An Aesthetic Occupation: The Immediacy of Structure and the Palestine Battle

In
An Aesthetic Occupation Daniel Bertrand Monk finds the historical past of the unquestioned political immediacy of “sacred” structure within the battle between Palestinians and Israelis. Monk combines groundbreaking archival analysis with theoretical insights to look at specifically the Mandate period—the interval within the first half of the 20 th century when Britain held sovereignty over Palestine. Whereas analyzing the relation between monuments and mass violence on this context, he paperwork Palestinian, Zionist, and British makes an attempt to advance competing arguments regarding structure’s utility to politics.

Succumbing neither to the view that monuments are autonomous figures onto which political that means has been projected, nor to the obverse declare that in Jerusalem shrines are fast manifestations of the political, Monk traces the reciprocal historical past of
each these positions in addition to describes how opponents within the battle debated and theorized their very own participation in its self-representation. Analyzing controversies over the authenticity of holy websites, the restorations of the Dome of the Rock, and the discourse of accusation following the Buraq, or Wailing Wall, riots of 1929, Monk discloses for the primary time that, as combatants seemed to structure and invoked the transparency of their very own historic scenario, they concurrently superior—and normalized—the battle’s incapability to account for itself.

This balanced and distinctive examine will enchantment to anybody serious about Israel or Zionism, the Palestinians, the Center East battle, Jerusalem, or its monuments. Students of structure, political concept, and faith, in addition to cultural and demanding research may also learn by its arguments.