Vol. II. Issue. III September 2011 - The Criterion: An International ...

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www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English ISSN 0976-8165 power; its very materiality also its particular masculinity; but non-real space is also the effect of masculinist power, its lack of reality the sign of its feminization. [T]he distinction is a dualism which reiterates the constitutive relation between the masculine “Same” and the feminine “Other”. Through trying to fix difference, they fix the same. (Rose, “As If The Mirrors Had Bled” 59) On another plane, language is a proxy for power. Accordingly, those in power use language to disseminate truth selectively through a process of representation and concealment. When applied to the Israel/Palestine issue, this insight reveals how the interplay of representation and concealment permeates the exercise of power, and why there is little reason to expect any progress in the situation. This geopolitically unfolds the strategies of dominant powers which inhere within the productions of space that seek in order to confine “Others” to their “proper” places. When the history of Palestine is invoked, the idea of concealing the history and experiences of a people under occupation permeates the language of the powerful side on housing for Jewish settlers. The land is then rezoned for housing by Israeli planning authorities while the former users, invariably Palestinian farmers or shepherds, and the former uses are declared absent and nonconforming. So successful is the Israeli discourse of concealment on this issue that it has managed to convince American news organizations to refrain from mentioning the words “settlement” or “illegal” when referring to these installations. The preferred term has become “Israeli neighborhoods.” Housing built by the occupier in Palestinian Territory is actually but one element in a broader Infrastructure of domination referred to by the Jerusalembased, Israeli Committee to End House Demolitions as “The Matrix of Control.” From the occupation, to the settlements and the Wall, the entire apparatus behind the Matrix of Control is illegal under provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention and now most recently by the Opinion of the International Court of Justice. But, it is said that those who control the present control the past, and those who control the past control the future. As long as the powerful side in this conflict continues to exercise control over the present, it will conceal the history of the “Other” as a means of perpetuating its power into the future. In truth, the conflict in Israel/Palestine is not about the Infrastructure of Terror, but geopolitically it is about the fact that one group of people dominating and subjugating the other. It is about discursive rationalizations that justify such domination and render the people under domination invisible. It is only when these facts on the ground are dismantled, and the discourses justifying them cease, that there can be any starting point for justice in the region. In the case of the Palestinian plight, for instance, the emphasis focuses on geographical landscapes as representations and instruments of power, and the practice of “territoriality” which refers to the power of human agency to influence patterns of development in a place by asserting control over a geographical area. The question here is: How do territorial landscapes communicate the power of dominant groups to reorganize patterns of material life, politics, and culture in particular places, and how does landscape itself become an instrument of dominant groups to control subalterns in this process of transformation? The use of power to reshape landscapes is a historically enduring phenomenon in the making of modernity, present in both major routes to the modern world, capitalist development and nation-building. This geo-cultural landscaping reveals how the imperial and colonial business uses force to reshape the economic and physical landscape, and uses this corporate power to rearrange elements on the land. This focus on the interplay of power and landscape in Palestine shows that geography of fragmentation and dispossession in Palestine marks a Vol. II. Issue. III 134 September 2011
www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English ISSN 0976-8165 longstanding pattern of territoriality. In this pattern, dominant group --inspired by the discourses of entitlement to a “promised” land backed by the state -- re-imagines the landscape and recasts its socio-economic, demographic, and physical character to fit this imagined vision. According to Gary Fields landscaping is used by practitioners of power to “promote systems of segregation and control movements of groups designated as threats by virtue of their representation as “Other”” (2010, 63). In his essay, “Landscaping Palestine: Reflections of Enclosure in a Historical Mirror”, Fields argues, What is occurring on the Palestinian landscape is a program of re-making land and shifting populations that is different from the partitioning of space in the walled borderlands, the gated communities and the fortified enclaves. It is a landscape aimed at transforming the economy, demography, and culture of territorial space itself through a time-honored practice -- the practice of enclosure. (63-4) As a geographical concept, “landscape” is a social product (Cosgrove 13–14). It represents the outcome of human interaction with human subjects and material objects that reorders the surface of land. Yet, landscape is more than a plot of ground. Landscape can also be understood as a dynamic political process. “To “landscape”’ argues Fields “refers to a process in which human agency transforms what is occurring on land. Both product and process, landscapes are representations of the societies anchored to them and the relations of power that govern them” (“Landscaping Palestine”, 64). In this sense, the Palestinian landscape has been transformed by processes of geopolitical powers from an imagined place of “land without people” into a “redeemed territory” materialized in the creation of Israel. Modern geopolitical mapping has created a different set of imperatives for exercising power and maintaining the social order. In this new historical environment, power evolved into a more subtle but no less formidable mechanism by controlling individuals’ spatial environs. In this way, power as a form of control over human beings emerged for Foucault as a thoroughly spatial phenomenon (Philo 121–28). Although theorists of territoriality draw upon this insight from Foucault about the interplay of power and space, it can be broadened into two important ways: first by emphasizing the socially constructed character of geographical landscapes and the power of human agency in transforming geographical space, and second by acknowledging the role of subalterns in resisting power and thus helping shape territorial outcomes. Briefly, territoriality is human action exercised on space. It refers to the efforts of individuals or groups “to affect, influence or control people, phenomena, and relationships by delimiting and asserting control over a geographic area” (Sack 19). What emerges from the insights of Foucault and territorial theorists influenced by him is a narrative of power. The landscape of Palestine today is part of this ongoing spatial history in which dominant groups and subalterns confront one another in an effort to impose and defend competing visions of life on the land. This type of territorial ambition and narrative of power, which involve re-imagining the character of land and reinventing the notions of who is rightfully entitled to it, are part of a more generalized cultural process, described by Said as imaginative geography. Said’s concept of “imaginative geography” suggests, among many other things, the way actors with territorial ambitions reinvent meanings about the landscapes they covet and frame discourses justifying why they belong on, and are entitled to take control of, the landscapes they reinvent. Although acknowledging the incentives for territorial expansionism to be material, Said argues that the inspiration for controlling other places and people is rooted in culturally shaped attitudes and Vol. II. Issue. III 135 September 2011
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