Probing the Terrain: Architectures of Control and Uncertainty in the Occupied Palestinian Territories

TY - CHAP

T1 - Probing the Terrain

T2 - Architectures of Control and Uncertainty in the Occupied Palestinian Territories

AU - