Emancipating Space from the Conditions of Violence: The Broken Middle and Inaugurated Mourning in Israel and Palestine

<p>Spatiality in Israel and Palestine is mired in ongoing trauma and hardened differentiation. This thesis argues that spatiality must be reconfigured in order to break from a stagnated pattern of ongoing conflict. First, border lines become increasingly rigid, and come to enact a bordering practice that radically differentiates. Second, the site of the border itself offers opportunity for political possibility. Third, the spaces of violence must be subject to a process of mourning that enables emancipation from the conditions that would support ongoing violence. I draw upon the thought of Gillian Rose to re-articulate a notion of the border as a broken middle, and to set forth an approach to the spaces of violence that incorporates them into a process of inaugurated mourning. Re-articulating the border as a broken middle enriches the field of critical border studies which seeks to expand on the notion of the border as a site of potential connectivity and political or social possibility. A Rosean approach challenges the dualisms that a hardened border represents, persistently subjecting these dualisms to interrogation that undermines their rigidity. Re-configuring the spaces of violence through a process of inaugurated mourning gives expression to grief, and disentangles the organisation of space from ongoing violence, without forgetting past suffering. An inaugurated approach seeks a fuller and self-reflective understanding of the conditions of suffering; it works against retreating into a melancholic condition that would reproduce the conditions of violence. These arguments are developed through an exposition of projects by artist Francis Alÿs, and architect/artist collective Decolonising Architecture Art Residency. Through their propositional nature, these projects illuminate the possibilities of a critical approach to the production and re-configuring of political and social space.</p>