various media and with selfconscious formal and aesthetic strategies. I have proposed them to create a deeper and more complexly ambiguous frame for understanding the strategies and effects of Yael Bartana’s practice that led to her trilogy and installation, And Europe will be Stunned. And Europe will be Stunned—the Artist

Born in 1970, Yael Bartana is one generation away from Ettinger or Akerman, her grandparents having come from Poland to Israel. She is now contemplating a history delivered to her that is mediated by an Israel into which she born, complete with its historical Zionist phantasmagoria inscribed symptomatically in cultural practices and in its official national institutionalization of Holocaust Memory. She is also intrigued by aspects of Israel’s national memorial culture, for instance in her work Trembling Time (one channel, video and sound, 6:20 mins, 2001) in which she filmed the one-minute silence, marked by a siren, observed in Israel on Soldier’s Memorial Day, a national commemoration of the members of the military fallen during the nation’s wars. A camera placed on a bridge over a motorway at night records the flow, the slowing and the halting of the lanes of traffic for this moment of remembrance.19 ‘Trembling Time communicates the emotionally charged ritual of the state decreed minute of silence as both visual and aesthetic experience, while simultaneously formulating a critical reflection upon the collective behaviour pattern of a nation.’ 20 Yael Bartana was born in Kfar Yetzkel, a small cooperative farming community of 1,500 people, initially founded in 1921, in the Jezreel Valley in Northern Israel. She studied art at the Bezalel Academy of Arts 116

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and Design in Jerusalem (1992–96), gaining her Master of Fine Arts (MFA) at the School of Visual Arts in New York in 1999 and undertaking an artistic residency at the prestigious Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam (2000–01). She soon became known for her critical explorations of Israeli gender identities, notably analysing masculinity, and Israeli cultural memory such as Trembling Time. She now lives in Amsterdam and Berlin. Yael Bartana’s subsequent work developed into a combination of filmed staged projects, drawing on, but politically reframing, historical cinematic conventions and tropes drawn from twentieth-century film, notably those that had inscribed highly charged political imaginaries, such as Eisenstein’s Soviet montage and later expressionist-socialist celebrations of labour. Her artworks, however, re-fashion this heritage from politically utopian cinema of the 1920s and 1930s to evoke troubling connections with the regressive ideologies still animating present-day nationalist cultures. Her working method involves, moreover, collaborative processes that not only invoke the making of new socialist utopias in the past. They also seek to enact, in practice, and thus provide for the participants, concrete experiences of transnational, inter-generational and radical solidarity, cooperation and transformation that performatively counter the nationalisms the filmed project seeks to unsettle. The significance of Yael Bartana’s work thus lies at the intersection of knowledgeable formal-aesthetic creative practice, grounded in the politics of twentieth-century political cinematic aesthetics, with the political performativity of a production process that involves and transforms the people who enact the events she directs and films so that the making itself instantiates the subjective-imaginative change in consciousness to which the film’s topics gesture. In what follows, I give an account of my own encounters with Yael Bartana’s work that traces my initial shock—I too was stunned—and slow realization of its radical import and cultural significance. In the context of this book about the relations between Israel and Palestine, this contribution might seem oblique. Bartana’s trilogy And Europe will be Stunned is, I suggest, a radical model for unbinding the stasis of trauma in cultural memory through imaginative action in and by means of cultural practice. To grasp its significance, it must, however, also be seen as a radical break from the hold of the past articulated in the trope of a post-Shoah Jewish return to Poland, created to frame the time-space of the trope of return that moves in one direction towards the foundation of the State of Israel and in another to the unresolved claim to return on the part of displaced Palestinian people. I examine Yael Bartana’s challenging use of cinematic aesthetics and creative staging to refashion the ways in which Jewish/European and Israeli/ 117

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Palestinian imaginaries of self, other, space and time as well as traumatically overshadowed co-existence might be understood and shifted from overinvestment in the burdens of the past to the possibilities of and necessities for different and, in Marx’s terms, really imagined futures. And Europe will be Stunned – Poland/Israel in Venice

The presence of an Israeli artist in the Polish Pavilion at Venice was historically surprising. It was, however, a radical intervention both into the history and meaning of the Venice Biennale, which was precisely founded in the age of modern nationalisms, and into the historical and ‘mythic’ relations between Israel and Poland created by the events of the mid-twentieth century in Europe and the Middle East. The city of Venice hosts the oldest of the biennial reviews of modern and now contemporary art. Instituted in 1895 at the height of European imperialism, the Venice Biennale takes place in the specially laid out gardens, where national pavilions were erected after 1907, each representing one of the nations that then, before the 1914–18 war and its concluding Treaty of Versailles (1919), formed the ‘world’. Each pavilion showcases a nation’s artists, each nation representing itself through the work of artists. After 1918, the Venice Biennale became more focused on representing the cutting-edge trends in modern art, and this commitment to being the showcase of the Euro-American avant-garde became more marked after its resumption in 1948, following a wartime suspension of six years. Marked by history and political struggle, the Biennale was taken over by the fascist government during the 1930s, and then responded to the student upheavals of 1968 by abandoning Grand Prizes. In 1974, the entire event was dedicated to Chile as a protest against the violent overthrow of Salvador Allende and democracy by the institution of a military dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet. Thematic framing was initiated in 1972 while the Aperto, a curated exhibition focusing on emerging forms and directions in art, was initiated in 1980. At the end of the 1990s, Harald Szeeman, one of the most influential of twentiethcentury European ‘curators’—a practice of exhibition making of which he is considered the initiator—directed the first two biennales of the second century of its existence, introducing artists from Asia and also from Eastern Europe, its post-Communist nations re-joining the wider European and world community in the wake of 1989. History was made in 2005 when, for the first time, two women, the Spanish curators Maria de Corral and Rosa Martinez, were invited to direct the Biennale. Had feminism finally found its place in the Italian sun? 118

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To walk in the Giardini, with its 30+ national pavilions every other year from June to November, is to meet art framed by both this profound and disturbing geopolitical mapping of culture and the cultural re-mapping of nationhood. Each year new countries seek to become visible in this art map either inside the Giardini or by renting premises for ad hoc national representation across the city of Venice. In 2011, the countries showing in Venice included Albania, Andorra, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China (PR), Congo (DR), Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech and Slovak Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Haiti, Hungary, Iceland, India, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Syrian Arab Republic, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States of America, Uruguay, Venezuela and Zimbabwe. In addition, there are two collective pavilions: the Central Asia Pavilion and Istituto Italo-Latino Americano. In 2013, eight additional countries participated for the first time: Bahamas, Kingdom of Bahrain, Republic of Kosovo, Kuwait, Maldives, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria and Paraguay. While Israel has had a pavilion within the Giardini since 1952, it was only in 2009 that Palestine made an appearance at Venice. Featuring the work of seven artists, the show was curated by Salwa Mikdadi, who chose the title Palestine c/o Venice—using the Palestinian postal service as metaphor of the condition of Palestine as a site of multiple colonisations. The title of the exhibition Palestine c/o Venice underscores chronic impermanence, a condition Palestinians surmount with creative resistance as they reclaim their place as art practitioners free from the political essentialism that defines the media representation of their aesthetics. The artists’ personal narratives intersect with history, architecture and their art with communities, past and present. Their debates open spaces for activism and social and political engagement.21 The artists selected were Sandi Hilal (b. 1973) and Alessandro Petti (b. 1973), Khalil Rabah (b. 1961), Emily Jacir (b. 1972), Shadi Habib Allah (b. 1977) and Taysir Batniji (b. 1966). It should also be noted that because Palestinians were unable to travel to Venice due to restricted exit and entry from territories controlled by Israel, simultaneous exhibits of the art works were held at six Palestinian art institutions: A.M. Qattan Foundation, Birzeit University Art Museum, 119

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Al-Hoash Palestinian Art Court, International Academy of Art Palestine, Al Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, and Riwaq Center for Architectural Conservation. The Venice Biennale is at once an international art market showcase and a snapshot of current trends, interests and directions. At times it becomes a strategic space for radical gestures that seek to allow art to be more than touristic, nationalistic and commercial cultural capital in a world of competing nationalisms, economic zones and political alliances. In the national pavilions, a curator or curators are appointed by their national committees with the intention of their selecting a national representative for the pavilion. Mostly monographic presentations, or sometimes small group shows, are thus created, with the honour of representing your country being considered a major achievement for any artist. Poland clearly has a vigorous and international tradition in avantgarde, modernist and now contemporary art. Since 1993, Poland has been represented by a distinguished roster of artists who are now significant names on the international scene: Mirosław Bałka, Katarzyna Kozyra, Stanisław Dróżdż, Artur Żmijewski, Monika Sosnowska and Krzysztof Wodjiczko. Thus, it was indeed remarkable, if not stunning, for the national pavilion of Poland in Venice to become the venue, in 2011, for a one-person exhibition by an Israeli artist. The politics of Bartana’s gesture were addressed fundamentally to Poland itself and its self-understanding as a nation through the prism of what we might name, in a Freudian gesture, not so much a return (as above) but ‘a return of the repressed’. At the same time, the exhibition challenged both the national grid of the Venice Biennale and nationalism itself, represented in such different but equally powerful ways by the two nations brought into play by this selection: Poland and Israel. Both are new nations. Both are old nations. Via their long and traumatic entanglement, the Jewish and the Polish peoples are imaginatively entwined. For the many Israelis of East European origin, Poland—Polin in Hebrew meaning ‘rest (or sleep) here’ refers to the Poland in which Jewish people were permitted to live and work after 1264—is, as I suggested at the start, simply ‘over-there’, a place whose now-terrible name cannot be spoken. Following the invasion and occupation by the Third Reich between 1939 and 1945, Poland, with its 3.3 million Jewish citizens, became the geographical locus of the ground zero of Hitler’s attempted annihilation of the long-established Jewish civilization and its people across Europe. Its land remembers both co-existence and persecution. For the contemporary Polish people, the now disappeared Polish Jews represent a repressed but haunting part of their own denuded history, which some nationalists might experience as liberation from the distorting presence 120

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of the irreducible Jewish stranger. As a result of what was done under the Third Reich, Poland has, however, lost part of its own complex history and its rich past while recovering as a nation from both the horrors of German occupation and the trauma of Soviet-style communism. It is still redefining its singular national identity that was in modern times undermined first by Russian, then German, and finally Soviet imperialism. Hyper-nationalism after 1989 growing more acute in the second decade of the twenty-first century can be read, if never entirely justified, as the overdetermined symptom and traumatic after-effect of these violently ruptured histories. Placing an Israeli artist in the Polish pavilion could not but agitate, therefore, the most sensitive point in the historical relations between Jewish and Israeli memory of the Holocaust’s killing fields located in Poland by the German SS on the one hand and, on the other, post-Communist Poland with its new nationalisms and increasing monoculturalism. Israel itself is both a society (re)born in part out of the disaster in Europe and a modern nation at the heart of a prolonged and unresolved conflict of nationalisms and territorialism in the Middle East (back to 1917 and centuries before). Yet the gesture of placing an Israeli artist’s work in the Polish Pavilion was itself deeply reflexive. Its significance lies in an imagined invocation of ‘return’ actively addressed to two societies once composed of a plurality of peoples, but now denuded of their own other. What appears to have no direct relation to the topic of this book Israel/Palestine thus resonates profoundly with the condition not just of Israel and Palestine, but in what no textual form can define so as to imagine what futures lie held in suspension in these linguistic formulations: Israel/Palestine/Palestine/Israel. The singularity of Yael Bartana’s oblique but intense address to urgent and immediate entanglements of memories, histories, places, peoples and trauma lies in the aesthetic space for resistance and the role of an aesthetic work of political imagination in enabling transformation that she has elaborated as a novel instantiation of the modernist debates about the politics of aesthetics and the critical rearticulations of the aesthetic dimension of the political. And Europe will be Stunned—Earlier Work: Summer Camp, 2007

I first encountered the work of Yael Bartana in 2007 when I entered the installation Summer Camp at DOCUMENTA 12 (Fig. 4.7). DOCUMENTA is a quinquennial exhibition that takes place in Kassel, Germany. Alongside the older Venice Biennale, it is considered the most influential showcase of contemporary art. DOCUMENTA 12 in 2007 was distinguished by being curated and selected by the team of Ruth 121

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Figure 4.7 Yael Bartana, Summer Camp, 2007, 12' 48", LIMA; installation (four images, two from each of two installations). Courtesy of Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam.

Noack and Roger Buergel. They produced the first exhibition in DOCUMENTA ’s history (it was founded in 1955) to achieve equality of representation between men and women while also seeking to extend the geopolitical frame by including work from former Communist European countries. Many of the artist-women brought to the visitors’ attention by Noack and Buergel’s innovative and internationally extended curation were critically engaged with both the legacies of the twentieth century politically and historically—in which feminist thought and practice is a major event—and with the aesthetic politics of form and media. Yael Bartana was, for me, one of the great discoveries of this exhibition. Summer Camp is a film screened in a specially constructed environment that evokes the community halls in which the Zionist pioneers of the 1920s and 1930s might have watched films after a day of physical labour building their settlement. Summer Camp, however, documents a recent activity in 2007: a peace camp of international volunteers rebuilding a Palestinian family’s home, their house having been destroyed by the Israel Defense Forces as a punishment for acts of resistance. In filming this ‘summer camp’, representing an international gesture of solidarity and resistance to Israeli government policies, Yael Bartana used the history of cinema to introduce political unsettlement and incite analysis. She recreated the political-aesthetic rhetoric of earlier films that had celebrated 122

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and mythologized the Zionist project of settlement building during the 1920s and 1930s. Thus, we experience images of muscular workers at work filmed with sharp camera angles that isolate and dramatize bodies outlined heroically against the dramatically blue sky. Bartana also deployed tight framing to bring the viewer close to the inspired if sweaty faces of men and women at work rebuilding the destroyed home. Did such a self-conscious recreation of a cinematic visual mode that appears to affirm, if not celebrate, the politics of such acts of defiance and solidarity heroize the present or open a space of analysis by using, with a difference, a history of political cinematic forms? By formally making us subject to the power of cinematic mythologization created in Soviet and other political cinemas borrowed to encourage and idealize an earlier moment of Zionist pioneer construction, Bartana introduced a politically necessary dialectic that unsettled any simply positive reading of the contemporary project. Indeed, to make the point even more strongly, after 2007, Yael Bartana made the decision to twin Summer Camp with one source film, Avodah/ Labour (1935), created by Swiss filmmaker and photographer Helmar Lerski (1871–1956), who had worked on Fritz Lang’s German Expressionist masterpiece Metropolis.22 Avodah deployed a bonding of Expressionist aesthetics and socialist realist cinematic rhetoric to celebrate the pioneering labours of early Jewish settlers in the British Mandate of Palestine, set to an uplifting soundtrack by the Budapest Symphony Orchestra, with the aim of celebrating a socialist vision of the emerging Jewish state then. Using visual rhymes between Summer Camp of 2007 and the historical work of Lerski, Bartana highlighted the power of aesthetic forms and visual rhetoric to shape a political imaginary, an imaginary whose long-term effects the rebuilding peace camp sought to contest in its current political reality. Yael Bartana evoked, translated, and defamiliarized cinematic tropes that once played a powerful role in ideological propaganda in the formation of what became the State of Israel. By introducing the cinematic rhetoric of the 1930s into a representation of current acts of political contestation of Israeli policy, however, Summer Camp exposes for critical examination the heroic fantasies created precisely by the image, by envisioning. Yael Bartana’s film opened the space for what Walter Benjamin theorized in the 1930s at the beginning of montage cinema as the ‘dialectical image’: a critical and analytical constellation of past and present. Benjamin wrote: It is not that what is past casts its light on what is present, or what is present its light on what is past; rather, image is that wherein what has been comes together in a flash with the now to form a constellation. In other words, image is dialectics at a standstill. For while the 123

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relation of the present to the past is a purely temporal one, a continuous one, the relation of what-has-been to the now is dialectical: is not progression but image, suddenly emergent.23 For its viewers, the cinematic play with time and space, cinematic memory and contemporary activism of Bartana’s practice creates such a flash of recognition in this constellation of present and past as her new image in order to provoke a critical reflection on both the action being filmed and the image-encoded-history being invoked visually. Could we define this work as the analytical opening out of the dream in which ideology sustains us and from which the dialectical image momentary propels us? In the dialectical image, what has been within a particular epoch is always, simultaneously, ‘what has been from time immemorial’. As such, however, it is manifest, on each occasion, only to a quite specific epoch—namely, the one in which humanity, rubbing its eyes, recognizes just this particular dream image as such. It is at this moment that the historian takes up, with regard to that image, the task of dream interpretation.24 In Summer Camp, the present is read through the past while the past becomes the condition of the re-visioned present in which homes are demolished while those resisting the state policies make a stand by joining forces in solidarity with the unhoused to reconstruct a real building and a symbolic ‘home’. But it remains a gesture: the state, represented here by its enforcing military watching the reconstruction from a distance, will not permit the peace activists’ actions to be any more than token. Soldiers will inevitably once again demolish what the Israeli and international peace activist summer camp volunteers are rebuilding. That is the point the film ultimately implies. Were the film to end with redemptive rebuilding, it would be as if the wound could be healed, as if the future is already here. For there to be a future, artists such as Yael Bartana suggest, there has to be a deconstruction of the aesthetically compelling dreams of the past that still imaginatively line and even mask the reality of this new present. Yet, there also has to be a way out of the closed cycle of repetition, for even if this gesture is futile, and human solidarity alone is unable to contest current state power and resolve historical conflict, the image the film creates and disseminates has an effect on viewers that exceeds the desultory outcome of the re-demolished home. Bartana’s work at this time was not merely historical revision. The film posited the need for, and potential efficacy of, a political aesthetic that works in conjunction with the repeated refusal to give up, to submit, and 124

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to abandon the ideal of working together. ‘Building’ and ‘home’ are both real issues and metaphorical tropes. Making sense of Summer Camp became the necessary preamble through which I came to grasp the significance of the trilogy by Bartana that followed. And Europe will be Stunned—Mary Koszmary/Nightmares

I first encountered both Mary Koszmary/Nightmares (2007), and the second film, Mur i Wieża/Wall and Tower (2009) in 2010 in the context of attending a conference at Harvard University on gender and space. I cannot fully convey the utter shock I experienced listening, without any foreknowledge of its contents, to Sławomir Sierakowski’s opening speech in Mary Koszmary/Nightmares. (Fig. 4.8) When pronounced, the Polish word sounds like the French cauchemar, also sharing an etymological root, mar/mare, with the English word nightmare. Sławomir Sierakowski stands alone in the derelict and empty central space of the Stadion Dziesięciolecia [The Tenth Anniversary Stadium] of

Figure 4.8 Yael Bartana, Mary Koszmary, 2007 (four stills), 16 mm film transferred to DVD, colour/sound; 10' 50". Produced with support from Hermès and Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw. Courtesy of Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam. 125

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Warsaw built in 1955 under the People’s Republic of Poland and built with the rubble of the city destroyed in the Warsaw uprising and the German reprisals in 1944. The stadium has so often been an architectural icon of totalitarian state celebration and, in Chile for instance, of persecution and disappearance of the military junta’s young socialist opponents. The image of a stadium also evokes those used by the French and Germans to round up foreign-born Jews in the infamous Rafle du Vél d’Hiv in 1942 in Paris, and even further back, there are the grandiose stadia of the fascist rally at Nuremberg in 1934 and the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936, cinematically mythicized in Leni Riefenstahl’s monuments to fascist ideology in her creation of fascist cinema, Triumph of the Will (1935) and Olympia (1938). The stadium is heavy with such associations. Locally, the leader of the Polish state used this stadium to meet the masses and it was much used by the Communist leadership for galas and set pieces. There are thus specifically Polish memories of the actual place. During the 1980s the Warsaw stadium was allowed to decay, and by 1989, its rim had become the site of the infamous outdoor and dodgy market, Jarmark Europa, a bazaar run by 5,000 traders, many of them Vietnamese immigrants, trading in all sorts of technologies and goods. The stadium was demolished in 2008 and the new National Stadium was erected on the site for the 2012 Union of European Football Associations Championship (known as Euro 2012). Thus, Mary Koszmary was not only set in a place freighted with disturbing political memories for Polish viewers; filmed thus, its image has also become a monument to a nowdisappeared space that was already a husk. In this eerie and echoing ‘lieu de mémoire’, grass growing across steps and seats, the market silhouetted against the skyline, Sławomir Sierakowski delivers the powerful speech he himself wrote.25 He starts with invocation: Jews, Fellow countrymen, People! Peeeooople! You think that the old woman that sleeps under Rivke’s quilt doesn’t want to see you? Has forgotten about you? You’re wrong. She dreams about you every night. Dreams and trembles with fear. Since the night you were gone and her mother reached for your quilt, she has nightmares. Bad dreams. Only you can chase them away. Let the three million Jews that Poland has missed stand by her bed and finally chase away the demons. Return to Poland, to your/our country! ... This is a call, not to the dead but to the living. We want three million Jews to return to Poland, we want you to live with us again. We need you! We want you to return!26 126

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However could anyone conceive of such an idea? Surely it is impossible that any such number of Jewish people might contemplate a return. A Jewish return to Poland might seem simply to reverse and erase history. Rhetorically, however, this speech aims at the exact spot at which the darkness of the killing fields on Polish land has become a primal scene to which the post-Shoah Jewish imaginary is bound, making ‘Poland’/’over there’ the constitutive other of its now monocultural dream of a Jewish nationhood elsewhere. It also speaks aloud the encrypted trauma within the Polish nation itself, at once implicated—reaching immediately to take over the abandoned quilt of the disappeared other—and haunted in its dangerous national solitude that engraves as national identity a selfconsolidating xenophobia impoverishing that very self. For Sławomir Sierakowski, Poland is diminished now by its own cultural homogeneity. It needs 3.3 million others, 10 per cent at least of differentiating cultural yeast. I was staggered—and thrilled—by the outrageous boldness. The film clearly took on a vast and complex historical relation between Europe and Israel by means of Poland and the ‘Jews’ without making the latter pair merely a trope for the former. Sławomir Sierakowski spoke his own words as a rousing and visionary speech to an invisible public, suspended in history but locked into exclusionary space. At first addressing the Jews who had gone, leaving their Polish neighbours relieved to be at home alone at last, Sierakowski’s speech then directs itself to his own Polish fellow countrymen who, as a result of the violent excision of part of Poland’s historical make-up, are now sinking into a mire of monoculturalist submission to globalizing capitalist uniformity. Who will pull Poland out of the mire so that it does not sink? Let us not wait for the global market to make us all similar, let us not wait for a new outbreak of nationalisms—these tumours on the body of the free market—to pit us against each other or against others. Instead of identical let us become one. We will never again exploit each other, humiliate each other, steal the fruit of other’s work. Next to the cemeteries, we will build schools and clinics.27 I was forced to ask my astonished self: what is the urgency that Sławomir Sierakowski feels that led him collaborate with Yael Bartana as she returned on a personal journey of exploration to Poland, as a visiting Israeli coming for the first time to a country from which her grandparents escaped to settle in the Mandate of Palestine, now become the State of Israel, coming to Poland to think about this missing place that was part of a foreclosed past in her own family’s and nation’s story? 127

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If Sławomir Sierakowski is arguing that Poland has become dangerously homogeneous, lacking internal others, first let me gauge the basis of his anxiety. In 1931 a census of Poland revealed a population of 68.9 per cent Polish, 13.9 per cent Ukrainian, 10 per cent Jewish, 3.1 per cent Belorussian, 2.3 per cent German and 2.8 per cent others including Russians and Romanies. Out of the over three million Jewish people in Poland in 1939, only between 40,000 and 100,000 survived. Repatriation built the Jewish population back to 170,000, with a post-war peak of a mere 240,000 Jews living in Poland. By 2002, however, a census revealed that 96.7 per cent of the population claimed Polish nationality and 97.8 per cent spoke Polish at home, an important index. In 2011, only 1.44 per cent of the population declared non-Polish ancestry, with a population of about 7,000 identifying Jewish as their second nationality and only 2,000 offering it as their first nationality. It would seem that Sławomir Sierakowski’s diagnosis is correct. Poland has changed. Listening to his claim that 3.3 million Jews could save Poland, like so many others I found myself asking if Sławomir Sierakowski and Yael Bartana were serious. Absolutely, but not in any simplistically literal sense. The opening film of the trilogy is, however, not a work of simple irony. The film is a work of art that stages a radical proposition, whose project is to articulate the genuine need to fertilize any monoculture with creative plurality. Immigration and cultural multiplicity enrich societies, we know this. The seriousness of this film inheres, however, in artistic work’s incitement to think the unthinkable by means of the situated evocation of a destroyed history alongside the political results of the incomplete processing of the trauma of post-Soviet nations. I understood, of course, that for historical but also political reasons, a rhetorical call addressed to contemporary Poland and the expanded postSoviet and now globalizing capitalist Europe would have to be in the first instance ‘Jews’ who would be invited to ‘return’. In quotation marks, ‘Jews’ is both a historical community persecuted in Christian Europe and the figure of the unassimilated and resiliently particular stranger living within the modern nation state. In those cases, those who are the invited are not those returning from the past, bearing a projected and internalized definition of otherness as created in the pre-war and latterly genocidal anti-Semitic formulation. The invitation is being imaginatively extended now, as a means of transformation not of mere (re-)immigration, to those who now live their identity as Israelis. If we do not catch this difference, the project falls into the hole of seeking a past in which history would repeat rather than be imaginatively transformed by action now. In any response to such a call the Israeli subject would have to engage with the range of meanings and subject positions once signified by the term Jew/ 128

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Jewish in a pre-Shoah but modernizing Europe: a critical, complex but specifically denationalized modern subjectivity. The ‘return’ for which Sławomir Sierakowski calls in Yael Bartana’s yielding of the spoken word to a young Polish socialist intellectual led to mutual re-recognition—a new seeing, in colours and in differences as the very opposite of the fixed differentiations that are the condition of the national: this is me/this is not me. Against the faked similarity of the consumer forged in the image of the globalizing capitalist market, Sławomir Sierakowski poses the question of a oneness of people constituted neither by a degree zero of reduction to bare humanity (the genocidal past) nor of the mythologies of national unity created defensively in both Israel and Poland in different ways. Any oneness would be created in practice by people knowingly forming themselves into Hannah Arendt’s post-totalitarian reconstruction of the ‘human condition’. In Arendt’s book of that title, written as the necessary sequel to her study of the constellation of factors out of which totalitarianism emerged in midcentury Europe, the human condition is rediscovered on the other side of genocide and totalitarianism, and newly articulated, as a fundamental plurality sharing a home and hence a condition of human—political— life on this earth, this planet.28 Italian Arendtian feminist philosopher Adriana Cavarero explains that Arendt’s plurality is not to be confused with pluralism, which is related to communitarian identities and a veiled logic of the One. Plurality is the radical ontological and phenomenological condition of human beings, because each is born a singular event in human history, with the capacity for speech and action, and this was what constituted the human condition as political. ‘This is what men (sic) have in common: uniqueness in plurality, or the uniqueness that makes them plural and the plurality that makes them unique.’29 Politics is the field of action in which such plurality as a relation of speaking and acting must be actively worked out in disclosing oneself to and with others and in recognition. And Europe will be Stunned—Mur i Wiez˙a/Wall and Tower

The second film, Mur i Wieża/Wall and Tower (2009, see Fig. 4.9), documents the building of a wooden enclosure and watchtower in the centre of Warsaw on open ground near the site of the razed Warsaw ghetto, a space in the city long left like a scar whose wound-source has remained unremembered (Fig. 4.10). Opening in 2013, however, a grandiose museum dedicated to the history of Jewish life in Poland—called, significantly, the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, initiated in 1996— 129

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Figure 4.9 Yael Bartana, Mur i Wieża, [Wall and Tower], 2009 (four stills), RED transferred to HD, colour/sound; 15 mins. Courtesy of Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam and Sommer Contemporary, Tel Aviv.

stands as the marker of that disappeared history, paradoxically fulfilling Hitler’s plan that the destroyed Jewish civilization in Europe would become but a musealized memory. The museum’s mission statement points in a more creative direction: ‘By recalling the memory of a thousand years of Polish Jewish history, to contribute to the formation of modern individual and collective identities amongst Poles and Jews, Europe and the world.’30 Mur i Wieża/Wall and Tower (2009, see Fig. 4.9) reminded me of Summer Camp (Fig. 4.7), although it was more clearly working off a specific Zionist film that documented the project of the early settlers to build a watchtower and protective wall—creating a small version of a frontier fort—overnight. Ottoman law that once prevailed when Palestine was a province of that empire (up to 1918) prevents the destruction of completed buildings. Thus, the new settlers had to complete enough of a construction to invoke that law before the British authorities could spot them at work and force its removal. Made of pre-fabricated elements, the new settlement would mark its claim on the land and arrival in the space by means of an architecture eloquent of conflict, fear of violence and fortification: a defensive enclosure and a watchtower (long before the latter became iconic of Germany’s concentration camps). The original documentary film of the 1930s celebrated the collective effort by means of which alone this feat of erecting a secure wall and tower 130

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could be achieved. Clearly the resonances of watchtowers and barbed wire were not so dreadful in the 1930s as they must be to any viewers after 1945. Historical events have intervened to make the watchtower and the barbed wire fence or wired wall the chilling icon of atrocity or the concentrationary. In Bartana’s film, a no longer innocent memory of the pioneers is re-enacted in an open space in the city of Warsaw, a space associated with one such intervening wall that literally enclosed a forced Jewish population, separating zones of life and zones of death, namely near the site of the Warsaw ghetto (Fig. 4.10). Its reality in now-time of the passing Warsaw inhabitants agitated stilled memory.31 Mur i Wieża/Wall and Tower was more troubling than shocking (Fig. 4.9). The men and women who formed the construction team were dressed in work clothes typical of the socialist youth movements of the 1930s, not yet a uniform, while speaking to a specific concept of the labouring body and gender egalitarianism. The making of the film involved the team of volunteers who appeared to be coming to Poland in response to Sławomir Sierakowski’s call in Mary Koszmary, not only to

Figure 4.10 Warsaw Ghetto Wall, 24 May 1941. Bundes Archiv Bild 101I-134-0791-30, Bild. Origin: Propagandakompanien der Wehrmacht—Heer und Luftwaffe. Photo: Ludwig Knobloch. 131

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perform an invocation of history. Mediated by idealizing representations, the participants being filmed literally experienced the past in their own bodies through re-enactment, impersonating the pioneers of a bygone age escaping from Europe to build a new world in the Middle East. At the same time there is an additional dimension. Who are the people who responded to the call to make the film? Polish? Israeli? Other to both? The making of the film was an occasion to create, in the concrete present, a new collective, a new collaboration of people otherwise divided by histories they inherit, geographies in which they are dispersed, identities that have emerged in the aftermath of both. These people work together not as settler-pioneers but as the experimental community of an aesthetically incited act of political imagination that they can test out in real time and space with each other and in both cinematic time and political space. This is what, in my argument, I think deflects the work of Yael Bartana from intellectual or political irony and tips it once again towards the dialectical image. Before the eyes of the camera that records that which the filmmaker will edit and the viewer will confront, these young people actually do something: they build the enclosure and the tower, experiencing the pull and power of being part of a group venture and the pleasure of its completion. Yet they also have to reflect on the result. The final gesture involves placing the barbed wired around the top of the encircling wall of the fortress-settlement they have built, under the perplexed gaze of local Warsaw people (Fig 4.9). As that final act is performed, the viewer, entrained into vicarious participation of the narrative of coming, building, staying, peels away to feel the Benjaminian shock of a momentary flashing up of the past and present in a single awful moment that reveals their potential intimacy. If I spell it out, a crude analogy applied to the second of the four images might take over so that the Zionist pioneers become ‘like’ the Nazis who once enclosed the Jews of Poland in a ghetto. This is not the purpose of the dialectical image. The arrow of history does not travel forwards; the politics of memory enables the present to recognize its own history as a freight it must now confront—and change through that coming to know it in ways that disrupt inherited, often ideologically fixed, narratives. The power of artworking is that any kind of reductive, analogical reading is forestalled precisely because the film evokes the past as image that might be unknowingly acted out rather than worked through: the latter taking place through the curious combination of performative actions and cinematic creation—real work, new images into which pasts explode and inflect the present with new responsibilities not to repeat. 132

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The locus of this overlay is the solicited viewer, who, created by the artwork, becomes neither a cinematic consumer nor a visitor to an art installation. The ambition of the artwork is that the viewer will anticipate being challenged and shocked into thought. And Europe will be Stunned—Zamach/Assasination

I finally encountered the third part of the trilogy Zamach/Assassination (2011, see Fig. 4.11) completed for the Polish Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011. Yet again I was put into a state of shock. I had not anticipated the radical turn of events presented in the third part of the film. The movement pioneered in the second film and proclaimed as the Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland is now established, with the young Sławomir Sierakowski as its iconic leader. White shirts and red scarves, the colours of Poland, form a uniform of the movement reminiscent of the white and blue of the early Israeli youth movements. Evocation is not without its troubling aspects. Shockingly, as the film opens, we are attending at a funeral, a formal lying in state, a prolonged farewell to the charismatic leader of the JRMiP. Sławomir Sierakowski has been assassinated. Through the device of the evocation of grand communist state funerals with the displayed body of the leader lying in state, a condolence book, formal speeches and mourning crowds, the film evokes the excesses of the personality cult that became part of Eastern Europe’s Communist era, complete with a gigantic statue of the bespectacled Sławomir. The film, however, knocks ‘the

Figure 4.11 Yael Bartana, Zamach [Assassination], 2011 (two stills), RED transferred to HD, colour/sound; 35 min. Commissioned by Artangel, Outset Contemporary Art Fund, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Netherlands Filmfunds, Zachta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw. Images courtesy of Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam. 133

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personality’ down, delivering the movement from the risk of overidealization and hyper-personalization of the message. In Zamach/Assassination, we move from the cinematic and its historical imagination to the televised rituals of the fascist or totalitarian state, especially those that must actively represent their ideals and created identities in pageants and iconic impersonation. But there is also the call to action that is not an empty one. (The first message transmitted into space was a televisual recording of Adolf Hitler opening the Olympic Games in 1936.) Those who participated in making this film in terms of acting its required roles also performed the JRMiP’s project to bring hitherto disconnected people together to deprive them of the false idol. This might be considered deeply Judaic as well as actively democratic. The process of the film they help to realize by performing and we watch enables both actors and viewers to experience the very ideal the film is aiming to make real. Calling for the Jews to return in the first film is now re-examined in the third film through multiple viewpoints by means of the formal speeches delivered at the funeral. The differences of opinion make clear that no one is calling for a repetition of a broken history. It is about the creation of new spaces that need constitutive otherness plaited into a collective project of new constructions. Buildings can be made into monuments and camps, ghettos and emblems: walls, towers, houses and statues. The ‘monument’, as it were, that remains at the end of the film is thus not an idol, a cult, a leader, but the young people as participating actors who become agents of a movement that exceeds the bounds of the present and the film. They listen to the speeches in their newly formed collectivity. The sequence of formal speeches delivered by various ‘characters’ and actual individuals from Poland and Israel weaves together different positions in response to the call Sławomir Sierakowski made, and to which the movement, real and represented, responds. There is a speech by the slain leader’s Israeli widow, a speech by the Polish curator and art historian Anda Rottenberg, herself the target of anti-Semitic pressure in recent times, a speech by Israeli author Alona Frenkel, who calls for one single act—the restitution of her Polish citizenship of which she was stripped. Israel is her home, Jewish her identity, but this gesture she would welcome. Her strongly Israeli sentiments are consolidated by a speech by Yaron London, who declares that the Israelis of today are no longer the Jews of yesteryear because the Israelis have been weaned from the Judaic diaspora. Yiddish culture is dead and unmourned. A return to Europe would not be a dream but a nightmare. The final speeches are by two young people representing the two peoples and the ideals of the JRMiP: 134

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Sławomir! Your heritage, which combines Judaism and universality, commands us to have ever-lasting faith. Poles and Jews together, we shall advance, shoulder to shoulder, in the name of the noble ideal of co-existence. Together we shall prevent the surges of nationalism and racism from flooding Europe.32 Each speaker stands for a moment in this complex history and a position in relation to the ‘return’ as both a memory of the past and a project for a different future. For those who lived through the Shoah and the foundation of the State of Israel there can no going back for what was in the past was the failure and the horror that was genocide. The die is cast. There is no way back to a Europe remembered from before. Anda Rottenberg poetically evokes a much older European dream by recalling as a vision of a different future the foundation of a multicultural city of Zamość by Jan Zamoyski in 1601, using this as a memory to fuel Sławomir’s dream for such an inclusive future for Poland, for Europe and for the Middle East. Throughout the trilogy there is a recurring figure named Rivke (the Hebrew form of Rebecca), played by German actress Suzanne Sachsse. In Mary Koszmary, Rivke is a name evoked to represent the disappeared Jewish world; she is referenced as the one who once slept under a now threadbare quilt that is currently used by those who live in a Poland without its Jews. As an embodied presence person, Rivke joins the crowds in Zamach/Assassination. She speaks of herself as the . . . ghost of return, the return returning to herself. Sunken in the crypt of grief that cannot be expressed in words, my dead tongue hides something that was buried alive. I am here to reveal the destruction of the understood through the tongue.33 As a name and a speaking figure, Rivke suggests a kind of haunting that might tip the whole work into the mythic or the tropic, while she is clearly the embodied site of encrypted trauma.34 While the third film less overtly uses cinematic tropes of the eras it is recalling and critiquing, the staging is resonant of the immediate history of Poland and its communist era. They use the grand hall of the Hall of Culture installed by Stalin in the centre of Warsaw. At the same time, there is a sense in which Sławomir Sierakowski and Yael Bartana are not merely denouncing the collectivities of either the Zionist pioneers or the communists of Europe. Raised to mythic levels through propagandistic representation and political distortions, the utopian dreams of social change and self-transformation are not simply renounced. In a way, something of their imagination and vision is being recalled to counter the 135

