Visioning Israel-Palestine: Encounters at the Cultural Boundaries of Conflict

Description

In this interdisciplinary book, a group of international authors strives to cultivate a better future for the people of Israel-Palestine through recognition of the part that cultural products have played in the duplication of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While this conflict is one of the longest-lasting struggles over land and human rights in recent history, politicians and the media have largely reduced it to a series of debates over historical facts and expressions of violence. Its persistence, however, has also led to the manufacture of cultural products that challenge understandings of the conflict as a fight between two distinct peoples unified against each other. Contributors to Visioning Israel-Palestine analyse the content of such products alongside the work that they do within Israel-Palestine and in the Jewish and Palestinian diasporas. They largely draw on the legacy of nonconformist intellectual Edward Said, who saw culture as a participant in the perpetuation of the conflict, as well as a vehicle capable of leading the way towards its just resolution. The chapters in the volume consider Israeli and Palestinian films, art installations, street exhibitions, photographs and oral histories to expand the conflict’s historical imagination and nurture suitable cultural conditions to revitalise the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Cover page Halftitle page Dedication Title page Copyright page CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS SERIES PREFACE INTRODUCTION Encounters at the Cultural Boundaries of Conflict Cultural encounters Conflicting boundaries Cultural boundaries as diplomacy cultures Notes PART I PRODUCTS OF CONFLICT CHAPTER 1 A COUNTRY AS A MAP OF ITSELF A nomadic Palestinian? Part-ition I: the political history of the map Part-ition II: Cultural history in the map Part-ition III: The theoretical history behind the map A nomadic Palestine? Notes CHAPTER 2 LAUGHTER ‘IN BETWEEN’ TIME Humour and temporality Iconographies of ‘Palestinianness’ and ‘Palestinianism’ Humour in-between time Laughter as return to ‘ethnos’ Humour and the burden of proof Acknowledgements Notes CHAPTER 3 IMPOSSIBLE INTIMACIES Acknowledgements Notes CHAPTER 4 DREAMS OR NIGHTMARES ‘Over there’ And Europe will be Stunned—Tropes of Return between Israel and Poland in Three Conversations And Europe will be Stunned—the Artist And Europe will be Stunned—Poland/Israel in Venice And Europe will be Stunned—Earlier Work: Summer Camp , 2007 And Europe will be Stunned—Mary Koszmary/Nightmares And Europe will be Stunned—Mur i Wiez˙a/Wall and Tower And Europe will be Stunned—Zamach/Assassination 2017 Notes PART II PRODUCTS IN CONFLICT CHAPTER 5 SCANDAL! Notes CHAPTER 6 SHOWCASING CONFLICT Notes CHAPTER 7 VISIBILITY, PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE OCCUPATION Activestills Transporting appearances Contested visibility Conclusion Notes CHAPTER 8 AT HOME WITH ‘PALESTINE’ Post-war travel trends Israel’s post-war photographic culture Domestic encounters Performing photographs of the West Bank in Israeli households Acknowledgements Notes CHAPTER 9 POSTMEMORY AND ORAL HISTORY Inescapable pasts, persistent identities Mankoub beyond postmemory Notes APPENDIX Acknowledgements Notes BIBLIOGRAPHY LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS INDEX