Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Sanctities6





Sanctities,
blasphemies and the (Jewish) Nation:


Commemorative
Inscriptions in a National Memorial Site in Israel





Chaim
Noy





Prologue


In
a recent annual meeting of the Israeli Anthropological Association,
an accomplished anthropologist and I were discussing my recent
ethnographic research at the Ammunition Hill National Commemoration
Complex (West Jerusalem, Israel). The complex is dedicated to the
memory of soldiers who died in the Jerusalem Front during the 1967
war. Shortly before the meeting took place, I spent a month at the
site, studying commemoration settings and practices, with a focus on
the site’s impressive visitor book. The colleague assertively
argued that, “the heydays of the Ammunition Hill are long
behind us,” and that the site is rundown and ill-kempt (two
points with which I generally agree). With specific respect to the
visitor book, he heatedly argued with noticeable disdain, “I
know what’s going on there. It’s a shame. Delinquent
youths from nearby neighborhoods and other passers-by come there and
masturbate on the book. It’s filthy!”


This
reaction puzzled me. While I know that some bodily practices and
secretions (which he also mentioned) are sometimes viewed as dirty
and impure , the coarse symbolic conjunction between memorialism and
autoerotic practices took me by surprise. It was clear, however, that
the anthropologist was arguing for a metonymic relationship between
the commemorative book and the commemorative site, and that both were
being desecrated; that instead of being sites of consecration that
commanded respect to those who sacrificed their lives for the nation,
they were sites of violation. Masturbation and bodily secretions were
employed as animated, embodied illustrations of the degradation of
the commemoration site(s) during the last years, and of degrading
things that can be done on/to commemorative surfaces.


In
what follows, no further reference to autoerotic bodily practices
will be made. I opted to open with this exchange because it reveals
some of the symbolic tensions between sanctity of places and spaces,
and specifically places of/for inscribing, on the one hand, and
various desecrations, on the other. These tensions evince the
dialectics between sanctities and blasphemies, which, though common,
are infrequently minded. In the sections that follow, I will briefly
describe the theoretical background regarding the linkage between
sacredness and nationalism, which is derived from Robert Bellah’s
highly influential notion of “civil religion” . Then I
will describe the ways that the institution of the Ammunition Hill
constructs sacred places and surfaces of national commemoration, and
complementarily, the various ways and practices through which these
places and surfaces are occupied and used by visitors, namely visitor
book entries that affirm and violate, adhere and desecrate the sense
of scarceness and solemnity bestowed by the site.





Ethno-national
civil religion and sacred national commemoration in Israel


According
to Bellah , civil religion concerns “[t]he religious dimension
that exists in the life of every nation through which it interprets
its historic experiences in the light of its transcendental reality”;
it is—as he famously argued with regards to the United
States—the “genuine apprehension of universal and
transcendent religious reality as seen in or, one could almost say,
as revealed through the experience of the American people” .
Bella’s concept was influential because it put a critical
mirror in the face of republican nationalism, indicating that nations
abundantly borrow symbols and rituals from religion, which they then
employ in order to mobilize citizens in ways that are uncannily
similar to the powerful institutions which they suggested to replace,
namely the church.


While
the concept of civil religion originated with observations of
national rituals and memorials in the United States, it has been
fruitfully and comparatively employed in other countries and
societies. With specific regards to Israeli national culture, Liebman
and Don-Yihya’s initial work revealed the unique synergy
between traditional Jewish symbolism and the ideological symbolic
apparatus that aims to mobilize and consolidate the Jewish citizens
of the State of Israel. In their comprehensive review, Liebman and
Don-Yihya observe that, “Zionist-socialism was a religious
surrogate,” and that “[t]he major symbols of
Zionist-Socialism, its myths and ceremonies, were laden with
traditional motifs and representations.” The authors candidly
admit to the cultural hues of this intense state of affairs, as they
point put that, “[i]t is almost impossible to convey in
English, especially to anyone unfamiliar with Hebrew, the elaborate
and intricate usage of traditional Jewish terminology in
Zionist-socialism” .