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novel conditions of post-socialist Poland and post-socialist Israel. Nationalism coupled with relentless self-interested capitalism is clearly Sławomir Sierakowski’s target. It is that which he sees as menacing what might be called the socialist humanist or humanistic socialist residue of the calamitous experiments with state socialism of the twentieth century that marked both Poland and Israel. In Zamach/Assassination, a much larger collective was assembled to participate, not as paid extras on a movie set but as participants in a living experiment that could not but change their own experience. The making of the last two films were concrete occasions for young people of different backgrounds, ethnicities, religions and nationalities to work together in the performance of the grieving farewell to the leader. The film thus makes clear that we do not need a messianic figure to inspire us now. In their human plurality, these young people are to be the bearers and performative embodiment of the practice of the dream: refusing the kinds of divisiveness on which xenophobic racism and narrow nationalism feed. The Poland/Israel axis of Yael Bartana’s trilogy becomes, I suggest, a double space of reflection: for Europe and its xenophobias and for Israel and Palestine in their current impasse. Yael Bartana’s work couples Poland and Israel as a past that sits as a ghost at the table with Israel and Palestine now, and as a space elsewhere to explore other futures that might become possible precisely because the idea of this return appears at first sight so outrageous. It appears to rip open history in order to project a different future that is not a ‘return’ to the past. Both Israel and Poland are new nations. Both are also old nations. Poland is also the remembered locus of both a 1,000-year history of co-existence and sporadic violence from raiding Cossacks and, ultimately deadly, persecution perpetrated by the SS on Polish soil.35 In a letter that solicited open participation in the making of her films in a Cookbook for Political Imagination, published to accompany Yael Bartana’s exhibition in the Polish pavilion at Venice in lieu of the traditional catalogue, the JRMiP is described as: . . .a political group which calls for the return of 3,300,000 Jews to the land of their forefathers, across a historical landscape scarred with nationalism and militarism, overdetermined by the Israeli settler movement, Zionist dreams, anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and the Palestinian right of return.36 This combination is not part of a fatuous analogy between Israel and its former genocidal persecutors, the Nazis. Using the common ground of Poland, with its richly associative past and its own current struggle to find 136

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its identity in post-1989 Europe, at the same time as reviewing the political and ideological foundations of Israel and its present contradictions, the work speaks to struggles with history and its legitimate visions. These may have, however, bequeathed dangerous outcomes, generated when such visions become mythologies, and leave no space for the other as partner to shared futures. The scope of this political vision is historical and retrospective. It also, however, addresses present situations and possible futures that might be built from reconsidering the ideologies of all nationalisms. Thus, the impossible, but not fanciful, call for a return to Poland of what Polish Jewish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman defined as the ‘quintessential figure of the other in the Christian and notably Catholic European imagination, the resident stranger, the self-defining and particularizing co-inhabitant’, becomes an imaginative-political prism through which to dare to address the most contentious issue of the current Israeli and Palestinian negotiations: the Palestinian right of return, which would disrupt the imagined mono-ethnic hegemony in the Jewish state.37 The writers of this letter continue: ‘The Polish trilogy can be read in a broader context, apart from the complex Polish-Jewish relationship, as an experimental form of collective psychotherapy, through which national demons are stirred and dragged out into daylight.’ They then quote the movement’s own manifesto: We direct our appeal not only to Jews. We accept into our ranks all those for whom there is no place in their homelands—the expelled and the persecuted. There will be no discrimination in our movement. We shall not ask about your life stories, check your residence cards or question your refugee status. We shall be strong in our weakness.38 The JRMiP held the First International Congress of the JRMiP in Berlin, 11–13 May 2012. Its questions indicated the breadth of its enquiry into potential change: ‘How should the EU change in order to welcome the Other? How should Poland change within a re-imagined EU? How should Israel change to become part of the Middle East?’39 The challenging encounter between the Jewish State of Israel and the postcommunist Poland incited by Yael Bartana and Sławomir Sierakowski is, I am arguing, an address to what I have termed after-affects of one of gravest of events in the twentieth century that bonded these two nations in a relation of the catastrophic eradication of a millennium of co-existence.40 At the same time, connecting Israel and Poland thus speaks obliquely, but pointedly, about one of the most intractable of situations in the twenty-first century: Israel/Palestine and the nature of both these nations now and to come. 137

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As an Israeli born after the turning point of the Six-Day War of 1967 that led to the Occupation of the West Bank, puzzling over the nation and nationality into which she was born, without the immediate link to ‘over there’, Yael Bartana’s artworking performs its intervention in these tangled, tragic and difficult histories by means of structured evocation and thoughtful displacement. Working additionally on a psychological and affective plane, the artist invites nostalgia to become a transformative vehicle for decisive political dreaming and imaginative action. Her trilogy also reworks the imaginative hauntings and tropes to expose different interpretations and to overwrite the past with counter-fantasies. Jacqueline Rose has argued that states in the political sense are themselves ‘states of fantasy’.41 Political formations are mediated by fantasy, and a critical take on the ‘state of fantasy’ can be accessed by fiction and re-invented by a gesture of critical imagination. Of the artist’s work itself, Rose writes: ‘This project is fully aware that true historical transformation can only come by tapping into the unconscious of nations.’42 In And Europe will be Stunned, Bartana powerfully deflects attention from history back to Europe, itself struggling with renewed anxieties around migration and xenophobia as well as its own resurgent right-wing and populist nationalisms. Her work will prompt its viewers to ask questions about the ways in which the latest phase of Europe’s history—which includes the last gasps of nation state formation, Israel and its shadowed self, Palestine—can now function to change Europe and how such a change in Europe itself can offer hope in the face of the traumatized space and suspended time that is Israel-Palestine. This is a complex sequence of relays, moves, reflections that depend upon putting into play the tropes and rhetoric of nationalism and its embodied selves while imagining modes of transnational connection and personally transformative collaborative acts of creation that were part and parcel of a now lost radicalism with which new generations, precisely those born after 1967 and even maturing after 1989, can do something. Yael Bartana and Sławomir Sierakowski belong to a generation who came of age in the 1990s. This allows a distance and a difference from congealed wounds and memories. They make clear the need to take concrete action in order to get beyond the haunting shadows. This, inevitably, and daringly, involves opening old wounds: investigating the nightmares—Mary Koszmary—of history. Yael Bartana and Sławomir Sierakowski are not playing games with history. They are confronting the legacies of trauma in a trans-traumatic politico-aesthetic practice. The tenor of their work is generationally distinct, seeking ways out of the psychic and national encryption of trauma: nightmares—bad dreams like Marx’s dreams—they call it.43 They are deadly serious in their diagnosis of two countries, Israel and Poland, which are, as 138

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an effect of violent histories and the narratives of victimage, deadly in reality to themselves. This work is neither ironic nor playful, even while it is daring and witty.44 It depends on being able to speak about the unspeakable by means of a subtle or knowing use of the very cinematic and political tropes that manufactured delusions that became so compelling when people lived them as ideology. This history-become-myth has to be punctured by a shocking and radical interruption. While none of the trilogy speaks directly of Palestine as it is currently understood as the dispossessed and the nation struggling still to be born; it haunts the entire scene. Palestine is its own Rivke, the image of the displaced; it is the land built upon; it is the necessity for challenging any monocultural state that tries to be the singular emblem of one nation when several peoples share co-inhabited space and crossinscribed memories and hence must create similarly complex futures.45 2017

In 2017, Yael Bartana was commissioned to create a new work that was featured in the United Kingdom at the Manchester International Festival, opening for five performances on 10 July. It was then performed in Aarhus on 23–25 November and was restaged in Germany on 12–14 April 2018 at Volksbühne in Berlin, with a different cast of invited participants for each time and each event. The 2017 event overlapped with a major retrospective of Bartana’s work since 2000 at the Musée cantonal des Beaux Arts in Lausanne, curated by Nicole Schweizer, an art historian and exhibition maker deeply fascinated by the complex interplay between fact and fiction in art as a means of understanding the often opaque realities we inhabit, and also a scholar long interested in how artist-women have confronted the issues of war in the twentieth century and beyond.46 In both cases, Bartana made more explicit the politics of gender and the gender of politics that characterized her earliest bemused analyses of her own country’s macho and militarized imaginary in works such as Profile (2000), Tuning (2001), Freedom Border (2003), Kings of the Hill (2003), Short Memory (2004) and Low Relief II (2004). In this new work, titled What If Women Ruled the World?, Yael Bartana strategically reworked American director Stanley Kubrick’s terrifying, yet darkly comic, film Dr Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), which alternates between a military base, a fleet of B2 bombers carrying nuclear weapons and the war room of the President of the United States. As the assembled men (there is only one woman in the entire film) confront the imminent but accidental destruction of the world, the former Nazi scientist (played by Peter Sellers) outlines a rescue 139

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plan for the ‘best’ of humankind. A selection of the best would hide deep in a mine for the next 100 years with a ratio of one man to ten sexually desirable, breeding women. The performances of What If Women Ruled the World? involved 11 scripted professional actors in conversation with non-actors, activists, survivors and professionals, all engaged in different ways with the traumas and conflicts of the present. Yael Bartana recreated the scenario of Kubrick’s war room for her set and invited participants to speak and assess the present and to imagine a future. Her premise for this urgent congress used her own science-fiction projection of a world in which women outnumbered men 10:1. Instead of the all-men cast of the usual representatives of the seats of power and decision making, Yael Bartana’s all-but-diversely-women convention not only presented the voices of many women, it also posed the question of what kind of world we would live in if the centres of decision making for our world were not the horrifying array of men caricatured with deadly accuracy by Kubrick. Such performative interventions that dare to pose the big questions, for some the unthinkable questions, by means of an art of thoughtful staging, informed and resonant fictional, but participatory, enactment, have defined the artistic project of Yael Bartana, a vision formed in the relations between historically diverse but deeply related time-spaces that become prisms for addressing a riven world whose dangers are never confined geopolitically. We are all involved and we will all have to be participants in any future we dare to imagine beyond the present ‘dark times’. Thinking of Israel/Palestine via one triangulating other, as does Bartana, is clearly a practice of thinking aesthetically for the world, artworking in the world. Notes 1. Karl Marx, Letter to Arnold Ruge, September 1843, Deutscher-Französische Jahrbücher, reprinted and translated in Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, vol. 3: 1843–44 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1987), pp. 133–45,

(accessed 12 August 2017). 2. The commissioner was Hanna Wróblewska and the curators were Sebastien Chichocki and Galit Eilat. The final part of the trilogy was commissioned by Artangel (UK), Outset Contemporary Art Fund, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture and Zachęta National Gallery of Art in association with Annet Gelink Gallery, Sommer Contemporary Art, Ikon Gallery, Netherlands Film Fund, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art and Artis. It was produced by My-i Productions in association with Artangel. This list indicates something of the economics of contemporary cultural production and the international recognition of Bartana’s work. 140

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3. The term ‘artworking’ evokes Sigmund Freud’s theoretical shift during World War I to an economic model of the psyche, namely a replacement of the earlier psychological thesis of cathartic abreaction to trauma by the process of working through (Durcharbeiten, 1916). The two major instances are dreamwork (Traumarbeit, 1900) and the work of mourning (Trauerarbeit, 1915). Ettinger proposes that artworking constitutes a space of encounter for both artist and viewer that can become transformative through shared openness to psychic work. For a fuller elaboration of Ettinger’s concept of artworking see Griselda Pollock, AfterAffects After-Images: Trauma and Aesthetic Transformation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013). 4. David Grossman, ‘Confronting the beast’, The Guardian, 15 September 2007, (accessed 19 July 2018). 5. At the Venice Biennale of 2013, Albanian artist Anri Sala was selected to represent France, and occupied the German Pavilion to present his work, while in the space of the French Pavilion, Ai Weiwei and others represented Germany, as the two countries had decided to exchange their pavilions: Mousse Magazine, n.d., (accessed 29 July 2018). 6. Galit Eilat and Charles Esche talk to Yael Bartana: (accessed 15 December 2012). 7. Margaret Olin, ‘Lanzmann’s Shoah and the topography of the Holocaust film’, Representations 57 (1997), pp. 1–23; Brett Ashley Kaplan, Landscapes of Holocaust Postmemory (New York: Routledge, 2011). 8. Cited in transcription in Alisa S. Lebow, ‘Memory once removed: indirect memory and transitive autobiography in Chantal Akerman’s D’Est’, Camera Obscura, 18/1 (52) (2003), pp. 35–83; reprinted in First Person Jewish (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), pp. 1–48. See also Griselda Pollock, ‘ “. . . that, again!”: Pathosformula as Transport Station of Trauma in the Cinematic Journey of Chantal Akerman’, in Pollock: After-Affects After-Images, pp. 315–48. 9. Bracha L. Ettinger, Matrix Halal(a)-Lapsus: Notes on Painting, trans. Joseph Simas (Oxford: Museum of Modern Art, 1993), p. 12. I have used the term ‘Europe’ in this chapter to refer to the continent. It is important to note that Europa was a Phoenician/Can’anite woman from Tyre in contemporary Lebanon, abducted by the Olympia Greek god Zeus who took the form of white bull. The story is a metaphor via sexual conquest of the ties between what is now called Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean civilizations and cultures. Europa appears on some Euro coins and bills. Europa is the title of an exhibition by Palestinian artist Emily Jacir (b. 1970, Bethlehem) at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London (2015–16) See Emily Jacir and Omar Kholeif (eds), Emily Jacir: Europa (Munich and London: Prestel, 2015). I do not have the space here to explore this important set of agonised and agonistic but also deeply rooted cultural and political relations encoded in this very name. 10. Ettinger: Matrix Halal(a)-Lapsus, p. 29. 11. Hundert Deutsche Fliegerbilder aus Palaestina, mit Verzeichnis des palästinensischen Bildbestands des Bayrischen Kriegsarchivs von P. Dr A.E. Mader, SDS Bericht über die Fliegerabteilung Nr 304 vom Staatsarchivar Freiherr von Wadenfels und 141

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Palästina Karte von Kartograph W. Goering. Schriften des deutschen PalästinaInstituts, 2Bd., Bertelsmann-Gütersloh, 1925. 12. The British wanted to break the bridge from Turkey to Egypt and access the Arabian peninsula. This would have been a strategic necessity for the British Empire to secure its control of Suez and the future oil fields. Oil had been found in Iran in 1908; it would be discovered in Iraq in 1929, while in Saudi Arabia, as it would become after the British conquest of the Ottoman Empire, oil was only found in 1938 by Standard Oil. 13. Paul Virilio, War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception, trans. Paul Camiler (London: Verso, 1989) cited in The Virilio Reader, ed. James Der Derian (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), pp. 109–10, (emphasis in original). 14. Rosi Huhn, ‘The folly of reason’, in Catherine de Zegher and Griselda Pollock (eds), Bracha L. Ettinger: Art as Compassion (Brussels: ASP, 2011), pp. 43–55. 15. Malcolm E. Yapp, The Making of the Modern Near East 1792–1923 (Harlow: Longman, 1987), p. 290. 16. Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation (London: Verso, 2007). 17. The concept of encrypted trauma, secrets that haunt and are passed on transgenerationally, is proposed in Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, ‘A poetics of psychoanalysis: “The Lost Object—Me” ’, SubStance 43 (1984), pp. 3–18, p. 17 n.1; also in ‘ “The Lost Object—Me”: Notes on Endocryptic Identification’ [1975], in Nicholas Abraham and Maria Torok, The Shell and the Kernel, trans. Nicholas T. Rand (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 1994), p. 140 n.1. Bracha Ettinger has extended this concept to trans-cryption. 18. For a fuller account of the practice of Bracha Ettinger see Griselda Pollock, Art in the Time-Space of Memory and Migration: Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud and Bracha L. Ettinger in the Freud Museum (Leeds: Wild Pansy Press and the Freud Museum, 2013). 19. The film actually does not simply record; indeed, the minute of silence lasts six minutes. Bartana’s work uses montage, with the image ‘trembling’ at times, thanks to fade-out and slow motion. The sound is also totally transformed. So, even in her early, un-staged videos, Yael works on the materiality of the film itself. See texts by Alloa and Hochberg in Nicole Schweizer (ed), Yael Bartana: Trembling Times (Lausanne: Musée des beaux arts cantonale; Zurich: JRPI Ringier, 2017). 20. Yilmaz Dziewior, Yael Bartana (Berlin: Hatje Cantz and Kunstverein Hamburg, 2007), p. 49. 21. Nafas Art Magazine, ‘Palestine c/o Venice’, June 2009, (accessed 20 August 2017). 22. Avodah (1935), dir. Helmar Lerski, 50 minutes, Israel, b&w (Israeli Film Archive: National Centre for Jewish Film). 23. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, ed. Rolf Tiedermann, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002), p. 262, (added emphasis). 24. Benjamin: The Arcades Project, p. 464. 25. Pierre Nora, ‘Between memory and history: les lieux de mémoire’, Representations 26 (1989), pp. 7–24. 142

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26. ‘Mary Koszmary (Nightmares)’, speech by Sławomir Sierakowski, reprinted in James Lingwood and Eleanor Nairne (eds), Yael Bartana: And Europe will be Stunned (London: Artangel, 2011), p. 120. 27. Lingwood and Nairne: Yael Bartana, p. 121. 28. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism [1951] (New York: Harvest Harcourt, 1968) and The Human Condition [1958] (Chicago, IL; University of Chicago Press, 1998). 29. Adriana Cavarero, For More Than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression, trans. Paul A. Kottman (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), pp. 191–2. 30. Museum of the History of Polish Jews mission statement, (accessed 13 October 2013). Since the opening of the Polin Museum, as it now named, in 2013, the website is now https://www.polin.pl/en. It does not repeat the mission statement. 31. British artist Pam Skelton created a work about the unmarked memory of the Warsaw Ghetto, titled Ghost Town (single channel video installation, 24 digital prints 2001): ‘When I first visited Warsaw in 1993, I was struck by the fact that the ruins of part of the former ghetto lay beneath a housing development. The rubble of the ghetto buildings provided the foundations for the homes that were built in the 1950s on top of what had been the central ghetto area, and it was this rather macabre realisation that drew me back to Warsaw again in 1995 and 1996, I was intent on investigating what remained of the ghetto architecture and with the easily obtainable ghetto map it was possible to wander within the huge swathes of the city that had been both prison and home to over 400,000 people. The names of the streets and the words of the authors of the ghetto diaries helped me to orientate and locate myself and I was surprised at how many of the crumbling remnants could still be found, especially as I had been led to believe that nothing of the ghetto had survived’, (accessed 12 May 2017). 32. Lingwood and Nairne: Yael Bartana, p. 125. 33. Lingwood and Nairne: Yael Bartana, p. 122. 34. The concept of encrypted trauma, secrets that haunt and are passed on transgenerationally is proposed in Abraham and Torok: ‘A poetics of psychoanalysis’, p. 17 n. 1; also in Abraham and Torok: ‘ The Lost Object–Me’, p. 140 n.1. 35. The Polish people did not conceive nor execute the genocide located on their soil. Some Polish Catholics risked their lives to save Jewish victims. Others did not, while many could not do much given the brutal intention of the Germans to reduce the Polish population to an uneducated slave labour force. Polish–Jewish relations were, however, shattered by post-war pogroms against surviving or returning Jewish communities in 1946 and official state-sponsored anti-Semitic persecution in the 1960s that forced a renewed Jewish migration. 36. Galit Eilat, Sebastian Cichocki and Yael Bartana, ‘Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland (JRMiP)’, in Galit Eilat and Sebastian Cichocki (eds), A Cookbook for Political Imagination (Warsaw: Zachęta Gallery; Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2011), p. ii.

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37. Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991). 38. Eilat, Cichocki and Bartana: ‘Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland (JRMiP)’, p. iii. 39. Congress in Berlin, (accessed 10 January 2013). 40. Griselda Pollock, After-Affects /After-Images: Trauma and Aesthetic Transformation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013). 41. Jacqueline Rose, States of Fantasy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). 42. Jacqueline Rose, ‘History is a nightmare’, in Lingwood and Nairne: Yael Bartana, p. 141; see also ‘Coming Home’, in Jacqueline Rose, Women in Dark Times, (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), pp. 221–40. 43. Koszmary, when spoken, sounds like cauchemar, the French for nightmares, which also contains the element mar, as does Mary (Polish). Mar derives from an Old French word and signifies a distressed condition. For an autobiographical reflection on mar and its relation to nightmares and her own Holocaust-haunted childhood, see Sarah Kofman, ‘Nightmare: At the Margins of Medieval Studies’, in Sarah Kofman, Selected Writings, ed. Thomas Albrecht with Georgia Albert and Elizabeth G. Rottenberg (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), pp. 251–3. 44. For a compelling analysis of the trilogy under the sign of irony, see Carol Zemel, ‘The end(s) of irony: Yael Bartana at the Venice Biennale, for Poland’, Forward, 15 July 2011, (accessed 2 January 2013). 45. For these two concepts of co-inhabitation and cross-inscription, see earlier section on the concept of artworking proposed by Bracha Ettinger. 46. Schweizer (ed): Yael Bartana.

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PART II PRODUCTS IN CONFLICT

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CHAPTER 5 SCANDAL! Images, Discourses and the Image of Discourse that ‘Hurt People’s Feelings’ Rhoda Rosen and Sander L. Gilman

Imaginary Coordinates was the second exhibition in the new facility of Chicago’s Jewish museum, Spertus Museum, first opened on 29 November 2007. The Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies, first founded in 1924 as the College of Jewish Studies, added a museum in 1974 as part of its public outreach. The new museum opened on the part of Michigan Avenue known as the ‘museum corridor’ and includes renowned institutions such as The Art Institute of Chicago and the anthropological Field Museum. Imaginary Coordinates was ground breaking in the museum’s history. First, Imaginary Coordinates was Spertus Museum’s contribution to Chicago’s citywide Festival of Maps. Secondly, it marked and reflected on the sixtieth anniversary of the state of Israel. Thirdly, as a Jewish museum in a new facility drawing primarily on its own holdings, Spertus aimed to draw new audiences: to create interest in and to attract scholars to its collection, and to draw a younger civic audience. Imaginary Coordinates focused on antique, modern, and contemporary maps of the Holy Land, primarily from Spertus’ collection.1 All these maps asserted boundaries and were juxtaposed in the exhibition with objects of material culture such as Israel-shaped fridge magnets and Palestine-shaped mobile phone attachments. Against this were placed works by contemporary Israeli- and Palestinian-born women artists, whose works ‘unmapped’ or questioned narrow issues of territoriality and national identity.2 These artists were Ayreen Anastas, Yael Bartana, Mona Hatoum, Noel Jabbour, Sigalit Landau, Enas Mutthafar, Michal Rovner and Shirley Shor.3 Imaginary Coordinates opened to the largest audience Spertus Museum had ever garnered for a single exhibition opening reception, received near -universal critical acclaim, brought to Chicago renowned artists previously not seen in the city and, of the 10 percent of visitors who filled out written in-house surveys of the exhibition, 93 per cent answered that their response to the exhibition was favourable.4 However, some constituents viewed the exhibition as anti-Israel, even 147

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though Israeli artists were included, some with video projects funded by the Israeli state.5 The viewing context, the new Spertus Museum, was the only contemporary building in a city-designated historic district. This state-ofthe-art facility featured a daring glass façade, bathed in light by day and illuminating Grant Park—beyond it, Lake Michigan at night. The glass façade offered a brave reinterpretation of the historic street wall, while it was subtly and sensitively in keeping with the majestic, historic buildings surrounding it.6 In addition to its architectural accomplishment, it was also conceived to herald Spertus’ place amongst the great public institutions stretching from Millennium Park to the Museum Campus. The design was warm and embracing as well as open and inviting. It was regarded by Spertus as a gift of architectural and civic significance to the City of Chicago. A number of decisions made with regard to the location and design of the building suggested that Spertus would be adopting a new mission with this new building, aiming to speak to people of all backgrounds and to present a multifaceted Jewish experience to the public. One of the reasons for the Spertus’ Board of Trustees’ decision to remain downtown was precisely this civic mission. This is particularly clear given the fact that most of the affiliated Jewish community lives far from the downtown area in Chicago’s suburbs. Another was that the Spertus Board of Trustees determined not to renovate the institution’s aging premises but agreed to a new building with an open, transparent face. With these decisions, they seemed to embrace an identity that moved beyond the parochial towards the civic. This meant that while the new Spertus’ starting point continued to be Jewish experience, the institution did not operate from a partisan point of view. Rather, like the other great civic institutions that surround it, the new Spertus provided programming that was not didactic but instead asked questions and invited discussion. The new civic agenda suggested that some programmes should indeed celebrate group identity and others challenge and test its limits. At times broadly accepted Jewish assumptions were examined and cherished, at others they were examined and questioned.7 The curator of Imaginary Coordinates was Rhoda Rosen, the museum’s director at the time and the co-author of this chapter. Her specific charge was to re-envision what a Jewish museum might be in the twenty-first century, hire the staff and oversee operations that would bring that new vision to fruition in the new facility within the framework laid out by a board-led committee. It was clear to her that the programming had to tell new stories. Rather than asserting what Jewish identity is or narrating the life cycle and holidays of Jews for the visitor, as if ‘Jew’ was a category that could be defined and Jewish practice was universally the same, for her the 148

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new museum vision gently prodded assumed categories in order to accommodate new experiences and ways of being Jewish. This intellectual project explored, resisted, crossed and smudged lines of demarcation: the object research, collections-based display and new collecting plan, for example, targeted the seam where Jewish and broader culture meet. Likewise, the commitment to provenance research took aim at the boundaries of title. In short, the collections-based display questioned the limits of permanence, the borders of ritual and context, the field of museological practice and the definition of aesthetics. On 29 November 2007, with the inaugural exhibition in the new building, The New Authentics: Artists of the Post-Jewish Generation, the direction was set: it pursued the ever-shifting, hazy, indistinct, yet so often assumed boundaries of Jewish identity. At Spertus Museum, ‘Jew’ was no longer an ethnic category of analysis; ‘Jew’ was no longer considered a stable and single cultural entity; and ‘Jew’ was no longer simply a religious classification. This paralleled the multiple identities of American Jews (and diaspora Jews in the United States). In this respect, it was unusual but not unheard of to articulate this often-contradictory and confusing reality in such a clearly defined ‘Jewish’ space as a museum.8 While the category of the Jew was never really reduced to these boundaries, this was the historical moment in which the complexities of being Jewish were clearly evident and assumed boundaries were blurred. In part, this was because a burgeoning younger, unaffiliated Jewish culture, reinventing tradition, was enjoying unprecedented popularity in the US. John Zorn, Golem, Sarah Aroeste, Matisyahu, Pharoah’s daughter, Yuri Lane, and the many Heeb events were just a few of the creatives reinvigorating young Jewish identity, as one identity among others young Jews may have been cultivating. The new vision insisted on exploring the Jewish cultural interaction with the broader community, not just because it was believed Jews have always lived amongst other groups whose cultures have impacted Jewish culture but because it was assumed these cultures were mutually constitutive of one another. Indeed, Rosen established her new vision and programming at a historical juncture in America. The multiculturalism of the late twentieth century, which claimed a tolerance and acceptance of many bounded, enclosed, circumscribed groups living alongside one another, was being replaced by an understanding that identity has neither essential qualities nor clear boundaries but that it is permeable, and constantly on the move. Like all identity, Jewish identity has multiple iterations within the global context. For this reason, programming at the new Spertus Museum offered no grand historical or cultural narrative but offered an invitation to question some of the central problems facing historiographers today. 149

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Rosen’s thinking about the new vision was inextricably entwined with her research on the Holy Land maps. As has been noted, Spertus’ opening year overlapped with the sixtieth anniversary of the establishment of Israel and with a citywide festival of maps.9 She therefore saw the opportunity first to understand the scope of Spertus’ Holy Land map collection as well as mounting an exhibition that made use of the maps she was researching alongside contemporary artworks. Thus, the exhibition could bring the question of Israel and Palestine to the fore in the context of a Jewish museum in a way that it had not been addressed before, as well as continue the rigorous challenge to categories, while asserting a new civic status by participating in a citywide endeavour. Map exhibitions took place at 30 institutions around the city of Chicago in 2008. Members of the cultural community had already dabbled with the idea that Chicago’s cultural community might be defined by a series of partnerships with the Silk Road project the previous year, in which a number of institutions coordinated their programming. The map festival, however, was the first of the major coordinated efforts and the inclusion of Spertus in that citywide festival was a mission-driven step for the museum. Because of the context and timing, Rosen believed that Spertus Museum’s programming, during Israel’s sixtieth anniversary year, should not be sectarian. Rather, she thought it should hold onto and honour the vision in which a Jewish museum, or other culturally specific museums, can participate, in the communal urban fabric of a great city, with offerings that engender and protect civic dialogue. Indeed, in the consortium known as the Cultural Alliance, which consists of over 30 museums in Chicago that consider themselves to be culturally specific, Spertus was the only one located within the civic arena, the museum corridor. The others, such as the National Museum of Mexican Art, the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture and the Chinese American Museum of Chicago, are located squarely within neighbourhoods and are conceived as expressions and grass-roots outgrowths of these neighbourhoods.10 This certainly spoke to the position of the Jewish community in contemporary America and its transparency, like Spertus’ façade, within broader American cultural life. Defining the strategic objectives for a collection and then nurturing public conversations around the collection can often be complex, because access to the past, to objects of material culture, to fine art and to the beliefs and needs of a diverse body of constituents requires a commitment. Yet the theme of the exhibition proffered the conviction that, within a Jewish museum context, Israeli and Palestinian material culture and fine art could be given equal space and uniform recognition. Hence, it attempted to demonstrate that a range of concerns about the activity of 150

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mapping could be discussed both in a context sufficiently safe for the attendant issue of national identity to be raised and in a space sufficiently stimulating for discussion to produce self-probing. The charge of the exhibition then was to protect the core vision while framing the project in a way that could be accepted by a larger number of people. Despite efforts to reach out to different audiences on this volatile subject and to provide a safe space for discussion on issues about maps and nationalism, the exhibition was nevertheless closed because of the controversy it engendered. The exhibition struck at the heart of what, for some, embodies or gives meaning to Jewish identity. For this group of people, Jewish identity is grounded in both the existence of Israel and assumptions about its territorial dimensions. The coupling of nationalism and territorial integrity has been extensively researched and its assumptions autopsied by scholars such as Benedict Anderson.11 But the exhibition also incorporated a specific Jewish turn on this examination. As Sidra Dekoven Ezrahi has noted, for 2,000 years the connection to the Holy Land has never wavered in the Jewish imagination, and the lost territory has been remembered, mourned and hungered for to the extent that yearning becomes in itself a form of repatriation, of alternative sovereignty.12 Also, the very origin of modern museums is tied to the establishment of modern nation states. A much-researched example is the Louvre, opened to the public directly after the French Revolution as an immediate symbol of the end of the emperors and the founding of the bourgeois modern state. In the modern era, the story told by museums is typically the story of the progress of the nation. The exhibition made clear the association of maps and museum space with nationalism. Following Irit Rogoff, a theorist is defined as ‘one who has been undone by theory’.13 For her, ‘the work of theory is to unravel the very ground on which it stands. To introduce questions and uncertainties in those places where formerly there was some seeming consensus about what one did and how one went about it.’14 With this unravelling, the theorist hopes to exit old models and structures, and to accommodate difference without speaking on behalf of difference. Rogoff writes that ‘geography is knowledge underpinned by nationalism, sustained by the regulating bureaucracies of the state and disseminated through cultural fantasies of otherness’.15 She calls for cartographers to ‘unhome geography’: ‘as a possibility of redefining issues of location away from concrete coercions of belonging and not belonging determined by the state’.16 This is what Rosen hoped to achieve with the exhibition: an opening up of a pedagogic space in which the individual visitor could learn through a process of becoming and unbecoming. Rosen wanted this project to be both an exhibition and an academic project. As an academic project, she hoped to explore the 151

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museum-map-nation connection in a wide literature; to provide a comparative angle on maps and nations in other places and times; and to record a case history that can be used by others in the field of museum studies. In Chapter 1 of this volume Abdul-Rahim Al-Shaikh dives deeply into the theoretical, political and cultural histories of the map of Palestine and, in this way, provides a fabulous complement to our chapter. Both homage to and exploration of Sobhi al-Zobaidi’s artistic practice, his chapter explores the way in which Zobaidi’s representations transform the strictly territorial and national dimensions of mapmaking through collective reimagining and the recognition of the necessarily nomadic features of what a Palestinian map might look like. The project of calling the homogenizing tendencies of nationalism into question with maps, museum and the physical space of the gallery meant that Rosen did not treat the museum as one more space in which to disseminate information or as a space to create a bridge to the public for otherwise scholarly knowledge. This project took seriously the possibility for a museum to interrupt its function to perform citizenship in order to make room for other notions of nationhood or, at least, for the limits of nationhood to become clear.17 This project took place in a culturally specific museum and culturally specific spaces emerged precisely because of a recognition that general museums were eliding marginal voices therefore, it seemed particularly appropriate not simply to extend the reach of homogenizing notions of nationhood to the culturally specific museum, but to illuminate the role general museums play in establishing and maintaining representations of nationhood from a culturally specific space. When the exhibition opened, the critical response from the official spokespeople of the major funder of the Institute and the Museum, the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, seemed to read this exhibition as part of anti-Israeli rhetoric. Michael Kotzin, then executive vice president of Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, said pieces ‘lacked context. While many pieces highlighted Palestinian humanity, he said others portrayed Israelis as unfeeling and guarded, without noting the dangers Israelis have faced for decades’.18 He went on to say in the same interview that the exhibition also opened against a backdrop of anti-Israel sentiments in many intellectual circles worldwide. ‘The last place the Jewish community should hear echoes of that is a Jewish museum’, Kotzin said. ‘This is kind of pulling the rug out.’ Critics charged that the combination of historical Holy Land maps and contemporary artwork cast Israel in a negative light. ‘Aspects of it were clearly anti-Israel’, said Steven Nasatir, president of the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago. ‘I was very surprised 152

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that a Jewish institution would put forward this exhibition. I was surprised and saddened by it.’19 In light of the recent, heated debates on campuses across the US—even between Jewish students—around the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS), the controversy around this exhibition stands as one of the many precursors to the current conversation. The reaction on the part of Spertus President Howard Sulkin was supportive, if muted. He expressed regret that the exhibition caused pain for its core constituents. But he said the concept behind it fitted in with the evolving mission of the museum. ‘A willingness to experiment is incorporated right into our core principles, and we see one of our roles as being a place that inspires dialogue on the critical issues of our time’, Sulkin said. Marc Wilcow, an institute trustee for 11 years, said: We like to encourage people to think about serious subject matters[. . .]Judging from the response from the community we did cross that line unintentionally [. . .] When there is a perception that the state of Israel is not being depicted in a balanced way it creates controversy[. . .] Spertus is not interested in going around and hurting people’s feelings.20 This seemed to be a key: not hurting people’s feelings meant not upsetting their expectations. The response caused the exhibition to be temporarily withdrawn on 14 May 2008 as Lauren Weinberg wrote in Time Out Chicago: Rosen assured me that no objects have been removed from the revamped Imaginary Coordinates. But museum staff have added photographs by Orit Siman-Tov depicting archeological excavations in Israel—and changed the language in some exhibition labels. When asked why Siman-Tov’s work was added, Rosen explained that Spertus wanted to show more objects from its permanent collection. She also stated that the label revisions were minor, concluding, ‘This doesn’t change the substance of the exhibition.’ I was relieved to hear it, because if one has ‘concerns’ about ‘subject matter’, a ‘dialogue’ does more good than ‘censorship’.21 This revision was not sufficient and Spertus’ board announced the early closure of Imaginary Coordinates on 20 June 2008. In a press release, Howard Sulkin, President of Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies, said: With our new Michigan Avenue facility, Spertus unapologetically sought to build a home for Jews and Jewish issues, and, with equal 153

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enthusiasm, opened its doors to everyone. As we grow into our new space, we are still learning how to balance our new programming and new audiences with sensitivity to our core constituents. Obviously, we still have a way to go in achieving this balance. Possibly, the most important lesson of Imaginary Coordinates’ closing was that the culturally specific museum is marked by having very different stake-holders, including stake-holders who had never attended the museum but who held passionate views on what a Jewish Museum should be and what constituted appropriate contemporary art. The exhibition showed that the population Spertus Museum served was made up of many voices, competing audiences with opposing positions. It showed that their mission statement, which sought to invite ‘people of all ages and backgrounds’, was something of an impossibility. The controversy around Imaginary Coordinates compels us to ask the question of what content and programming is appropriate for an American Jewish museum. While the content was deemed inappropriate by some American funders, some Israelis questioned the helpfulness of unwavering Jewish American loyalty to Israel. In an article entitled ‘Jewish World/We Should Stop Hugging Israel and Start Wrestling’ in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Israeli Robbie Gringas, commenting on the closing of Imaginary Coordinates, suggested that ‘when our institutions honestly and publicly engage with the complexities of Israel, they can inspire commitment where once was detachment’.22 Also, as with many such projects, the content, the context and the timing of the exhibition can all determine its reception. For example, Imaginary Coordinates might have had a different reception in another American city, just as A Declaration of Immigration, which had recently been on view at the National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, might have had a more heated reception closer to a border. The question of timing is significant for Imaginary Coordinates too, because, like the Enola Gay exhibition at the National Air and Space Museum in 1995, it was thought to celebrate an anniversary. Projects that coincide with anniversaries might be pre-empted by an expectation of celebration and not regarded as a time for reflection, no matter how much prior work is done to question this easy correlation. Imaginary Coordinates opened at a time when political positions regarding Israel were testing the limits of academic freedom. While the exhibition was being planned; at DePaul University, a Catholic institution in Chicago mere steps away from the Spertus facility, there had been a brutal fight about granting tenure to the political scientist Norman Finkelstein because of his critical stance towards Israel and what he called the ‘Holocaust industry’.23 This became a national story when Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard University 154

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law professor, wrote to the president of De Paul contesting Finkelstein’s academic credentials. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs invited and then disinvited John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt of the University of Chicago to lecture on their recently published book, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, a book that pinpointed the American Jewish lobbying effort for Israel as one of the sources of disequilibrium on American and Middle Eastern politics.24 Beyond Chicago, the attack on academic freedom had been just as strong. The controversy surrounding PalestinianAmerican anthropologist Nadia Abu-el-Haj’s tenure bid in the 2006/7 academic year at Columbia University, New York, was one example. Abuel-Haj had taught at Barnard, an affiliate of Columbia, since 2002, but her tenure bid became highly contested because her book, Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society, was perceived by some Columbia donors to be anti-Israel.25 Likewise, the Michigan Chapter of the pro-Israel group StandWithUs (SWU) condemned the University of Michigan Press’ distribution, on behalf of Pluto Press, of Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine, by Joel Kovel. They insisted that by distributing what they saw as an anti-Israel publication, the university itself was being anti-Israel. Protests over the summer of 2007 ended in mid-August with the press continuing its publication of the book.26 Other examples included the cancellation of Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s lecture in October 2007 at St Thomas, a Catholic university in Minnesota. A St Thomas university official said the school was ‘worried his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would offend the Jewish community’.27 Moving further afield, we can also cite the example of the British University Teachers’ Union vote in late May 2007 to boycott Israeli academic institutions.28 Working within the new mission accepted by Spertus’ board in February 2007, the museum staff worked hard to define an opening series of programmes for the new facility that opened on 29 November 2007.29 The programming spoke to the belief that, despite the commercial demands of public institutions from universities to museums or newspapers, Spertus could engage in an intellectual project not entirely determined by these demands. The history of museums is tied to the constituting and sustaining of nationalism, both from its inception at the Louvre, following the trail of blood from the king’s guillotined head and the declaration of a republic,30 to the US, and Chicago in particular, where museums were critical in defining nationalism in European terms against the claims of Europe that America had no culture and no cultural future.31 It is clear that a museum is not a disinterested educational space, and that it is performative in nature. In Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s words and 155

