Abstract
Mendelson-Maoz explores the ways in which Intifada-era novels critique the blurred political borders set between Israel and Palestinian Occupied Territories and analyzes their concept of space and ethics. In Hebrew literary works from the 1990s to the 2000s whether focusing principally on Israeli soldiers’ experiences across the Green Line, or exploring Israeli society itself, the theme of space is tied to the concept of borders. In many of these works, the border implies a transition from one moral and psychological existence to another, creating a physical, psychological and moral rift. In this liminal zone, the civil identity is frozen, and another identity is resuscitated—one that obeys other laws, that accord with male stereotypes projecting roughness and aggression, often on the verge of emotional dissonance and madness. Most interestingly, the question of border and national space is illustrated aesthetically. The literary works offer poetic alternatives of presenting and dismantling the borders, often creating deterritorialization—not just of the liminal space of the Occupied Territories, but also of the entire national space and sovereignty.
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Notes
- 1.
Adriana Kamp, “Ha-gvul ki’fney yanus – Merhav ve’toda’a leumit be-israel,” [Borders, Space and National Identity in Israel ] Teoria u’bikoret 16 (2000): 13–43.
- 2.
Zeli Gurevitz and Gideon Aranne, “Al ha-maqom,” [On the Place] Alpayim 4 (1993): 9–44.
- 3.
Kamp , “Ha-gvul ki’fney yanus,” 19.
- 4.
Oz Almog, The Sabra: The Creation of the New Jew, trans. Haim Watzman. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
- 5.
This is an ostensibly temporary situation, but the rhetoric that promises “calm” and “security” actually defines the occupation as an interim situation that can continue ad infinitum and thus represses the fact that it creates occupation. Hannan Hever, “Ten lo badranim – v’yanuach be-shalom,” [Give him Entertainers, and he will rest in Peace] in: Canoni v’populari [Canonic and Popular] (Tel Aviv: Resling, 2007), 193–208. See also: Adi Ophir and Ariella Azoulay , Mishtar zeh she-eino ehad [This Regime Which Is Not One] (Tel Aviv: Resling, 2008).
- 6.
Ophir and Azoulay , Mishtar zeh she-eino ehad, 26–27.
- 7.
Yitzhak Ben-Ner, Ta’atuon [Delusion] (Jerusalem : Am Oved, 1989); Roy Polity, Arnavonei gagot, [Roof Rabbits] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2001); Asher Kravitz, Ani Mustafa Rabinovitch [I, Mustafa Rabinovitch] (Bnei Brak: Sifriat Poalim -- Ha-kibbuts Ha-meuhad, 2004); Liran Ron-Furer, Tismonet ha-mahsom [Checkpoint Syndrome] (Tel Aviv: Gvanim, 2003).
- 8.
Yaniv Iczkovits, Dofek, [Pulse] (Tel Aviv: Ha-kibbuts ha-meuhad, 2007); A.B. Yehoshua , Friendly Fire, trans. Stuart Schoffman (New York: Harcourt Inc., 2008), first published in Hebrew: Esh yedidutit (Tel Aviv: Ha-kibbuts ha-meuhad, 2007); Ronit Matalon, Bliss, trans. Jessica Cohen (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003). first published in Hebrew: Sarah, Sarah (Tel Aviv: Am-Oved, 2000); Eshkol Nevo, World Cup Wishes (London, Chatto & Windus, 2010), first published in Hebrew: Misha’la a’hat yemina (Tel Aviv: Kinneret/Zmora-Bitan/Dvir, 2007).
- 9.
Ofra Meisels, “Likrat gius,” [Before Enlisting], in: Mitbagrim be’israel -- hebetim ishiyim. mishpahtiyim ve’hevratiyi [Adolescents in Israel – Personal, Family and Social Aspects], ed. H. Plum, (Even Yehuda: Rekhes, 1995), 177–200; Liora Sion, Dimoyei gavriut etzel lohamim: ha-sherut be-hativot heil raglim ke-teckes ma’avar mi-na’arut le-bagrut [Images of Manhood among Combat Soldiers: Military Service in Israeli infantry as a Rite of Passage from Youth to Adulthood] (Jerusalem : The Dayan Center for Social Science Research, The Hebrew University, 1997).
- 10.
According to Hever , acceptance of this basic assumption is a major attribute of popular literature on the Intifada. He contends that critical literature must remove itself from national moral framework, which he believes is based on dual morality ( Hever, “Ten lo badranim,” 196).