Nowhere
in Israel is this fusion more evident and more powerful than in the
consecration of national sacrifice and the celebration of militarism.
Numerous national rituals, ceremonies, days of commemoration, and
memorial sites and spaces celebrate the Zionist fusion of
militaristic nationalism, through the use of symbols and rituals of
consecration. During the last two decades, a sizable body of
research, mainly within the disciplines of sociology, anthropology
and political science has explored these assorted sites, rituals and
events. From the National Days of Commemoration and Independence to
commemorative road signs, and from archeological sites that have
turned cornerstones in the national(ist) ethos to toddlers’
songs and ceremonies, this body of research documents Israeli
society’s “profound engagement” with commemoration
, amounting to “a national cult of memorializing the dead”
.



While Bellah’s concept was especially productive in
stimulating research of hegemonic and institutional (“top
down”) practices, plenty of room was left for examining
people’s actual ways of experiencing, embodying and
participating in the rituals, how people perform practices of
national sacredness and consecration, and—when this should be
the case—also how they experience and perform practices of
protest and violation.






Ethnography
of inscribed commemoration



The Ammunition Hill Complex was inaugurated in 1975, honoring the
Israeli soldiers who died in the battle that took place there and in
the Jerusalem Front during the 1967 War. The site celebrates the
“liberation” of East Jerusalem and the “unification”
of the city. The complex comprises of several spaces and structures,
including an outdoor space sprinkled with monuments and national and
military symbols, located between the original trenches and bunkers
where the fighting took place, and an indoor museum.



Wholly devoted to commemoration, the Ammunition Hill Museum is
constructed as a typical “national-militaristic shrine,”
which ideologically and materially embodies Israel’s “cult
of the dead” . The museum’s physical structure is
half-sunken, dimly lit, and built of local (“Jerusalemite”)
stone—all of which produce an impression of authentic war
trenches and an atmosphere of somberness and remembrance. Many images
and representations of the Ammunition Hill battle and the campaign
over Jerusalem are presented, and the inner spaces are steeped in a
venerated atmosphere created by a perfusion of symbols and icons. The
display consists mostly of discursive devices that serve
commemorative aims, such as the Golden Wall of Commemoration, where
the names of those who fell in the battle for Jerusalem are engraved,
a book-like device of which pages are made of steel, that allows
visitors to learn about the soldiers who died, and a short film about
the battle, which is narrated in the (male) first body and is infused
with a combination of machismo, heroism, and grief. Other discursive
artifacts include soldiers’ letters, personal and war journals,
autographs and more.



The ethnography I conducted in the museum took place in the summer
and autumn of 2006, and included observations and interviews.
Demographically, the observations indicated that the visitors were
either (local) Jewish Israelis doing sightseeing in Jerusalem, or
Ultra/Orthodox Jewish tourists-pilgrims, mostly from North America,
visiting Zionism’s “holly sites.” These
tourists-pilgrims were usually on planned tours to Israel, organized
by the Jewish Agency, the Taglit Project and similar organizations
promoting Zionism.


The
research’s focus was on the site’s impressive visitor
book, where commemorative entries are inscribed. Two volumes supply
the dataset presently examined. These volumes were chosen because
they were the most recent ones to be completed, and because they are
typical of the Ammunition Hill visitor books in all respects: each
contains 100 pages, took between one to two years to fill (the first
volume between May, 2003 and June 2005, and the second between June
2005 and July 2006), and includes over 1,000 entries. Given this
considerable number and the location of the books, they provide a
representative sample of visitors’ inscribed actions at a
symbolic site. Most of the entries in the books are written in Hebrew
(50%) and the rest are mostly in English (45%, but also in French,
Spanish, Russian and more).


The
entries were examined in light of the performative appreciation of
the book’s function, whereby it is viewed as a communicative
medium that facilitates inscribed performances. In the analysis of
the entries, I avoided employing rigorous procedures (such as
content/discourse/text analyses of sorts), and preferred a contextual
reading that enjoys sensitivities promoted by the fields of
(critical) discourse analysis and multimodality studies . These
sensitivities promote a semiotics wherein inscriptions correspond
with but at the same time are also part of the material settings or
ecology within which they are performed.




Institutional
construction: The visitor book as a sacred Jewish stage


The
Ammunition Hill commemorative visitor book serves as a sacred
stage
that invites inscribed performances of participation in the
Zionist ethno-national civil religion. While I have elsewhere argued
for a performative view of this book , I propose that the book
functions as a stage insofar as it is construed by its users as a
consecrated Jewish media. In other words, the semiotics of
performance, on the one hand, and Jewish symbolism surrounding
national commemoration, on the other, are brought to the fore as the
notions of “sacred” and of “stage” become
mutually informing. This unique condition is attained by a number of
contextual(izing) framing cues , by which the sacred function and the
national-performative function are joined, materially and
symbolically.