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with her emphasis, ‘display not only shows and speaks, it also does’.32 In the case of a Jewish museum, historically the site for the presentation of what a Jew is and how one practises, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s critical contribution is her recognition that Jews do not precede but rather are constituted by ‘disciplines, institutions, and display practices’.33 Therefore, in line with Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s discussion, the museum shapes the subject, and within that a particular kind of subject, the citizen of a nation state. Museums insert the visitor into the grand historical narrative of nationalism, in a move that is essentially cartographic itself. For Tobi Miller and George Yùdice, this citizen is marked by a set of manners and ethics, also forged in the museum setting.34 Concomitantly, the museum sets up a series of exclusions of those whose ethics and manners are called into question by the museum. The museum creates the public but, because of its structure, it has limited options to shift the kind of public it can create by shifting the form of its address. It can become more inclusive; in other words, the museum can change its details to, for instance, include more women and minority artists, make space for a Jewish museum on Michigan Avenue, include more or different audiences, remove items, give back items, close down an exhibition. All these tactics, however, remain internal to the all-absorbing logic of the nation state. In America, this all-encompassing mechanism was further informed by the notion that out of the melting pot (the very admission of difference at the heart of the nation’s sameness) could come a unified and consistent nation. With this turn, museums took on their educational structure to draw these disparate parts together. Europe, the model for and against which American national identity cohered, offered the common source for high art to a range of multiple groups in America. One may hail from Ireland, Eastern Europe or Germany, but high art erased those distinctions. Its source was simply Europe. In this way, museums took on a further solidifying function in America. In a convincing essay connecting the development of prisons and museums, Tony Bennett explores the shift of the display of power from the realm of public displays of discipline to the subtle shaping of the passive body of the citizen through education in spaces like the museum and suggests that If the orientation of the prison is to discipline and punish with a view to effecting a modification of behavior, that of the museum is to show and tell so that the people might look and learn. The purpose, here, is not to know the populace but to allow the people, addressed as subjects of knowledge rather than as objects of administration, to know; not to render the populace visible to power but to render power visible to the people and, at the same time, to 156

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represent to them that power as their own. In thus rhetorically incorporating an undifferentiated citizenry into a set of powerknowledge relations which are represented to it as emanating from itself, the museum emerged as an important instrument for the selfdisplay of bourgeois-democratic societies.35 Despite understanding the limitations of museum space to work outside of the framework of power, or extra-territorially, Rosen assumed that a site like Spertus, shaped by the vocabulary of pedagogy and culturally specific as well, seemed worth the effort not to propose anything exterior to power but, alongside de Certeau, to hope for small flickers of resistance, small disruptions, from a place clearly trapped within the grid of power.36 Since Spertus balanced being a marginal, culturally specific space with being a new civic institution, it seemed to her that this tilted position, so to speak, might offer opportunities to catch the viewer anew in this lopsided, or askew moment. Imaginary Coordinates demonstrated, however, that there is no exteriority to the museum, a point even more important because it will be remembered that the state of Israel was declared on 14 May 1948 by David Ben-Gurion in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. It was not declared in a building that was later to become a museum. The Israeli state was born in a museum. While it is true that there were few large secular spaces in the new state, the now-iconic image of David Ben-Gurion declaring the state while standing under a portrait of Herzl is too well crafted to be completely coincidental. If the museum’s origins are in the birth of the republic, there was every reason to believe in 2008—on the edge of global fiscal collapse—that the broader museum world was at the bottom-of-the-barrel, and that museum policy and programming had depleted the fatigued logic of the nation state. Imaginary Coordinates successfully intervened in the seamlessness of the narrative of the nation, in Rogoff’s language, and thus called into question the limits of possibility for a Jewish museum. In large part, for these reasons, it was closed. On the night Imaginary Coordinates opened, Rogoff was the opening speaker. She offered a powerful description of contemporary experience. For her, there has been a shift from criticism with its inherent value judgments and from critique with its epistemological unveiling and uncovering of assumptions and knowledge regimes to a contemporary state that can be called criticality. Criticality being at once an ability to see through the structures that we are living in and to analyze them in a theoretically informed way while at the same time to recognize that 157

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for all of one’s critical apparatus one is nevertheless living out those very conditions.37 For her, without exteriority, what theorists bring to analysis that is contemporary is the experiential dimension of what they are living, ‘to navigate the terrain at levels of analysis, feeling and mutuality’.38 One common effect of closing an exhibition is to shift the conversation from the content of the exhibition to the fact of its cancellation—a crafty transference. Imaginary Coordinates, however, has enjoyed a robust afterlife that is double-pronged and which has been both about its cancellation and its content: Artist Michael Rakowitz, who at the time held an associate professorship at Northwestern University (he is now a full professor), refused to participate at Spertus when invited to do so after the closing of Imaginary Coordinates. His letter of refusal, addressed to then Senior Curator Staci Boris, who had invited him to do a commission for Spertus, was later published in the Exhibitionist article organized by Gretchen Jennings. This letter and another by artist Marc Fischer were included along with the Imaginary Coordinates catalogue in an exhibition mounted by curator Lauren van Haaften-Schick at The Center Book Arts, NY, titled Canceled: Alternative Manifestations and Productive Failures (18 April—30 June 2012), and which toured to Albright College in Reading, PA in 2013. This exhibition earned some critical acclaim and, in turn, inspired a follow-up exhibition entitled Non-Participation, again curated by van Haaften-Schick, of letters by artists, curators and other cultural producers, written to decline their participation in events or to organizations and institutions that they either found suspect or whose actions ran counter to their stated missions. According to van Haaften-Schick’s call for such letters of non-participation, these statements are, in effect, protests against common hypocrisies among cultural organizations and pose a positive alternative to an equally ubiquitous pressure to perform. At the heart of the project is the notion that what one may say ‘no’ to is perhaps more important than what one may agree to. Michael Rakowitz’s letter to Spertus was again included. While closing exhibitions is extremely rare, two other cases of exhibitions that were closed at around the same time shared certain topics with Imaginary Coordinates. In 2006, Lior Halperin, a student at Brandeis, curated an exhibition entitled Voices of Palestine. The exhibition showcased 17 paintings by Palestinian teens living in Aida refugee camp. Halperin was a 27-year-old sophomore at the time, and an Israeli army veteran. This small exhibition was her final project for a course entitled ‘The Arts of Building Peace’. It was scheduled to run for two weeks, but four days 158

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into its run at the student gallery at Brandeis it was closed down amidst very vocal protests by some students. Each painting on display was accompanied by the teenaged artist’s name, the name of the village (now in Israel) from which his or her family came, his or her hobbies, a sentence on his or her dreams and a sentence or request to the world at large. Some of these statements included: ‘Liberation of Palestine and hopes to become nerves surgeon or genetic engineer’ or ‘I want to tell the world about Palestine, and I ask them to search for the reality about our case.’39 When interviewed by the New York Observer, Halperin said: ‘If we are going to find a partner for peace, we have to listen to the other side’ and continued: ‘these are voices who are longing for a land and longing for a home, we have to respect that.’40 When the exhibition was closed by Brandeis administrators, officials from MIT were willing to take it over and it was moved to MIT for a short one-week run. While this is a different incident to that of Imaginary Coordinates, most notably because it only included Palestinian voices, it shared two similarities. First, the perception that a Jewish institution is not an acceptable venue for challenging official Israeli narratives; secondly, that when Palestinian voices are represented, it is almost always accompanied by a call for ‘context’ or ‘balance’. In the Brandeis example, one administrator was quoted by the New York Observer as admitting he would be prepared to remount the exhibition if paintings showing the Israeli perspective were introduced.41 At Spertus, when the noisy protests of various leading members of the established Jewish world were beginning to be heard, labels were revised and Rosen introduced a guided-tour policy to answer their call for ‘context’. It is a perspective that also suggests that there is a homogenous Israeli position to counter a homogenous Palestinian position, which at Spertus was a perspective that the curator did not assume and, indeed, for these Jewish leaders it was the work of Israeli artists Yael Bartana and Sigalit Landau that drew the most severe criticism. In the case of Bartana, this was because some members of the Chicago institutional Jewish world felt that Jeff Halper, the founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition, the organization with which Bartana had partnered to make the video, was a divisive figure within anti-Israel politics. In the case of Sigalit Landau, because she was naked, there were calls from a member of the audience that a Jewish museum should programme for families, the assumption being that nudity was not acceptable content for children. Voices of Palestine was curated by an Israeli who had served in the Israeli army, yet it is clear in that instance that ‘Israeli’ is not a homogenous category. In Chapter 4 of this volume Griselda Pollock analyses Yael Bartana’s Summer Camp, her contribution to Imaginary Coordinates, in greater detail. Pollock’s fascinating discussion of Bartana’s contribution to the Polish pavilion in 159

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the 2011 Venice Biennale complicated even further what it means to hold to a simplistic notion of national identity. The second exhibition that was closed around the same time as Imaginary Coordinates and which also addressed territorial issues in Israel/ Palestine was A Civilian Occupation. In its first iteration, this was an exhibition curated by Tel Aviv-based architects Eyal Weizman and Rafi Segal. They also edited a book of the same name.42 The project was funded by the Israeli Association of United Architects (IAUA) and aimed to demonstrate the role Israeli architecture has played in the Israeli state’s expansionist policies through photography, video and maps. The exhibition took a historical vantage point, presenting material that demonstrated the use of architecture from as early as the Tower and Stockade villages of the 1930s through to the total planning policies of the newly declared state to contemporary settlements. In its understanding of geography as central to the construction of national identity, it was closer to Imaginary Coordinates than was Voices of Palestine. For them, the ‘key to understanding the erection of settlements throughout the West Bank is the geography of the land and its politicization during the building process’.43 The book brought together philosophers, journalists, architects, cartographers and photographers such as Gideon Levy, a former aide to Shimon Peres, Meron Benvenisti, former deputy mayor of Jerusalem and architect Thomas Leitersdorf.44 Both the exhibition and the book put forward an argument for the complicity of professional architects in forwarding the expansionist policies of the state and called for an end to settlement building and a withdrawal from the occupied territories. The exhibition and book were originally conceived as Israel’s official submission to the 2002 World Congress of Architecture, a biennale, scheduled to open in Berlin on 23 July 2002. Once the catalogue was published, however, it was immediately read by the head of IAUA, Uri Zerubavel, who contacted Weizman straight away to register his disappointment and to share with him his intention to cancel Israel’s contribution to this major biennale, to withdraw all further support for the project and to ban the catalogue. Again, the issue of ‘balance’ was raised and, as with Imaginary Coordinates, an argument was made about representing the enemy’s point of view. Zerubavel was quoted at the time as saying: the association is an apolitical organization whose role is to promote specialization and not to take a political position. Were there a political balance to the exhibition, then I would understand it. But the exhibition and the catalogue are just anti-Israeli and post-Zionist 160

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[. . .] Heaven help us if this is what Israel has to show [. . .] I don’t need to do the Palestinians’ work for them.45 This quotation demonstrates the fine line that is perceived between something political and something that is anti-Israel. Indeed, it is this fine distinction that leads so many organizations, most prominently JStreet (an organization that aims to organize and mobilize pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans who want Israel to be secure, democratic and the national home of the Jewish people), to ground their criticisms in an argument for love of Israel. As long as an argument makes clear that the territorial sanctity of the state is not in question and that the central place of Israel as the defining characteristic of Jewish identity is not being jeopardized, then the argument is more likely to be allowed. Thwarted in Berlin, a modified version of the show opened in a New York gallery, Storefront for Art and Architecture, which included several copies of the censored catalogue. Sarah Herder, the curator at the Storefront for Art and Architecture, had heard about the censorship and invited Segal and Weizman to mount their exhibition in her space. It was on view 12 February–20 April 2003, without being censored and then travelled and became one part of Anselm Franke’s Territories exhibition on view 2 June–24 August 2003 at Kunst-Werke in Berlin, bringing the show’s schedule full circle. Segal and Weizman’s experience is instructive because it suggests that venue/context is the defining quality for what is permissible. When exhibitions that deal with Israeli geography are tied to a Jewish institution or to the Israeli state abroad, exhibitions have the potential to be explosive but, divorced from this context, the exhibition is permissible and is received without controversy, raising again the argument about the specificity of culturally marked spaces. There is one more example of how the function of a culturally specific space impairs potential Jewish museum programming. This example, while it did not have the same consequences as either Imaginary Coordinates or A Civilian Occupation, is valuable because of the way it demonstrates the point about context being the defining factor in these controversies. On Friday 8 May 2009, the Board of the Koffler Centre for the Arts, Toronto’s Jewish museum, announced that they were disassociating themselves from Each Hand as They are Called, an exhibition about life in Toronto’s Kensington Market, an area steeped in Jewish history, similar to Chicago’s Maxwell Street or the Lower East Side of New York City. A historical memory project about Jewish life in Toronto, the exhibition had nothing to do with Israel/Palestine. Also—and this is critical for our argument about the specificity of culturally marked spaces—while the exhibition had Koffler Center for the Arts’ financial support, it was a community-based 161

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project sited in various different spaces throughout the Kensington neighbourhood, outside of the Koffler Center for the Arts venue itself. Even though artist Reena Katz had made her political views known upfront, when the board was criticized for supporting an artist who was affiliated with Israeli Apartheid Week, they withdrew their support. Their statement to the press read: As a Jewish cultural institution, an agency of UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, the Koffler Centre for the Arts will not associate with an artist who publicly advocates the extinction of Israel as a Jewish state [. . .] The Koffler considers the existence and well-being of Israel as a Jewish state to be one of its core values.46 Katz’s rebuttal made the reduction of Jewish identity to Zionism clear. She said: ‘I have said that I’m an anti-Zionist Jew. So they are conflating the state of Israel with Zionism. I’m speaking to an ideology when I speak about Zionism. They’re speaking about a Jewish state.’47 And, indeed, Israeli Apartheid Week, which was in its fifth year, did not make any attack on the claims of the Jewish state but rather aimed ‘to educate people about the nature of Israel as an apartheid system and to build Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns as part of a growing global BDS movement’.48 What is instructive about this example is that the Koffler removed the exhibition from its website and disassociated itself from any promotion of the exhibition. Koffler did not or could not prevent the exhibition from continuing, because it was billed to open in a number of venues, none of which were managed by the Koffler or by any other Jewish institution, thus placing it beyond the reach of the ideology of the inviolability of the nation state. The inherent limitations of such projects, then, are not set in advance but reveal themselves in the unfolding of the project, its context and its timing. The historical and contextual specificity of all the examples given above manifests in a number of factors that account for a difference in reception. This makes it challenging to explain the exceptions to the rule. The 2007 Dateline: Israel at the Jewish Museum, New York, which did not cause controversy and which was not closed down, is an example of an exhibition that shared some of the same artists as Imaginary Coordinates, including one of the Palestinian participants, whose works the Jewish Museum accessioned into their collection. Likewise, a small exhibition held at the same time as Imaginary Coordinates in Washington DC’s Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery, located in the Jewish Community Center, was also not closed down. It was entitled L(a)ttitudes and concentrated on contemporary Israeli and Palestinian mapping.49 Within Israel itself, such exhibitions are commonplace. The 2008 exhibition Realtime at the Israel Museum, 162

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Jerusalem, is an example. The exhibition was on show at the same time as Imaginary Coordinates and was well received by an Israeli audience despite the fact that many artists whose work was on view dealt ambivalently or were outright critical of some of the territorial policies of the Israeli state.50 At the time of writing, ten years have passed since the closing of Imaginary Coordinates and the cultural landscape has changed enormously since then. Yet contemporary Israeli and Palestinian artists continue to produce blunt, hard-hitting art that is non-polemical yet part of a serious ethical and political project. When Sigalit Landau, in her video, Barbed Hula (2002), is prepared to honour these relationships by opening her physical contours; when she hula hoops naked with barbed wire on the shores of Tel Aviv, asks questions about the physicality of borders and draws attention to the torture and suffering that it takes to protect a line that is really a breathing, porous, permeable and shifting surface, as curators and administrators we are bound to pay tribute to her cartographic gesture. When, in her video Summer Camp (2007), Yael Bartana shows Palestinians, Jews, Christians and international volunteers rebuilding a destroyed home in East Jerusalem in the style of early Zionist footage of the building of the land, she does so to charter the space for a land with multiple identities. Consciously opposing this video with the scenes of destruction of Palestinian houses by the Israel Defense Forces that have become a commonplace of media reporting, hers is a challenge to hear new voices making space for renewal and transformation. When Michal Rovner, in Makom (2008), works together with Palestinian and Druze stone masons to gather bricks from a variety of places, times and populations to build something new, a place she significantly calls Makom, she too offers the cartographic prospect for finding space for mutual existence. When curators honour Israeli artists by sharing their strategies and bringing Palestinian artists whose work demonstrates similar geographical impulses into our museums, curators honour their cultural work even more. As poet Yitzhak Laor wrote: ‘a joint life means relinquishing parts of a national ethos’.51 The artists included in Imaginary Coordinates celebrate the multiple identities living on the land, if not on the map, and chart the psychological and conceptual terrain that imagines new political realities. Therefore, we suggest that it is the curators’ job to support them.

Notes 1. The Muriel Yale Collection of Antique Maps of Eretz Yisrael and Related Areas, housed in the Norman and Helen Asher Library, and the Spertus Museum collection were the main sources of antique maps for this exhibition. 163

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2. In her opening lecture for Imaginary Coordinates, on 1 May 2008, Irit Rogoff said that the possibility that ‘the arts and creative practices open up is to usurp a language, like the language of cartography, and to reinvest it with a lot of internal contradictions so that what might not sit well in an atlas that you use for kind of straightforward knowledge purposes begins to assume another set of possibilities when it is in the hands of creative practices whose relations to knowledge is oblique’. 3. The work by Ayreen Anastas that was finally included was with Rene Gabri, who is both Iranian and male, and so disrupted the curatorial symmetry. 4. For reviews of the exhibition, see Alan Artner, ‘ “Coordinates” rewardingly unorthodox’, The Chicago Tribune, 22 May 2008, (accessed 25 November 2012); Rachel Funari, ‘Review: Imaginary Coordinates/ Spertus Institute’, New City, 15 May 2008, (accessed 25 November 2012); Philip Berger, ‘Imaginary coordinates’, Time Out Chicago, 3 June 2008, (accessed 25 November 2012). 5. Yael Bartana’s Summer Camp, for example, was not only funded in part by two departments of the Israeli state but it was also selected to represent Israel in the national pavilion at Documenta just prior to the opening of Imaginary Coordinates. 6. Cheryl Kent, Ron Krueck and Mark Sexton, The New Spertus Institute: A Study in Light by Krueck and Sexton Architects (Chicago, IL: Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies, 2008). This publication offers a beautifully illustrated and thoroughly documented overview of this project. 7. In advance of moving to the new building, an ad hoc committee of Spertus’ senior administrative officers (including this co-author), some board members and outside community leaders was formed to draft and recommend to the board a new mission, a new set of core principles and net strategic advantages, all of which speak to this new sense of the Institute re-envisioning itself in civic terms. The new mission was ratified by the board in February 2007. 8. In common English usage, the Jewish diaspora and the Jewish state are both referred to with a capital ‘D’ and a capital ‘S’ to distinguish it from other diasporas and other states, which take lowercase. Since this chapter explores and recognizes various powerful nationalist narratives of Israel/Palestine, the authors choose to designate all diasporas and states using the lower case only. 9. Indeed, the Spertus opening gala on 29 November 2007 coincided, unintentionally on the part of the planners, with the date that marked the sixtieth anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations (UN) partition plan. 10. See Chicago Cultural Alliance website: (accessed 9 April 2016). 11. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). 12. Sidra Dekoven Ezrahi, Booking Passage: Exile and Homecoming in the Modern Jewish Imagination (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000), p. 10. 13. Irit Rogoff, ‘What is a Theorist?’, in James Elkins and Michael Newman (eds), The State of Art Criticism (New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 97–110, p. 97. 164

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14. Rogoff: ‘What is a Theorist?’, p. 97. 15. Irit Rogoff, Terra Infirma: Geography’s Visual Culture (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 21. 16. Rogoff: Terra Infirma, p. 21 17. Tony Bennett, ‘The Political Rationality of the Museum’, in Justin Lewis and Toby Miller (eds), Critical Cultural Policy Studies (London: Blackwell, 2003), pp. 180–7; Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (London: Routledge, 1995); and Denis Hollier, Against Architecture: The Writings of Georges Bataille, trans. Betsy Wing (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992) are examples of authors who describe the way museums were established to teach citizens how to perform their national identity—in essence, how to be citizens. These authors also point to the voices excluded from these museums. 18. Manya A Brachear and Charles Storch, ‘Controversy closes show at museum’, Chicago Tribune, 21 June 2008, p. 1. All quotations from Michael Kotzin, Steve Nasatir, Howard Sulkin and Marc Wilcow are from this front-page article. 19. Brachear and Storch: ‘Controversy closes show at museum’, p. 1. 20. Brachear and Storch: ‘Controversy closes show at museum’, p. 1. 21. Lauren Weinberg, ‘Imaginary Coordinates reopens at Spertus Museum’, Time Out Chicago, 14 May 2008. 22. Robbie Gringas, ‘Jewish World/we should stop hugging Israel and start wrestling’, Haaretz, 17 August 2008, (accessed 25 November 2012). This is borne out in some of the in-house surveys we took during Imaginary Coordinates. For example, in response to a question about whether a concept of homeland was central to his/her identity one respondent wrote: ‘Yet this show really did make me think more about it and spark a desire to visit Israel.’ 23. Norman G. Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (London: Verso, 2000). 24. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007). 25. See Karen W. Arenson, ‘Fracas erupts over book on Mideast by a Barnard Professor seeking tenure’, The New York Times, 10 September 2007, (accessed 7 September 2014). 26. Scott Jaschik, ‘Michigan keeps link to controversial publisher’, Inside Higher Ed., 25 October 2007, (accessed 7 September 2014). 27. MPR News, ‘University of St Thomas says “no” to Desmond Tutu’, 4 October 2007, (accessed 7 September 2014). 28. Alan Cowell, ‘British academics’ union endorses Israel boycott, The New York Times, 31 May 2007, (accessed 7 September 2014). 29. The new board-ratified mission read: ‘Spertus invites people of all ages and backgrounds to explore the multifaceted Jewish experience. Through its innovative 165

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public programming, exhibitions, collections, research facilities and degree programs, Spertus inspires learning, serves diverse communities and fosters understanding for Jews and people of all faiths, locally, regionally and around the world.’ The first sentence was altered on 16 June 2008 to: ‘Spertus is a Jewish institution grounded in Jewish values and invites people of all ages and backgrounds to explore the multifaceted Jewish experience.’ The initial reenvisioning of the mission was begun, with board leadership, in 2002, was presented to an encouraging board in 2004 and finally accepted in 2007. 30. Hollier: Against Architecture, p. xiii. 31. Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Culture and the City: Cultural Philanthropy in Chicago from the 1880s to 1917 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1976), pp. 4–21. Although we are reminded by Horowitz that in Chicago this victory was never clear. Price Collier, for example, quoted by Horowitz earlier in the book, commented when he visited in 1897 that Chicago was ‘a strange combination of pork and Plato’ (p. ix). 32. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998), p. 6. 33. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett: Destination Culture, p. 2. 34. Toby Miller and George Yudice, Cultural Policy (London: Sage, 2002), p. 148. 35. Bennett: ‘The political rationality of the museum’, p. 186. 36. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Randall (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984), p. xix. 37. Irit Rogoff, opening speaker for Imaginary Coordinates, 1 May 2008. 38. Rogoff, opening speaker for Imaginary Coordinates. 39. ‘Brandeis shuts down a show of Palestinian art’, The New York Observer, 2 May 2006, (accessed 25 November 2012). 40. ‘Brandeis shuts down a show of Palestinian art’. 41. ‘Brandeis shuts down a show of Palestinian art’. 42. Rafi Segal and Eyal Weizman (eds), A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture (London: Verso, 2003). 43. Jessica Ostrower, ‘A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture at Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York’, Art in America, 91/7 (2003), p. 93. 44. Segal and Weizman: A Civilian Occupation. 45. Paul Hilder, ‘Professionals in Israel’, Open Democracy, 17 July 2002, (accessed 25 November 2012). 46. Vanessa Lu, ‘Kensington Market exhibit stirs controversy among Jews’, The Star, 10 May 2009, (accessed 25 November 2012). 47. Lu: ‘Kensington Market exhibit stirs controversy among Jews’. 48. (accessed 9 April 2016). 49. It should be noted, however, that Ari Roth was fired from Theater J—like the Bronfman Gallery, also a part of the DC Jewish Community Center (JCC)—in 166

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2014. After 18 years of programming performances with Israel-Palestine at their core, Carole Zawatsky, the CEO of DC JCC fired Roth. For more on the controversy, see Lonnie Firestone, ‘Why Ari Roth got fired from Theater J’, Tablet, 26 December 2014, (accessed 9 April 2016). 50. Some of the artists in Realtime were also included in Imaginary Coordinates. 51. Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London: Verso, 2004), p. 119.

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CHAPTER 6 SHOWCASING CONFLICT Notes and Observations on Photographic Representation in Israel and Palestine Huw Wahl

Do you think we are not the audience of our image as well? Yazan Al-Khalili In the summer of 2012, I travelled to Israel and Palestine to explore the function and operation of photographic representation in this heavily documented region. During my stay I met Israeli, Palestinian and international photographers who struggle with the daily realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but choose to continue living in the place that they consider their home. My main intention was to assess what guides their practice, and to what extent, if at all, their socio-national identities and political views affect the visual strategies that they employ. I used interviews to begin answering these questions, and I also photographed some of them at work.1 This allowed me both to record the broader context in which professional and activist camera users produce images when in the field and to produce my own images capable of showing how they choose to frame the situations they encounter. The resulting photoessay presented here brings together those images, accompanied by quotations extracted from the interviews I held, as a way to invoke complex thoughts about the nature of some of the most popular photographic image types that often delineate, communicate and define the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in Israel, in Palestine, and internationally.2 When attending demonstrations and being present where clashes were ongoing between Palestinian individuals, soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces and political Israeli and international activists, I was surrounded by many other photographic practitioners, all capturing the action. These included, for example, international activist and press photographers, Palestinians with camera-phones, Palestinians with video cameras lent by human rights NGOs such as B’Tselem, and collectives such as Activestills who both self-publish their photographs and sell them to news wires, or use them to make the conflict visible away from Israeli-Palestinian violent clashes as Simon Faulkner shows in Chapter 7 of this volume. In fact, at 168

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times there was almost the same number of camera users in the field as of protestors, soldiers and activists. This visualization frenzy is part of the reality of the conflict, and so is the awareness of both sides that cameras are constantly pointed at them, especially when they confront each other. But, professional photographers and also often political activists—Israelis, Palestinians or internationals—repeatedly strive to avoid capturing the image of other photographic practitioners in their pictures. Therefore, their photographs often give the impression that no one else was present to witness the situations that they display. Consciously or not, this framing of the conflict tends to exclude the strange reality of media spectacle. One explanation may be that the photographers I met tend to be guided mainly by the requirements of their profession—in the case of press photographers—or by their political views—in the case of activists. Press photographers are very much aware of the kinds of images that sell. Many of the images they take are thus not necessarily impartial mediations of ordinary and extraordinary conflict-related incidents, but instead are replications of images that work—images news editors and members of the public expect to see when imagining the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, activists also tend to use their cameras in compliance with some prescribed visual patterns. They may use photography to support antioccupation campaigns with the intention of changing the situation in the region for the better, but on occasion they also employ invasive methods to instigate images of suffering and victimhood that can assist them to rest their political case. To a large extent the adherence of professional photographers and political activists to these visual codes of practice compromises nuanced engagement with the realities of the conflict. Frequently, the resulting images could therefore be said to potentially be misleading as, in fact, while not compromising their authenticity, many of the demonstrations and clashes in Israel and Palestine are akin to performances in which participants know their place and role. Behavioural patterns come to sight moment by moment as activities are repeatedly executed by each of the sides in turn, as if they were prearranged and coordinated. This is not to diminish the real danger of the conflicts in which sometimes people get severely injured or even killed. In the end, it is mostly classic, monolithic images of individuals with slingshots, stone-throwing, masses running away from tear gas, and people in physical or emotional pain that the press and political activists use to communicate to the world what is going on in Israel and Palestine. Through these pictures, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict appears as a cyclical drama that simply repeats itself. Even though the production 169

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of these images may often involve ad hoc collaboration between the photographer and the subjects, and although the resulting images are usually intended as a means to raise public awareness to the suffering of Palestinians and Israelis, they construct representational realities that cannot necessarily attend to the complex socio-political reality in Israel and Palestine nor to the intricate nature of interaction between Israelis and Palestinians. Professional photographers and other camera users play an integral part in these dangerous enactments. One way or another, on some occasions they may even be the catalysts of this routine. Their presence, however, is most often excluded from the conflict’s representational spaces. In presenting images of camera users at work along with their reflections on the visual practices that they utilise, the following photoessay takes a step back from the images produced by professionals and activists, placing the photographic practitioners at the centre of attention alongside the simultaneous realities that surround them. Although, as such, the photo-essay must still not be seen as a more accurate or credible representation of the socio-political situation in Israel and Palestine, it foregrounds the fact of visual planning and its manifestation in photographic representation of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order to open up the visual and analytical field to the broader circumstances that determine their making.

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Newspapers used to have their own staff [. . .] but they don’t use their own staff anymore, so most of the people are working for agencies, and the main interest of the agency is to sell. So the image have to be clear, high quality, not ambiguous, like you understand the message, and nice! Something you can sell. People will like! And they are all shooting the same. Miki Kratsman

Figure 6.1 People demonstrate in support of prisoners participating in one of the longest hunger strikes in Palestinian history. Ofer prison is located near Ramallah in the West Bank and run by the Israeli Prison Services. According to B’Tselem, Israel holds more than 4,500 Palestinians in jail on charges that range from stone throwing to deadly attacks on Israeli targets. Hunger strikes in protest at inhumane and abusive conditions, as well as detentions without charge or trial, have been growing over the past years. See the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, (accessed January 2013). Huw Wahl, Ofer Prison, West Bank, June 2012.

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Photographers [. . .] I don’t know if they’re a third party, they’re an additional party to the conflict. And they also have a role and an influence on the way things develop in any given situation. And yeah, you almost rarely see pictures that include images of other photographers. Mati Milstein

Figure 6.2 Photojournalists photograph a boy dressed as Spiderman during the weekly protest in Nabi Saleh. Each Friday the village residents, joined by Israeli and foreign activists, try to march to their village spring, which has been confiscated by Halamish, the settlement in the top right of this photograph. The Israel Defense Forces use tear gas, rubber-coated bullets and a foul-smelling water canon nicknamed the ‘skunk canon’ to stop them. Huw Wahl, Nabi Saleh, West Bank, May 2012.

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Because it looks a bit odd to see. . . your focus is on a particular event, and the characters in this event. Therefore if you have a photographer or cameraman inside the frame it kind of distract I think from the actual action, because you have somebody in the frame that is not at the same stage as the others. It’s like adding another category, and then it’s more, I think, confusing for the viewer in a way. Ann Paq

Figure 6.3 Foreign activists photograph Palestinian children playing in a car while the community carries out agricultural work. Huw Wahl, South Hebron Hills, West Bank, May 2012.

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Well usually the international media don’t show the Palestinians as victims, because they try to be in the safe side, between the Palestinians and Israelis. But the Arab media yes, yes, they try to show the Palestinians like they are victims; they don’t really focus on good points. Fadi Arouri

Figure 6.4 Palestinian photojournalists talk to local children during a quiet moment at a demonstration outside Ofer prison in support of prisoners on hunger strike. Huw Wahl, Ofer Prison, West Bank, June 2012.

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[Activists are] trying to sometimes supply really subversive content, and also use it in a way that would make it more complex, and allow this space, the space that is very, very limited, even today with the internet [. . .] and still very much narrated by very strong forces you know, which are, for one the government, and second the media. Yoav Gross

Figure 6.5 An Israeli photographer demonstrates framing in a project encouraging the Bedouin communities in southern Israel to document themselves through portraiture, as a way of building a political archive. The Israeli government regularly demolishes houses without permits in Israel as part of its policy of settling former nomadic Arab communities such as Bedouins in government-planned towns. Huw Wahl, Negev Desert, Southern Israel, June 2012.

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Sometimes I’m bored with the way we’re portrayed, in a sense, as you say these stereotype images. And at the same time I feel, photographs are really a, very very powerful tool about showing what’s happening [. . .] I don’t know if there’s an instance in the world where the general media can take up a mission to show something different, it’s individuals I think who will do that. Tania Nasir

Figure 6.6 Foreign activists document agricultural work by Palestinian cave dwellers in the South Hebron Hills. The caves and residential dwellings are regularly destroyed by Israeli forces claiming they do not have permits to live there. Palestinian and foreign activists provide help by building houses out of breezeblocks, which are also quickly knocked down. Huw Wahl, South Hebron Hills, West Bank, May 2012.

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Photography is a tool, it’s showing a truth, but from which angle? This is the problem. It’s not a matter of Palestinian or Israeli photographer; it’s a matter of what the editors choose. This is the problem. If the editors change, the photographers change automatically. Maybe we need a new school of photography? Osama Silwadi

Figure 6.7 A Palestinian activist films a Palestinian cave dweller in a temporary tent. Huw Wahl, South Hebron Hills, West Bank, May 2012.

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I liked photojournalism, but I couldn’t do it without getting emotionally [involved] in what I see. It was very hard for me to see grieving, crying, funerals, it used to get to me so much. Rula Halawani

Figure 6.8 A Palestinian man is arrested following a protest against the Jerusalem Day march of the flags entering East Jerusalem. Jerusalem Day is the day on which Israeli nationalists celebrate the capture of East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War. The annexation of East Jerusalem by Israel has never been recognised by international law. Huw Wahl, East Jerusalem, Israel, May 2012.

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We usually say that photography is an extension of our sight or something that we see but, there is some truth to it when you realise that yes, when you photograph and you look at what you photograph you actually see it, it’s the first time you really see it. But taking pictures is not natural, it’s an artificial thing. And if you’re taking responsibility over it, you can make 300, 400 pictures in a digital camera and who can take so much responsibility over so many pictures? Gilad Ophir

Figure 6.9 Young people from a Bedouin community take photographs of a house recently demolished by the Israeli forces. Huw Wahl, Negev Desert, Southern Israel, June 2012.

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I’m very against I would say, the issue of victim hood. And I would totally differentiate between the victim and the oppressed. The victim is a very passive character, whereas the oppressed I believe is a different character, it’s an active character that tries to free itself from the oppression itself. Therefore the issue of image making and the image of representation, differs between the victim and the oppressed. Yazan Al-Khalili

Figure 6.10 A foreign activist photographs a Palestinian child playing in a car. Huw Wahl, South Hebron Hills, West Bank, May 2012.

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One time an editor of one of the big wire [photo agencies] told me that they really like the Activestills photos [. . .] but they say it’s always complicated because we document, you know, Israeli leftwing activists who join Palestinian[s] and confront soldier[s], and for them they prefer to show it like—the Palestinian kid the Israeli soldier. Like sometime[s] [. . .] you can see in the captions an Israeli soldier arresting a Palestinian man, and I can recognise it’s like, my friend from Tel Aviv. Oren Ziv

Figure 6.11 An arrest at a protest against the Jerusalem Day march of the flags entering East Jerusalem. Huw Wahl, East Jerusalem, Israel, May 2012.

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I don’t want to remain the victim, I think that’s it, I want to be on my own and not as a victim. Because I am, and yet I want to be free of that, and one way of freeing myself from being a victim [. . .] [is] to grow above it, to be solid inside, to be able to sustain this ongoing suffering and tragedy. Tania Nasir

Figure 6.12 View from a bus leaving Qalandiya checkpoint as it enters Israel alongside the separation barrier. Qalandiya separates the West Bank from Jerusalem; only Palestinians with special permits are allowed to enter Israel. Huw Wahl, Qalandiya Checkpoint, Israel, June 2012.

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Notes 1. The quotations that accompany the photographs in this photo-essay have been derived from those interviews conducted in May and June 2012. I am grateful to the following individuals for making time to discuss with me their work and views: Yazan Al-Khalili, Fadi Arouri, Yoav Gross, Rula Halawani, Khaled Jarrar, Miki Kratsman, Mati Milstein, Tania Nasir, Gilad Ophir, Anne Paq, Osama Silwadi and Oren Ziv. I am also grateful to all those who let me photograph alongside them. Without their help this project could have not been possible. Special thanks go to the late Jean Mohr, who gave me much of his time to discuss with me his work in the region. 2. A related, audio-visual piece of the same title as the photo-essay discussed here can be viewed online: (accessed 18 September 2017).