- 11.
Ben- Ner, Ta’atuon; Orly Castel-Bloom , Dolly City , trans. Dalya Bilu (London: Loki Books, 1997), first published in Hebrew (Tel Aviv: Zmora-Bitan, 1992); Michal Govrin , Snapshots , trans. Barbara Harshav (New York: Riverhead Books, 2007), first published in Hebrew: Hevzekim (Tel Aviv: Am-Oved, 2002).
- 12.
David Fishelov, “Megamot ba-shira bi’shnot ha-shmonim” [Trends in the Poetry of the 80’s,] Achshav 67/68 (Fall-Winter 2002–2003): 184–5.
- 13.
See also: Adia Mendelson-Maoz, “Hurled into the Heart of Darkness – Moral Luck and the Hebrew Literature of the Intifada.” Hebrew Studies 52 (2011): 315–339.
- 14.
Ben-Ner , Ta’atuon, 53–4.
- 15.
Christine M. Korsgaard, The Source of Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 102.
- 16.
Ben- Ner, Ta’atuon, 156.
- 17.
Castel-Bloom , Dolly City, 11.
- 18.
“There was a moment when I almost threw? the baby down. Ten times over, I checked that I was still holding him” (Ibid., 38–39).
- 19.
Ibid., 109.
- 20.
Ibid., 44.
- 21.
Adia Mendelson-Maoz, “On Human Parts – Orly Castel-Bloom and the Israeli Contemporary Extreme,” Novels of the Contemporary Extreme, eds. Naomi Mandel and Alain-Philippe-Durand (London and New York: Continuum, 2006), 163–173.
- 22.
The reference is to the borders of Israel on June 4, 1967, on the eve of the Six Day War . According to these borders Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, as well as East Jerusalem , are not part of Israel . A whole or partial Israeli return to the ’67 borders has been discussed in talks between Israelis and Palestinians , and still comes up in any context of the founding of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
- 23.
Castel-Bloom , Dolly City, 132.
- 24.
Ibid., 171.
- 25.
Ibid., 59.
- 26.
Ibid., 110.
- 27.
Hannan Hever, “Mapa shel hol” [map of sand] Teoria u’bikoret 20 (2002): 165–190.
- 28.
Govrin, Snapshots , 18, my italics.
- 29.
Ibid., 45.
- 30.
Lana is surrounded by refugees made up of Holocaust survivors, Palestinians and the refugees Lana devotes her architectural work to.
- 31.
Ibid., 284.
- 32.
Ibid., 40.
- 33.
Rosi Braidotti , Nomadic subjects : embodiment and sexual difference in contemporary feminist theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 36.
- 34.
Shlomit Rimmon-Kenan, “Place , Space, and Michal Govrin’s ‘Snaps hots’.” Narrative 17.2 (May 2009): 222.
- 35.
Govrin, S napshots, 114.
- 36.
Braidotti , Nomadic Subjects, 22.
- 37.
See also Rosi Braidotti , “Affirming the Affirmative,” Rhizomes 11/12 (Fall 2005/Spring 2006).
- 38.
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus (Minnesota: Continuum, 1987), 106.
- 39.
Ibid., 277.
- 40.
Luce Irigaray, This Sex which is not One (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1985), 140–141.
- 41.
Rosi Braidotti , “Nomadism with Difference: Deleuze’s legacy in a feminist perspective,” Man and World 29 (1996): 305–309.
- 42.
Elizabeth Grosz, “A Thousand Tiny Sexes: Feminism and Rhizomatics,” In Gilles Deleuze and the theater of philosophy, edited by Dorothea Olkowski and Costantin V. Boundas (NY: Routledge, 1994), 188.
- 43.
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus , 508.
- 44.
Levitan suggested examining “the Prozbul Writ, which was instigated by the Jewish Sages against financial shmitta , in sense of “tikkun olam” (repairing the world) because the shmitta is unrealistic.” And hence indeed “the utopia that her book [Govrin’s] proposes, despite its beautiful idea, is unrealistic, and there is no other alternative than to release it.” Amos Levitan, “Mah lishmot, mah le’ehoz?” [What to keep what to release] Iton 77 269 (2002): 34.
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Mendelson-Maoz, A. (2017). Land, Territory and Border: Liminality in Contemporary Israeli Literature. In: Elbert Decker, J., Winchock, D. (eds) Borderlands and Liminal Subjects. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67813-9_3
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