First,
while visitor books are typically located near sites’ and
attractions’ point of exit, where they allow visitors to
recapitulate their experiences and comment on their overall visit, at
the Ammunition Hill Museum the book is located in one of the
innermost halls. It is positioned in the hall that is near the Golden
Wall of Commemoration and
the eternal flame, where a low and solemn voice of a male narrator
continuously recites the names of the fallen soldiers, their military
affiliations and ranks, praising the beauty and innocence of their
youthfulness. This unique location, inside the museum’s
commemorative “holy of holies,” endows the book with the
semiotic status of a sacred device that is an organic part of the
museum’s authentic commemorative exhibit. Conceptually, the
book’s unique location is the complete opposite of the typical
location of visitor books, because it invites acts of ideological and
emotional participation in a national rite, rather than reflections
on a completed visit.


Second,
the book’s framing as a scared stage is further augmented by
the psychical structure on which it rests. The book is installed on a
large and impressive structure, consisting of two columns of black
steel, each of them about one meter thick (Figure 1 below). The
shorter column functions as a pedestal on which the book rests, and
beside it is another pillar some four meters tall. The pedestal is
made of thick and impressive wood, giving the book’s platform a
particularly respected appearance. The entire structure rests on a
base that is slightly elevated from the floor, so that those wishing
to read or write in the book must step up and enter a specially
designated—elevated—zone.





Figure
1: Book and hall: Solemn national spaces




Again,
the sacred function of the book is cued. The special construction
cues a sacred function, because it suggests that the book is not a
bureaucratic document that is meant to capture information about
visitors (names, dates of visit, etc.), nor even impressions
regarding the visit, but a cherished medium that invites ritualistic
acts in which visitors may engage in situ as part of their embodied
participation in national commemoration. This framing is further
augmented by the fact that the book is the central exhibit in the
hall where it is located (see Figure 1, above). This arrangement,
too, frames the book as a unique medium, which demands special
attention on behalf of the visitors.


Note
that because the book is located as in a special public space inside
the museum, the entries visitors inscribe in it immediately become
elements of the site’s commemorative (Jewish)
display
. Here is a transformative function, where individual
inscriptions are instantaneously granted a public nature and become
collective acts of embodiment of the commemorative ideology at the
site.


Third,
the metonymic association between the tangible device of the book and
the intangible ideology of ethno-national commemoration is
established not only through the spatial positioning of the book, but
is also reiterated from “within”: through the book’s
pages and their design. In terms of materiality, the book is a heavy
and sizable volume that includes 100 thick pages made not of paper
but of parchment. The size and material of the book’s pages
offer a point of interface between text and texture, where inscribing
practices are granted a particular embodied sense. In terms of visual
design, each of the book’s pages is printed with a vertical
line of four large symbols (Figure 2, below). These include (in
descending order) the symbol of the State of Israel (the Menorah or
candelabrum), the symbol of the City of Jerusalem (a lion), the
symbol of the Israeli army (a sword and olive branch in a Star of
David), and the logo of Ammunition Hill (three arches). These symbols
are repeated on large flags that hang near the installation, and
correspond with other ethno-national and military emblems that are
profusely exhibited throughout the site. They reiterate the
connection between the ethno-national sanctity of the spaces/stages
of the museum as a whole, and the same with regards to the
spaces/stages of the visitor book, stressing the tripartite bond
between Zionism, Judaism and militarism.


The
contextualizing framing cues that I briefly described suggest that
the book can be conceptualized as a sacred public media, a stage,
which serves to embody Zionist ethno-national ideology. First, due to
the symbolic and material ways that the book is framed (its
potentialities) and the populations that can and do access it (its
usage)—recall that Jews exclusively visit the site—the
pages of the visitor book embody exclusive ethno-national Jewish
spaces
. Moreover, the materiality of the book and the
interactional possibilities that it offers index traditional Jewish
practices. The respected pedestal on which the book lies, which
demands readers and writers to stand or to lean, the book’s
parchment pages, which clearly echo the material of the Jewish Sepher
Torah
(Torah Book), and the elevation of the entire space
surrounding it—all are symbolic, connoting Jewish acts of
reading, or literally ascending to the Torah Book (Alyah laTorah).
At the same time, these qualities all offer a physical setting on
which Jewish practices can be observed and performed .





