Living with Contested Borders: The Case of Israel-Palestine
Presentations/Workshop by Revital Madar et alHow are borders experienced by those inhabiting a contested territory? To what extent do unresolved borders generate an inflation of borders, and where can we trace the implications of these borders in day-to-day experiences? What are the axes upon which we can locate the ongoing presence of a territorial dispute, beyond the existing borderlines?
This workshop will tackle these questions within the context of Israel-Palestine. Asking to think borders beyond formal conceptualizations and international relations, the workshop will offer an interdisciplinary examination of the question of borders and will address the working of violence, sexuality, art, language, race, nationality, class, gender and ethnicity on both external and interior borders within Israel-Palestine.
The first session will discuss the following subjects: linguistic borders, violence on the borders, the production of identities in frontier areas, and the presence of borders in the works of Israeli-Jewish and Israeli-Palestinian artists envisaging life after the conflict.
The second session will address the following subjects: borders within the LGBT and queer community in Israel, trans activism in Israel, the implications of the current borders on the intimate life of couples of Israeli-Jewish women and Palestinian men, and the way in which Israel’s contested borders reflect the limitation over different emotional expressions of Palestinians.
The closing session of the workshop will be a roundtable discussion. This session will discuss the results of the workshop, and will also ask how the different case studies can contribute to our understanding of the border as an analytical tool. The roundtable will be chaired by Muzna Bishara.
Revital Madar receives a scholarship from ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius within the program "Trajectories of Change" that focuses on societies in transformation.