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CHAPTER 7 VISIBILITY, PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE OCCUPATION The Case of the Activestills Collective Simon Faulkner

This chapter takes as its subject the Israel/Palestine-based photographic collective Activestills, focusing on a series of street exhibitions organized by the collective between 2006 and 2014. These exhibitions consisted of sets of photographic images that pictured situations and events related to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank presented on walls and other urban surfaces, primarily in Tel Aviv. The exhibitions were intended to transport scenes of the occupation to an Israeli audience in the hope of affecting their opinion about the treatment of the Palestinians by the Israeli state. As such, they reflected a concern on the part of Activestills to utilize photography as a political tool. This use of photography can be linked to the longer-standing and broader relationship between photography and the political situation in Israel/Palestine, as exemplified by other chapters in this collection. For example, in Chapter 8, Gil Pasternak’s discussion of photographs made by Israelis visiting the West Bank after the June War of 1967 shows how even personal photography can be infused with conditions of occupation and the power relations they involve. Huw Wahl’s photo-essay in Chapter 6, as another example, emphasizes how heavily visualized the occupation continues to be and how deeply saturated the resulting images are with political implications. Like these two chapters, the current discussion examines photography in Israel/Palestine in relation to political questions of visibility and seeing. Although the Activestills exhibitions were readily observable by people who passed by on the street, it is generally not obvious how these displays were actually seen by Israeli spectators, except where they responded to them by tearing, writing on or obscuring the images. These responses can be interpreted as attempts to police the field of the visible and to reassert boundaries between the national Israeli self and the Palestinian other. Here, the visibility of the exhibitions was something contested between the intentions of Activestills and the actions of spectators who opposed their viewpoint. The mere act of presenting images of the occupation in the street could not determine how these images were visible to those who 184

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saw them, meaning that the visibility Activestills sought to create for aspects of the occupation remained largely potential rather than actualized. At a basic level, visibility is dependent on two factors: the availability of something to be observed and the way of seeing applied to it. The denial of visibility can occur when something is physically excluded from the field of vision, or when the spectator fails or refuses to see it in a way that involves some form of recognition. These two forms of denial often occur in conjunction with each other, meaning that, within particular contexts, people are, to some degree, hidden from view and at the same time refused recognition where they are observable. These forms of denial are also wrapped up with the way that seeing is shaped by power. This is why Andrea Brighenti comments that ‘[v]isibility lies at the intersection of the domains of aesthetics (relations of perception) and politics (relations of power)’.1 This meeting of aesthetics and politics defines a field of struggle over whether or not something is available to be seen and over how it is seen. These points relate to both direct sight and the representation of things through visual images. Brighenti observes that ‘[v]isibility curdles into representations’.2 This comment refers to the way that people and things that have social and political prominence tend to be repeatedly represented. Images are therefore a pictorial consequence of the visibility that power entails. But images also contribute to the processes through which things become and remain visible. Images can be used to reinforce power, but they can also be produced with the aim of generating visibility for people who are socially and politically excluded. Practices of image production and distribution can therefore be understood as integral to contests over visibility and consequently to political struggles. The preceding discussion is particularly relevant to the consideration of visibility and the role of images within the context of the Israeli occupation, which is part of the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Like other conflicts, this situation has partly been defined by a struggle over seeing and visibility. Different ways of seeing have related to the experiences and positions of different protagonists in this conflict. These ways of seeing have been underpinned by and have themselves generated particular framings of the visible. Thinking about what they call the ‘Zionist Israeli Collective’, Ruchama Martin and Dalit Baum suggest that there exists an ‘active nonseeing mechanism’ that has shaped the field of vision in the service of the political project to create and maintain a Jewish homeland in Palestine.3 This active nonseeing has involved attempts to exclude the Palestinians from the Israeli field of vision, and at the same time, involved the seeing of Palestinians in stereotypical ways. In relation to the latter effect, Edward Said has commented that: ‘For years after 1948 the Palestinians are an absence, a desired and willed nonentity in Israeli 185

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discourse, on whom various images of absence have been heaped—the nomad, the terrorist, the fellah, the Arab, the fanatic, and so forth.’4 In particular cases, attempts by Israelis to see the Palestinians as something other than the enemy have been interpreted as a kind of border crossing tantamount to betrayal. For example, in 2003, the Jewish-Israeli Tali Fahima stayed with and acted as a human shield for the Palestinian militant Zakariye Zbeide in the refugee camp in Jenin in the West Bank. She was subsequently arrested by the Israeli security services and accused of working with the militants. However, in her view, her real crime was ‘seeing the Palestinians’.5 Here ‘seeing’ does not just refer to literal interactions with Palestinians, but also to the act of breaking with the Zionist Israeli Collective’s hegemonic framing of the visible that generally positions the Palestinians as people who should not really be seen, even when they are available to be observed. Having stated all this, one should be cautious about oversimplifying the Israeli field of vision when it comes to the Palestinians and the occupation. As Liora Sion suggests, the anxieties generated in Israel by Fahima’s boundary crossing indicate that Zionist ways of seeing are not all encompassing or completely secure.6 Conditions of visibility can never be utterly controlled by the state and dominant media institutions. Consequently, the active nonseeing mechanism that Martin and Baum suggest is structural to Israeli vision in relation to the Palestinians is best understood as a set of effects that have to be continuously produced so that the field of vision can be made manageable for the Zionist political project. This nonseeing mechanism is therefore active not simply because it involves actions, but also because it requires constant reproduction and policing against attempts to contest its limitations. Activestills

The Activestills collective was formed in 2005 in response to the struggle against the construction of a section of the West Bank Barrier on the land of the Palestinian village of Bil’in, located just east of the Green Line in the vicinity of Ramallah. Since the 1980s, Bil’in has experienced land confiscation for the construction of parts of the nearby Modi’in Illit settlement bloc. In December 2004, Israeli authorities announced that they would construct part of the barrier across land owned by the village. In response, the villagers formed the Bil’in Committee of Popular Resistance Against the Wall and Settlements and began a series of demonstrations at and around the barrier construction site, which were joined by Israeli and international activists. These demonstrations 186

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attracted a relatively high degree of media attention, partly due to the use of creative activism, involving theatrical actions and symbolic props.7 The four founding members of Activestills—Oren Ziv, Keren Manor, Yotam Ronen and Eduardo Sauteras—encountered each other in this context and decided that they wanted to do something together to publicize the demonstrations against the barrier to an Israeli audience. This initiative resulted in a street exhibition in Tel Aviv to mark the first anniversary of struggle in Bil’in in January 2006. The name Activestills was invented as a way for the exhibition organizers to remain anonymous, but was subsequently kept as a means of identifying their collective activity.8 A second exhibition, displayed on the streets of Bil’in itself, marked the second anniversary of struggle in February 2007. Activestills also provided the Committee of Popular Resistance with images of the demonstrations to use on the village website as well as distributing images of the demonstrations more widely. After 2007, members of the collective continued to photograph the resistance to the barrier in Bil’in, while extending their photographic work to other sites of protest against the barrier and settlement expansion, such as the villages of Nil’in and Nabi Saleh. The collective also photographed subjects such as the effects of the barrier in Bethlehem, the practice of house demolitions conducted by Israeli authorities in Jerusalem and the division of Hebron into areas H1 and H2. These subjects were represented in a set of street exhibitions organized in June 2007 in Tel Aviv and elsewhere to mark the fortieth anniversary of the beginning of the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. Since its foundation, Activestills has accepted new members on three conditions: that they are professional photographers, or at least are on their way to becoming professional photographers; that they have, and are motivated by, a political understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and that they are prepared to work collectively.9 The latter condition has involved a willingness on the part of individual photographers to contribute to the Activestills archive, which constitutes a photographic record of different political events and struggles within Israel/Palestine since 2005. This archive existed first as a Flickr account, opened in July 2006, and then as a searchable database as part of the redesigned Activestills website, launched in 2014.10 Once uploaded to the archive, the property rights for photographs are shared between the individual photographers and the collective. Activestills can sell these images as a means of generating income to sustain collective work, but it is important to understand that the collective is not a business in the sense of being a photo agency or a wire service.11 This also means that the collective does not constitute a source of income for its members, who have to undertake other kinds of 187

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photographic work to earn a living. For example, Yotam Ronen has worked for the Israeli news website Walla!, while Oren Ziv has worked for the Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz as well as the wire service Agence France-Presse and the picture agency Getty Images.12 The non-profit nature of Activestills means that members of the collective have to commit a substantial amount of their labour as photographic workers to the collective without financial remuneration. What this situation provides in return is an organizational context within which members of the collective can focus on political rather than commercial concerns and in which their individual photographic activities can be combined with those of other members. This enables the development of group projects such as the street exhibitions and publications.13 It has also enabled the development of on-going working relationships with other organizations, such as the blog-based online magazine +972, to which Activestills is a regular contributor, and the Israeli human rights non-governmental organization (NGO) B’Tselem. Collective organization has also been essential when Activestills has wanted to cover events that are occurring simultaneously in different places. The cumulative effects of working collectively are particularly evident when it comes to the online archive, where photographs taken of particular places at different times by different photographers have accumulated to create a greater picture of the situation in these locations. This has been especially important where these locations have been the sites of political struggles that have continued over many years. The general political orientation of Activestills and its commitment to specific political struggles has also involved the development of a different perspective towards the dominant journalistic notions of disinterestedness and ‘balance’ that inform international reporting of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. According to these notions, journalists working for international news networks and agencies are meant to keep their professional activity separate from whatever political view of the conflict they might have. Reporting the conflict is meant to involve seeing both sides from a supposedly objective perspective. Palestinian journalists in particular have been identified as lacking the necessary disinterestedness, because it is assumed that they cannot separate their work from their commitments to the Palestinian national struggle.14 Contrary to such ideas of professional disinterestedness, Activestills is explicit about approaching the conflict and the occupation from a politically informed viewpoint and with political objectives in mind. This is why Oren Ziv has commented that the collective ‘try to tell the story from a certain perspective’, continuing that ‘we are not trying to be objective, we are not trying to show both sides are equal’.15 This statement refers to what Activestills identifies as a 188

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tendency for international reportage to represent the conflict as one between antagonists who bear equal responsibility for the violence. This tendency does not take into account the inequity of power that exists between these antagonists. Contrary to such approaches to the reporting of the conflict, the position adopted by Activestills is premised on an understanding that the conflict is fundamentally unequal. This understanding of inequality is primarily informed by a view of the occupation as a relationship of domination between a powerful state and a stateless people. Responding to this perception of inequality has been the raison d’être for the work of the collective from the outset. The situation in Bil’in was understood to be one where a small and relatively isolated community confronted the power of the occupying state and its military. Rather than assuming that the professional journalistic notions of disinterestedness and balance should override other moral considerations, Activestills took a principled decision to side with the weaker party. This strong understanding of the inequality of the conflict also means that the approach developed by Activestills has been informed by a different understanding of balance. Instead of defining representational balance as something that results from a disinterested relationship to the conflict, Activestills conceives balance as something that comes precisely from political engagement. This point is specific to the predominantly Israeli context within which the collective works. For Activestills, this context is defined by a stark imbalance between a dominant Zionist viewpoint that is understood to be generally anti-Palestinian and against marginal viewpoints that have sympathy for the Palestinians or involve forms of anti-Zionism. The collective adopted a political position in its representation of the conflict and the occupation as an attempt to contribute to the rebalancing of this situation. Hence Oren Ziv’s observation: People say we are one-sided, but the situation in Israel is so onesided, we try to show a bit of the other side. I won’t say it is the Palestinian side, because we are Israelis [. . .] we are trying to show the side of those who are oppressed. The situation is so unbalanced, we try to bring a bit of the side that is not seen.16 From this perspective, the only possible balance is one created through political struggle, in opposition to the dominant viewpoint. This contestation of this dominant viewpoint occurs not only through the photographing of struggles in places such as Bil’in but also through the development of longer-term projects that involve the representation of larger issues. In these cases, Activestills ‘plan[s] a project and follow[s] a subject for weeks, or maybe years’.17 A key concern of this type has been 189

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with Israeli policies towards Palestinian residency in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. This has resulted in a particular focus in photographic work on evictions, house demolitions and the destruction of Palestinian property in these areas. One result of this work has been the publication in 2011 of a book with the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition (ICAHD), entitled ‘We Never Finished 1948’: The Continuing Campaign of Internal Displacement in Israel/Palestine, which addresses the displacement of Palestinians and Bedouin within Israel, Gaza and the West Bank between 2006 and 2011.18 Nine specific locations were represented in the book: the Bedouin village of Al-Arakib in the Negev; the Jordan Valley; the South Hebron Hills; the Israeli cities of Lod and Ramle; the East Jerusalem neighbourhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan; the village of Al-Wallejeh near Jerusalem; and Gaza. In each of these locations, non-Jewish populations have experienced displacement, whether through military violence in Gaza, village demolition in AlArakib, Jewish settlement in Silwan or evictions in Ramle. At a basic level, the intention of the project was to report on subjects generally not represented in the Israeli press, but at another level the concern was to identify links between what has happened within both the Green Line and the occupied territories. This linkage is manifested in the design of the book through the setting up of relationships between photographs taken within the Green Line and photographs taken in Gaza and the West Bank. For example, by placing a photograph of Jaffa just before some photographs of the Jordan Valley or placing a photograph of the demolished village of Dkeika in the South Hebron Hills on the opposite page to a photograph of the demolished village of Al-Arakib in the Negev.19 This practice creates a set of transitions and visual analogies between locations to reinforce those made in the accompanying texts. The shift from the image of the demolished village of Dkeika to that of AlArakib not only takes the spectator/reader across the Green Line but also involves a transition from one very similar scene to another. In both we see a desert-like topography and people standing or sitting amongst the remains of habitations. Other visual analogies are spread throughout the book, as is the case with the multiple images of people living in tents in Gaza, Lod, Al-Walaja, the South Hebron Hills, the Jordan Valley and Sheikh Jarrah.20 The book also links Israel, Gaza and the West Bank in historical terms by relating the effects of the war of 1948 to those of the post-1967 occupation—hence the reference to 1948 in the title of the book. The slogan ‘We Never Finished 1948’ is attributed in the book to Yitzhak Rabin,21 though, in fact, it derives from Moshe Dayan. It is a phrase that refers to the understanding that the war of 1948 left an unresolved 190

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problem for the Zionist project in the form of a large Palestinian population remaining within ‘the land of Israel’. Tanya Reinhardt suggests that this notion of the unfinished business of 1948 gained a new currency in Israel with the outbreak of the second Palestinian Intifada in September 2000.22 The general implication of this linkage between 1948 and the present is that the massive population transfer that coincided with the creation of the state of Israel has continued through acts of internal displacement within the Green Line since 1948, and within Gaza and the West Bank since 1967. Activestills and ICAHD understand this continuity of internal displacement between 1948 and the present to be driven by the basic Zionist objective of taking over the greatest amount of Palestine with the fewest Palestinians left in it. Consequently, Jeff Halper, the director of ICAHD, states in the introduction to the book: ‘Policies of internal displacement [. . .] derive from an ongoing attempt to “judaize” Palestine that has continued unabated since 1948, on both sides of the Green Line.’23 The aim of the book was to take what might appear to be a set of separate actions in quite different contexts and reframe them as manifestations of the same overarching objective to rid the land of Israel of its non-Jewish population. This approach suggests a distinction between news reportage of the conflict and the occupation and the documentary approach developed by Activestills. The former is concerned with the reporting of events as they happen, as if they are singular and separate occurrences. The latter approach is more concerned with relationships between events and, through this, with the greater structural nature of the application of state power in different places over time. In terms of visibility, this approach is not only concerned with the visual documentation of situations and events through individual photographs but also with the way in which something larger can become potentially visible through the bringing together of photographs in some form of archive. This is the case whether the archive is the database on the Activestills website, the ‘We Never Finished 1948’ book or what could be defined as an archival display of the kind presented by Activestills in the context of the protest camp against the cost of housing established on Rothschild Boulevard in central Tel Aviv during the summer of 2011 (Fig. 7.1). This display presented images from the project on internal displacement, setting up connections between different events and locations and providing a sense of a larger spatial order of state violence that linked AlArakib to Jaffa, Silwan, Ramle and Gaza. Thought about in these terms, the practices developed by Activestills involve different modes of potential visibility. The online archive is a context where images accumulate and can be searched according to place191

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Figure 7.1 Activestills display in protest camp on Rothschild Boulevard, Tel Aviv (August 2011). Photo: Simon Faulkner.

names and thematic titles. The uploading of images by different members of the collective using the same names and titles allows for the searching of the archive in such a way that a struggle in a particular place, or a more general theme can become visible as something that is ongoing, or as something that involves links between different locations and events. The book ‘We Never Finished 1948’ and the display in the Tel Aviv protest camp in 2011 both involved the selecting of images from the larger Activestills archive and their configuration in fixed forms, with the intention of making links between different instances of internal displacement visible. Other Activestills exhibitions have addressed situations and political struggles in singular locations or particular areas, functioning more like photographic essays in the form of a tabular display. Transporting appearances

All of the modes of potential visibility developed by Activestills rely on the fundamental capacity of photography to bring absent things into 192

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view, a capacity encapsulated by John Berger’s observation that ‘cameras are boxes for transporting appearances’.24 The street exhibitions were particularly dependent upon this capacity, because their primary function was to translocate appearances related to the occupation to contexts where these things were not visible. To understand the particular significance of this use of one of photography’s most basic capabilities, more needs to be understood about the spatial context within which it occurred. What was discussed earlier as the active nonseeing of the Palestinians and the occupation has in part been produced by the physical segregation of Israelis and Palestinians. This physical segregation has become more entrenched since the end of the first Intifada, through the restriction of Palestinian movement between the occupied territories and Israel.25 The occupied Palestinian population is on the whole just not part of the physical reality of Israelis living within the Green Line while, at the same time, the spaces of occupation are separated from the civil space of Israel. Despite the spatial proximity of Tel Aviv and the West Bank, the relationship between these two areas involves a radical divergence of reality. Under such circumstances, photography can potentially function as a pictorial means of bridging the divide between one reality and another. Photography cannot transport the reality itself, but a photograph can go some way towards showing how the segregated other lives and struggles under occupation. It is in these terms that Activestills conceived the role of photography in the context of its exhibitions, hence Keren Manor’s observation that they ‘wanted to bring this reality to Israeli cities—to present these views of the occupation to people who are mentally living at a great distance, despite their geographical proximity’.26 This point has also been made by Oren Ziv, who states that through the street exhibitions ‘you force them [the public] to see the reality they [the Israeli government] hide behind walls, behind separation plans’.27 This use of photography to bring the appearance of the occupation to Tel Aviv can be linked to other activist practices that have symbolically relocated aspects of the occupation to within the Green Line. For example, in February 2007, activists blocked one side of Rothschild Boulevard with rolls of razor wire taken from the barrier in Bil’in in an attempt to replicate the blockage of movement that has been structural to the Palestinian experience of the occupation since at least the beginning of the 1990s.28 It is also possible to suggest that such symbolic translocations of the occupation are responses to the particular moral pressures that arise from the experience of traversing the divide between Israel and the occupied West Bank on the part of Israeli activists. This experience has been described as one of stark inequalities that are emotionally difficult to deal with.29 The difficulty of this experience is translated into a kind of moral witnessing that in the case of Activestills 193

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also involves an attempt to make other Israelis secondary witnesses to the occupation through the viewing of photographic images. This witnessing involves attestation to a current reality, yet the appearances transported by photography are also always inextricably related to the past. Activist photography involves a desire to attest to what is currently happening and therefore possible to change, but, in reality, it always shows something that has already happened. The compromise position between these two temporal conditions is to find a way for photographs of the past to attest to something that continues to happen. In her book The Civil Contract of Photography, Ariella Azoulay argues for an ethical spectatorship of images of the occupation on the basis that the people pictured in these photographs ‘are still present’ at the moment of viewing.30 Framed in this way, photographs show the spectator how the occupation appeared in the past but are also meant to show how the occupation continues to appear. This desire to use photographs of the recent past to stand in for current conditions has been central to the exhibitions organized by Activestills, starting with the exhibition about Bil’in in January 2006. This exhibition was presented for one week in various locations in Tel Aviv. Activestills produced a flyer that described the exhibition and identified the places where it could be seen. This flyer was left in cafes and bars. The displays were checked every night for the duration of the exhibition and the images were replaced if they were damaged.31 The displays that constituted the exhibition consisted of 16 captionless images printed on A3 paper, organized in groups of four, each representing the work of one of the four founder members of Activestills. The images presented a range of scenes related to the struggle against the barrier in Bil’in. For example, one photograph showed protestors climbing and standing on a large pile of stones that had been brought to the site to form the hardcore base for the barrier, while another depicted a villager viewing settlement construction in Matityahu East from the vantage provided by these stones. Other images were concerned with interactions between protestors and soldiers. A photograph—taken from a low angle through a roll of barbed wire—depicted three villagers showing a document to a soldier. Another image showed a line of soldiers facing a line of demonstrators, while yet another presented a close-up view of a young man from the village struggling against arrest. These images were intended as visual documents of the preceding year of struggle and, as such, showed the spectator things that were of the past. However, the accompanying text also made it clear that what was represented in the photographs related to the ongoing situation in Bil’in. This was achieved by linking the images to a petition against the construction of the barrier on village land 194

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that was currently going through the Israeli High Court of Justice in Jerusalem.32 This part of the text was set out like a wanted ad, entailing four paragraphs, each with a heading that was prefixed with the word ‘Wanted’. These headings were: ‘Wanted: Initiative’, ‘Wanted: Openmindedness’, ‘Wanted: Responsibility’ and ‘Wanted: A Courageous Decision’.33 These ‘wanted’ characteristics were meant to apply to the High Court of Justice. Consequently, the images were presented as evidence of injustice and resistance that continued to require a solution. The struggle in Bil’in represented in the photographs was not simply a thing of the past, but also something that required both legal and political action in the present. In this sense, the exhibition addressed its potential spectators as people who could be informed of this continuing situation and who might take action in response to what they saw. Yet, returning to the discussion of the visibility of the exhibitions in the introduction to this chapter, such a response was merely a potential effect of the exhibition. There is little available evidence of how spectators responded to the January 2006 exhibition. A photograph taken by Activestills shows two women walking past one version of the exhibition as if they have not noticed it. Another shows a group of people standing to the right of a different version of the exhibition while another person looks at the images. One of the people to the right of the display is identifiable as the left-wing activist Nir Nadar,34 suggesting that this photograph shows people who are already sympathetic to the intentions of Activestills. A third photograph shows a woman walking past and looking at the remains of a version of the exhibition that has been torn down, an act of vandalism that suggests strong opposition to the exhibition.35 Although it is necessary to be careful when treating these photographs as evidence, they suggest that responses to the exhibition ranged from support to indifference and opposition. This range of responses to the January 2006 exhibition can be contrasted to the responses that appear to be shown by photographs of the Activestills exhibition presented in Bil’in in February 2007 to mark the end of the second year of struggle in the village. The latter photographs show spectators from the village looking at, pointing to, touching and taking photographs of the displays. It is reasonable to suppose from these photographs that the spectatorship of the exhibition in this context was predominantly sympathetic. This is an obvious point to make given that the role of the second exhibition in Bil’in was to represent the struggle back to its participants. In this context, the primary function of the images in the exhibition was to remember recent events that had occurred in locations very close to where they were shown. This exhibition was therefore primarily concerned with the transportation of appearances across time rather than space. 195

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Contested visibility

In the absence of evidence other than that provided by photographs taken by Activestills members themselves, it is difficult to write much more about how the 2006 and 2007 exhibitions dealing with the struggle in Bil’in were viewed by particular spectators. It is possible, however, to write more about the set of exhibitions that Activestills organized in June 2007 to mark the fortieth anniversary of the beginning of the occupation, simply because of the availability of more photographic evidence of how spectators responded negatively to these displays.36 The four displays that constituted this exhibition were presented under the general title 40 to 67 and addressed subjects in Bethlehem, Hebron, Gaza and Jerusalem. The exhibition was accompanied by texts explaining what each display was about.37 The display dealing with Jerusalem was entitled ‘Jerusalem— Expelled’ and included 14 images. Amongst other things, these images represented the demolition of houses in the East Jerusalem neighbourhoods of Silwan, A-Tur and Sur Baher. The accompanying text described house demolitions and the difficulties facing Palestinians wanting to build homes in Jerusalem. The display on Bethlehem, entitled ‘Bethlehem— Trapped’, focused on the effects of the construction of the West Bank Barrier in this area, where it took the form of a nine-metre high concrete wall (Fig. 7.2). Amongst the nine images of the display were those that showed a checkpoint in the wall, a Palestinian home hemmed in on three sides by the same structure and views from houses in the Aida refugee camp that are located very close to the wall. The accompanying text emphasized the predicament of those having to travel through the wall to employment in Jerusalem and the general enclosure of Bethlehem. One of the images in the display about Jerusalem depicts an area where the East Jerusalem settlement of Pisgat Ze’ev meets an area of Palestinian residence, probably the Shuafat refugee camp, or Anata. In the bottom half of this image is a traffic circle at the centre of which is a circular flowerbed and a lawn with an olive tree in the middle. Above this is an unfinished section of the wall that separates the settlement from the Palestinian residential area. This image appears to be a conscious attempt on the part of the photographer to represent the spatial divisions and disparities created by the occupation through a contrast between the pristine and colourful beauty of the traffic circle on one side of the barrier and the grey exclusion of Palestinian life under occupation on the other. This image might be compared to a description of the contrast between Pisgat Ze’ev and the Shuafat refugee camp written by Jeff Halper in 2001: 196

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We walked through the crowded camp of some 25,000 people, finally coming out on the top of a hill overlooking the periphery of the camp and, across the wadi, the narrow valley, the Jerusalem settlement of Pisgat Ze’ev looming over Shuafat from the opposite hill. Juxtaposed in this way, the injustice virtually hits you in the face. Here was a crowded camp, layers of jerry-built concrete homes separated by the narrowest of alleyways [. . .] and then, just a couple of hundred meters away, the massive modern housing project of Pisgat Ze’ev [. . .] with its manicured lawns and trees [. . .] And, separating these two worlds [. . .] the ‘security road’ where the army patrols at night, guarding the residents of Pisgat Ze’ev from their neighbors.38 Although there is no causal connection between the image and Halper’s words, and although the crowded setting described by Halper is not quite represented in the photograph, this description seems to provide us with an understanding of why the Activestills photographer chose and framed the scene in the way they did.

Figure 7.2 Activestills display, ‘Bethlehem—Trapped’, from June 2007, Tel Aviv (June 2010). Photo: Simon Faulkner. 197

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One version of the display about Jerusalem was pasted on a hoarding on Tarsat Boulevard in Tel Aviv. By late June 2007 this display was torn and written upon. Over the image of the traffic circle in Pisgat Zeev someone had written in Hebrew: ‘How lovely! Here a suicide bomber will not pass’ (Fig. 7.3).39 This sentence redefines the intended meaning of the image in terms of a vernacular articulation of official Israeli ‘security’ discourse. As Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ophir observe: ‘According to the official Israeli conception, all Israeli mechanisms of violence active in the Occupied Territories are meant to fulfil “security needs”, namely, preventing direct Palestinian violence against Israeli citizens.’40 According to this logic, the violence of the state is defined as ‘violence-preventing violence’ and, in this sense, is not really seen as violence. What this means is that the spectator/respondent to the Activestills image was probably not seeing the barrier as an artefact of the occupation at all. The respondent also refused to feel sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians living behind the wall. Instead they made it clear that what concerned them was the safety of Israeli Jews. For this spectator the image is visible in a way that counters

Figure 7.3 Damaged Activestills display, ‘Jerusalem—Expelled’, Tel Aviv (June 2007). Photo: Simon Faulkner. 198

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the intentions of Activestills, rendering its visibility as an image of the occupation contested. This response therefore involves an active nonseeing of the kind discussed in the introduction. The image of the traffic circle is available for viewing, but the spectator has refused the implications of seeing it in a way that involves empathy or identification with the Palestinians. A related response was made to one of the images in the display about Bethlehem that depicted a queue of Palestinian men packed between another section of the barrier and a small fence running parallel to it. Again, this subject appears to have been chosen and framed in an attempt to show something more general about the occupation. What is represented is not only the barrier that fills much of the picture but also the effect the barrier has upon Palestinian mobility. The role of the barrier as an architectural form that divides space, blocks movement and encloses the occupied Palestinian population is literally denoted through the depicted scene and at the same time connoted through the way the Palestinian men are hemmed in between the barrier and the fence. The way that the barrier towers over the men also seems to symbolize the nature of the governing relationship between the Israeli state and the occupied population.41 When this image was displayed on Tarsat Boulevard, somebody— possibly the same respondent as to the image of Pisgat Ze’ev—wrote upon it: ‘Traitors, good luck’ (Fig. 7.4). This statement was obviously aimed at the members of Activestills themselves or, more precisely, at the traitorous relationship they are perceived to have with the Palestinians depicted in this and other images in the display. This definition of Activestills as ‘traitors’ seems to have been articulated in relation to a normative understanding Israeliness defined in terms of a clear boundary between the Israeli self and the Palestinian other. As was discussed in the introduction in relation to Tali Fahima, such an understanding of Israeli identity involves the framing of Palestinians as people for whom there can be no sympathy and with whom there can be no identification. From this perspective, crossing the boundary between the ethno-national self and the other is tantamount to a form of betrayal. Israelis are either for the existing policies of the state, including the West Bank Barrier or they are against Israel and their fellow Jews. Here the barrier does not need to be explained and legitimized through linking it to security. Instead, the very act of showing the barrier in the way that Activestills does is simply unacceptable and must be refused. The word ‘traitor’ is used as a slur that is meant to indicate that Activestills has stepped outside of what Amalia Ziv terms the ‘Jewish Israeli discursive community’. (It is relevant here that another respondent had written at the bottom of the image, ‘You’re 199

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Figure 7.4 Detail of Activestills display, ‘Bethlehem—Trapped’, Tel Aviv (June 2007). Photo: Simon Faulkner.

not Jews’.) Labelling Activestills members traitors is also an attempt to silence them by discursively banishing them from the national collective and situating them ‘in a location from which it is impossible to speak legitimately’.42 By writing on the image of the Palestinians alongside the wall, the respondent refuses to see the image as Activestills conceived it and refuses its legitimacy to speak within the Israeli public sphere. The image is seen by this particular spectator, but primarily as a traitorous act. Again, the visibility of the image is contested. But the need to silence Activestills on the part of the respondent also suggests that the apparently well-defined Jewish-Israeli identity that was being defended through this response was not as secure as it appeared to be. Defensiveness suggests an inability to accept alternative viewpoints and a degree of vulnerability.43 Street exhibitions organized by Activestills continued to be subject to negative responses after 2007. The presentation of an Activestill’s display within the protest camp on Rothschild Boulevard in the summer of 2011 has already been mentioned. This display was intended to introduce images of displaced Palestinians and Bedouin into a political space that was primarily defined by concerns about housing and economic issues on 200

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the part of Jewish-Israelis. Concerns for the situation of non-Jewish populations in Israel/Palestine and the occupation were on the whole not present in this space. This is why Activestills included the slogan ‘If Rothschild will not come to Mohammad then Mohammad will come to Rothschild’ on one of the boards of their display. It is not possible to know how most camp participants responded to this display; however, at one point a banner calling for the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from captivity in Gaza and bearing the slogan ‘Even Gilad Shalit Deserves a Home’ was placed over one of the boards of the display (Fig. 7.5).44 Images of people excluded from the Jewish-Israeli collective were therefore obscured by an image of a representative of that collective. The presentation of the banner on Rothschild Boulevard was primarily about declaring support for Shalit but placing it over the Activestills display also indicated a refusal to see images of the national other. More recently, in 2013, a spectator responded to a street exhibition created by Activestills to mark Palestinian ‘Prisoner’s Day’ by writing on every one of the 12 images in the display.45 These written responses suggest racist animosity towards the people shown in the images. One response to

Figure 7.5 Activestills display in protest camp on Rothschild Boulevard, Tel Aviv, covered with Gilad Shalit banner (September 2011). Photo: Simon Faulkner. 201

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an image of someone holding a photograph of a Palestinian man with his mother, read: ‘What an ape.’46 The responses also indicate a need on the part of the spectator to see Palestinians as people to whom violent things can and should be done. An image of soldiers detaining a Palestinian youth provoked the written response ‘That’s it, just catching him’, as if there were a need for a greater violence to be inflicted. Another response to an image of an injured Palestinian man in a hospital bed read ‘That’s it, just injured’, as if the man should have been killed. One way of understanding these suggestions of a need for greater violence towards Palestinians is to interpret them as not simply being driven by hatred but by an ingrained nationalistic sense of self-defence. The statements written on the images do not explicitly suggest self-defence; however, they might well be informed by a logic that asserts that violence should be done to those defined as the enemy so that the national collective can be protected. This logic works along the lines of Judith Butler’s discussion of wartime discourses that distinguish the lives of those who are members of the national collective from the lives of those who are defined as the enemy. The loss of the former is to be grieved, whereas the latter are not grievable because they are not really understood to be living and are, moreover, defined as those whose lives have to be lost to protect the lives of those who are truly alive.47 Conclusion

The examples of responses to Activestills street exhibitions discussed in the preceding section point to the existence of a nationalized way of seeing, through which dominant Israeli discourses on national security and national struggle with the Palestinians are translated into spectatorship. As Rebecca L. Stein argues in relation to Israeli television images of the Gaza invasion in late 2008 and early 2009, this involves an extension of nationalist ideology into the field of vision that generates restrictions on what is actually visible to the national subject.48 Ariella Azoulay has made similar points in her writing, suggesting that photographs that circulate in the Israeli public sphere have the potential to reveal a great deal about the reality of the occupation. She uses the phrase ‘everything could be seen’ to refer to this potentiality.49 Yet the national context within which these images are viewed means that the appearances these photographs present are rarely seen in a way that makes them comprehensible as an occupation. Everything, or at least quite a lot, could be seen, but was not. Is the apparent refusal on the part of particular spectators to comprehend the street exhibitions in the way that Activestills intended tantamount to 202

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the failure of the exhibitions as a form of political communication? In one sense the answer to this question is yes. Yet in another sense, the exhibitions were a success in that they provoked a defensive reaction on the part of particular spectators. The presence of the exhibitions in public spaces prompted these spectators to engage in actions to erase, counter and attempt to silence the meanings that Activestills was trying to communicate—action, that is, to re-establish a condition of nonseeing. The exhibitions could not win the contest over what could and should be seen of the Palestinians and the occupation in Israeli public space. Nevertheless, they created conditions of contestation. This is why members of Activestills comment that they are not upset if they find that their displays have been written on or torn down. For example, Oren Ziv has stated that after the collective has put up an exhibition, members‘go and see what happens afterwards’ and ‘even if they rip down the photos we are happy’.50 What the members of Activestills fear more than the destruction of their displays is an Israeli public sphere that conforms to Zionist ideological agendas, without dissent or political antagonism. This means that any provocations that the exhibitions generate are to be valued. As a final example of responses to an Activestills exhibition, we can consider the display of photographic images created by the collective as part of the conference ‘Visual Culture Between Disobedience and Resistance’ held in March 2014 at the Shenkar College of Engineering and Design in Ramat Gan, just East of Tel Aviv. Activestills selected 70 images from its archive related to a range of different situations from Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. The display involved its now-established method of printing images on paper and arranging them next to each other in a grid on the front of a display case in the main entrance hall to the college. The immediate response to the display from some students at Shenkar, even before the conference had opened, was to pull the images down and throw them in the bin. The conference organizers then put the damaged images back on the wall, incorporating this act of vandalism into the display rather than printing new images. When the conference then opened, students gathered in the entrance hall. According to the account of this event by Shiraz Grinbaum of Activestills, these students were divided between those strongly opposed to the display and those who thought it should stay up, either on the grounds of free speech or because they defended the content of the images. The former group of students, who Grinbaum has identified as members of the right-wing Zionist organization ImTirtzu (‘If you will it’),51 denounced the exhibition for its ‘politicization’ of public space and the images as ‘Palestinian propaganda’ performed for the camera. Thus, one declared: ‘Whenever [Palestinians] see a camera they become miserable.’52 On the second day 203

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of the conference, the opponents of the exhibition taped printed images of weeping Israeli soldiers and Israeli army medics treating the victims of suicide bombings directly onto the Activestills display. The students also attached four Israeli flags to the exhibition. This response suggests that the students did see the Activestills images but that this seeing involved a refusal of their intended meanings. Images of the bodies of injured Israelis were used to assert Israeli victimhood as a counter to what the students perceived as a clichéd and manipulated Palestinian victimhood. This was not a matter of asserting Israeli victimhood as simply equal to that of the Palestinians. Rather, it was a matter of asserting that within Israel the well-being of Israeli Jews should be of absolute priority. Again, these responses positioned Activestills somewhere outside of the body of the nation. The designation of the images presented by Activestills as ‘Palestinian propaganda’ suggests that they were viewed as a means of transmitting a Palestinian point of view rather than being understood as representative of an anti-Zionist viewpoint held by Israeli Jews. The possibility that Jewish-Israelis could hold such a viewpoint was ruled out by the construction of Jewishness within Zionist ideology, meaning that any Israeli who took up an anti-Zionist position must, ipso facto, fail to be properly Jewish. Despite the domination of responses to the exhibition by right-wing students, the responses of other students and staff at Shenkar in defending the display indicate that other forms of spectatorship for the Activestills images were possible. Thought about in this light, the example of the display at Shenkar College affirms the point, made at the outset of this chapter, that one should be careful about making assumptions about the nature of Israeli spectatorship when it comes to the occupation. Martin and Baum’s notion of an ‘active nonseeing mechanism’ is a useful starting point for thinking about the politics of vision in this context, but it is a relatively blunt analytical tool. Israeli spectators have responded to Activestills street exhibitions in different ways, ranging from ignoring them to being prompted to deface the images they entail. Most of these responses left no visible trace. This situation has inevitably resulted in a discussion that attends primarily to responses that involved the visible defacement of the exhibitions. The focus on these particular responses has resulted in a rich but rather partial understanding of how Israelis viewed the exhibitions. The partiality of this discussion points to the need for the identification of further examples that can be explored to elaborate upon existing understandings of how Israelis have seen or failed to see the occupation. Such explorations would probably need to utilize an ethnographic approach along the lines of that developed, for example, by Amahl A. Bishara in her work on Palestinian responses to the mediation of the occupation.53 204

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Such research would also need to be sensitive to the ways that the visibility of the occupation for Israelis has been contingent upon the changing conditions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Members of Activestills have themselves identified recent changes within public responses to their work that they link to shifting Israeli attitudes towards the Palestinians. These changes have led them to be more careful about where they locate their street exhibitions. Speaking specifically of the ‘Prisoner’s Day’ exhibition in 2013, Oren Ziv has observed: we never put exhibitions on the main streets because then it gets off really quickly. We try to choose small streets that people pass, but it won’t get ripped off. I was more afraid to go on Rothschild and put pictures because I know if somebody passes and sees the pictures of the prisoners, you know, the public opinion is much worse against Palestinians.54 This statement suggests an intensification of intolerance on the part of Israeli spectators towards representations of Palestinians that depart from the dominant framing of them as a threatening other. This development does not bode well for the prospects of Activestills future ability to affect Israeli public opinion through its work. Yet these adverse responses to the exhibitions continue to indicate their potential to create disruptions, however limited, within the Israeli field of vision related to the occupation. These disruptions are valuable, for they point to the contingency of vision itself and the possibility of the existence of more progressive ways of seeing under different circumstances. The images of the occupation produced by Activestills are documents that utilize the basic capacity of photography to transport appearances. At the same time, these images are models for a way of seeing that holds the potential to challenge the nonseeing that is structural to the Zionist imagination. It is this possibility of seeing things otherwise, that also involves thinking oneself otherwise, that must be denied and erased by those committed to the exclusivist vision of a Jewish state. Notes 1. Andrea Brighenti, ‘Visibility: a category for the social sciences’, Current Sociology 55/3 (2007), pp. 323–42), p. 324; emphasis in the original. 2. Brighenti, ‘Visibility’, p. 333. 3. Ruchama Marton and Dalit Baum, ‘Transparent Wall, Opaque Gates’, in Michael Sorkin (ed), Against the Wall: Israel’s Barrier to Peace (New York and London: The New Press, 2005), pp. 212–23, p. 214. See also Gil Z. Hochberg’s discussion of

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concealment as the ‘dominating principle shaping the Israeli field of vision’, in Gil Z. Hochberg, Visual Occupations: Violence and Visibility in a Conflict Zone (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015), p. 21. 4. Edward W. Said, ‘Afterword: The Consequences of 1948’, in Eugene L. Rogan and Avi Shlaim (eds), The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 206–19, p. 214. 5. Conal Urquhart, ‘My crime was seeing the Palestinians’, The Guardian, 5 January 2007, p. 19. 6. Liora Sion, ‘Boundaries crossing and blurring: the case of Tali Fahima’, Current Sociology 62/3 (2014), pp. 431–48. 7. See Maia Carter Hallward, ‘Creative responses to separation: Israeli and Palestinian joint activism in Bil’in’, Journal of Peace Research 46/4 (2006), pp. 541–58; Rania Jawad, ‘Staging violence in Bil’in: the performance of violence in a Palestinian village’, TDR: The Drama Review 55/4 (2011), pp. 128–43. 8. Simon Faulkner, interview with Oren Ziv and Shiraz Grinhaum, Tel Aviv, 1 June 2014. See also Ben Ronen, ‘I am a camera’, Programma 3 (2010), pp. 92–9. 9. Simon Faulkner and David Reeb, interview with Oren Ziv, Tel Aviv, 19 May 2013. 10. Activestills website (accessed 28 November 2018). 11. Oren Ziv has placed particular emphasis on Activestills not being a ‘wire’. Simon Faulkner and David Reeb, interview with Oren Ziv, Tel Aviv, 19 May 2013. One might, however, compare Activestills to photographic collectives that produced images in line with their political agenda to supply to the international media; for example, Afrapix in South Africa during the 1980s. See Heidi M. Saayman Haffingh and Rolf J. Gaede, ‘Photographer autonomy and images of resistance: The case of South Africa during the 1980s’, Visual Communication 10 (2011), pp. 499–525. 12. There is also a website that advertises the skills of these two photographers in areas such as food and wedding photography, (accessed 27 July 2014). 13. The 2016 monograph Activestills: Photography as Protest in Palestine/Israel should also be seen as a project developed by the collective, in collaboration with other activists and writers (including the current author), as a means of extending their general political concern to make visible and publicize political struggles within Israel/Palestine. Vered Maimon and Shiraz Grinbaum (eds), Activestills: Photography as Protest in Palestine/Israel (London: Pluto Press, 2016). 14. For a discussion of this, see Amahl A Bishara, Back Stories: US News Production and Palestinian Politics (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013), pp. 106–35. 15. Simon Faulkner and David Reeb, interview with Oren Ziv, Tel Aviv, 19 May 2013. Ziv also made this point in an earlier interview in 2010. Simon Faulkner and David Reeb, interview with Oren Ziv, Tel Aviv, 17 June 2010. 16. Faulkner and Reeb, interview with Oren Ziv, 17 June 2010. 17. Faulkner and Reeb, interview with Oren Ziv, 17 June 2010. 18. See Activestills and Israeli Committee Against House Demolition, ‘We Never Finished 1948’: The Continuing Campaign of Internal Displacement in Israel/ Palestine(Israel/Palestine: Activestills, 2011). For an online exhibition related to this 206

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project, see (accessed 9 April 2014) 19. ActiveStills and Israeli Committee Against House Demolition, ‘We Never Finished 1948’, pp. 28–37. 20. Activestills and Israeli Committee Against House Demolition, ‘We Never Finished 1948’, pp. 38, 66, 69, 93, 103, 111, 125, 137, 145, 153. 21. Activestills and Israeli Committee Against House Demolition, ‘We Never Finished 1948’, p. 14. 22. See Tanya Reinhart, Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948 (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002), pp. 106–11. Ilan Pappe has also made this point. See Ilan Pappé, Out of the Frame: The Struggle for Academic Freedom in Israel (London and New York: Pluto Press, 2010), pp. 66–7. 23. Activestills and Israeli Committee Against House Demolition, ‘We Never Finished 1948’, p. 15. 24. John Berger and Jean Mohr, Another Way of Telling (London: Writers and Readers Publishing, 1982), p. 92. 25. Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ophir have discussed the closure of the occupied territories and the ‘encampment’ of the Palestinians in these areas as a structural element of the occupation since 1991. Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ophir, ‘The Monster’s Tail’, in Sorkin (ed), Against the Wall, pp. 2–27. 26. Ronen, ‘I am a camera’, p. 95. 27. Simon Faulkner and David Reeb, interview with Oren Ziv, Tel Aviv, 17 June 2010. 28. See Yael Barnovsky, ‘Anarchists block Tel Aviv street’, Ynet, 2 March 2007, (accessed 4 May 2014). 29. For example, a member of the Israeli women’s organization Machsom Watch (Checkpoint Watch), has described her experience of this divide when returning from a shift at a checkpoint in the following terms: ‘You just came from such a harsh and miserable reality, and you cross the Green Line [. . .] the driver drops us off at a shopping mall at Kfar Saba, by the supermarket, and there are lots of shops there and you see the Israelis with their shopping carts [. . .] It’s five minutes away. Nobody cares that there is such a harsh reality’. Quoted in, Carmit Wiesslitz and Tamar Ashuri, ‘ “Moral journalists”: the emergence of new intermediaries of news in an age of digital journalism’, Journalism 12/8 (2011), pp. 1035–51, p. 1047. 30. Ariella Azoulay, The Civil Contract of Photography (New York: Zone Books, 2008), p. 16. 31. After the initial display of the images in Tel Aviv, the exhibition was also displayed in the community center in Bil’in itself. Simon Faulkner, interview with Oren Ziv and Shiraz Grinbaum, Tel Aviv, 1 June 2014. Also see Ronen, ‘I am a camera’, p. 95. 32. Activists also held up images from the exhibition at a demonstration outside the High Court of Justice. 33. From an English translation of the exhibition text, provided to the author by Activestills, February 2014. 34. Nadar writes for the left-wing Israel/Palestine-based magazine Challenge and works for the Israeli Workers Advice Center. 207

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35. Some of these photographs can be found in the Activestills’ Flickr photo-stream, (accessed 6 August 2014). 36. The author took the photographs discussed in this section in Tel Aviv in 2007 and 2011. 37. The images and texts for these displays can be found on the Activestills website, (accessed 5 August 2014). 38. Jeff Halper, ‘An Israeli in Palestine’, in Roane Carey and Jonathan Shainin (eds), The Other Israel: Voices of Refusal and Dissent (New York: The New Press, 2002), pp. 93–8, p. 95. 39. My thanks to David Reeb for translation here and in relation to other graffiti on Activestills’ images. 40. Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ophir, ‘The order of violence’, in Adi Ophir, Michal Givoni and Sari Hanafi (eds), The Power of Inclusive Exclusion: Anatomy of Israeli Rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (New York: Zone Books, 2009), pp. 99–140, p. 120. 41. Other photographers have framed similar relationships between human figures and the concrete bulk of the barrier in their work. See, for example, Miki Kratsman’s photograph Abu Dis (2003). For a discussion of this image, see my article: ‘The most photographed wall in the world’, Photographies 5/2 (2012), pp. 223–42. See also particular photographs in Kai Wiedenhöfer’s book, Wall (Göttingen: Steidl, 2007). 42. Amalia Ziv, ‘Performative politics in Israeli queer anti-occupation activism’, GLQ 16/4 (2010), pp. 537–56. For similar points made about the Israeli anti-occupation group Women in Black, see Sara Helman and Tamar Rapoport, ‘Women in black: challenging Israel’s gender and socio-political orders’, The British Journal of Sociology 48/4 (1997), pp. 68–700. 43. For a discussion of Tali Fahima along these lines, see Sion, ‘Boundaries crossing and blurring’. 44. Gazan militants held Shalit between June 2006 and October 2011. 45. Activestills photographed this particular display and presented this image alongside a printout of the original display at the Cinematheque in Tel Aviv in May 2013. See also Activestills, ‘Street exhibition confronts Israelis on Palestinian Prisoner’s Day’, +972 Magazine, 18 April 2013, (accessed 6 August 2014). 46. My thanks to Daniel Reeb for translation here. 47. See Judith Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (London and New York: Verso, 2009), p. 31. 48. Rebecca L. Stein, ‘Impossible witness: Israeli visuality, Palestinian testimony and the Gaza war’, Journal for Cultural Research 16/2–3 (2012), pp. 135–53, p. 142. 49. Azoulay, The Civil Contract of Photography, pp. 190–203; Ariella Azoulay, ‘Everything Could be Seen’, in Ariella Azoulay (ed.), Everything Could Be Seen (Um El Fahem, Israel: Um El Fahem Gallery, 2004), pp. 10–15. 50. Simon Faulkner and David Reeb, interview with Oren Ziv, Tel Aviv, 17 June 2010. During my interview with Keren Manor in Tel Aviv on 25 June 2007 she also 208

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defined damage to the exhibitions as a kind of ‘talk-back’ and as a sign of relative success. 51. Discussion between Simon Faulkner, David Reeb, Oren Ziv and Shiraz Grinbaum, Tel Aviv, 2 June 2014. 52. Shiraz Grinbaum, ‘Out of sight, out of mind: Right-wing students tear down Activestills photo exhibit’, +972, 2 April 2014, (accessed 3 April 2014) 53. See Bishara, Back Stories, chs 5 and 6. 54. Simon Faulkner and David Reeb, interview with Oren Ziv, Tel Aviv, 17 June 2010.

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CHAPTER 8 AT HOME WITH ‘PALESTINE’ Performing Photographs of the West Bank in Israeli Households Gil Pasternak

One Sunday morning in West Jerusalem I sit for breakfast with David and Dalia, their 39-year-old daughter, and two grandchildren. When we finish, David brings to the table a grey-patterned photo album. As I previously learnt, he performs this album to virtually anyone paying a sociable visit to the family house.1 ‘David loves talking about his pictures’, quips his wife, ‘I heard it all many times before so I’ll leave you to it.’2 Their daughter agrees and follows her mother to a nearby room with her own two children. ‘I show my pictures to anyone who wants to listen’, David whispers at me, laughing.3 He captured most of them during his military duty and duty reserve service back in the 1960s, but towards the end of the album he had placed a series of photographs that he took when he was a law student in 1968. ‘Here’, he explains to orient me in the representational spaces of the series, ‘we went out on a journey from Anata throughout Wadi Qelt—all the way down the valley’.4 David’s album is the product of a much broader cultural phenomenon that began sweeping Israel when the six-day Arab-Israeli War of 1967 ended. Merely a week later, Israeli citizens began travelling to the various territories that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had conquered in the recent battles with Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Often carrying cameras, they photographed places and in spaces that had only just returned to accommodating more prosaic activities than battle and war. The IDF’s 1967 capture of the Golan Heights in the north, the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip in the south and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) in the east dismantled the borders that had separated them from Israel since its formation in 1948.5 Primarily because of their detailed descriptions in the Hebrew bible, these geographical terrains have featured in the Jewish collective memory as integral parts of the Promised Land for centuries. In the first half of the twentieth century Jewish residents in the region had already toured these geographies to enhance their knowledge of the ancient Jewish homeland through embodied experiences of their natural features and human-made 210

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landscapes. Between the foundation of the State of Israel and the June 1967 war, however, they had been mostly out of reach for Israeli passport holders. Because the Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian coordinated plan to wipe out the State of Israel from the region failed, this reality changed when the June 1967 fighting concluded. Although after the war some prominent Israeli state officials proclaimed their wish to withdraw from the lands should the political leaders of those countries sign peace treaties with Israel, no serious negotiations between Israeli and Arab leaders took place.6 The future of the conquered territories thus remained unknown for the time being, and the Israelis went to see and capture them on film before it was too late. From among all the territories Israel captured during the war, the West Bank became the Israelis’ favourite travel destination during the post-war period.7 Photographs taken in the West Bank subsequently began to flood a large number of Israeli households throughout the country. While their making was merely one product of the Israeli post-war travel trend, at that time photography gained much esteem in the Israeli social sphere. Israeli private and public publishers, and local newspapers and magazines employed photographs to commemorate Israel’s war victory and spread and prolong its celebrations around the country. Simultaneously, photographic camera and film manufacturers promoted photography as a means to capture, maintain and perpetuate the changing course history had taken in the region. These endeavours resulted in the framing of photography as a practice of great sociocultural importance, which inspired many Israeli citizens to organize the photographs they produced during and after the war in collections and albums dedicated to that historical moment. In this way, the photographs Israelis took in the West Bank rapidly became absorbed into a locally growing popular photographic culture. Subsequently, they participated in shaping impressions and Israeli understandings of its residents’ political desires. The involvement of popular culture and its multiple associated social practices in creating spaces for engagement with Israeli-Palestinian politics has been explored by numerous scholars.8 Demonstrating the interdependence of cultural and political formations, their works have illustrated that Israeli and Palestinian products of popular culture may foreground historical, social and cultural narrative forms whose underpinning logics complicate conservative debates about the IsraelPalestinian struggle. Accordingly, as they demonstrated, the consumption of Israeli and Palestinian products of popular culture could challenge national constructions of Israeli and Palestinian identities and the otherwise traditional perception of Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Arabs as binary oppositions. Wishing to expand the discursive field such works 211

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have opened up, in this chapter I want to demonstrate that the photographs Israeli citizens took during their post-war excursions to the West Bank have become significant participants in the formation of complex public and private approaches towards Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and its claimed right to this piece of land. The following study draws on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews that I carried out in Israel in 2015. The findings presented are informed by my research into historical periodicals and analysis of over 100 privately produced photographs, now preserved in national photo collections in the country. Aiming, however, to establish an understanding of the function the photographs played in the Israeli reality of the post-war and later periods, I primarily consider data I gathered through my work with 46 individual participants and via examination of their photographic collections. Identifying themselves with political views ranging in local terms from right to left, these participants represent 15 Israeli secular households in which at least one individual visited and took photographs in the West Bank during the post-war period. Three of these emerged during the course of my fieldwork as illustrative of recollections, tenets and dispositions foregrounded by participants in the other households I visited. I worked mainly with David in one of these, with Udi and his daughter Vered in another and with Barak, Hannah and their granddaughter Noga in another.9 To communicate the study’s findings coherently without compromising diversity, I exemplify insights obtained during my fieldwork mainly through reference to these participants. During my fieldwork I intended to explore how the production of photographs in the West Bank became an Israeli cultural trend in the post-war period, what sociocultural work the photographs did during that time (both in public and at home) and what sociocultural work they might have done since then. To prompt answers for these questions, I took my cue from non-representational theory.10 When working with participants I specifically called for memories that absorbed their consciousness more in the field of everyday public and domestic living experiences and not so much in the representational domain of the photographic image.11 The participants and I did inevitably attend to the images they captured during their post-war excursions to the West Bank. Yet, rather than focus on the meanings they might presently bestow on photographic content, I wanted to learn about the participants’ embedded and emplaced experiences that resulted in their production, and I was interested in obtaining knowledge about the ways in which the participants have experienced the photographs during social functional exchanges since then. Personal, hindsight speculation regarding what the photographs might have meant during the post-war period or later were suspended by 212

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this means. Instead, the participants’ recollections produced a portal to the, otherwise unexplored, ways in which the photographs have played a part in everyday living since Israel’s war victory. Our conversations thus allowed me to reconstruct a narrative about the lives the photographs have lived in the Israeli public and private domains. My research work also presented me with opportunities to encounter interactions between the photographs and the participants in ordinary domestic settings. Inspired by Lauren Berlant’s argument that ordinary conditions foreground the strategies individual subjects develop to negotiate their place within the realities by which they are surrounded, in the final part of the study I describe some of the interactions I observed.12 In line with the logic at the foundation of non-representational theory, these descriptions are intended to open up the otherwise veiled environments in which the photographs are kept in the present. Sketching some of the experiences and social exchanges the photographs shape therein, the occurrences they delineate provide an insight into the functions the photographs fulfil in the privacy of Israeli domestic life in the context of the present political reality in Israel-Palestine. Bringing the chapter to a close, I attend to the gradual absorption of the type of photographs the study is concerned with into one Israeli national archive that resulted from the initiative Israel Revealed to the Eye.13 Instigated by the Israeli government in 2010, the initiative was conceived with the objective of digitizing the photographic collections of Jewish-Israeli citizens and with the aim of disseminating them both online and via physical public exhibitions, in order to promote national values amongst a young generation of Jewish-Israelis. In considering the legacies of the photographs Israeli travellers captured in the West Bank of the post-war period in the context of this archive, I point to their re-emergence in the Israeli national sphere, and to the ideological function they are currently made to fulfil in the Israeli national public domain. Post-war travel trends

The presence of post-war photographs from the West Bank in Israeli domestic photographic collections is as common as that of holiday snaps, wedding and birthday party photographs, class and graduation portraits and pictures from duty military service. Viewed in the context of individual households, they evidence their owners’ excursions to the West Bank. Considered together, however, the photographs attest to the popularity that trips to this region enjoyed amongst the Israelis at that particular moment in time. Their exploration offers some insights into 213

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the specific destinations, sites and environments that most appealed to the travellers while they were following the itineraries that opened up to Israeli citizens as a consequence of their state’s war victory. Yet, by themselves, the photographs provide no explanation for the emergence of the West Bank as a desirable Israeli travel destination. Taking trips to geographical terrains that only recently belonged to enemy states and constituted ferocious battlefields may seem a risky business. The unbalanced power relations prevalent in the West Bank after the 1967 war suggest that, by entering the occupied territory, Israeli citizens practiced territorial ownership and performed Israel’s superiority to those inhabiting the occupied lands.14 The sense of self-confidence, euphoria and complacency that Israelis might have felt in the post-war period could thus offer some explanation for an Israeli desire to develop tourism in the West Bank. However, it can neither account for the Israelis’ enthusiasm to embark on their journeys into environments that not long ago still claimed the lives of so many other Israeli citizens, nor for the immediate popularity that (specifically) the new eastern Israeli frontier gained amongst the Israelis as soon as the war ended.15 ‘In the days after the war’, Udi told me in an interview, the Palestinians were happy they no longer lived under the Jordanian regime. They remembered vividly how the Jordanian government and King Hussein had oppressed them [. . .] When Israel arrived, all of a sudden their living standards changed for the better. They liked what we did for them in the war, and loved having us in their cities. We were a great source of income apart from anything else.16 Although the Palestinian residents of the West Bank might have perceived and experienced the post-war reality differently from the way Udi recalled it, his words echo other Israeli records from the period. Alongside Israel’s post-war victory celebrations, the Israeli media, for example, portrayed the Palestinian population of the West Bank as being equally delighted about the emancipation of the land from Jordanian rule. It frequently reported on prosperous cooperation between the Israeli authorities and the residents of the occupied territories, describing life in the region as civilized, normal and, all in all, peaceful.17 Similar descriptions of the West Bank and its people also became common in trip advice columns published by Israel’s principal newspapers. Less than two weeks after the war ended, they began introducing routes for journeys in the geographies that were now seen as new parts of the Israeli country. With but few exceptions, trip advice columnists portrayed residents of the West Bank as friendly to visitors and altogether sociable, arguing that the Palestinian 214

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population saw in the post-war reality an opportunity to develop tourism in the region as a way to improve the local economy. Not only did the Israelis have no reason to be afraid of the West Bank, according to their local media outlets, the Palestinian residents looked forward to welcoming them. The West Bank seemed safe for Israeli citizens in this atmosphere. In addition, Israel’s occupation of the region provided the Israelis with a convenient opportunity to visit unfamiliar places, cheaply and with ease. The West Bank’s relative proximity to the majority of central Israeli towns and cities meant that a large number of Israeli subjects were able to expand their usual leisure itineraries into foreign lands without leaving the country. Only having to spend a little time on the road before arriving at the region, they could easily cover a substantial part of the occupied territory in a day and return virtually effortlessly to any area they particularly enjoyed visiting. Before the war, Israeli citizens could only choose to travel overseas if they wanted to go away from their everyday routines and familiar cultural environments. In the post-war period, the vicinity of the West Bank enabled them to visit new places on a regular basis, with minimal effort and minimum investment. But while the geographical contiguity of Israel and the West Bank, coupled with the sense of safety that the occupied territory offered to Israeli citizens, contributed to its being rendered a potential land for excursions, its enormous appeal to Israeli tourists was because of another ingredient. Attending to the scale of the popularity the West Bank gained amongst Israeli citizens as a desirable travel destination, a column published a month after the war by author and trip adviser Menachem Talmi suggests that it was mainly the Jewish cultural imagination that made the West Bank the captivating region it had so rapidly become: As a gushing spring, Israeli tourism breaks into the liberated West Bank. Hungry for spaces, thirsty for novel landscapes, and struck by longings for well-known sites which they had not been able to see until now, Israelis cross through new roads and paths. In uniform or not. In large lively bands and in small groups. Families and couples. They drive new and old cars, buses and trucks, riding motorcycles and scooters. Any vehicle appears to be kosher [. . .] Yesterday, there was a state. Today there is a country. Yesterday, the borders suffocated the Israelis; unruly lands appeared frightening. Today, there is more space. The bars have fallen. The minefields have been removed. All that used to be an old memory, a hope, and an inner desire, has become true and possible. The Israelis feel an impulse to leave their homes and visit new places, go out of their comfort zone and breathe 215

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fresh air, see unfamiliar sites, and visit places whose names sound familiar to them, but not their reality. Stand up. Go see them for yourself. Feel them with your hands and feet. Visit the depth of the nation’s history. Go and listen to the biblical stories told by rocks and water wells. Climb the hills on which prophets voiced their insights. Imbibe the water running out of the same springs your fathers drank from. Explore the remnants of the sacred places. Reach to the old fables. Make them real.18 Indeed, considerations of safety and convenience surfaced in conversations with participants in this study as partial explanations for the post-war popularity of Israeli excursions to the West Bank. Resonating with the biblical references made by Talmi, their recollections insist that the most significant allure of the region originated from the many historical Jewish sites located throughout the territory, coupled with the Jewish cultural memories anchored to its landscapes. ‘My childhood experience in Jerusalem was similar to the experience of Moses, who’d only been able to look out over the land from east to the [Jordan] River’, Barak, who grew up in West Jerusalem during the 1950s, told me.19 ‘I’ve always known’, he continued explaining, that the Old City of Jerusalem and the Wailing Wall were in the eastern part of the city. My mother used to go there before Jordan captured them in ’48, but it was already impossible for Jews to visit either of them when I was a child.20 Complementing Barak’s words, his wife, Hannah, recalled the excitement and sense of bewilderment she experienced when they went on their first day trip to the West Bank in August 1967. ‘All of a sudden’, she explained, ‘we saw the Cave of the Patriarchs, the Wailing Wall, Jericho, Rachel’s Tomb [. . .] the Promised Land and all of that [. . .] places you never thought you would be able to visit in your lifetime.’21 With the West Bank’s sacred sites and landscapes in reach, Israeli citizens were now able to connect with perceived physical remnants of the historical Jewish past whose narration has been used by Zionist leaders to justify the establishment and existence of an Israeli state in the Middle East.22 Regardless of Israeli society’s diverse attitudes to religion and religious belief, in the minds of the Israeli public, the capture of the West Bank from Jordan removed the last barrier that stood between the Israeli’s apparent legitimate homeland and the country of their historical fantasies. Although Israeli citizens continued travelling to the West Bank into the 1970s, in the late 1960s they found themselves unable to estimate how 216

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long the territory would remain under Israel’s control, nor whether they would still be able to access the region should Israel decided to withdraw. Throughout the late 1960s, the Israeli press continually offered the Israeli public some insights into the views that Israel’s political leaders held regarding the future of the occupied territory. More often than not, journalists and political analysts argued that, eventually, Israel would withdraw from the West Bank and from the other lands it occupied in 1967. The Israeli government, it was often reported, believed that Syria, Jordan and Egypt would prefer to recover their lost lands in return for peace agreements with Israel. Following this rationale, and with a view to seizing the opportunity to resolve the Arab-Israel conflict once and for all, in 1967 some Israeli politicians had already delineated plans for Israel’s departure from the majority of the lands the IDF occupied. The Defense Minister, Moshe Dayan, did not object to their ideas. However, he thought that Israel should not be the first to open peace negotiations, famously stating that the government was awaiting a phone call from the Arab leaders.23 In this atmosphere, as David told me, ‘people spoke in terms of opportunity [. . .] you couldn’t know how much time you had to visit [the West Bank]’.24 Thus, Israeli citizens rushed into the West Bank while they could, at the same time as they were hoping that the new travel routes would remain open and facilitate Israeli mobility across the region on a more permanent basis. The establishment of strong mutual social ties, or at least a comfortable relationship between Israelis and Palestinians, was the subject of their dreams, coupled with a reality in which both peoples would enjoy the freedom to live peaceful lives, whether under one political regime or not. Ultimately, the fate of the West Bank on its apparent Jewish sites and vast cultural landscapes was unclear. Wishing to capture images of themselves, the places they would visit, the views they would encounter and the people they would meet, Israeli travellers usually took their private cameras every time they went on an adventure in the West Bank. While in principle their desire to produce visual records of their trips was informed by the conventional social practice of tourist photography and by the West Bank’s ostensible liminal state, they also invited photography to partake in their post-war travel trend for another reason.25 Israel’s post-war photographic culture

At the same time as Israel won the 1967 war, photography won much of the Israelis’ attention. During the war, Israel fought some fierce battles with the Arab states on various fronts and on numerous battlefields. As a 217

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consequence, the creation of photographic coverage from the frontlines was mainly left to IDF photographers, foreign photojournalists and international media agencies. The Israeli media reproduced some of their photographs while the war was still going on.26 Nevertheless, the lion’s share of these remained unpublished for practical reasons. Photographers had to find the means to send their unprocessed images away from the battlefield before any of the pictures captured could be examined. In addition, the photographic technologies of the day prolonged the time it took to mine a photographic image from a roll of film. However, there was another, more obstructive reason why Israeli newspapers could not print the majority of the photographs their editors acquired from the battlefield. The publication of information about all matters concerning the war and IDF operations had to be approved by the IDF Military Censor.27 As the Israeli media willingly abided by the censor’s protocols at the time, the publication of the photographs received by Israeli news editors was often either delayed or proscribed. For these reasons, together with the relatively short duration of the war and the privilege the Israeli print media of the time gave to textual reports, photographic images of the war were not readily available to the Israeli public while it lasted.28 Immediately after the war, when Israel learnt of its astonishing victory, the Israelis were hungry for visual documents of the recent events. Independent publishers, virtually every newspaper in the country and even the Israeli Defense Ministry identified the public need and resolved to give the people what they wanted. One after the other they complied and published photographic victory albums, each of which featured large selections of pictures showing Israeli soldiers during skirmishes and partaking in the celebrations that followed their return from the battleground. The albums introduced the photographs as iconic images of Israeli strength, heroism and patriotism; records of great significance to Israeli history, national identity and social unity. As such they framed Arab and Israeli soldiers as depersonalized agents of the states they were serving.29 Sharing in the general victorious excitement, Israeli citizens consumed the albums en masse, and imbibed the photographs they put on display passionately. Collecting the albums rapidly turned into an Israeli social custom, a means to show appreciation to the IDF and a way to express individual pride in the nation. At the same time, other photographic records of the war also flooded the country. The 1960s coincided with both the expansion of Israel’s photography market and the growing popularity of private photographic practices amongst the Israelis. By the time the Six-Day War began, virtually every household in the country had at least one camera, and many Israeli soldiers carried them into battle. At the end of the fighting, 218

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they thus returned home with personal pictorial accounts of the sights and experiences they had encountered on the front line. The Israeli print media showed great interest in their first-hand documents, calling upon the perceived national heroes to share their visual memories with the public. The soldiers responded and a large number of their photographs were included in newspapers, exhibitions and additional victory album publications. In this way, an increasing number of photographs of combat and other frontline occurrences engrossed the Israeli social sphere, prolonging the victory celebrations for months, all around the country. The Israeli craze for war photographs and their subsequent participation in the post-war festivities framed photography as a practice of great social, cultural, historical and national importance. ‘Any photography enthusiast who made photographs during the war and its aftermath won a priceless souvenir’, wrote one commentator in a newspaper section dedicated to the local photographic phenomenon.30 Later the unnamed author added that: Photographs of combats, battlefield episodes, places in the first few hours after their conquest, the very same places afterwards, and photographs showing the combatants who participated in the fights—all of these constitute precious assets in any household. Soldiers and civilians who missed the opportunity, whether because they never took any interest in photography or because they chose not to bother about it – they will certainly live to regret it.31 But while perhaps during the war Israeli civilians had other worries and little reason to pick up their cameras, after the war the growing significance Israeli citizens bestowed on photographic records of these recent events rapidly prompted them to extend their photographic consumption practices into photographic production rituals. Taking pictures of any scenes and sights related to Israel’s war achievements became a conventional way to pay personal homage to the state and the nation, and a means to project a sense of personal belief in the future to come. However, as the West Bank was the most culturally valued of the territories Israel gained during the war in the eyes of the Israelis, its diverse natural and urban settings also became the most popular spaces for the nation’s photographic activity. In this reality, the prospect of increasing their clientele did not escape world-leading camera and film manufacturers. As early as late June 1967, renowned photography brands launched various campaigns that drew on the recent events in the region. A few of them encouraged the Israelis to use their photographic products to take pictures in the country’s expanded 219

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northern and southern frontiers. However, camera and film manufacturers dedicated the majority of their photographic advertisements to the occupied territories in the east. The way in which the local photographic industry responded to the new reality in the country demonstrates the prominence that, specifically the West Bank, gained in the photographic culture that erupted in Israel after the war. ‘In One Click – a Whole History,’ promised Agfa, for example, in advertisements that repeatedly appeared in the country for nearly two years during the post-war period. Each included a photograph of either the Wailing Wall or the Dome of the Rock, noting that visitors to the Old City of Jerusalem would find many exciting sites deserving of having their photographs taken, and prompting customers to equip themselves with an adequate number of rolls of film before embarking on a journey to the West Bank. Also making the most of the post-war period and the Israelis’ adoration of the West Bank, Konica created a topical advertisement with a view to promoting its new Auto-Reflex camera. ‘When you have only 10 exposures left while visiting the West Bank and the sacred sites’, it read, ‘you can multiply them to 20 with little effort’.32 Similarly, and as a final example, Yashica also made an effort to secure its position in the growing market through references to the West Bank. ‘No permits required in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank]’, it announced in a series of advertisements issued in November 1967. ‘You too can visit the territories and photograph them.’ Israeli citizens made sure to produce or at least obtain pictures of various locations on the country’s eastern frontier. Most often, they inserted them into private photo albums and collections dedicated to the 1967 war and its aftermath. Citizens who went to battle armed with their private cameras added the photographs they later took in the West Bank to the visual narratives they had created to commemorate their involvement in the Israeli war effort. Likewise, using albums that they specifically started in order to narrate that moment in Israeli history, those who experienced the war at home often compiled their photographs from the West Bank alongside other photographs related to the reality that emerged in the country in the post-war period. With more and more Israeli citizens choosing to focus their attention on the West Bank and take part in the photographic documentation of its culturally familiar cities, sites and landscapes, the photographs they took during their excursions to the region facilitated their participation in Israel’s post-war celebrations. At first sight, the photographs Israeli citizens captured during their excursions to the West Bank could be described as nothing more than typical tourist snapshots. They were taken as mere records of the places visited, the attractions experienced, the people encountered and often 220

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also of the travellers themselves. The images they carry show lively Palestinian city and town centres, natural landscapes, ancient ruins and sacred sites. They depict the travellers exploring their trip destinations, occasionally posing by a site of interest, hailing the camera and smiling at the photographs’ imagined beholders in the same way as the traditional rituals of tourist photography. However, precisely because of their conformist properties, the photographs Israelis captured in the West Bank have also preserved conventional views of the region and its people at a particular moment in time in which Israelis perceived their relationship with the Palestinians as amiable, and before they came to realize just how unwanted their presence in the region was going to become. Rather than drawing attention to specific eye-catching objects or occurrences, the photographic series David, for example, produced in Wadi Qelt and its surroundings in 1968 appears erratic, as if each of its constituting images were a register of his encounter with the landscape that unfolded in front of him while he was moving through the spaces it occupies. Having placed the series in an album, the captions he added by the majority of the photographs help identify the locations they show. The pictures thus also invite the viewer to become familiar with specific geographical features and characteristics that David and his friends came across during their journey, from their departure in Anata, through Éin Fara, Éin Fuar, Éin Qelt, all the way to the fringes of Jericho. But it is not a lesson in geography. While the group progressed in space from west to east, photographs in the album appear in no particular order. Instead of signposting the exact itinerary David and his companions followed between the outskirts of Jerusalem to those of Jericho, they convey mixed impressions of the terrain visited. Some feature hills, boulders and rocks, springs and rivers, vegetation and animals. Others depict remnants of a Herodian aqueduct as well as a water pipe constructed during the British Mandate to transport water from the springs in the valley to the city of Jerusalem. Alongside the pictures of human-made and natural-looking landscapes, David mounted in his album photographs of himself and his friends on the journey. A number of these show them walking in the valley, climbing up and down its steep slopes, posing alongside a herd of goats and refreshing themselves at streams and waterfalls (Figs 8.1–8.3). Although the photographs may be misleading, the region David and his friends visited appears calm and welcoming, and the group of travellers seems to have felt comfortable and confident enough to explore its many diverse spaces. Accounting for the relatively large quantity of the photographs featured in the series, David explained to me that ‘at the time we thought the photographs would become significant one day, but in the end I have 221

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Figure 8.1 ‘Éin Qelt—1968’, January 1968. Reproduced courtesy of research participant.

Figure 8.2 Wadi Qelt/Nahal Prat, January 1968. Reproduced courtesy of research participant. 222

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Figure 8.3 ‘Under the waterfall’, January 1968. Reproduced courtesy of research participant.

taken this trip many more times’.33 Although, due to the continuing Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the photographs in David’s album ended up depicting a land to which he could still return, in his eyes, they turned out to be telling records of the encounters that Israeli citizens and members of the Palestinian community experienced together after the war. Sitting with his album in his home garden in West Jerusalem, he points at a couple of individual photographs, drawing my attention to images depicting him and his friends coming upon Palestinians from the area. One displays David’s friends progressing on a nature trail, passing by a Palestinian woman in traditional costume, who guides a labouring mule in the opposite direction (Fig. 8.4). Captured by one of David’s friends, the other shows the rest of the travellers getting into a car after the Palestinian driver had offered them a lift to the valley (Fig. 8.5). Despite the ordinary scenarios the photographs describe, David gives them his full attention. ‘Facing Israeli citizens’, he says, ‘was also a relatively unusual experience for the Palestinians’.34 Indeed, whereas the photographs Israeli travellers captured during the excursions to the West Bank render visible some of the locations that 223

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Figure 8.4 ‘Éin Fara’, January 1968 Reproduced courtesy of research participant.

Figure 8.5 ‘Anatot’, January 1968. Reproduced courtesy of research participant. 224

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attracted them to the area and some of the activities they carried out while there, they also manifest segments of the reality encountered by both Israelis and Palestinians shortly after the war. Although more often than not the reality they depict remains inexplicit, equivocal and certainly visually conditioned by the image maker, they can nevertheless evince a selection of the typical human and material actualities that presented themselves to the regions’ visitors and residents. As such, they impart knowledge, particularly about some of the impressions the Israelis absorbed when they shared their photographs with one another back at home. Hannah and Barak, for instance, took photographs in the Old City of Jerusalem during their one-day trip to the West Bank. While looking at photographs they took at the Wailing Wall, Barak draws Hannah’s attention to the images’ foreground. ‘This is still before’, he tells her, pointing at the public square that stretches in front of the site. ‘No, it’s already after!’, Hannah answers without hesitation, ‘it must be [. . .] the date on the other picture says we went there on the 1st of August ’67’. Looking somewhat confused for a while, Barak eventually replies: ‘It is after they destroyed the buildings, but still before they tilled the square’ (Fig. 8.6).

Figure 8.6 The Wailing Wall, 1 August 1967. Reproduced courtesy of research participant. 225

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The event Hannah and Barak alluded to occurred on 8 June 1967. One day after the IDF captured the Old City of Jerusalem, local Israeli commanders had evacuated and bulldozed to the ground the majority of buildings in the Mughrabi Quarter, which for centuries had stood adjacent to the Wailing Wall.35 The photographs carry the traces of this act through the marks it left in the area. Equally, however, they feature the image of visitors who were now able to flood into the newly created public square, to look at the wall, touch its ancient stones and perhaps also say some prayers at its presence. Many other participants in this study keep similar photographs of the Wailing Wall in their collections, from different days and months. Even though some of them also feature images of members of the Palestinian community, none of the photographs provides any indication of local resistance to the presence of Israeli citizens in the area nor any manifestations of disagreement with the act the IDF committed during the war. The same also applies to photographs from other, less-charged areas that Israeli travellers visited in the West Bank. Udi’s post-war photo album, for example, contains photographs he and his parents took on day trips to various locations in the region within a month after the war. One of the images they captured in Tulkarm shows Udi and his mother having their photograph taken at the entrance to the city’s municipal building, at the same time as a member of the local community goes about his business just behind them (Fig. 8.7). In another photograph, Udi’s parents pose against the background of ancient Roman ruins in the Nablus Governorate’s village of Sebastia (Fig. 8.8). The ruins in the picture constitute a fragment of a site also comprising remnants of Samaria, the biblical capital city of the northern Kingdom of Israel. Identifying what function the ruins in the site used to perform in their respective historical times, fixed signboards written in Hebrew, Arabic and English feature in this picture and in others that Udi and his parents captured during their visit to Sebastia. The signs thus appear to invite Israeli and Palestinian visitors, as well as international tourists, to explore the site and learn about its past. Their presence in the photographs renders Sebastia as an uncontested location, safe and welcoming to all. Clearly, one must not treat any of the pictures Israeli citizens captured in the West Bank as credible, indisputable, pieces of evidence about the nature of life and emotions that its Palestinian residents experienced at the time. Yet, because of the peaceful sights they put on display, the photographs Israeli itinerants shared with their relatives and friends right after the war further cemented the common view that the Palestinians were content with the post-war reality, together with the Israeli presence in their towns, cities and villages that it entailed. Even when a few expressions of 226

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Figure 8.7 Tulkarm, 1967. Reproduced courtesy of research participant (original in colour).

Figure 8.8 Ruins of Sebastia, 1967. Reproduced courtesy of research participant (original in colour). 227

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Palestinian violence gradually began to surface in different parts of the West Bank, and the United Nations Security Council demanded that Israel withdraw its armed forces from the eastern frontier, the photographs Israeli citizens captured while touring the West Bank reassured them that, in reality, their morality was intact, the situation in the country was safe and their relationship with the Palestinians was affectionate. Domestic encounters

‘I’d probably never be able to visit these places’, Vered tells her father, Udi, looking at pictures of the West Bank in a photo album he inherited from his late parents, Adah and Bernard.36 Dedicated to the post-war period from beginning to end, the album opens with pictures of an Israeli Air Force flyover performed in celebration of Israel’s war victory. The following pages feature a mixture of black and white and colour photographs that Bernard, Adah and Udi took while travelling in Sinai, the Golan Heights and the West Bank. In Sinai and the Golan Heights, the family mainly photographed abandoned tanks, rockets and hand grenades, as well as raided bunkers, decimated tracks, ravaged cars and devastated buildings. In comparison, in the pictures from the West Bank, traces of recent events are barely noticeable, while they depict sites and human landscapes in the Palestinian cities of Tulkarm and East Jerusalem and the village of Sebastia. Occasionally showing family members in the foreground, they focus on grandiose antique and sacred monuments, quaint scenes and daily life. Vered takes great interest in this set of pictures, at first mainly because they feature more images of her late grandparents. ‘It must have been very dangerous to go there straight after the war’, Vered suggests after perusing the pictures.37 Udi disagrees. ‘The people [Palestinians]’, he tells Vered, ‘were very pleased about the war outcomes [. . .] Only later [Yasser] Arafat and other militants began turning the Palestinians against Israel.’38 Vered eagerly imbibes the information her father passes on to her. But still, looking at photographs taken in Al-Haram al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary/the Temple Mount) and Qubbat as-Sakhrah (the Dome of the Rock), she asserts that ‘the area looks deserted and lifeless [. . .] grandma must have trusted grandpa to protect you’.39 Turning the album’s pages, she spots some images of members of the local population captured in pictures that Udi, Adah and Bernard took in Tulkarm (Fig. 8.9). ‘I don’t think it was so easy for them to encounter Israelis in their towns’, she says empathetically, ‘they must have been afraid.’40 228

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Figure 8.9 Tulkarm, 1967. Reproduced courtesy of research participant (original in colour).

Perhaps shortly after the 1967 war Israelis saw in their photographs from the West Bank records of trips to a familiar but unknown land, inventories of sites attesting to histories of Jewish presence in the western bank of the Jordan River, testimonies of Jewish triumph against all the odds, symbolic representations of homecoming and demonstrations of Israeli-Palestinian alliance. Yet, as Udi’s and Vered’s exchange suggests, many things have changed since then. Starting in the early 1970s, political Palestinian movements led by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) have become increasingly active in fighting over the West Bank in their struggle for an independent Palestine state, at the same time as the State of Israel began expropriating lands in the region. Establishing Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Israel encouraged religious and secular Jewish Israeli citizens alike to build their homes adjacent to Palestinian towns, cities and villages throughout the occupied territory.41 In a relatively short period of time, the growing tension between Israeli and Palestinian leaders triggered violent confrontations between the Israeli and Palestinian residents of the West Bank, which occurred sporadically but continually for nearly two decades. 229

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However, when a popular Palestinian national consciousness awakened in the First Intifada of 1987, clashes between IDF soldiers and the Palestinian residents of the West Bank became a matter of daily routine, claiming many lives on both sides day by day.42 Following the 1993 and 1995 agreements between Israel and the PLO (the Oslo Accords), the Palestinian uprising gradually faded away and a large portion of the West Bank was now administrated by an appointed Palestinian Authority. Israeli civilians have consequently been denied easy access to a large number of the towns and cities that constituted the most popular destinations for their travels after the 1967 war, including Tulkarm, Nablus, Jericho and Bethlehem, to name just a few. Social and political instability persisted in the occupied territory, however, including mutual challenges to the Israelis’ and Palestinians’ right to a place in the Middle East and frequent lethal expressions of Palestinian and Israeli violence. These turned into regular incidents once again when another Palestinian popular uprising against the Israeli occupation occurred in the Second Intifada of 2000.43 Although it came to a gradual end between 2004 and 2005, Israeli and Palestinian expressions of violence continued to emerge regularly. The social and political instability that has characterized the West Bank since the early 1970s has rendered the territory anything but a safe haven for either Israelis or Palestinians. In this reality, the Israeli-Palestinian dispute over the West Bank places the historical consequences of the 1967 war at the forefront of Israeli lived experience. Under these circumstances, Israeli citizens tend to give the West Bank and its residents some concentrated attention virtually on a daily basis, commonly perceiving the occupied territory as a landscape of uncertain national and political aspirations, a land of contested histories and truths and a site in which Jewish and Arab, and Israeli and Palestinian memories collide. Whereas in the Israel of the post-war period the photographs this study focuses on helped shape a sense of sociocultural cohesion, since the West Bank emerged in the Israeli public domain as a politically contested territory, they have largely diverged from the Israeli national sphere. Once shared indicators of Israeli unity, patriotic pride and collective cultural history, they have been withdrawn into the privacy of domestic life. Consequently, unlike numerous other products of popular culture, they normally no longer circulate or become visualized away from the household. Arranged and rearranged, displayed, looked at and discussed in isolation from civic flows of concrete political beliefs and national dogmas, since the early 1970s, the photographs Israeli citizens captured in the West Bank during the post-war period have become engaged with ever more complex, privately structured geographical imaginations, life narratives and imaginative geographies.44 230

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‘All my friends spoke Arabic’, David, for example, mentions to me at the sight of a photograph showing his trip companions conversing with a member of the Palestinian community (Fig. 8.10).45 ‘We spoke with the Arabs we met along the way’, he recalls. ‘They welcomed us blissfully.’46 Continuing to stare at the photograph silently, his otherwise permanent wholehearted smile gradually turns flat, and a serious, focused and pensive expression eventually bursts out of his face. ‘The valley [Wadi Qelt], as the rest of the West Bank’, he finally intimates, turned out to be part of the state of Israel in the end. The regional politics has become much more complex since then. The state now rules many Arab minorities [. . .] This situation generates a conflict about the connection to the land itself.47 Moving his eyes away from the photograph, David then starts turning the pages in the album back and forth, looking at the various pictures in the series over and over again. Occasionally he rests his eyes on a photograph and emits some enthusiastic commentary: ‘Éin Fara—look at the area! [. . .] Éin Fuar—extraordinary! [. . .] Éin Qelt—look at this stream of water! [. . .] What an experience!.’48 Similarly to other participants, however, while performing his album David refers to the places in his

Figure 8.10 ‘Éin Fuar’, January 1968. Reproduced courtesy of research participant. 231

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photographs by their names in Arabic and Hebrew, as if he were reluctant or even unable to imagine the West Bank as an exclusive Jewish-Israeli national landscape. The ambiguous cultural and national identity of the landscapes David captured in the series mostly becomes manifest through the album’s materiality. Although he compiled it about two decades after he took the photographs, around the time in which the 1987 Intifada erupted, David blended Hebrew and Arabic place names in the annotations that he jotted down next to the pictures. The series’ opening photograph, for example, shows David sitting in a car alongside the Palestinian who drove him and his friends to the valley. Its caption reads: ‘A journey from Anatot to Jericho—Wadi Qelt.’ Another photograph depicts a panoramic view of the region travelled, carrying the caption ‘a view on Eretz Benjamin’. As the series continues, other landscapes appear by captions such as ‘[t]he place where the aqueduct crosses Wadi Qelt’, ‘the hut of Éin Fara’ and ‘Éin Fuar—January 1968 New Year’s day’. Wishing to stress and strengthen the Jewish-Israeli community’s historical connection to the land of Israel, in 1951 the Israeli government had already appointed a national names committee to recommend Hebrew designations for regions, geographical features and human-made urban sites throughout the country.49 The committee’s task was to investigate the country’s ancient and more recent history, and suggest place names capable of establishing links between the Hebrew bible, significant Zionist pasts and the country’s landscapes.50 As a consequence, the committee’s work largely involved altering Arabic place names with a view to Hebraizing the state map.51 The committee’s work continued throughout the 1950s and 1960s, and in 1967, the same policy became applicable to the West Bank.52 In this way, Anata—where David and his friends began their journey— became Anatot. The arid region north of Jerusalem, which includes some Palestinian settlements such as Ramallah, Al-Bireh and Bil’in, was renamed Eretz Benjamin. Wadi Qelt turned into Nahal Prat. Éin Fara changed to Ein Prat. Éin Fuar transformed into Ein Mabua. ‘The imposition of particular names on place’, Juliet Peteet argues, ‘is an ideological invocation that is integral to the more encompassing project of claiming territory and sentiments of belonging’.53 If we keep Peteet’s insight in mind, David’s album and his photographic elicitations contest any ideological invocations that refuse to acknowledge the sentiments that both Israelis and Palestinians feel towards the territories shown in his photographs. ‘I wouldn’t mind it if the valley goes in the Palestinian part of the country’, David tells me as we continue our conversation.54 Seconds later he adds, ‘when you walk there you feel that your fathers’ fathers walked in this very valley—there is no doubt about it!’.55 While the two 232

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sentences express conflicting sentiments, the photographs in David’s album allow them to live together rather comfortably. Coupled with the captions David gave them, they unite traditional Palestinian and Israeli imaginative geographies and form a geographical imagination of cohabitation that concurrently captures, complements and extends David’s deliberations. Even if in its actual geography some may identify the valley David’s photographs show as Wadi Qelt, Nahal Prat or by any other name, in his album and through David’s performance, it remains a space in which Jewish and Arab collective memories intersect and Israelis and Palestinians mingle peaceably. Interactions of other individuals with their post-war photographs observed during my fieldwork resulted in similar reconfigurations of the West Bank, its cultural identity and national status within the country’s geography. But, being aware of how the reality in the region unfolded during the years that followed the war, especially the reality underpinning Israeli-Palestinian relations to this day, some of the participants in this study see the presence of the photographs in their collections as a rather disturbing fact of life. Frustrated by the evolvement of Israel into an oppressive nation state and by the living conditions it has imposed upon the Palestinians of the West Bank for the majority of the past five decades, they now lament the perceived missed opportunity that the two peoples had to lay the foundations for warm coexistence. In their eyes, the photographs they captured during their trips used to portray the beginning of a new optimistic era in the region, but since then they have come to signify nothing more than grievous disappointment. ‘My mum reorganized our family photos’, Iris tells me on the phone one day during my fieldwork, aware of my interest in the visual economy of photographs, ‘you should come with me to see what she did’.56 We agree to visit her parents, Hannah and Barak, at the weekend. Minutes after Iris and I get into their house, Hannah guides me into a room adjacent to the living room where she opens a two-door cupboard filled with neatly piled-up albums and boxes. ‘All the photographs we’ve got are here now’, she explains as the scent of acidified paper rapidly spreads across the room.57 Hannah and Barak own a large number of photographs of family members and familial activities. As I start unloading the cupboard, it becomes clear that family orientated rather than historical chronology per se underpins their organization in the collection. Pictures showing Hannah or Barak before they knew each other are kept separately from one another. Photographs taken before the children were born constitute another collated batch. Family events such as weddings, birthday parties and holidays form their own separate sets. Hannah has used rubber bands to 233

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secure each group of photographs and to prevent them from being mixed up with others in the box. She has also added a piece of paper at the front of each pile, identifying in writing photographs of what occasions, moments and family members it encompasses. Albums display similar notes, but they are exclusively dedicated to trips family members have taken abroad. Hannah and Barak prepare dinner while I explore the collection. Every Friday evening the extended family dines together, and some of the guests have already arrived. Iris’ 18-year-old niece, Noga, has taken interest in her grandparents’ photographs for several years. My activity draws her attention. She enters the room, keen to learn new things about her family’s past. ‘I reproduced many of these in albums that I created as birthday and anniversary gifts’, she tells me as she digs into one of the boxes in the cupboard containing about 20 loose photographs hidden underneath all others.58 Hannah has developed a classification system in which every photograph earns its place in the collection by subject. Yet the photographs Noga found remain unattached, unmarked and altogether deprived of any instructing recollections. She picks them up eagerly, interested to find out what they are doing at the bottom of the box. Noga notices that five of the photographs are squared, captured in black and white and printed on same-sized paper of equal weight. Three were taken in or around the Old City of Jerusalem. One features an overview of the city of Jericho. The fifth photograph portrays a destroyed bridge and Noga takes more time to explore this particular image (Fig. 8.11). Chunks of concrete and pieces of metal hang down from the deformed structure. Others are scattered in the water of the river that this structure once used to cross. Although the image displays two figures in casual dress walking towards the ruin, otherwise the site appears desolate and severely damaged. The photograph was taken in the Jordan Valley, a few short kilometres southeast of the city of Jericho. The ruin it displays is that of King Abdullah Bridge. Before the war, while the Jordanians occupied the West Bank, it connected the Jordan River’s east and west banks. Once the West Bank fell to Israel, IDF combatants blew up the bridge to prevent Jordanian counter attacks. ‘Nothing has changed in the country, eh!?’ – Noga snarks, and puts the picture down.59 For her, the more peaceful and pleasant photographs Hannah has interwoven into the collection delineate normality, but not what Noga recognizes as normal for the turbulent nature of life in the country with which she has been familiar for as long as she herself can remember. She is curious to know who took the photographs, when and why and also to understand how they fit in with her grandparents’ photographic collection, which otherwise valorizes their family and its members. 234

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Figure 8.11 Ruins of King Abdullah Bridge in the Jordan Valley, 1 August 1967. Reproduced courtesy of the research participant.

‘It’s difficult to tell you anything about them without involving my humanistic political views’, Barak tells Noga when she brings the five photographs next door, alongside others that she found at the bottom of the box.60 But Noga seems to be puzzled by his reaction to the pictures, looking at both Hannah and Barak in anticipation of more details. ‘We took them on a daytrip to the West Bank a couple of months after the war’, Hannah explains, while she and Barak remind themselves of the places they visited.61 ‘What do we need all these places for!?’, Barak asks after a few long seconds of silence, ‘and all this occupation!’, he adds impatiently.62 Noga turns Barak and Hannah’s attention to the other photographs she found. It transpires that they are snaps that Barak captured when he was stationed on the northern front in June 1967. Hannah tells Noga that when she reorganized the photographs, she preferred to remove those associated with the war and its aftermath. ‘At the time’, she says, ‘we couldn’t have anticipated what the photographs we took would eventually turn out to signify’.63 In her view, ‘since ’67 the state has moved away from the values we used to believe in’.64 She and Barak therefore feel that the photographs from the war and those they took during their trip to the 235

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West Bank can no longer represent the ideals that they wish to instil in their children and grandchildren. ‘The photographs of the family as a family are much more pleasant to look at’, Hannah asserts in conclusion, just before inviting all the guests to sit at the table.65 Hannah and Barak’s responses to Noga’s questions stress the challenge their photographs from the post-war period pose to the normative individual and familial postmemories that Hannah collated in the family’s photographic collection.66 Their exclusion from Hannah and Barak’s organized photo collection cannot necessarily be seen as an intentional statement about the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, nor about the regional politics at large. Their material placement, however, constitutes the most current entry in the five photographs’ social biography, signalling their domestic devaluation.67 Hannah’s words clarify that their covert location away from other family snaps marks the line that Hannah and Barak perceive to exist between their moral values and those articulated by the Israeli state’s treatment of the Palestinian people in the West Bank. Similarly to other participants in this study, Hannah and Barak cannot easily accommodate the lack of correlation between these values in their pictorial life narratives at that moment in time. Performing photographs of the West Bank in Israeli households

Walking around the country’s perceived biblical landscapes with the intention of coming to know the land and its cultural histories is a JewishIsraeli national custom whose origin can be traced back to the early twentieth century. Having been conventionalized as an educational and pastime activity since state foundation, it is largely responsible for the production of a notable percentage of the photographs preserved in JewishIsraeli households to this day. Their display, discussion and exploration yield private knowledge about the country’s physical and human geography, coupled with a sense of familiarity with the state’s history and its cultural boundaries.68 The photographs Israeli subjects took in the West Bank during the post-war period are another outcome of the same national custom. Yet, captured and circulated when Jewish-Israelis were collectively immersed in the celebrations of their war victory, they instantly became intersected with local political realities and have, since then, turned into popular credible-looking reminders of the Jewish-Israeli post-war mindset. As I showed elsewhere, the specific ways in which Jewish-Israelis have produced, employed, deployed and performed domestic photography portray it as a genre whose diverse applications in the Israeli context are at least partly conditioned by local socio-political power structures and the 236

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sociocultural realities that surround life in the country.69 The sources and various examples introduced above extend this observation to include the photographs Israeli citizens captured during their post-war excursions to the West Bank. In the post-war period, the photographs served Jewish-Israelis as perceived evidence of their cultural connection to the West Bank and as extensions of the Jewish-Israeli visual field into Palestinian geographies. They contributed to cementing a sense of Israeli patriotic pride and national unity at the same time as they supported other products of popular culture that naturalized a belief in Israel’s just occupation of the West Bank, alongside a view of its residents’ satisfaction with this new reality. Implicating their producers in the making of the historical period alongside its imagined and concrete political realities, they participated in conventional Jewish-Israeli social processes that often determined how the Jewish citizens of the State of Israel experienced regional politics and their relationship with the Palestinians of the West Bank. Following the post-war period, Jewish-Israeli citizens have gradually come to realize fully that the Palestinian people consider them as oppressive occupiers of their land. Whether they were open to this claim or rejected it altogether, their photographs from the West Bank were no longer able to maintain their cultural function unchanged. From repositories of relatively stable national narratives and vessels of largely fixed political meanings, they have come to function as material and social sites in which personal memories about the 1967 war and its assumed socio-political outcomes are secreted, and diverse political aspirations, ethical values and understandings of Israeli and Palestinian lived experiences crystalize. Despite the photographs’ animated lives and unstable meanings in the privacy of Israeli households, in recent years the Israeli public has seen an innovative attempt to reinsert the type of photographs considered in this study into the Israeli national sphere. Shortly after the right-leaning Israeli government won the 2009 parliamentary election, it appointed and required a special steering committee to prepare a strategic plan to promote national values amongst the country’s citizens, through public exposure to Israeli national heritage. In 2010, after consultation with state officials, historians, geographers, archaeologists and culture specialists, members of the committee identified private photographic collections as one type of tangible resources well suited for this purpose. Placing such collections in the public environment, they argued, would result in an accessible, appealing pictorial history of Israel. The work involved in gathering (and digitizing) the photographs, they explained in addition, would unite Israeli citizens as partners in the effort to preserve this history, and prompt them to consider it as their own. In response to the committee’s recommendation, the government initiated a communal project with the declared purpose of 237

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documenting, creating a backup, and salvaging pictures of the state and the country, its residents and its history [. . .] to strengthen the partnership of residents of all walks of life in the narration of Israeli heritage of all generations.70 The project and its resulting digital archive is supported professionally and financially by a large number of politically and culturally influential institutions, including the Israel Prime Minister’s Office, the Association of Israeli Archivists, the Israel Society for the Conservation and Preservation of Cultural Property, the Council for Conservation of Heritage Sites in Israel and others. By preserving the otherwise personal photographs gathered from Jewish-Israeli citizens in association with the state’s historical narrative about its legitimate right to the land of Israel-Palestine, the archive commemorates this narrative as a credible account. As the number of towns and cities included in the project grows, so does the volume of digitized photographs in the emerging archive. Any perceived boundaries between the personal and national aspirations of Israelis consequently become increasingly blurred and the otherwise complex histories alluded to by the photographs rapidly make way for one coherent image of Israeli self-gratification. Highlighting asceticism, self-defence, self-reliance and adherence to the Israeli land as a way of life, the archive renders cultural Zionist tropes about the character and characteristics of the Israeli people into tangible forensic evidence. Photographs captured by Israeli families and individuals in the post-war period feature in the digitalized archive in large quantities, in particular images of Israelis in the West Bank. Mainly identifying the depicted figures and the locations the pictures show, the archive tends to articulate Israeli socio-political unification and expressions of satisfaction with the conquest of the territory. ‘Every person living in Israel is partner to the development and history of the state’, the archive reminds anyone accessing the materials online, while inevitably being unable to disclose the complex lives that Israelis live with their photographs of ‘Palestine’ at home.71 Acknowledgements

Some of the research activities undertaken towards the completion of this study were carried out as part of the project Digital Heritage in Cultural Conflicts (DigiCONFLICT) that received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 699523 (Joint Programming Initiative on Cultural Heritage), implemented in the United Kingdom by the Arts and 238

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Humanities Research Council (AHRC) under Project Ref AH/S000119/1. I presented an earlier version of this research at the conference Visual Histories of Occupation, which was organized by Jeremy E. Taylor in the Department of History at the University of Nottingham in June 2017. I would like to thank all participants, delegates and the organizer for their very insightful comments and helpful suggestions. I am especially grateful to all the individuals and families who welcomed me to their homes with open arms and enabled me to explore their photographic collections, together as well as independently. Their kindness, generosity, open mind and sincere cooperation were fundamental to my ability to develop the multiple layers of this study. Notes 1. I write of the display and verbal presentation of photographs in the domestic sphere as a form of performance as it is through the enactment of these activities that photographs, and especially the images they show, are made present and their meanings and significance negotiated. 2. Dalia, personal communication, 5 April 2015. 3. David, personal communication, 5 April 2015. 4. David, personal communication, 5 April 2015. Anata is a Palestinian town located approximately 4 km northeast of Jerusalem, and Wadi Qelt is a valley in the West Bank, running between east Jerusalem and the Jordan River. 5. Michael B. Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (New York: Presidio Press, 2003). 6. Elie Podeh, Chances for Peace: Missed Opportunities in the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2015), pp. 83–92. 7. I use the term ‘post-war period’ to denote a period that began with Israel’s 1967 war victory and lasted roughly until the beginning of the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Virtually throughout this period, Israel faced some Palestinian resistance to the occupation of the West Bank and found itself in attrition warfare with the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), Egypt and Jordan. In spite of that, however, between June 1967 and the beginning of the Yom Kippur War, Israeli citizens assumed that their state was secure and that they were safer in the country than ever before. The beginning of the Yom Kippur War caught Israel off guard. Thus, even though the battles were fought across Israel’s northern and southern borders, and not in the West Bank, it brought an end to those feelings of confidence. For more information about Israel’s social and political reality between the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War see, Dalia Gavriely-Nuri, Israeli Culture on the Road to the Yom Kippur War (New York: Lexington Books, 2014), pp. 3–14. 8. See, for example, the studies presented in Rebecca L. Stein and Ted Swedenburg (eds), Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005). 9. All individuals discussed in this study were anonymized. 239

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10. Non-representational theory focuses, as Hayden Lorimer explains in an oft-cited passage, ‘on how life takes shape and gains expression in shared experiences, everyday routines, fleeting encounters, embodied movements, precognitive triggers, practical skills, affective intensities, enduring urges, unexceptional interactions and sensuous dispositions’. See Hayden Lorimer, ‘Cultural geography: the busyness of being “more-than-representational” ’, Progress in Human Geography 29/1 (2005), pp. 83–94, p. 84. It takes interest in practices of subjectification rather than in explorations of individual subjects; it considers, as Nigel Thrift emphasizes, ‘the geography of what happens’. See Nigel Thrift, Non-representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect (New York: Routledge, 2008), p. 2. 11. In doing so, I intended to access what Maria Tumarkin suggests naming ‘morethan-declarative’ memories, which she defines as memories ‘expressed and decoded in ways that eschew conscious recall and representation’. See, Maria Tumarkin, ‘Crumbs of memory: tracing the ‘more-than-representational’ in family memory’, Memory Studies 6/3 (2013), pp. 310–20, p. 313. 12. Berlant suggests one turns ‘toward thinking about the ordinary as an impasse shaped by crisis in which people find themselves developing skills for adjusting to newly proliferating pressures to scramble for modes of living on’. See Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2011), p. 8. 13. The digital archive can be accessed online: Israel Revealed to the Eye, (accessed 10 April 2016). I am currently writing a study dedicated to the exploration of the sociopolitical history of the project Israel Revealed to the Eye. Discussing the project’s resulting archive and public exhibitions, I am also looking into its influence on the lived experience, collective memories and photographic cultures of the communities involved in its sustainability. 14. See the excellent discussions in, Rebecca L. Stein, ‘#StolenHomes: Israeli tourism and/as military occupation in historical perspective’, American Quarterly 68/3 (2016), pp. 545–55, and also in Rebecca L. Stein, ‘Souvenirs of conquest: Israeli occupations as tourist events’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 40/4 (2008), pp. 647–69. 15. Although the various cultural products that Israel and Israelis produced after the war may suggest that Israeli society was completely immersed in a state of selfconfidence, euphoria and complacency, in reality Israel’s politicians, military leaders and citizens were very much aware of Israel’s continuing unstable position in the region despite its victory. See Gavriely-Nuri, Israeli Culture on the Road to the Yom Kippur War, pp. 8–12. 16. Udi, personal communication, 7 April 2015. For a scholarly study addressing the relationship between the Israeli authority and the Palestinian population in the West Bank during the first few months after its occupation, see Don Peretz, ‘Israel’s new dilemma’, Middle East Journal 22/1 (1968), pp. 45–57. 17. See, for example, Chaviv Knaan, ‘Laborious works to expand the public square by the wailing wall’ [avoda kdachtanit be’harchavat ha’kikar she’leyad ha’kotel ha’ma’aravi], Haaretz, 12 June 1967, p. 7; Mordechai Eretzieli, ‘Hebron’s Qadi: we are satisfied with the arrangements [Moshe] Dayan initiated in the Cave of the Patriarchs’ [ha’kadi shel hebron: anu sve’ei ratzon me’ha’hesder she’yazam dayan be’me’arat ha’machpela], Haaretz, 16 August 1967, p. 6; ‘Officials in Jerusalem: one shouldn’t anticipate resistance and rebellion in the West Bank as existed during the 240

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British Mandate era’ [chugim musmachim be’yerushala’im: ein lezapot le’machtarot u’le’giluyei meri ba’gada kefi she’hayu be’yemei ha’mandat], Haaretz, 21 August 1967, p. 6. 18. Menachem Talmi, ‘Journeys to the water’ [masa’ot el ha’maim], Ma’ariv (the supplementary Yamim ve Leilot), 21 July 1967, p. 4. 19. Barak, personal communication, 28 March 2015. With these words, Barak referred to Deuteronomy 34:4, in which God spoke to Moses on Mount Nebo, east to the valley of the River Jordan, saying to him that: ‘This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, “I will give it to your offspring.” I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not go over there.’ 20. Barak, personal communication, 28 March 2015. 21. Hannah, personal communication, 28 March 2015. 22. See also Ilan Pappé, ‘The Bible in the Service of Zionism: “We do not Believe in God, but he Nonetheless Promised us Palestine” ’, in Ingrid Hjelm and Thomas L. Thompson (eds), History, Archaeology and The Bible Forty Years After ‘Historicity’ (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), pp. 205–17. 23. Yoram Pery, ‘Intractable Conflict and the Media’, in Gabriel Sheffer and Oren Barak (eds), Militarism and Israeli Society (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010), pp. 95–119, p. 105. 24. David, personal communication, 5 April 2015. 25. On tourist photography and its common representational conventions see, Jonas Larsen, ‘Families seen sightseeing: performativity of tourist photography’, Space and Culture 8/4 (2005), pp. 416–34; Michael Haldrup and Jonas Larsen, ‘The family gaze’, Tourist Studies 3/1 (2003), pp. 23–46. 26. See, for example, the front covers of Yedioth Ahronoth, 6 June 1967 (third edition); Ma’ariv, 7 June 1967 (special evening edition); Yedioth Ahronoth, 7 June 1967 (second edition); Davar, 8 June 1967; Ha’aretz, 8 June 1967; Yedioth Ahronoth, 8 June 1967; Yedioth Ahronoth, 9 June 1967. 27. Yehiel Limor and Hillel Nossek, ‘The military and the media in the twenty-first century: towards a new model of relations’, Israel Affairs 12/3 (2006), pp. 484–510, pp. 491–2. 28. Prior to 1968 the Israeli printed media included only a sparse number of photographs in news reports and coverage. For a discussion of the Israeli printed media’s content and style before and after 1968 see Dan Caspi and Yehiel Limor, The Mediators: The Mass Media in Israel 1948–1990 (Tel Aviv: Am Oved Publishers, 2003), pp. 40–93. 29. Israel Ben-Dor, ‘Shoes in the Sand: The Image of the Arab Enemy in the Victory Albums of the Six-Day War’, in Haggai Golan and Shaul Shay (eds), Nachshonim: 40th Anniversary to the Six Day War (Tel Aviv: Maarachot, 2007/Hebrew), pp. 363–88. 30. ‘The World of Photography and Film’, Ha’aretz, 30 July 1967, p. 9. 31. ‘The World of Photography and Film’, Ha’aretz. 32. The Auto-Reflex camera enabled users to change the frame size and thereby inscribe up to 72 images on a standard film roll of 36 exposures. 33. David, personal communication, 5 April 2015. 34. David, personal communication, 5 April 2015. 241

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35. Simon Goldhill, Jerusalem: City of Longing (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 80–1; Robert Bevan, The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War (London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 2006), pp. 142–3. 36. Vered, personal communication, 24 March 2015. 37. Vered, personal communication, 24 March 2015. 38. Udi, personal communication, 24 March 2015. 39. Vered, personal communication, 24 March 2015. 40. Vered, personal communication, 24 March 2015. 41. For in-depth discussions of the establishment and development of Jewish-Israeli settlements in the West Bank see the great majority of chapters in Rafi Segal and Eyal Weizman (eds), A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture (London and New York: Verso, 2003). 42. See Ilan Pappé, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 228–52; Edgar O’Ballance, The Palestinian Intifada (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998). 43. Julie M. Norman, The Second Palestinian Intifada: Civil Resistance (London and New York: Routledge, 2010); Pappé: A History of Modern Palestine, pp. 272–5. 44. In the context of this chapter, the term ‘geographical imagination’ refers to material cultural products capable of assisting individual subjects in acquiring knowledge about the world and orientation in space and time. Conversely, the term ‘imaginative geographies’ refers to the mental images individual subjects conjure up when encountering such products. See, Joan M. Schwartz and James R. Ryan, ‘Introduction: Photography and the Geographical Imagination’, in Joan M. Schwartz and James R. Ryan (eds), Picturing Place: Photography and the Geographical Imagination (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2003), pp. 1–18, p. 6. 45. David, personal communication, 5 April 2015. 46. David, personal communication, 5 April 2015. 47. David, personal communication, 5 April 2015. 48. David, personal communication, 5 April 2015. 49. Nur Masalha, The Zionist Bible: Biblical Precedent, Colonialism and the Erasure of Memory (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 145–94; Meron Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948, trans. Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000), pp. 11–54. 50. David Newman, ‘The Formation of National Identity in Israel/Palestine: The Construction of Spatial Knowledge and Contested Territorial Narratives’, in Nikki Slocum-Bradley (ed), Promoting Conflict or Peace through Identity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 61–80, p. 67. 51. Noga Kadman, Erased from Space and Consciousness: Israel and the Depopulated Palestinian Villages of 1948 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2015), pp. 97–8; see also Bevan: The Destruction of Memory, pp. 137–8. 52. Saul B. Cohen and Nurit Kliot, ‘Place-names in Israel’s ideological struggle over the administered territories’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 82/4 (1992), pp. 653–80. 242

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53. Juliet Peteet, ‘Words as interventions: naming in the Palestine–Israel conflict’, Third World Quarterly 26/1 (2005), pp. 153–72, p. 158. 54. David, personal communication, 5 April 2015. 55. David, personal communication, 5 April 2015. 56. Iris, personal communication, 24 March 2015. Coined by anthropologist Deborah Poole, the term ‘visual economy’ refers to the production, circulation, and (changing) value of images and image-objects. See, Deborah Poole, Vision, Race, and Modernity: A Visual Economy of the Andean Image World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 9–13. 57. Hannah, personal communication, 27 March 2015. 58. Noga, personal communication, 27 March 2015. 59. Noga, personal communication, 27 March 2015. 60. Barak, personal communication, 27 March 2015. 61. Hannah, personal communication, 27 March 2015. 62. Barak, personal communication, 27 March 2015. 63. Hannah, personal communication, 27 March 2015. 64. Hannah, personal communication, 27 March 2015. 65. Hannah, personal communication, 27 March 2015. 66. The term ‘postmemory’ refers in this context to domestic photographs that, as such, assist in fostering connections between one generation and another through mediation of fragmentary pieces of information about personal lived experience in the past. See Marianne Hirsch, Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 22. 67. Drawing on notions such as ‘the social life of things’ and ‘the cultural biography of things’, I use the term ‘social biography’ to allude to the different treatment the photographs have received in Barak and Hannah’s domestic environment over time as well as to the subsequent values they have come to signify at different moments since 1967. See Arjun Appadurai (ed), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 68. Gil Pasternak, ‘ “The Brownies in Palestina”: politicizing geographies in family photographs’, Photography and Culture 6/1 (2013), pp. 41–64. 69. See, for example, Gil Pasternak, ‘Playing Soldiers: Posing Militarism in the Domestic Sphere’, in Paul Fox and Gil Pasternak (eds), Visual Conflicts: On the Formation of Political Memory in the History of Art and Visual Cultures (Newcastleupon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011), pp. 139–68; Gil Pasternak, ‘Posthumous interruptions: the political life of family photographs in Israeli military cemeteries’, Photography and Culture 3/1 (2010), pp. 41–64; Gil Pasternak, ‘Covering horror: family photographs in Israeli reportage on terrorism’, Object: Graduate Research and Reviews in the History of Art and Visual Culture 11 (2009), pp. 87–104. 70. Israel Revealed to the Eye. 71. Israel Revealed to the Eye.

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CHAPTER 9 POSTMEMORY AND ORAL HISTORY Inter-generational Memory and Transnational Identity in Exile Ihab Saloul

In the absence of archives and other facilities normally maintained by an independent state, and since many Palestinians from the first generation of exiles have either died or are illiterate, oral history has become a significant mode for archiving and sustaining Palestinian cultural memory. The cultural transmission of the memory of al-Nakba—in Israel called the War of Independence but known to Palestinians as ‘The Catastrophe’— often takes place through oral performances. These form one of the commemorative practices, engaged in in fragmentary moments that give texture to the fabric of everyday life. It was therefore only to be expected that attempts to preserve the past and to convey what happened in 1948 to second and third generations of post-Nakba Palestinians would include oral history projects, alongside the writing of memoirs by intellectuals and politicians and the fostering of heritage rituals and commemoration practices.1 It is almost redundant to say that oral histories are subjective narratives that have meaning for the people who narrate them as much as for those they are about. Almost, but not quite. One consideration above all trumps the subjective nature of such storytelling; that is, the common political backdrop shared by the participants in the events, the storytellers and their intended audience. Most of the anthropological literature dealing with the oral history of al-Nakba ignores this aspect, limiting itself to a recounting of political and military activities and the subsequent social transformations in Palestine. For example, while the recent historiography of Palestinian catastrophe has shown a growing awareness of the importance of recording the events of 1948 from the perspective of those previously marginalized in nationalist narratives—peasants, women, camp refugees, poorer city dwellers and Bedouin tribes—there is still little documentation on alNakba as experienced and remembered by the non-elite majority of Palestinian society.2 Such ethnographic approaches to the 1948 Nakba are limited in scope in that they tend to remain locked within an historical framework; what can be called a narrative about a history of identity. The 244

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ethnographic approach assuredly offers an important means to unearth concrete evidence and information about the historical expulsion and ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Palestinians. However, it seldom pays attention to how the ‘uprooting’ itself makes the narratives meaningful to the narrator’s everyday condition of displacement and exile. Nor does it tell us how the Palestinian subject’s narrative of the Nakba of 1948 affects his or her experience of the ongoing catastrophe of the Palestinians to this day.3 To deal with these issues, I shall put forward an alternative mode for reading oral accounts of al-Nakba. Instead of treating them as ethnographic fieldwork notes or autobiographies, I treat them as memories in exile. I do so not to privilege narratology above ethnography. Rather, I argue that any disciplinary perspective employed should pose ‘the subject of the everyday’ as the question at the heart of any narrative about the condition of Palestinian exile. Posed as a question, ‘the subject of the everyday’ can help us not only to refine our reading of exilic narratives as historical representation but also to supply insights into these narratives’ depiction of current affairs. Most importantly, with regard to the visioning of IsraelPalestine, I explore oral histories and ethnography as forms of visioning that go beyond palpable visual materials. In doing so I want to argue that these methods can similarly trigger forms of visioning of the past in the present while simultaneously expanding the kinds of understandings of Israel-Palestine and of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict often achieved through more tangible visual media. This mode of reading entails a shift of focus from the historical event itself, in its inevitable pastness, to the subject of this event and his or her present-day condition. Rather than referring to al-Nakba of 1948, I shall mobilize what I call mankoub—the ‘catastrophed subject’. This manoeuvre brings new frameworks into play for understanding the reach and the scope of Palestinian exile in the everyday. It does this by fixating on the cultural imaginings (or when particularly visual, ‘imagings’) evoked by oral accounts of the catastrophic loss of homeland. In order to read oral narratives as memories we must acknowledge the crucial distinction in storytelling of exilic identities between autobiographical and memorial modes. As necessary as it is, this distinction entails a certain risk when applied to the Palestinian case. Autobiographical narrative can generate an exaggeratedly individualized sense of subjectivity, while the memorial mode, charged with friction between past and present experiences of catastrophe, can destabilize that very sense of identity. In order to explore this mode of reading, I shall analyse a collection of oral narratives that were published by the Journal of Palestine Studies in 1998, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of al-Nakba. Entitled ‘Reflections on Al-Nakba’, this compilation includes stories of Palestinians 245

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from different walks of life who tell what al-Nakba means to them.4 The authors of the narratives were Mamdouh Nofal, Fawaz Turki, Haider Abdel Shafi, Inea Bushnaq, Yezid Sayigh, Shafiq al-Hout, Salma Khadra Jayyusi and Musa Bueiri. With the exception of Yezid Sayigh, whose narrative represents the second and third generation of post-Nakba Palestinians, all of these writers belong to the generation who lived through the 1948 Nakba. My analysis focuses, in particular, on the narratives of Fawaz Turki and Yezid Sayigh, complemented by few personal interviews that I collected in the Gaza Strip in 2004.5 Although written, I refer to the personal accounts printed in ‘Reflections on Al-Nakba’ as ‘oral narratives’, a term that reflects the dynamics governing the way the stories were told and written. In its introduction to the narratives, the Journal of Palestine Studies points out that it ‘asked a number of Palestinians of different generations and walks of life to write short pieces on what al-Nakba has meant to them’.6 Another appropriate characterization of the texts is to call them ‘stories’. This is not meant to imply that they are fictional. Rather, it opens the way to read the accounts as ‘narratives’ instead of categorizing them as historical or anthropological evidence. This approach, as I shall argue, gives the stories greater autonomy as texts or utterances and allows us to take in their complexity of form and content together. The material from the Journal of Palestine Studies is complemented by a number of narratives that I collected in Gaza; the analysis takes account of my own position in that fieldwork campaign. In conclusion, parallels are drawn between the different aspects of Palestinian cultural identity and the inter-generational transmission of memory in exile articulated by these personal accounts. My analysis of these narratives is focused on the memory of al-Nakba in the everyday life of Palestinian exiles, and revolves around two distinct issues: the temporal orientation of the stories between past and present, and the relation of cultural identity to the fragmented generational, spatial and geopolitical distribution of Palestinian society. The state of exile exists not only for Palestinians in the diaspora, mainly in the Arab world, but even those in Israel and the occupied territories who were driven out of their homes. What interests me is how the Palestinian subject’s voice engenders exilic discourse; how memory shapes the exile’s meanings, desires and needs of and for home; and the relevance of the resulting narrative configuration for the Palestinians’ struggle to overcome their forced exile and return home. Hence, my reading emphasizes the presentday rather than the historical significance of these narratives. Only when this aspect of the narratives of al-Nakba is taken into account can we understand how Palestinian identity is anchored in the cultural memory of an ongoing catastrophe. 246

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Inescapable pasts, persistent identities

The dominant topos in Fawaz Turki’s narrative is that exiled Palestinians cannot escape their past.7 In its affirmative framework of Palestinian identity, Turki’s story puts forward the notion that for Palestinians there is no movement forward without looking back to 1948. Turki describes how the Palestinians, despite their loss of home in the past and their exclusion from it in the present, have managed to preserve their cultural identity. Significantly, he introduces this resilience with the temporal injunction to wait: But wait! Our remembrance of where we came from has not torn at the edges. We have not, even after these fifty years, been hounded into oblivion. Palestinian exiles, wherever they are, share the same historical preoccupation, that same turn of phrase, that same communicative internality, that same love for the hammer beat of al-awda [the return] song that we all grew up singing (‘who am I?/ who are ye?/ I am the returnee/ I am the returnee’) and that we today hum to our children as we tuck them in every night. We’ll still be around fifty years from now, and if Israel is still around—a doubtful proposition, if you ask me—we’ll be knocking on its doors, asking to be let in. And if there is no response, we’ll break the door down. We’ll break the door down, baby. If God is my witness, we’ll break it down. My children are not growing up in refugee camps as I have done. They are not living in a host state whose authorities snarl at their heels, or place them close to the door for easy eviction, as their father had lived in Arab host states. But they do realise that, though they are loyal Americans, only in their ancestral homeland would their larger identity be housed, and only through the struggle to liberate it do they become enduringly defined.8 This description reveals two specific aspects of resilience in the present. First, Turki assumes that his sense of history in exile is a shared experience: ‘Palestinian exiles, wherever they are, share the same historical preoccupation.’ The defining feature of the Palestinians’ identity in exile is their collective belief in al-awda, the ‘right of return’ to the homes from which so many Palestinians were expelled in 1948. The sharing of al-awda finds form specifically in a song they all know. Palestinians not only have the ‘same love’ that the song of al-awda embodies, ‘that we all grew up singing’, but more significantly they also ‘hum’ this song to their children. The ‘humming’ brings with it the second aspect of the construction of Palestinian cultural identity in exile—memory transmission. The act of 247

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humming to the children signifies a cultural mode of transmission of Palestinian memory of the loss of home, signified both in the loss of words—humming consists of inarticulate sounds—and, at the same time, in the repetition of an old song whose implied lyrics are only too well known. As a result of this memory transmission, Palestinian identity in exile appears as transnational. In Turki’s narrative, memory as an aspect of Palestinian identity undergoes a shift in function. At the beginning of his story, memory functions to recall the burden of loss of home, but at its close memory turns into a sign of resistance and hope to overcome in exile the predicament of loss. It is now future orientated. We’ll still be around fifty years from now [. . .] My children are not growing up in refugee camps [. . .] only in their ancestral homeland would their larger identity be housed, and only through the struggle to liberate it do they become enduringly defined. Holding Turki’s images together in this part of the passage is the phrase ‘my children’. The children signify continuity of struggle and resistance against the loss of home in exile. Turki and his generation might be unable to overcome the loss of home, but his children will succeed in doing so. Turki expresses the conviction that struggle and resistance are the only means through which his children’s identity can be ‘enduringly defined’ as Palestinians, finally at home. But there is more to Turki’s use of memory. He identifies his children as Palestinians even though they were neither born in Palestine nor grew up in refugee camps. It is precisely here that memory takes on, yet again, a different function in Turki’s narrative. This time memory appears as a tool of self-preservation. Thus, the cultural transmission of memory in Turki’s story, from parent to child through the act of humming the song, not only feeds the subject’s notions of struggle and resistance against the loss of home and exile, it also affects his or her identity as Palestinian in the present. Similar conceptions of the role of memory as a tool for the preservation of the identity of second and third generations of post-Nakba Palestinians can be found in other narratives in the collection. A poignant example is told by Inea Bushnaq (b. 1938).9 Consider her description of how her American-born daughter performs her Palestinian identity in spite of being away from Palestine most of her life: And if the loss of Palestine were my chief bequest, I have watched my American-born daughter follow in some of my long ago footsteps. 248

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She has trotted to the furun, the communal bake house, with a trayload of risen dough balanced on her head. She has developed a taste for green almonds with salt and fresh chickpeas roasted on the vine. And, finally, she said to me on Hudson Street, New York, ‘Stop! Doesn’t that smell make you think for a second that you are in Ramallah?’10 Thus, by following in the footsteps of her mother, the daughter asserts her identity as a Palestinian. The act of ‘following in the footsteps’ signifies the memory transmission in Palestinian exile from one generation to the next. This act, most pointedly when it takes place in a mother-daughter relationship, has another cultural connotation in Palestinian tradition. The common Palestinian saying ‘El bint tala’a la emha’ (‘Like mother, like daughter’) alludes not merely to the natural but also to the nurturing aspect of identity interconnection and positioning. In this way it impinges on memory transmission in child raising and the act of ‘teaching how to’ that it entails. Not only do we see the daughter performing Palestinian identity by mastering traditional acts – ‘She has trotted to the furun’— but we also see her enacting this identity through the senses: ‘She has developed a taste’ and she recognizes a smell. Her enactment and performance of Palestinian identity is utterly dependent on memory. These narrative evocations of familial or inter-generational transmission of memory in the preservation of Palestinian identity in exile relate to the ‘postmemory’ of al-Nakba. As I shall argue below, in using the term ‘postmemory’ I do not mean to highlight a special identity position nor to suggest that the Palestinian catastrophe is locked in the past but, on the contrary, to emphasize that it is an ongoing event whose originating moment has been transmitted to later generations. To put it differently, I use postmemory as shorthand for the presentness of a temporal, ongoing Nakba. The narrative transmission of the memory of loss of place is grounded in Palestinian cultural identity, especially that of later generations who did not experience the Nakba in 1948. Among the issues involved is the extent to which the identity of these subjects is limited to their parents’ memories of the past trauma. Is the postmemorial discourse of al-Nakba the only discourse that shapes the identity of post-Nakba Palestinians today? This question brings me to a final set of oral narratives. One is that of Yezid Sayigh (b. 1955), also published in ‘Reflections on Al-Nakba’.11 The other is based on the selection of interviews I collected in Gaza in 2004, which I mentioned earlier. These narratives are analysed as one set because they are all told by Palestinians from second and third post-Nakba generations, allowing us to ask what the experience and memory of 249

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catastrophe mean to Palestinians who were not yet born when it happened. This question complements the discussion above of the multi-temporality of al-Nakba and the Palestinian subject’s heterochronic experience of catastrophic time. As we shall see, the Palestinian identity of later generations is not constructed exclusively through their parents’ memories (postmemories) of the 1948 Nakba; they are also shaped through their everyday experience of the loss of home. Mankoub beyond postmemory

While Turki’s narrative foregrounds Palestinian identity in terms of familial (or inter-generational) memory, Yezid Sayigh’s story elaborates on the spatiotemporal construction of such an identity in the present, especially the ways in which the loss of home influences the identity of second and third generations of post-Nakba Palestinians: For an instant, before I have time to reflect, 1948 is encapsulated for me in two photographs I have in my study. One, in black and white, is an outside shot of my paternal grandparents posing with their seven children in Tiberias in the early 1940s. The other, this time in colour, was taken by my mother during a visit in 1980 and shows the front of the family house with its triple arched liwan and the black volcanic stone construction typical of the area. Neither photograph hints at the conflict that engulfed family and house; only my knowledge links them. Yet they reveal to me the way in which my images and imaginings—of life in Palestine in the Mandate years, of the individual stories of my father and his parents and siblings, and of the collective uprooting of 1947–49—are telescoped into what has always seemed to me like a single event, depriving me of the detail and texture of a much richer fabric.12 The opening of Sayigh’s narrative presents us with a typical example of what I call ‘postmemorial storytelling’ in exile. His memory of al-Nakba is ‘encapsulated’ in two photographs with stark temporal and spatial differences. Temporally, there is the ‘when’ of the photos: while the blackand-white family photo was taken before al-Nakba in the ‘1940s’, the colour photo is from after the event in the ‘1980s’. Spatially, the black/ white photo shows the grandparents with their children at home in Tiberias, while in the colour photo the children have become parents (Sayigh’s mother), together with their own children (among them Sayigh himself ) in exile and ‘visiting’ the lost home as homeless tourists. 250

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Sayigh’s description of the two photos is further noteworthy. According to him, ‘neither photograph hints at the conflict that engulfed family and house’ and that ‘only [his] knowledge links them’. The word ‘knowledge’ in this description is crucial because it denotes the specific narrative position from which Sayigh speaks. To speak of ‘knowledge’ implies a certain distance: knowledge is not the same thing as memory. In terms of that distinction, Sayigh’s storytelling is emphatically ‘postmemorial’. This manifests itself further in the way his ‘knowledge of his family’s stories of loss of home’ affects his personal relationship to the photos. Sayigh’s knowledge of his family’s stories enables him not only to bridge the temporal gap between the two photos but also to be able to establish a spatial continuity between them through their common theme, the loss of home. What supports this reading of Sayigh’s narrative as postmemory is the passage, ‘yet they reveal to me the way in which my images and imaginings are telescoped’. The temporal and spatial linkage between the two photos establishes for the author a continuity of the Palestinian experience of loss of homeland between the generations, from his grandparents to his mother to Sayigh himself. At this juncture, and before proceeding with my analysis of the remainder of Sayigh’s narrative, let me clarify my use of ‘postmemory’ and what I mean by the inter-generational continuity of the Palestinian experience. The term ‘postmemory’ was introduced by Marianne Hirsch in discussions about the Holocaust to describe the relationship of the second generation to powerful, often traumatic, experiences that preceded their births but that were nevertheless transmitted to them so deeply as to seem to constitute memories in their own right.13 The Holocaust as a historical event is, however, fundamentally different from al-Nakba as a historical event. Although both are catastrophic events, the Holocaust belongs to the past: it was over when World War II ended. Al-Nakba, I argue, has an originating moment in the past, namely in 1948, but as a historical event it does not belong to the past at all; it extends into the present of Palestinian exile. In order to unpack this argument, I shall problematize both the concept of ‘postmemory’ and the intergenerational continuity of loss in line with two theoretical insights as offered by Hirsch and Ernst van Alphen. The vigour of Hirsch’s and van Alphen’s contributions—both distinctively different as they are raised within the context of the Holocaust—is that their grounding of postmemory configures aspects of its cultural transmission in geopolitically conflicted discourses, and they do so not merely in terms of historical and individual trauma but also in terms of postmemory as a site-specific memorization that affects subjective identification in the present. 251

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In her book chapter ‘Projected Memory: Holocaust Photographs in Personal and Public Fantasy’, Hirsch conceptualizes postmemory as a means to understand the complexities of the memories of the children of Holocaust survivors as well as the processes of cultural transmission of memory itself.14 As Hirsch explains elsewhere, the significance of postmemory as a specific form of memory distinguished from memory in general depends on generational distance and deep familial connections, and is ultimately grounded in its mediation ‘not through recollection but through an imaginative investment and creation’.15 Moreover, what underlies Hirsch’s conceptualization is a particular model of postmemory, which she describes as follows: ‘as I can “remember” my parents’ memories, I can also “remember” the suffering of others’.16 At the heart of Hirsch’s model of postmemory is ‘an ethical relationship’ to suffering, and understandably so in terms of the Holocaust, in which the subjects (the children) ‘adopt traumatic experiences—and thus memories—of others as one’s own’.17 Thus, for Hirsch, postmemory serves as a model in which a continuity of inter-generational transmission of traumatic memory and experiences becomes possible through imagination.18 This brings me to the second theoretical insight on postmemory, that of van Alphen. In his article ‘Second-Generation Testimony, Transmission of Trauma, and Postmemory’, van Alphen questions the terms ‘postmemory’, ‘survivor’ and ‘second and third generations’.19 According to van Alphen, these terms ‘share with the idea of inter-generational transmission of trauma the claim of a fundamental continuity between generations’.20 Van Alphen, however, rejects this idea of fundamental continuity between generations, and argues instead that, particularly in the case of the Holocaust, ‘the dynamics between children and survivor parents is rather defined by dis-connection, hence dis-continuity: disconnection not in an emotional, personal sense but in terms of intelligibility’.21 Hence, what underlies van Alphen’s critique of postmemory is that the transmission of affect is not the same as the transmission of memory, and certainly not of the experience itself. In other words, for van Alphen, second and third generations do not really have memories of the traumatic events, but rather the effect related to it in their parents’ experience. Taking into consideration my earlier argument of both the multitemporality of al-Nakba and the subject’s heterochronic experience in exile, both Hirsch’s model of the inter-generational continuity of memory and experience and van Alphen’s distinction between memory and effect trigger some personal reflection on my part, as well as a closer look at Sayigh’s postmemorial mode of storytelling with respect to the Palestinian condition. Insofar as my personal experience is relevant here, as an exiled 252

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Palestinian from the third generation of post-Nakba Palestinians, I can only substantiate that my own knowledge of my family’s stories of alNakba constitutes my memory of their experience of the catastrophe. But these memories, working in van Alphen’s vein, are by no means constitutive of my own memory and experience of catastrophe—my Nakba happens in ongoing exile. As such, the closest model I can come up with to describe my postmemories of al-Nakba would be as follows: as I can remember my family’s memories of 1948, I can also remember the suffering not of others, as Hirsch would have it, but rather my own, my loss of home in the everyday. Thus, the inter-generational continuity of the experience of loss of home should be seen not as a construct of Palestinian identity in the present but as a present-orientated model of postmemory. In this model, the self (the child) takes the position of the other (the parent). The memories of what the parents lived through in 1948 and what the children experience in the present may become so conflated and blurred that the inter-generational continuity of loss of home is sustained in both memory and everyday experience. That is nothing more than a corollary of the fact that the Palestinians’ loss of home, through their exile, has never stopped. Later generations of Palestinians do not just have postmemories of alNakba. They live al-Nakba every day of their lives as exiled Palestinian refugees whose lands and persons are persistently violated under Israeli military occupation. The first generation of post-Nakba Palestinians has memories and experiences of the originating event of al-Nakba, but the second and third generations, although they might not have been alive in 1948, are still ‘inside’ the event itself, as they live the catastrophe every day. Similar dynamics take place in Sayigh’s narrative. In the passage quoted above, knowledge of his family’s stories is revealed to Sayigh in two photos. This knowledge reveals ‘images and imaginings’ composed of individual as well as collective uprooting. These images and imaginings constantly lead him into what ‘always seemed [to him] like a single event’. Sayigh’s description clearly shows, to use Ernst van Alphen’s theorization, that while his parents’ memories transmit both the ‘emotional’ and the ‘personal’ effect of their experience, they do not convey the real experience of al-Nakba. The event of al-Nakba ‘deprives’ Sayigh of the ‘details’ of his parents’ experiences of the catastrophe. They remain ‘unintelligible’ to him, so that he cannot simply narrate them. In contrast to other narratives, nowhere does Sayigh’s report details of the Nakba. The only means he has at his disposal to expose details of the past is by shifting the focus of his story from the Nakba of 1948 to the ongoing catastrophe of exile—his own Nakba. 253

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This comes out clearly in Sayigh’s plea for the ‘need to deconstruct’ the singularity of al-Nakba: For if there is one thing that I come away with from thinking about 1948, it is the need to deconstruct it and subject its distinct strands to separate analysis before reintegrating them in a dynamic narrative that is whole but multifaceted and multilayered and therefore both contractible and expandable [. . .] 1948 is of course more than a series of historical events that took place in 1947–49 and that had specific, calculable material results. Were that the case, the Palestinian struggle would have been reducible to a legal and ‘technical political’ dispute over repatriation and compensation, which it never was. Rather, it is precisely because for Palestinians 1948 is also about the content, form, and meaning of national identity as practiced in different symbolic and existential contexts—therefore involving variations, adaptations, and compromises—that we must cease to think of [it] as a single event, from which we derive in unilinear fashion assumptions about who Palestinians are, how they came to be and how they will behave.22 According to Sayigh, then, the deconstruction of the singularity of alNakba is an indispensable step in the exposure of its multi-temporality and the subject’s experience of this multi-temporality in the present. Deconstruction is moreover vital as a means to position al-Nakba in direct relation to the construction of Palestinian identity. For Sayigh, just as we ‘must cease to think’ of Nakba as a singular event, Palestinian identity also needs to be understood as varied and multiple: ‘we must cease to think of [it] as a single event, from which we derive in unilinear fashion assumptions about who Palestinians are, how they came to be and how they will behave.’ Thus, the event must both be deconstructed and integrated into the fabric of Palestinian experience in the everyday. This is what happens in the rest of Sayigh’s story. Written in the style of an academic essay, Sayigh presents us with three analytical distinctions required for the simultaneous deconstruction of al-Nakba and its integration into the everyday. The first distinction is phrased in terms of what happened ‘before’ and what came ‘after’ al-Nakba. As Sayigh puts it, to distinguish between the before and the after is to make a distinction between the structural social, economic, political, and cultural discourse and practices of Palestinian society as they evolved in the late Ottoman and [British] Mandate periods, as they were 254

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transformed during the intense and sweeping dislocations of 1947–49, and as they adapted to post-Nakba realities. The second distinction that Sayigh proposes is related to the multiplicity of the narrative of al-Nakba between the all-embracing nature of 1948 [. . .] and the myriad responses to the unfolding of events of 1947–49 and equally myriad adaptations to their aftermath, which were influenced in varying degrees and combinations by background markers [. . .] as well as by external agency. Sayigh’s third and final analytical distinction, closely linked to these two, concerns the construction of his own Palestinian identity. For Sayigh, the construction of identity takes place ‘between his personal and political responses to 1948’, particularly in relation to the ways ‘[his] understanding of, and relation to, 1948 has shifted over time’. The deconstruction and reintegration of al-Nakba involves, first and foremost, the subject’s understanding of the Palestinian experience of catastrophe as an ongoing event. The ‘continuity of al-Nakba’ is manifest in the ways in which the Palestinians’ individual and collective experience of loss of home has unfolded since 1948 in relation to both the imaginative and the discursive. This imaginative-discursive conceptualization of the deconstruction and reintegration of al-Nakba into the everyday is brought out most concretely in the final two passages of Sayigh’s story. Here is the first of these: I moreover strongly suspect that, although my own image of 1948 has been softened from the outset by middle-class upbringing and exposure to cosmopolitan lifestyles and universalistic liberal beliefs, Palestinians similarly born after 1948 who have had to contend with a much harsher aftermath in refugee camps or under Israeli occupation must nonetheless share with me at least a telescoped, compressed, and relativized perspective of 1948. Not that it is not hugely important to them, but simply that their emotional and perceptual stance cannot but be shaped both by their generational distance and by the immediacy of the socioeconomic settings and politico-administrative contexts in which they live. Reviewing the way in which 1948 has been narrated to date and how it has been related to subsequent institutional discourses and practices—by Palestinians—I am struck by the tyranny of the (male, class, and institution-dominated) nationalist narrative, and in particular by 255

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the narcissism of intellectuals [. . .] simplifying and homogenizing their experiences and obscuring the fact that they, too, have varied and layered memories, feelings, and even readings of 1948.23 Sayigh offers us a concrete conceptual framework for understanding the identity of later generations of Palestinians in terms of their postmemories of the past event (al-Nakba) and their current experience in exile. This framework can be seen in his self-reflexivity at the beginning of the passage, where he acknowledges the multi-layered perceptions of alNakba: ‘although my own image of 1948 has been softened’. In this description, Sayigh relates the specificity of his personal ‘softened image’ of al-Nakba to his own life circumstances. He also articulates the inevitable alterity of this ‘image’ for other Palestinians who, like him, were born after the event, yet who live in different circumstances and ‘had to contend with a much harsher aftermath in refugee camps or under Israeli occupation’. With respect to postmemory, the most significant sentence in Sayigh’s description is this: ‘Palestinians similarly born after 1948 [. . .] must nonetheless share with me at least a telescoped, compressed, and relativized perspective of 1948’. This observation holds the key to the imaginativediscursive framework through which the identity of post-Nakba generations of Palestinians can be assessed in relation to their postmemories of Nakba and their experiences of its action in the everyday of exile. Thus, for Sayigh, the ‘telescoped perspective’ of the catastrophe of 1948 exercised by post-Nakba Palestinians needs to be correlated with their current everyday lives. In the following sentence Sayigh goes as far as to undercut the grand narrative of Palestinian identity: Not that [Nakba] is not hugely important to them, but simply that their emotional and perceptual stance cannot but be shaped both by their generational distance and by the immediacy of the socioeconomic settings and politico-administrative contexts in which they live. Sayigh’s view is based not only on the sociocultural ‘male, class, and institution-dominated tyranny’ that governs the Palestinian national narrative, but also the ways in which this narrative has been intellectualized. For Sayigh, the intellectual practices concerned with the narrative of Palestinian cultural identity have often ‘simplified’ and ‘homogenized’ it by failing to take into consideration the narrative’s multifaceted articulations in the everyday lives of Palestinians: ‘I am struck by the tyranny [. . .] and in particular the narcissism of intellectuals.’ 256

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In the final passage, following the imaginative-discursive framework he has proposed, Sayigh reflects on what al-Nakba means for him personally in the present: When I return in my mind to the family house in Tiberias, I wonder what life might have been like had I [. . .] been born there, but conclude that I might in all probability have been displaced and diverted by other, unforeseen if more peaceable migrations [. . .] That I was unjustly and forcibly deprived of this birthright is undeniable, but at a personal level I like to derive black humour from the fact that the family house has since been turned into what is reputedly the best Chinese restaurant in Tiberias.24 Sayigh’s imaginative investment of al-Nakba is closely linked to his experience in the present. This can be seen in the way Sayigh’s imagination of loss of home (‘when I return in my mind’) leads him back into a concrete experience of loss, namely the denial of his birthright in Palestine: ‘That I was unjustly and forcibly deprived of this birthright is undeniable.’ Sayigh’s ‘black humour’ concerning the fact that the lost family house became a Chinese restaurant signifies that his absence from home is not a ‘peaceable’ migration. Sayigh’s articulation of his postmemory of alNakba, shifting the focus of his storytelling from his parents’ Nakba of 1948 to his own experience of this catastrophe in the present, becomes an ‘ongoing memory’ that frames and disperses a symbolic landscape of loss of place. By ‘ongoing memory’ I mean a memory that harks back to a traumatic originary event (al-Nakba) and is constantly reworked, reactivated by new events and rearticulated in new acts of memory. This ongoing memory exposes an imaginative geography and history that helps the subject intensify his or her sense of self as a Palestinian both individually and collectively.25 Similar conceptions of the postmemory of al-Nakba and the ways its dynamics bear on the identity of post-Nakba Palestinians are worked into stories I collected in Gaza in 2004. Here, for example, is the story of Yousef, a taxi driver living in Jabalia Refugee Camp, who left his hometown with his family during al-Nakba. This is how he describes what the catastrophe means to him today: Of course, I remember the story of my family and how they were driven out by Jewish war planes from Jora to Gaza in 1948. My father, while pulling the camel on which my mother sat with my newborn sister (Layla), was carrying me on his shoulders then. We live in the camp, and my children were born there too—their 257

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grandmother and I told them the story already. We still have ownership papers of our house in Jora—my kids know everything; not only where they live, but also where they come from and what they missed [. . .] We would return tomorrow, if they let us. Who would want to live in this small place? Our home and land in Jora were much bigger. Yousef not only remembers his parents’ stories but also interiorizes these postmemories as his own. Narratologically, this interiorization of postmemory is most obvious in Yousef ’s use of the pronouns ‘I’ and ‘we’. While in the first sentence of his story Yousef narrates his postmemory as ‘I remember the story of my family’, in the rest of the passage he inserts himself into the story, as when he says: ‘We live in the camp [. . .] We still have ownership papers of our house in Jora.’ Although it is clear that the ‘ownership papers’ of the lost house belong to his parents, Yousef ’s use of the pronoun ‘we’ transfers this loss to him and his children. Thus, instead of being a narrator of a story of loss of home, Yousef and his children become characters in this story. As in Sayigh’s account, in Yousef ’s too the absence of details concerning his parents’ experience of al-Nakba is compensated through a shift to his own and his children’s experiences in the refugee camp today. The temporal shift from postmemory to the present experience of exile is echoed in the narrative of Samah, a university student from Rafah Refugee Camp: Al-Nakba is a defeat for me. I know the past, because my present is one of military occupation and exile. I am a twenty-eight-year-old refugee from Demra, but I never saw it. I know about my home from parents and grandparents. This camp is not my place; it is the place of refugeeism, not my country. Demra is my land. In the camp, I was born imprisoned. I am imprisoned. Of course I want to return there—I don’t want to remain a refugee. For Samah, al-Nakba is a personal ‘defeat’. She links her knowledge of the past causally to her life in exile. The past loss of home manifests itself in and through her experience as a Palestinian ‘refugee’. Samah ‘know[s] the past, because [her] present is one of military occupation and exile’. The experience of al-Nakba is grounded in her ongoing experience of ‘imprisonment’ in exile. Finally, the most poignant depiction of the continuity of Nakba in the everyday of Palestinian exile is offered by Abdelaziz, from the Al-Shati refugee camp: 258

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For me, al-Nakba means many things. It is the story of my grandfather, father and mother when they lost our home in Nijd in 1948 [. . .] Since I opened my eyes on this world, I grew up seeing a strange occupying army with an Israeli flag that I don’t identify with whatsoever. The soldiers imprisoned me because I threw stones during the 1987 Intifada [the uprising] when I was seventeen years old. They stopped me from going to school; they ruined my future life since I was young. Now, I am grown up, married with kids, unemployed and can hardly feed my family nor know how my kids are still alive. To make a long story short, I and everyone I know are dying slowly as refugees. Slow death is all that Israel did, and still does, to us daily—that is my Nakba. Like the other storytellers, Abdelaziz’s conception of al-Nakba begins with his parents’ stories of the times when they lost their homes in 1948: ‘it is the story of my father, mother’. His postmemorial storytelling of alNakba exposes the everyday of Palestinian exile in contemporary terms. He describes al-Nakba as a condition of ‘slow death’ that has controlled his life from the moment of birth. What he calls ‘slow death’ manifests itself in the events of his life: ‘being born under occupation, imprisoned and barred from going to school, unemployed and can hardly feed his family’. These cruel conditions are presented as imposed colonial mechanisms that not only affirm the Palestinian subject’s postmemory of the past Nakba of 1948 but continue to determine his ongoing memory and experience of the catastrophe in present exile. Hence, we can now say, he identifies himself as mankoub. As Abdelaziz declares: ‘To make a long story short I and everyone I know are dying slowly as refugees. Slow death is all that Israel did, and still does, to us daily—that is my Nakba.’ Abdelaziz’s everyday Nakba brings me to my concluding remarks. In this chapter, I have argued for a reading of the oral accounts of al-Nakba as narratives. This is possible if we read them as both memorial and postmemorial modes of storytelling. We can do this by paying closer attention to the stories’ language, rhetoric and concepts than to their history and ethnography. Rather than analysing al-Nakba’s brute effects in the past, I have instead read the verbal signs of this catastrophe in the everyday of the mankoub. This textual, narrative and anachronistic reading is helpful to expose not only the multi-temporality of al-Nakba, but also the Palestinian subject’s experience of this multi-temporality in the present—an everyday experience that I have called an experience of ‘catastrophic time’. In conclusion, oral histories of subsequent generations of postNakba Palestinians expose a resoundingly present-orientated model of 259

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postmemory. At the heart of this model, subsequent generations of Palestinians take the position of the previous generations in terms of the effect of trauma of al-Nakba in their parents’ past experience. Most importantly, the distinction between memories of what the previous generations lived through in 1948 and what later generations experience today may become so blurred that the inter-generational continuity of loss of place can, in fact, be sustained in both memory and experience. This is so simply because the Palestinians’ loss of homeland, through their exile, did not stop. Hence, in the Palestinian case, the problem of the term ‘postmemory’ is not so much with memory but with ‘post’ which is by no means constitutive of the experience of catastrophe of subsequent Palestinian generations: they do not have just postmemories of al-Nakba. Rather, Palestinian cultural memory is diffuse: the past and the present are more closely bound up together than in other situations. Whereas the first generations of Palestinians have memories and experiences of the originating event of al-Nakba, second and third generations of postNakba Palestinians, although they did not experience this originating moment (1948), are still ‘inside’ the event itself living the catastrophe on a daily basis as mankoub subjects whose lands as much as lives are being persistently violated under Israeli occupation and in exile. Palestinian oral accounts, I have argued, serve as voices of experience for succeeding generations that trigger forms of visioning of the conflict and its histories and produce different understandings of Israel-Palestine in the present. The crucial demand on the interpreter, as I have attempted to show, is to locate and stress the Palestinians’ everyday experience of catastrophe. Taking this experience into consideration helps us to conceive the construction of Palestinian identity in the present as a multifaceted phenomenon, one that is difficult to elucidate with exclusive reference to 1948. The stories I have analysed suggest that the process of identity formation of Palestinians is determined not only historically by their loss of home during al-Nakba, but also and crucially by the ‘open-endedness’ of their catastrophic experience of this loss. In this way, reading oral accounts of al-Nakba becomes a practice of knowing how to read the imagining (or imaging) of the past without detaching it from the subject’s everyday of ongoing exile. Finally, this detailed reading of textual and audiovisual imaginings of loss of homeland and collective articulations of identity has important political implications and helps us to see the ongoing conflict in a new or different light. Each of these oral narratives demonstrates how the complex modes of memorial storytelling of al-Nakba function as an alternative discourse of Palestinian identity in exile. This alternative discourse not only challenges official versions imposed by dominant Zionist discourses 260

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but also tests the limits of literary and cultural criticism of the condition of Palestinian exile. Palestinian exilic narratives utilize postmemorial storytelling as a mode that scrutinizes different retellings and realizations of the same story or related stories of al-Nakba, so that they give coherence and meaning for the aftermath of that catastrophe as the ‘ongoing catastrophe’. Most importantly, postmemorial storytelling offers a cultural envisioning that calls on a specific notion of collective memory in narrative, not only as an assertion or testimony of the past Nakba but as a point of departure that exposes the repetitive quality of the past as well as the durability of this loss in the present. Current exile: this is where we are steeped in Palestinian narratives as specific representations of cultural memory in which the ongoing spatiotemporality of catastrophe appears particularly intense and urgent. Notes 1. For listings, documents and resources on Palestinian historiography of al-Nakba (especially oral history projects both inside Palestine and outside it), see, for example, the following initiatives by non-governmental organizations: BADIL (Resource Center of Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights): (accessed 14 September 2017); Palestine Remembered, (accessed 14 September 2017); and Nakba Archive, (accessed 14 September 2017). For relevant publications on Palestinian oral histories, see Salman Abu Sitta, The Atlas of Palestine 1948 (Palestine: Palestine Land Society, 2004); Elias Sanbar, ‘Out of place, out of time’, Mediterranean Historical Review 16/1 (2001), pp. 87–94; Susan Slyomovics, ‘Discourses on the Pre-1948 Palestinian Village: The Case of Ein Hod/ Ein Houd’, in Annelies Moors (ed), Discourse and Palestine (Amsterdam: Spinhuis, 1995), pp. 41–54; Susan Slyomovics, Objects of Memory: Arab and Jew Narrate the Palestinian Village (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998); Ted Swedenburg, ‘Popular Memory and the Palestinian National Past’, in Jay O’Brien and William Roseberry (eds), Golden Ages, Dark Ages: Imagining the Past in History and Anthropology (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 152–79; Ted Swedenburg, Memories of Revolt (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1995); Randa Farah, ‘The Significance of Oral Narratives and Life Histories’, in Rosemary Sayigh (ed), Al-Jana: The Harvest: File on Palestinian Oral History (Beirut: Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts, 2002), pp. 24–7; Randa Farah, ‘Western Sahara and Palestine: Shared Refugee Experiences’, Forced Migration Review 16 (2003), pp. 20–3. For a critical discussion of oral histories and methods and their challenges to collective memories in conflict situations, see Selma Leydesdorff, Surviving the Bosnian Genocide: The Women of Srebrenica Speak (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011). 2. For useful critiques on the problematics of ethnographic approaches to al-Nakba and of humanities and social science research in Palestine in general, see Salim Tamari, ‘Problems of social science research in Palestine: an overview’, Current 261

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Sociology 42/2 (1994), pp. 69–86; Salim Tamari, Social Science Research in Palestine: A Review of Trends and Issues’, in Riccardo Bocco, Blandine Destremau, Jean Hannoyer and Markaz al-Dirāsāt wa-al-Abh. āth ‘an al-Sharq al-Awsat. alMu‘ās.ir (eds), Palestine, palestiniens: territoire national, espaces communautaires (Beirut: CERMOC, 1997), pp. 17–40; Abbas Shiblak, ‘Residency status and civil rights of Palestinian refugees in Arab countries’, Journal of Palestine Studies 25/3 (1996), pp. 36–45; Jill Tansley, Adaptation in the West Bank and Gaza, Monograph Series No. 6 (Ramallah: SHAML, 1997); Rosemary Sayigh, ‘A house is not a Home: permanent impermanence of habitat for Palestinian expellees in Lebanon’, Holy Land Studies: A Multidisciplinary Journal 4/1 (2005), pp. 17–39. 3. My use of the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ follows Ilan Pappé in his description of the Palestinian condition of loss of home and exile. In his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Pappé demonstrates conclusively that the Zionist concept of ‘transfer’—a euphemism for ethnic cleansing—was, from the start, an integral part of a carefully planned colonial strategy and is at the root of today’s ongoing conflict in the Middle East. For Pappé, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine is represented most clearly in Israel’s persistent attempts to wipe out Palestinian heritage and cultural identity since 1948. See Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oxford: One World Publications, 2006). For critical studies on the Zionist concept of ‘transfer’, see also Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of ‘Transfer’ in Zionist Political Thought 1882–1948 (Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992); Rashid Khalidi, Under Siege: PLO Decision Making During the 1982 War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985); Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997); Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (London: Vintage, 1994), pp. 256–88; Edward Said, ‘On Jean Genet’s Late Works’, in J. Ellen Gainor (ed), Imperialism and Theatre: Essays on World Theatre, Drama and Performance (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 230–43; Philip Mattar, Encyclopedia of the Palestinians (New York: Facts on File, 2000). 4. See Mamdouh Nofal, Fawaz Turki, Haidar Abdel Shafi, Inea Bushnaq, Yezid Sayigh, Shafiq al-Hout, Salma Khadra Jayyusi and Musa Budeiri, ‘Reflections on Al-Nakba’, Journal of Palestine Studies 28/1 (1998), pp. 5–35. 5. For a more elaborate and detailed analysis of these personal interviews, see Ihab Saloul, Catastrophe and Exile in the Modern Palestinian Imagination: Telling Memories (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Sami Adwan, Efrat Ben Ze’ev, Menachem Klein, Ihab Saloul, Tamir Sorek and Mahmoud Yazbak, Zoom In: Palestinian Refugees of 1948, Remembrances (Dordrecht and Boston, MA: Republic of Letters, 2011). 6. Nofal et al. ‘Reflections on Al-Nakba’, p. 5. 7. Nofal et al. ‘Reflections on Al-Nakba’, pp. 9–14. 8. Nofal et al. ‘Reflections on Al-Nakba’, pp. 13–14. 9. Nofal et al. ‘Reflections on Al-Nakba’, pp. 16–19. 10. Nofal et al. ‘Reflections on Al-Nakba’, pp. 18–19. 11. Nofal et al. ‘Reflections on Al-Nakba’, pp. 19–23. 12. Nofal et al. ‘Reflections on Al-Nakba’, p. 19. 13. Marianne Hirsch, ‘Projected Memory: Holocaust Photographs in Personal and Public Fantasy’, in Mieke Bal, Jonathan Crewe and Leo Spitzer (eds), Acts of 262

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Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1999), pp. 3–24. 14. Hirsch: ‘Projected Memory’. 15. Marianne Hirsch, Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 22. 16. Hirsch: ‘Projected Memory’, p. 9. 17. Hirsch: ‘Projected Memory’, pp. 8–9 (Hirsch’s emphasis). 18. For further explanation of Hirsch’s conceptualization of postmemory, see Marianne Hirsch, ‘The generation of postmemory’, Poetics Today 29/1 (2008), pp. 103–28. For relevant studies on contemporary dynamics of Palestinian cultural memory, see Carol B. Bardenstein, ‘Trees, Forests, and the Shaping of Palestinian and Israeli Collective Memory’, in Mieke Bal, Jonathan Crewe and Leo Spitzer (eds), Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present (Hanover, NH: University of New England Press, 1999), pp. 148–68; Carol Bardenstein, ‘Transmissions interrupted: reconfiguring food, memory and gender in the cookbook-memoirs of Middle Eastern exiles’ Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28/1 (2002), pp. 353–87. 19. Ernst van Alphen, ‘Second-generation testimony, transmission of trauma, and postmemory’, Poetics Today 27/2 (2006), pp. 473–88. 20. Alphen: ‘Second-generation testimony’, p. 488. 21. Alphen: ‘Second-generation testimony’, p. 488. 22. Nofal et al. ‘Reflections on Al-Nakba’, pp. 20–1. 23. Nofal et al. ‘Reflections on Al-Nakba’, p. 22. 24. Nofal et al. ‘Reflections on Al-Nakba’, p. 22. 25. For similar conceptions of individual and collective Palestinian identity and ‘Palestinianism’ in relation to iconography, humour and mapping, see Chapter 1 by Abdul-Rahim Al-Shaikh and Chapter 2 by Chrisoula Lionis, in this volume.