Figure
2: Sacred text(ture)s: Logos and inscriptions on parchment





Finally,
the nature of the object of the visitor book and of much of the rest
of the museum display, concern literacy related objects and
activities
. In fact, the largest category of exhibits in the
museum consists of textual objects. This detail is not coincidental
and suggests that the site holds a particular textual
ideology. The museum’s visitor book is such a central
device because it embodies the site’s textualist ideology, and
as such it does not only absorb meaning (in the form of visitors’
entries), but also projects it: its presence in situ says something
about the site and its literacy-related orientation.


There
are obvious reasons why literacy would receive prominence in this
museum. First and foremost, because more than any other element
language, i.e. Hebrew, can conjure “traditional [Jewish] motifs
and representations” . Further, presenting handwritten
documents is an effective way of claiming authenticity. In
tourism in general, handmade products have a special value because
they index their creators, and handwritten products are no exception.
Notice that in Sabra (native Israeli) culture, where informal and
un-institutionalized modes of communication, such handwriting, are
highly esteemed as “authentic,” this quality enjoys a
particular cultural accent . Third, literacy in general and
specifically the association to Jewish symbolism serve to construct
an image of the moral Israeli; after all, what is commemorated
at the site is a battle, an instance of institutionalized brutality
and violence. For the Sabra worldview, which aspires to liberalism
and humanism, these events suggest a moral issue that requires an
adequate resolution. Literacy here tells that the warriors
commemorated are portrayed as literate and educated; they were “men
of the sword,” but also “men of the pen” (savage
but noble, etc.). Forth and finally, from the perspective of national
identity, literacy of course brings to mind Anderson’s famous
work, which showed the effects of print on the creation of imagined
communities of nationhood stretching across large distances. With
regards to the Ammunition Hill visitor book, the spread, which in
Anderson’s work is geographical, is temporal: different people
arrive at the same place yet in different times.





Inscribed
performances: Sanctities and blasphemies


The
fact that the spaces of the museum and of the visitor book therein
are institutionally cued so as to elicit sacredness and gravity, does
not necessarily imply that visitors—construed as
users/consumers—indeed understand these cues or comply with the
ideological agenda they promote. The fact is that only a third of the
visitors who arrive at the visitor book hall approach it, and about
10% of these chose to inscribe in it. Hence the majority does not
respond to the invitation and simply pass on the opportunity offered
by the book. These findings are actually not surprising when
considering the observations, which indicate that typical of museum
goers, many visitors to the Ammunition Hill site are sometimes in a
hurry, tired, bored, preoccupied with social interactions (within
their groups or families) or otherwise disinterested.


That
been said, the book overflows with inscribed acts of consecration, in
the shape of commemorative visitor book entries that manifest
characteristics of religious language . This sense of profusion is
intentional, and results from the inscriptions’ enduring
nature, which grants the book the quality of an accumulative medium:
new entries are added to older ones and so on. The first illustration
(Example 1, below), was chosen because it is characteristic of
normative entries in the book, i.e. entries that employ the
sacred register of national commemoration with the aim of
accomplishing a commemorative performance. The entry is written in
Hebrew, and is presented in its original layout.





Example
1





“In
their death they commanded us to live”


Thanks
to the courageous fallen [soldiers] on


Ammunition
Hill, we and our children can


stand
here presently in unified


Jerusalem.


Holly
are these men.


The
Shiffman Family


Hadera


19.10.05





This
entry is typical of normative, i.e. confirmative entries, because it
affirms the ideological agenda of the national militaristic heritage:
it repeats the transcendent tenets of Zionist ethno-national civil
religion, in its commemorative facet, namely the (casual) connection
between past and present (and future) and in this case, the
justification of the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem (and more
broadly, of the entire West Bank). In this and in other entries, the
(mythic) past is populated by sacrificial death, which enables life
in the present to flourish. Therefore the dedication on behalf of
those living—through remembrance and commemoration—to
those who fell.


It
is not only the aims that are at stake here, but also the means,
which are conveyed confirmatively: the visitors’ inscribed
performance conveys that they have understood and internalized the
sacred register of commemoration. This is conveyed lexically, through
the choice of words, such as “Holly,” and by using
reference (citation, paraphrasing, etc.) to the discourse of
commemoration presented at the site. The entry’s opening
sentence is a direct quote (specifically marked as such by the
inscribers). Other varieties of sacred discourse make reference to
the pool of ethno-national(ist) idioms and icons, which include such
expressions as, “May Their Memory be a Blessing,” “Next
Year in Jerusalem,” “Jerusalem of Gold,” “For
the Glory of the State of Israel,” and icons such as the Star
of David and the Menorah (the Jewish candelabrum). We are reminded
that in order for performance to be effective, i.e. performative,
some aspect of repetition of authority should be exercised . Further,
the personal expression of idioms and icons, which represent “canonic
language,” is an essential aspect of religious expression and
experience .


Another
common stylistic feature which serves to mark the entry as
ritualistic and scared, concerns a direct address to the dead
soldiers. Entries that open or close with expressions such as,
“[T]hank you for dying for the Land of Israel,” are also
common in these book . In all of these cases, inscribing entries
facilitates the assumption of a particular “inhabitable
specking role” (or inscribing role), through which
sanctification is accomplished . Also, note that the entry is not
preceded by the acronym “bh” or “bsd
(In God’s Help), which typically precedes entries written by
Observant Jews. This means that the inscribers were most likely not
Observant Jews, which delineates the fact that when it comes to
national commemoration, the sacred register is specifically employed.


Confirmative
entries amount to the majority of inscriptions in the commemorative
visitor books. Yet leafing through these book’s pages clearly
reveals acts of violation and desecration. While statistically,
violating entries amount to less that 4% of the overall number of
entries, they are salient because they express critique rather than
admiration and affirmation, or, in the context of civil religion,
performances of blasphemies rather than sanctities. Also, they are
highly visible because the laws of saliency of this stage concern not
only sheer (quantitative) distribution, but also visibility
(iconicity). The next illustration (Example 2, Figure 3, below), is
of a Hebrew text that is inscribed on the space of an entire visitor
book page (which is usually occupied by 6-10 entries), a fact which
clearly grants it visual saliency.





Example
2





Bsd


Boo
Sharon


who
made life bitter


for
Haredim [Ultra-Orthodox Jews]


and
[one] need[s] to blow up his


belly
with a needle.


From
Ben Ezra





Figure
3: Boo Sharon





The
mention of the name Sharon refers to Israeli prime-minister at the
time (around May, 2005), Ariel Sharon. Publicly expressing a desire
to stick a needle into Sharon’s belly and to blow him up, are
symbolic expressions of radical disdain not only from the person of
Ariel Sharon, but also from the Zionist association of militarism and
nationalism. Recall that like most prime-ministers in Israeli, Sharon
too was a decorated general. Hence an attack on Sharon carries
considerable symbolic value. Typically, the inscriber’s
motivation is revealed—in this case anger directed against
Sharon on behalf of Ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups. What is interesting
is the fact that the stage of the ethno-national commemorative book
was found appropriate for inscribing this entry. In light of the
symbolic context, the entry is not simply a hate graffiti that could
have been inscribed anywhere, but a situated performance that
recognizes what the site stands for, and wishes to “stick a
needle” and deflate the Zionist ethos and narrative that the
site recites.


Entries
of this type express violations of various degrees, which originate
with non- or anti-Zionist ultra-orthodox visitors. To some degree,
the occurrence of these entries is accounted by the urban location of
the Ammunition Hill, which is in vicinity of ultra-orthodox
neighborhoods (Ramat Eshkol).


Lastly,
figure 3 (above) clearly evinces that the page on which the entry was
inscribed was torn off the book and crumpled. The story behind this
is that there were additional, very large hate inscriptions that were
directed against Sharon and Zionism, which were dealt with by the
curator in charge (who covered them with erasing marker liquid). Such
interventions on behalf of the staff are rare. However, at some
point, one of the site’s maintenance employees became extremely
upset with these inscriptions and tore the page off, conducting thus
an act of desecration on top of the violating inscription itself. He
was then made to return the page to its place in the book, where the
inscription has not been erased (which is how I found it in the
archive).


If
this and similar entries express anti-Zionist motivated violations of
the sacred ethos of national commemoration, then the illustration
below is representative of violations that express what can be
accurately termed as Neo-Zionist (counter-)narrative . Hence, example
3 is typical of a cluster of entries that were written around the
time of Israel’s withdrawal from the Occupied Gaza Strip
(August, 2005). These entries perform condemnation of the Zionist
narrative that is celebrated via commemoration at the site.




Example
3





With
the completion of the deportation of Jews from Gush Katif


a
museum needs to be built


a
memorial


in
the memory of a country


that
was severed, destructed and vanished


in
the hands of evil and damned people


with
no heart, with no pity





The
interesting point with this entry is that the violation that it
performs is reflexive. The focus of the entry is not the condemnation
of the government’s Withdrawal Plan, but the very sites and
apparatuses—museums, memorials and rituals—through which
national commemoration and sanctity are performed. The (unsigned)
inscriber suggests that alternative sites and rituals should be
constructed in order to commemorate the “destructed” Gush
Katif
(or the area where Jewish settlements were built in the
Gaza Strip). By doing so, the inscriber does not dissociate notions
of sacredness from sites of commemoration, but rather protests and
suggests that national (Zionist) commemoration is erroneous. Entries
of this type, both inside the visitor book and outside Ammunition
Hill Complex (in the shape of graffiti, bumper stickers and the
like), de-legitimize the association between Judaism, as understood
and practiced by some, and the Zionist Movement. Note that the Hebrew
term used for the word “memorial” (Yad Vashem) is
particularly charged because it is the name of the official National
Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Site in
Jerusalem. The entry is thus inter-discursive, because it alludes to
the claims of settlers in Gush Katif, who drew comparisons
between their state and the state of Jews in the Holocaust.


The
final example (no. 4, Figure 4, below), presents an act of
desecration of a rather different ideological background, and
concerns the politics of ethnicity in (Jewish) Israeli society and
specifically within the Israeli army. The entry was produced
sometimes around January, 2006.





Example
4





Golani
respect!!


[an
image of a tree]


All
the paratroopers shall die!! [an image of a crossed out snake]


[an
image of footsteps]


I
was here…








Figure
4: Anti-commemoration: Ethnic desecration





Golani
is an infantry brigade with a long rivalry with the Paratrooper
Brigade. The icon of the first is a (green) tree while the icon of
the latter is a (red) snake. The entry may be understood as an
occurrence within this rivalry, which celebrates Golani over the
Paratroopers. This celebration is accomplished by the straightforward
expression of desire for the death of the paratroopers. This act is
expressed through both discursive and iconic means, which amount to a
“hybrid entry” that effectively enjoys the communicative
resources made available in and by the book. This entry’s
meaning could have been limited only to the content of intra-military
rivalry, but for the fact that the Ammunition Hill celebrates the
Paratrooper Brigade
and is associated with it. The site and the
museum present many pictures and heroic tales of the legendary
paratroopers, who were the first to arrive at and to “liberate”
the Western Wall. The symbolic execution of the paratroopers that the
entry accomplishes, rather than their commemoration and preservation,
is actually directed at the Ammunition Hill site and the
(ethno-)national narrative it tells.


The
meaning performed by the entry is complicated further because the
Golani and the Paratrooper Brigades have different images of men and
masculinities that are associated with them. While paratroopers are
associated with earlier images of elite Sabra masculinity, usually of
Ashkenazi background (Jews of European decent), the popular image of
Golani soldiers is that of a rougher model of masculinity, usually of
Mizrahi background (Jews who emigrated from Muslim countries). Hence
within the frame of politics of ethnicity and gender in contemporary
Israeli society, an assault on the Paratrooper Brigade carries ethnic
hues, and amounts to an assault on Ashkenazi hegemony. It is directed
at the local politics of commemoration, which lie beneath the sacred
register, exposing the fact that sacred ethno-national
commemoration (and ethno-militarism) is a prestigious cultural
resource. As Weiss correctly indicates, Israeli culture of
commemoration “ultimately presents itself as a key symbol that
cuts across historical periodizations and ethnic divisions.”
Hence we see that the entry’s violation is not limited to
(symbolically) executing the paratroopers rather than commemorating
them, but also to exposing the politics behind national commemoration
and exposing the social prestige and mobility that are bound to them.