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APPENDIX Invention, Memory, and Place Edward W. Said

Over the past decade, there has been a burgeoning interest in two overlapping areas of the humanities and social sciences: memory and geography or, more specifically, the study of human space. Both of them have spawned an extraordinary amount of interesting work, work that has in effect created new fields of study and inquiry. The concern with memory, for example, has branched out to include such increasingly prevalent forms of writing as personal memoirs and autobiography, which nearly every fiction writer of note has attempted, to say nothing of the outpourings of academics, scientists, public figures, and so forth. The national fixation on recollection, confession, and witness has run the whole gamut from public confession—as in the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal—to various studies of the meaning of collective memory, extended reflection and analyses of instances of it, plus numerous chronicles embodying it. I shall have more to say about that later. In addition, and somewhat on the margins, has been a serious, sometimes bitter inquiry into the authenticity of certain memories, as well as, at the other, calmer end of the spectrum, a remarkable academic analysis of the role of invention in such matters as tradition and collective historical experience. Some examples of intense and even anguished controversy are the following: Was Anne Frank’s diary really hers, or was it so altered by publishers, members of her family, or others in its published form so as to conceal the disturbances in her domestic life? In Europe there has been a great and often acerbic debate over the meaning of the Holocaust, with a whole range of opinions as to what happened, why it happened, and what it tells us about the nature of Germany, France, and several other involved countries. The celebrated French classicist Pierre Vidal-Naquet wrote a powerful book some years back called Assassins of Memory about French deniers of the Holocaust, and more recently the Papon trial in Bordeaux raised uncomfortable questions related not just to memories of the Occupation but the centrality of French collaborators with the Nazis and what it said about French selective memories of the Vichy regime. In Germany of course debate on the testimonials of the death camps and their philosophical as well as political meaning periodically receives new infusions of controversy, fuelled most recently by the publication of the 264

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German translation of Daniel Goldhagen’s book Hitler’s Willing Executioners. In the United States consider the anger provoked by representatives of the official culture and members of the government by the Smithsonian Institution—seen correctly as a sort of embodier of official memory in the country—in its unsuccessful attempts to mount exhibitions, one about the Enola Gay and another on the African American experience. Earlier there was a furor over an impressive exhibition at the National Gallery of American Art, America as West, which set out to contrast representations of the land, the Indian natives, and the conditions of life in the Western US during the 1860s with the way the land was being forcibly settled and the Indians destroyed, and the transformation of a once peaceful rural environment into a predatory urban one. Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska decried the whole thing as an attack on America even though he avowed that he himself had not seen the exhibit. In any event these controversies raise the question not only of what is remembered but how and in what form. It is an issue about the very fraught nature of representation, not just about content. Memory and its representations touch very significantly upon questions of identity, of nationalism, of power and authority. Far from being a neutral exercise in facts and basic truths, the study of history, which of course is the underpinning of memory, both in school and university, is to some considerable extent a nationalist effort premised on the need to construct a desirable loyalty to and insider’s understanding of one’s country, tradition, and faith. As is well known, there’s been a robust debate in the US on the matter of national standards in history, in which issues such as whether George Washington or Abraham Lincoln should be allowed more time than they have at present in history curricula have generated very angry arguments. Similarly, as Howard Zinn has suggested in his work, there has been skepticism expressed as to why the study of American history should glorify only the big deeds of big people and neglect to mention what happened to the small ones, the people who built railroads, worked the farms, sweated as laborers in the enormous industrial companies that lie at the heart of this country’s immense wealth and power. (He redresses this imbalance in his impressive People’s History of the United States, which has already sold well over half a million copies.)1 In a recent article he goes even further. Having been asked to participate in a symposium on the Boston Massacre, Zinn reflected to himself that he wanted to discuss other massacres because it seemed to me that concentrating attention on the Boston Massacre would be a painless exercise in patriotic fervor. There is no surer way to obscure the deep divisions 265

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of race and class in American history than by uniting us in support of the American Revolution and all its symbols (like Paul Revere’s stark etching of the soldiers shooting into the crowd). I suggested to the people assembled at Faneuil Hall (the wall around us crowded with portraits of the Founding Fathers and the nation’s military heroes) that there were other massacres, forgotten or dimly remembered, that deserved to be recalled. These ignored episodes could tell us much about racial hysteria and class struggle, about shameful moments in our continental and overseas expansion, so that we can see ourselves more clearly, more honestly.2 These remarks immediately transport us to the vexed issue of nationalism and national identity, of how memories of the past are shaped in accordance with a certain notion of what ‘we’ or, for that matter, ‘they’ really are. National identity always involves narratives—of the nation’s past, its founding fathers and documents, seminal events, and so on. But these narratives are never undisputed or merely a matter of the neutral recital of facts. In the United States, for example, 1492 was celebrated very differently by people who saw themselves as victims of Columbus’s advent—people of color, minorities, members of the working class, people, in a word, who claimed they had a different collective memory of what in most schools was celebrated as a triumph of advancement and the collective march forward of humanity. Because the world has shrunk— for example, communications have been speeded up fantastically—and people find themselves undergoing the most rapid social transformations in history, ours has become an era of a search for roots, of people trying to discover in the collective memory of their race, religion, community, and family a past that is entirely their own, secure from the ravages of history and a turbulent time. But this too has provoked very sharp debate and even bloodshed. In the Islamic world, how one reads the orthodox tradition (sunnah) is being debated, as are the questions of how one interprets stories about the Prophet, which are, basically, memories reconstructed by disciples and friends, and how one can derive an image of contemporary Islamic codes of behavior and law that is consonant and in accordance with those precious, early, in fact aboriginal, memories. Similar questions arise in interpretations of the Christian Gospels, as well as the Judaic prophetic books; these questions have a direct impact on matters of community and politics in the present. Some of this lies behind the much-touted controversy over family values that have been vaunted by political candidates, moral philosophers, and public scolds. To this whole matter of memory as a social, political, and historical enterprise has been added a complication, to which I referred above, 266

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namely, the role of invention. In 1983 two distinguished British historians Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger edited a book of essays by various other well-known historians entitled The Invention of Tradition.3 I won’t try to summarize the ideas in this subtle and rich collection except to say that what was being studied was the way rulers—social and political authorities in the period since about 1850—set about creating such supposedly age-old rituals and objects as the Scottish kilt or, in India, the durbar, thereby providing a false, that is, invented memory of the past as a way of creating a new sense of identity for ruler and ruled. In India, for example, the durbar—whose status as ‘tradition’ was a total fiction—was said to be a great ceremonial pageant designed to be implanted in the Indian memory though it served the British colonial authorities to compel Indians to believe in the age-old history of British imperial rule. ‘In Africa, too’, writes Ranger, ‘whites drew on invented tradition in order to derive the authority and confidence that allowed them to act as agents of change. Moreover, insofar as they were consciously applied to Africans, the invented traditions [such as compelling Africans to work as laborers on European gentlemen’s farms] of nineteenth-century Europe were seen precisely as agents of “modernization.” ’4 In modern France, according to Hobsbawm, the demise of Napoléon III’s empire and the emergence of a politicized working class as evidenced in the Paris Commune convinced the ‘moderate Republican bourgeoisie’ that only it could head off the dangers of revolution by producing a new kind of citizen, ‘turning peasants into Frenchmen . . . [and] all Frenchmen into good Republicans.’ Thus the French revolution was institutionalized in education by developing ‘a secular equivalent of the church . . . imbued with revolutionary and republican principles and content.’ In addition, there was ‘the invention of public ceremonies. The most important of these, Bastille Day, can be exactly dated in 1880.’ Thirdly, there ‘was the mass production of public monuments’, of two main kinds—images of the Republic itself such as Marianne—and images of the ‘bearded civilian figures of whoever local patriotism chose to regard as its notables.’5 In other words, the invention of tradition was a practice very much used by authorities as an instrument of rule in mass societies when the bonds of small social units like village and family were dissolving and authorities needed to find other ways of connecting a large number of people to each other. The invention of tradition is a method for using collective memory selectively by manipulating certain bits of the national past, suppressing others, elevating still others in an entirely functional way. Thus memory is not necessarily authentic, but rather useful. The Israeli journalist Tom Segev shows in his book The Seventh Million that the Holocaust was consciously used by the Israeli government as a way of 267

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consolidating Israeli national identity after years of not paying much attention to it.6 Similarly, historian Peter Novick, in a recently published study of the image of the Holocaust amongst American Jews, shows that before the 1967 war and the Israeli victory against the Arab states, American Jews paid very little attention to that appallingly horrible episode (and in fact tried consciously to deemphasize it as a way of avoiding anti-Semitism).7 It is a long way from those early attitudes to the construction of the Holocaust Museum in Washington. Similarly the controversy surrounding the memories of the Armenian genocide is fuelled by the Turkish government’s denial of its role. My point in citing all these cases is to underline the extent to which the art of memory for the modern world is both for historians as well as ordinary citizens and institutions very much something to be used, misused, and exploited, rather than something that sits inertly there for each person to possess and contain. Thus the study and concern with memory or a specifically desirable and recoverable past is a specially freighted late twentieth-century phenomenon that has arisen at a time of bewildering change, of unimaginably large and diffuse mass societies, competing nationalisms, and, most important perhaps, the decreasing efficacy of religious, familial, and dynastic bonds. People now look to this refashioned memory, especially in its collective forms, to give themselves a coherent identity, a national narrative, a place in the world, though, as I have indicated, the processes of memory are frequently, if not always, manipulated and intervened in for sometimes urgent purposes in the present. It’s interesting to contrast this more modern and somehow loosely malleable form of memory with the codified, rigorous art of memory in classical antiquity described by Frances Yates.8 Memory for Cicero was something organized and structured. If you wanted to remember something for a speech you were about to give, you imagined a building with all sorts of rooms and corners, and in your mind’s eye you subdivided the parts of the memory you wished to recall and placed them in various sections of the building; as you spoke you walked through the building in your head, so to speak, noting the places and the objects and phrases as you went along. That way order was maintained in the memory. The modern art of memory is much more subject to inventive reordering and redeploying than that. As for geography, or geography as I want to use the word, as a socially constructed and maintained sense of place, a great deal of attention has been paid by modern scholars and critics to the extraordinary constitutive role of space in human affairs. Consider, as an easy instance, the word globalization, which is an indispensable concept for modern economics. It is a spatial, geographical designation signifying the global reach of a 268

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powerful economic system. Think of geographical designations like Auschwitz, think of what power and resonance they have, over and above a particularly specifiable moment in history or a geographical locale like Poland or France. The same applies to Jerusalem, a city, an idea, an entire history, and of course a specifiable geographical locale often typified by a photograph of the Dome of the Rock, the city walls, and the surrounding houses seen from the Mount of Olives; it too is overdetermined when it comes to memory, as well as all sorts of invented histories and traditions, all of them emanating from it, but most of them in conflict with each other. This conflict is intensified by Jerusalem’s mythological—as opposed to actual geographical—location, in which landscape, buildings, streets, and the like are overlain and, I would say, even covered entirely with symbolic associations totally obscuring the existential reality of what as a city and real place Jerusalem is. The same can be said for Palestine, whose landscape functions in the memories of Jews, Muslims, and Christians entirely differently. One of the strangest things for me to grasp is the powerful hold the locale must have had on European crusaders despite their enormous distance from the country. Scenes of the crucifixion and nativity, for instance, appear in European Renaissance paintings as taking place in a sort of denatured Palestine, since none of the artists had ever seen the place. An idealized landscape gradually took shape that sustained the European imagination for hundreds of years. That Bernard of Clairvaux standing in a church in Vezelay, in the heart of Burgundy, could announce a crusade to reclaim Palestine and the holy places from the Muslims never fails to astound me, and that after hundreds of years of living in Europe Zionist Jews could still feel that Palestine had stood still in time and was theirs, again despite millennia of history and the presence of actual inhabitants. This too is also an indication of how geography can be manipulated, invented, characterized quite apart from a site’s merely physical reality. Simon Schama’s book Landscape and Memory chronicles the to-ing and fro-ing between specific geographical locales and the human imagination. Surely the most compelling aspect of Schama’s book is that he shows in dozens of different ways that forests, villages, mountains, and rivers are never coterminous with some stable reality out there that identifies and gives them permanence. On the contrary, as in the example he gives of his family’s original village in Lithuania, most of its traces disappeared; he finds instead through the poetry of Adam Mickiewicz how Jews and Poles ‘were snarled up . . . in each other’s fate’ despite his contemporaries’ belief that they were ‘necessarily alien to each other.’ Geography stimulates not only memory but dreams and fantasies, poetry and painting, philosophy (as in Heidegger’s Holzwege), fiction (think of Walter Scott’s Highland 269

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novels), and music (as in Sibelius’s Finlandia or Copland’s Appalachian Spring).9 But what specially interests me is the hold of both memory and geography on the desire for conquest and domination. Two of my books, Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism, are based not only on the notion of what I call imaginative geography—the invention and construction of a geographical space called the Orient, for instance, with scant attention paid to the actuality of the geography and its inhabitants—but also on the mapping, conquest, and annexation of territory both in what Conrad called the dark places of the earth and in its most densely inhabited and lived-in places, like India or Palestine. The great voyages of geographical discovery from da Gama to Captain Cook were motivated by curiosity and scientific fervor, but also by a spirit of domination, which becomes immediately evident when white men land in some distant and unknown place and the natives rebel against them. In the modern era Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe is the essential parable of how geography and conquest go together, providing an almost eerie prefiguration of historical figures like Clive and Hastings in India, or scientific adventurers and explorers like Murchison in Africa decades and decades later. These experiences enable complicated memories for natives and (in the Indian case) Britishers alike; a similar dialectic of memory over territory animates the relationship of French and Algerian accounts of the 130 years of French rule in North Africa. We should never have left or given up India or Algeria, say some, using strange atavistic sentiments like the Raj revival—a spate of TV shows and films like The Jewel in the Crown, A Passage to India, Gandhi, and the fashion of wearing safari suits, helmets, desert boots—as a way of periodically provoking nostalgia for the good old days of British supremacy in Asia and Africa, whereas most Indians and Algerians would likely say that their liberation came as a result of being able after years of nationalist struggle to take hold of their own affairs, reestablish their identity, culture, and language, and, above all, reappropriate their territory from the colonial masters. Hence, to some extent, we witness the remarkable emergence of an Anglo-Indian literature by Anita Desai, Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, and many others, reexcavating and recharting the past from a postcolonial point of view, thereby erecting a new postimperial space. It is easy to see the fact of displacement in the colonial experience, which at bottom is the replacement of one geographical sovereignty, an imperialist one, by another, native force. More subtle and complex is the unending cultural struggle over territory, which necessarily involves overlapping memories, narratives, and physical structures. No one has studied this more powerfully than the late Raymond Williams in his 270

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classic book, The Country and the City. What he shows is that literary and cultural forms such as the ode, the political pamphlet, and different kinds of novels derive some of their aesthetic rationale from changes taking place in the geography or landscape as the result of a social contest. Let me explain this more concretely. The mid-seventeenth- to eighteenthcentury genre of the country-house poem, with its emphasis on the house’s calm stateliness and classical proportions—‘Heaven’s Centre, Nature’s Lap’—is not the same thing in Marvell, Ben Jonson, and, later, in Pope. Jonson draws attention to the way the house was won from disturbing, encroaching peasant populations; Marvell in a more complicated way understands the country house as the result of a union between money, property, and politics; in Pope the house has become a sort of moral center; and later in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park it is the very embodiment of all that is benign and actively good in England. Property in all four writers is being consolidated; what we watch is the gradual triumph of a social dialectic celebrating the virtues and necessities of a propertied class, which itself seems to stand for the nation at its best. In each case the writer remembers the past in his or her own way, seeing images that typify that past, preserving one past, sweeping away others. Later writers, say, urban novelists like Dickens and Thackeray, will look back to this period as a sort of rural paradise from which England has fallen; the beauties of the field are replaced by the grimy, dark, sooty, industrial city. Both the retrospective image and the contemporary one, says Williams, are historical constructs, myths of the social geography fashioned in different periods by different classes, different interests, different ideas about the national identity, the polity, the country as a whole, none of it without actual struggle and rhetorical dispute.10 All of what I have been discussing here—the interplay between geography, memory, and invention, in the sense that invention must occur if there is recollection—is particularly relevant to a twentiethcentury example, that of Palestine, which instances an extraordinarily rich and intense conflict of at least two memories, two sorts of historical invention, two sorts of geographical imagination. I want to argue that we can go behind the headlines and the repetitively reductive media accounts of the Middle East conflict and discern there a much more interesting and subtle conflict than what is customarily talked about. Only by understanding that special mix of geography generally and landscape in particular with historical memory and, as I said, an arresting form of invention can we begin to grasp the persistence of conflict and the difficulty of resolving it, a difficulty that is far too complex and grand than the current peace process could possibly envisage, let alone resolve. 271

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Let us juxtapose some relevant dates and events with each other. For Palestinians 1948 is remembered as the year of the nakba, or catastrophe, when 750,000 of us who were living there—two-thirds of the population— were driven out, our property taken, hundreds of villages destroyed, an entire society obliterated. For Israelis and many Jews throughout the world 1998 was the fiftieth anniversary of Israel’s independence and establishment, a miraculous story of recovery after the Holocaust, of democracy, of making the desert bloom, and so on. Thus, two totally different characterizations of a recollected event have been constructed. What has long struck me about this radical irreconcilability at the origin of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is that it is routinely excluded from considerations of related subjects concerning ethnic or collective memory, geographical analysis, and political reflection. This is most evident in studies of the German catastrophe as well as of ethnic conflicts in former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Ireland, Sri Lanka, South Africa, and elsewhere. Take Germany first. There is little doubt that it is important to prevent assassins of memory from denying or minimizing the Holocaust; but it is also important not to forget to show the link, well-established in contemporary Jewish consciousness, between the Holocaust and the founding of Israel as a haven for Jews. That this link also meant the disestablishing of the Palestinians from their homes and farms is practically never stated, although for Palestinians it increases the agony of their plight: why, they ask, are we made to pay for what happened to the Jews in Europe by what was in effect a Western Christian genocide? The question never emerges out of the debate in or about Germany, even though it is directly entailed by such facts as the enormous amount of money paid by Germany to Israel in Holocaust reparations and has surfaced again in the claims against Swiss banks. I have no hesitation in saying, yes, Germany and Switzerland ought to pay, but that also means that Palestinians over the past fifty years whose own losses are staggering deserve a hearing, too, especially since to us these payments to Israel go to consolidate Israel’s hold not only on what we lost in 1948 but on the territories occupied in 1967. The Palestinians have never received even the slightest official acknowledgement of the massive injustice that was done to them, much less the possibility of staking material claims against Israel for the property taken, the people killed, the houses demolished, the water taken, the prisoners held, and so forth. There is also the complex, almost equally dense and far-reaching matter of Britain’s responsibility. What strikes me as more significant is the refusal in the Israeli official narrative to take account of the state’s complicity in and responsibility for the Palestinian dispossession. For years and years an assiduous campaign to maintain a frozen version of Israel’s heroic narrative of repatriation and 272

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justice obliterated any possibility of a Palestinian narrative, in large part because certain key components of the Israeli story stressed certain geographical characteristics of Palestine itself. Take the key notion of liberation: so strong was the story of Jewish independence and reemergence after the Holocaust that it became virtually impossible to ask the question, Liberation and independence from whom? If the question was asked it was always answered as liberation from British imperialism. Or, as the story got elaborated, it was defense against invading Arab armies that wanted to crush the young state. The Palestinians thus faded into the encircling and menacing obscurity of ‘the Arabs’, the fact that they were actual residents occluded and simultaneously denied. Perhaps the greatest battle Palestinians have waged as a people has been over the right to a remembered presence and, with that presence, the right to possess and reclaim a collective historical reality, at least since the Zionist movement began its encroachments on the land. A similar battle has been fought by all colonized peoples whose past and present were dominated by outside powers who had first conquered the land and then rewrote history so as to appear in that history as the true owners of that land. Every independent state that emerged after the dismantling of the classical empires in the post-World War II years felt it necessary to narrate its own history, as much as possible free of the biases and misrepresentations of that history by British, French, Portuguese, Dutch, or other colonial historians. Yet the fate of Palestinian history has been a sad one, since not only was independence not gained, but there was little collective understanding of the importance of constructing a collective history as a part of trying to gain independence. To become a nation in the formal sense of the word, a people must make itself into something more than a collection of tribes, or political organizations of the kind that since the 1967 war Palestinians have created and supported. With a competitor as formidable as the Zionist movement, the effort to rewrite the history of Palestine so as to exclude the land’s peoples had a disastrous effect on the quest for Palestinian self-determination. What we never understood was the power of a narrative history to mobilize people around a common goal. In the case of Israel, the narrative’s main point was that Zionism’s goal was to restore, reestablish, repatriate, and reconnect a people with its original homeland. It was the genius of Herzl and Weizmann to draft thinkers like Einstein and Buber, as well as financiers like Lord Rothschild and Moses Montefiore, into giving their time and effort in support of so important and historically justified a scheme. This narrative of reestablishment and recovery served its purpose not only amongst Jews but also throughout the Western (and even in some parts of the Eastern) world. Because of the 273

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power and appeal of the Zionist narrative and idea (which depended on a special reading of the Bible) and because of the collective Palestinian inability as a people to produce a convincing narrative story with a beginning, middle, and end (we were always too disorganized, our leaders were always interested in maintaining their power, most of our intellectuals refused to commit themselves as a group to a common goal, and we too often changed our goals) Palestinians have remained scattered and politically ineffective victims of Zionism, as it continues to take more and more land and history. Just how deliberate and sustained has been the assault on the history and consequently the dominant public memory of Palestine, and how much attention has been paid over the years to the reconstruction of Jewish history to suit the purposes of Zionism as a political movement, is made stunningly clear by the Scottish historian of the ancient Near East, Keith W. Whitelam, whose book The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History is of paramount importance. Not being myself a scholar of the ancient world generally, nor of ancient Palestine in particular, I cannot make a judgement about every one of the points that Whitelam makes; but I am able to judge what he says about modern scholarship on ancient Israel, and there I was very impressed with his careful, but nevertheless extremely audacious argument. In effect Whitelam is talking about two things: one, the politics of collective memory, and, two, the creation by Zionist scholars and historians of a geographical image of ancient Israel that is shaped by the ideological needs and pressures of the modern Zionist movement.11 As I suggested above, collective memory is not an inert and passive thing, but a field of activity in which past events are selected, reconstructed, maintained, modified, and endowed with political meaning. In her 1995 book Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition, the Israeli-American historian Yael Zerubavel shows how before the late nineteenth century the story of Masada was unknown to most Jews. Then in 1862 a Hebrew translation of the Roman sources of Masada in Josephus’s Wars of the Jews was published, and in a short time the story was transformed by reconstruction into four important things: ‘a major turning point in Jewish history, a locus of modern pilgrimage, a famous archeological site, and a contemporary political metaphor.’12 When General Yigael Yadin excavated Masada after 1948 the expedition had two complementary aspects: an archeological investigation and ‘the fulfillment of a national mission.’13 In time the actual place was the site of Israeli army ceremonies, a commemoration of Jewish heroism, as well as a commitment to present and future military skill. Thus was a dim, relatively unknown incident in the past reformulated consciously as a 274

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major episode in the nationalist program of a modern state; Masada became a potent symbol of the Israeli national narrative of struggle and survival. Whitelam presents a remarkably analogous picture of how the history of ancient Palestine was gradually replaced by a largely fabricated image of ancient Israel, a political entity that in reality played only a small role in the area of geographical Palestine. According to Whitelam, ancient Palestine was the home of many diverse peoples and histories; it was the place where Jebusites, Israelites, Canaanites, Moabites, Philistines, and others lived and flourished. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, however, this more complex and rich history was silenced, forced aside, in order that the history of invading Israelite tribes, who for a time suppressed and dispossessed the native peoples, became the only narrative worth considering. Thus the extinction of the indigenous population of Palestine in the late Bronze Age became an acceptable and gradually permanent feature of a sort of triumphalist Jewish history for scholars like W. F. Albright, the leading historian of ancient Palestine during the early twentieth century, and made it possible to silence native Palestinian history as it was supplanted by the history of the incoming Israelites. Albright goes so far as retrospectively to condone the destruction of the native inhabitants of ancient Palestine in favor of superior people: ‘From the impartial standpoint of a philosopher of history’, he says, ‘it often seems necessary that a people of markedly inferior type [that is, the ancient Canaanite Palestinians] should vanish before a people of superior potentialities [the Israelites], since there is a point beyond which racial mixture cannot go without disaster’.14 In its remarkably frank expression of racist attitudes this statement by a supposedly objective scholar, who also happened to be the most influential figure in modern biblical archeology, is chilling. But it suggests how in its desire to overcome obstacles in its path, even to the point of retrospectively condoning dispossession and even genocide, modern Zionism also imposed a sort of teleology retrospectively. Whitelam proceeds to show how scholars like Albright and many others went on in their writing to construct ‘a large, powerful, sovereign and autonomous . . . state [which was] attributed to its founder David’.15 Whitelam shows how this state was in effect an invention designed to accompany the Zionist attempt in the twentieth century to gain control over the land of Palestine; thus ‘biblical scholarship, in its construction of an ancient Israeli state, is implicated in contemporary struggles for the land’.16 Whitelam argues that such a state was far less important than its champions in the present day say it was: The invented ancient Israel ‘has silenced Palestinian history and obstructed alternative claims to the past’.17 By 275

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inventing an ancient Israeli kingdom that displaced Canaanite Palestinian history, modern scholars have made it nearly impossible for present-day Palestinians to say that their claims to Palestine have any long-term historical validity. Indeed such pro-Zionist scholars have gone on to assert that ancient Israel was qualitatively different from all other forms of government in Palestine, just as modern-day Zionists said that their coming to Palestine turned an ‘empty’ desert land into a garden. The idea in both ancient and modern cases is identical and of course violently contradicts the far more complex, pluricultural identity of the place. Whitelam is quite right to criticize my own work on the modern struggle for Palestine for not paying any attention to the discourse of biblical studies. This discourse, he says, was really a part of Orientalism, by which Europeans imagined and represented the timeless Orient as they wished to see it, not as it was, or as its natives believed. Thus biblical studies, which created an Israel that was set apart from its environment, and supposedly brought civilization and progress to the region, was reinforced by Zionist ideology and by Europe’s interest in the roots of its own past. Yet, he concludes, ‘this discourse has excluded the vast majority of the population of the region.’ It is a discourse of power ‘which has dispossessed Palestinians of a land and a past’.18 Whitelam’s subject is ancient history and how a purposeful political movement could invent a serviceable past that became a crucial aspect of Israel’s modern collective memory. When the mayor of Jerusalem a few years ago proclaimed that the city represented 3,000 years of unbroken Jewish dominance, he was mobilizing an invented story for the political purposes of a modern state still trying to dispossess native Palestinians who are now seen only as barely tolerated aliens. Along with the idea of Israel as liberation and independence couched in terms of a reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty went an equally basic motif, that of making the desert bloom, the inference being that Palestine was either empty (as in the Zionist slogan, ‘a land without people for a people without land’) or neglected by the nomads and peasants who facelessly lived on it. The main idea was to not only deny the Palestinians a historical presence as a collectivity but also to imply that they were not a people who had a long-standing peoplehood. As late as 1984 a book by a relative unknown called Joan Peters appeared from a major commercial publishing house (Harper and Row) purporting to show that the Palestinians as a people were an ideological, propagandistic fiction; her book From Time Immemorial won all sorts of prizes and accolades from well-known personalities like Saul Bellow and Barbara Tuchman, who admired Peters’s ‘success’ in proving that Palestinians were ‘a fairy tale.’ Slowly, however, the book lost credibility despite its eight or nine printings, 276

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as various critics, Norman Finkelstein principal among them, methodically revealed that the book was a patchwork of lies, distortions, and fabrications, amounting to colossal fraud. The book’s brief currency (it has since practically disappeared and is no longer cited) is an indication of how overwhelmingly the Zionist memory had succeeded in emptying Palestine of its inhabitants and history, turning its landscape instead into an empty space that, Peters alleged, was flooded in the middle 1940s with Arab refugees from neighboring countries attracted to the place by the hope of prosperity under Jewish settlers.19 I remember my rage at reading a book that had the effrontery to tell me that my house and birth in Jerusalem in 1935 (before Peters’s flood of ‘Arab’ refugees) to say nothing of the actual existence of my parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents, and my entire extended family in Palestine were in fact not there, had not lived there for generations, had therefore no title to the specific landscape of orange and olive groves that I remembered from my earliest glimmerings of consciousness. I recall also that in 1986 I purposefully published a book of photographs by Jean Mohr, After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives for which I wrote an elaborate text whose effect with the interconnected pictures I hoped would be to dispel the myth of an empty landscape and an anonymous, nonexistent people.20 All along then the Israeli story, buttressed both subliminally and explicitly with memories of the horrors of an anti-Semitism that ironically took place in an entirely different landscape, crowded out the Palestinian history taking place in Palestine and out of it because of Israeli geographical and physical displacement of the people. The justified feeling of ‘never again’, which became the watchword of Jewish consciousness as, for instance, the massively publicized Eichmann trial revealed the scope of the awfulness of the Holocaust, pushed away the deepening sense of the need for Palestinian assertion that was developing in that community. There is something almost tragically ironic about the way in which the 1967 war on the one hand intensified the assertiveness of a triumphal Israeli identity and, on the other, sharpened the need among Palestinians for organized resistance and counterassertion. Only this time Israel had occupied the rest of Palestine and acquired a population of almost two million people that it ruled as a military power (20 percent of Israel’s citizens are Palestinians). Newly excavated memories from the Jewish past emerged—the Jew as warrior, militant, vigorous fighter—and replaced the image of the Jew as scholarly, wise, and slightly withdrawn. The change in iconography is brilliantly chronicled by Paul Breines in his book Tough Jews.21 With the rise of the PLO, first in Jordan, then after September 1970 in Beirut, a new Palestinian interest arose in the past, as embodied in such disparate activities as organized historical research and the production of 277

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poetry and fiction based upon a sense of recovered history, formerly blotted out but now reclaimed in the poetry of Zayyat, Darwish, Hussein, and al-Qassem, in the fiction of Kanafani and Jabra, as well as in painting, sculpture, and historical writing such as Abu Lughod’s collection The Transformation of Palestine. Later work such as the compilations of Walid Khalidi—Before Their Diaspora and All That Remains—Rashid Khalidi’s study Palestinian Identity, Sabry Jiryis’s The Arabs in Israel, Bayan al Hout’s study of the Palestinian elites, Elia Zureik’s The Palestinians in Israel, and many others, all by Palestinian scholars, gradually established a line of dynastic descent, between the events of 1948 and before and after the catastrophe, that gave substance to the national memory of a Palestinian collective life that persisted, despite the ravages of physical dispossession, military occupation, and Israeli official denials.22 By the middle of the 1980s, a new direction had begun to appear in Israeli critical histories of the canonized official memories. In my opinion their genesis lay to some considerable extent in the aggravated, but close colonial encounter between Israelis and Palestinians in the occupied territories. Consider that with the accession to power of the right-wing Likud in 1977 these territories were renamed Judea and Samaria; they were onomastically transformed from ‘Palestinian’ to ‘Jewish’ territory, and settlements— whose object from the beginning had been nothing less than the transformation of the landscape by the forcible introduction of Europeanstyle mass housing with neither precedent nor basis in the local topography—gradually spread all over the Palestinian areas, starkly challenging the natural and human setting with rude Jewish-only segregations. In my opinion, these settlements, whose number included a huge ring of fortresslike housing projects around the city of Jerusalem, were intended visibly to illustrate Israeli power, additions to the gentle landscape that signified aggression, not accommodation and acculturation. The new trend in Israeli critical history was inaugurated by the late Simha Flaphan, but then continued in controversial scholarly monographs and books by Bennie Morris, Avi Shlaim, Tom Segev, Ilan Pappe, and Beni Beit Halahmi. Much of this work I believe was fuelled by the Palestinian intifada, which laid to rest the idea of Palestinian silence and absence. For the first time a systematic critique of the official version programmatically revealed the crucial role played by invention in a collective memory that had ossified into unyielding, almost sacralized, and, with regard to Palestinians, dehumanized representation. Far from Palestinians having left or run away because they were told to do so by their leaders (this had been the prevalent argument for the suddenly depopulated landscape in 1948), these historians showed that according to Zionist military archives there had been a cold-blooded plan to disperse 278

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and exclude the native population, spiriting them away so that Palestinians would not clutter Israel with their non-Jewish presence. Far from the Jewish forces having been a small, outnumbered, and truly threatened population, it was shown that these forces were greater in number than the combined Arab armies, they were better armed, and they had a common set of objectives entirely lacking among their opponents. As for the Palestinians, they were effectively leaderless, unarmed, and in places like Jerusalem—which I recall vividly myself, since I was twelve at the time—completely at the mercy of the Hagganah and the Irgun, whose undeflected purpose was to clear them out unequivocally, as we were indeed. And far from there being a policy of ‘purity of arms’, the stock-intrade phrase for Israeli military policy, there was a series of massacres and atrocities designed specifically to terrorize the greatly disadvantaged Palestinians into flight and/or nonresistance. More recently, the distinguished Israeli social historian Zeev Sternhell has revisited the official state archives to show with extraordinary force that what was presented to the world as a socialist democracy was not in fact that at all, but what he himself calls a nationalist socialism designed above all to create a new community of blood, to redeem the land by conquest, and to submit the Jewish individual to a collectivity of almost messianic fervency.23 Thus in fact Israel was profoundly antisocialist and, rather than encouraging individual rights and an egalitarian concept of citizenship, in fact created a theocracy with a rigorous limit to what the individual was and could expect from the state. The Kibbutzim—long heralded as a unique social experiment in egalitarianism and innovative sharing—were, says Sternhell, window-dressing, extremely limited and circumscribed in their membership (no Arabs were ever allowed to be members). Israel is now the only state in the world that is not the state of its citizens but of the whole Jewish people wherever they may be. Not only has it never had until the present any international boundaries, Israel also has no constitution, but a set of Basic Laws, one of which, the Law of Return, entitles any Jew anywhere the right to immediate Israeli citizenship, whereas Palestinians whose families were driven out in 1948 are allowed no such right at all. Ninety-two percent of the land is held in trust by an agency for the Jewish people; this means that non-Jews, especially Palestinian citizens of Israel who constitute a population of one million people and are almost 20 percent of the state, are simply forbidden to buy, lease, or sell land. One can imagine the outcry in the United States if land was only permitted to Christian whites, for example, and not to Jews or nonwhites. Thus the dominant pattern in thought about the geography of Palestine, for a millennium and a half inhabited by an overwhelming majority of 279

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non-Jews, has been the idea of return: to return to Israel for Jews who have never been there was to return to Zion and an earlier state from which Jews had been exiled. Carol Bardenstein notes in a sensitive study the way the same images of prickly pears, oranges, trees, and return thread their way into discourses of memory for both Jews and Palestinians. But the Jewish discourse eliminates from the landscape the former Palestinian presence: I had the opportunity to visit a number of sites of former Palestinian villages that have been variously reshaped through tree-planting and related JNF projects, in ways that would appear to promote ‘collective’, if selective, forgetting. If one visits the site of the destroyed village of Ghabsiyah in the Galilee, for example, upon closer scrutiny the trees and landscape themselves yield two very different and contesting narratives converging on the same site. One has to rely on landscape readings, because little else remains. What is most readily visible to the first-time visitor are the JNF trees planted on the site— the recognizable combination of pine and other trees that have grown over the past four decades in a manner that makes it seem as if perhaps that is all that was ever there.24 Let me note in a very brief conclusion what the interplay among memory, place, and invention can do if it is not to be used for the purposes of exclusion, that is, if it is to be used for liberation and coexistence between societies whose adjacency requires a tolerable form of sustained reconciliation. Again I want to use the Palestinian issue as my concrete example. Israelis and Palestinians are now so intertwined through history, geography, and political actuality that it seems to me absolute folly to try and plan the future of one without that of the other. The problem with the American-sponsored Oslo process was that it was premised on a notion of partition and separation, whereas everywhere one looks in the territory of historical Palestine, Jews and Palestinians live together. This notion of separation has also closed these two unequal communities of suffering to each other. Most Palestinians are indifferent to and often angered by stories of Jewish suffering since it seems to them that as subjects of Israeli military power anti-Semitism seems remote and irrelevant while their land is taken and homes are being bulldozed. Conversely most Israelis refuse to concede that Israel is built on the ruins of Palestinian society, and that for them the catastrophe of 1948 continues until the present. Yet there can be no possible reconciliation, no possible solution unless these two communities confront each’s experience in the light of the other. It seems to me essential that there can be no hope of peace unless the stronger 280

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community, the Israeli Jews, acknowledges the most powerful memory for Palestinians, namely, the dispossession of an entire people. As the weaker party Palestinians must also face the fact that Israeli Jews see themselves as survivors of the Holocaust, even though that tragedy cannot be allowed to justify Palestinian dispossession. Perhaps in today’s inflamed atmosphere of military occupation and injustice it is perhaps too much to expect these acknowledgements and recognitions to take place. But, as I have argued elsewhere, at some point they must. Acknowledgements

This text first appeared in the journal Critical Inquiry 26/2 (2000) and is reproduced by permission of the editor-in-chief, W.J.T. Mitchell, and Chicago University Press. Critical Inquiry 26 (Winter 2000) © 2000 by the University of Chicago. 0093-1896/00/2602-0009$02.00. All rights reserved. Notes 1. See Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (New York: Harper & Row, 1980). 2. Howard Zinn, ‘The Massacres of History’, The Progressive 62/8 (1998), p. 17. 3. See Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 4. Terence Ranger, ‘The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa’, in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 220. 5. Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Mass-producing Traditions: Europe, 1870–1914’, in Hobsbawm and Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition, pp. 271, 272. 6. See Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust, trans. Haim Watzman (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993). 7. See Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), pp. 146–203. 8. See Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966). 9. Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), p. 30. 10. See Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (London: Chatto and Windus, 1973). 11. See Keith W. Whitelam, The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History (New York: Routledge, 1996). 281

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12. Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 63. 13. Zerubavel, Recovered Roots, p. 63. 14. Quoted in Whitelam, The Invention of Ancient Israel, p. 83. 15. Whitelam, The Invention of Ancient Israel, p. 124. 16. Whitelam, The Invention of Ancient Israel, p. 124. 17. Whitelam, The Invention of Ancient Israel, p. 124. 18. Whitelam, The Invention of Ancient Israel, p. 235. 19. See Edward W. Said, ‘Conspiracy of Praise’, in Edward W. Said and Christopher Hitchens (eds), Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question (New York: Verso, 1988), pp. 23–31; Norman G. Finkelstein, ‘Disinformation and the Palestine Question: The Not-So-Strange Case of Joan Peters’s From Time Immemorial’, in Said and Hitchens (eds), Blaming the Victims, pp. 33–69. 20. See Edward W. Said and Jean Mohr, After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986). 21. See Paul Breines, Tough Jews: Political Fantasies and the Moral Dilemma of American Jewry (New York: Basic Books, 1990). 22. See Ibrahim Abu Lughod (ed), The Transformation of Palestine: Essays on the Origin and Development of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Evanston, IL.: Northwestern University Press, 1971); Walid Khalidi, Before Their Diaspora: A Photographic History of the Palestinians, 1876-1948 (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1984); Walid Khalidi (ed), All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992); Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997); Sabri Jiryis, The Arabs in Israel, trans. Inea Bushnag (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976); Bayan al Hout, Political Leadership and Institutions in Palestine, 1917-48 [Arabic] (Beirut, 1984); and Elia Zureik, The Palestinians in Israel: A Study in Internal Colonialism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Books, 1979). 23. See Zeev Sternhell, The Founding Myths of Israel: Nationalism, Socialism, and the Making of the Jewish State, trans. David Maisel (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998). 24. Carol Bardenstein, ‘Threads of memory and discourses of rootedness: of trees, oranges, and the prickly pear cactus in Israel/Palestine’, Edebiyât 8/1 (1998), p. 9.

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