Conclusions:
Jewish entextualizations


It
is no news that where norms exist deviations and violations follow,
and where sanctities exist blasphemies and profanities can be
expected. Most entries in the commemorative visitor books examined
above, confirm the Zionist story that is told at the site. They do so
through repeating and (re)citing both its ideological tenets and its
scared register of discursive and iconic commemoration. Perhaps more
interesting, and definitely more intriguing are those entries that do
not confirm the national narrative, but refute the sacredness that
the site endows. What is paradoxical about these violations is that
they do not promote secular or liberal worldviews, which would have
aimed to dissociate the civic sphere from religious symbolism.
Instead, these violations are predominantly expressions of
fundamentalist Jewish ideologies, which view the conjoining of
national and religious worldviews as essentially problematical.


At
the commemorative visitor book in the Ammunition Hill National
Commemoration Site, these (Jewish) dialectics assume the body of
inscribed Jewish performances. These performances are not mere
discursive “opinions” or “expressions,” but
situated acts. Two points that account for this. First, the stage for
visitors’ inscriptions is cued as a “Jewish” stage,
which is to say that it has the semblance of holly Jewish symbolism
and ritual, specifically evoking notions of writing and reading. This
type of staging is pursued in the ideological aim of sustaining
Zionism’s “civil religion,” notably with regards to
the pivotal moments of sanctified commemoration, sacrifice and
emotions of profound indebtedness.


Yet
institutional staging supplies only one half of the overall
semiotics, i.e. the invitation/potentialities. The complementary
half, i.e. the response/materializations, is supplied by the visitors
themselves, who are the users of this stage and those who are acting
on it. These, as the ethnographic observations indicate, are solely
Jewish. Therefore, the Ammunition Hill site as a whole and the
surfaces of the visitor book therein, offer a Jewish space in both
respects: in terms of its construction and in terns of its use.


The
second point with regards to the Jewish dialectics of performances of
sanctity versus blasphemies, concerns the discursive nature of the
stage. The medium that serves here, i.e. handwriting, is not
coincidental. Rather, it too, marks the stage and the utterances
therein as embodied and authentic “Jewish” performances;
and it too, alludes to the esteemed symbolism of the written word—and
of occasions of reading and writing it—in traditional Jewish
ritual . From this, the visitor book emerges as a politically
mobilized, cultural site of entextualization; a site where texts are
publically drafted and meaningfully performed. While processes of
entextualization have commonly been discussed in terms of the
extractability of discourse, or how units of discourse can be
(re)moved , the framing of this commemorative visitor book precisely
establishes the reverse notion—that of immobility. In line with
commemorative ideologies, the book indexes the stability of location
and the stretch of duration, while visitors index mobility and
fleetingness.


Moreover,
as an entextualization site, the semiotics of the visitor book are
also shaped by the semiotics of (heritage) tourism, which concern to
a large degree issues of space, place, scale and mobility. Because
tourists’ performances are actual activities, entries in the
book amount to more than matters of “signs” or
“representation.” Rather, in their material and spatial
features, these inscriptions are acts that occupy and populate space.
They accomplish things over and above their literary meaning.


In
this respect the commemorative visitor book corresponds with other
Jewish/Israeli sites of entextualization. The Western Wall (which is
located within a twenty minute walk from the Ammunition Hill), for
instance, was mentioned in the interviews by both management and
visitors. In fact, there are a few instances in the visitor books
where entries are not inscribed on the book’s surfaces, but on
pieces of paper which are then placed between its pages. This
practice is very reminiscent of note-writing practices at the Western
Wall and other holly locations, where prayers are inscribed on paper
to be later placed in a holly site.


A
last example of Jewish/Israeli sites of entextualization, which has
recently caught the attention of local media for a brief duration,
concerns racist and hate inscriptions smeared on the walls of
Palestinian houses in the Gaza Strip by Israeli soldiers during the
last Israeli invasion.1
In many ways, including content, frequency of code shifts (Hebrew and
English), and combinations of discursive and iconic resources, these
performances resemble those explored in this article. They amount,
together to multiple articulations or performances which are
practices that mark, consume, occupy and (ab)use space.






References










1
http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3662938,00.html
(accessed April 7, 2009). Note that the newspaper article is titled,
“’Souvenirs’ from soldiers,” playing on the
endurance of inscriptions and their authentic character.





1







No comments: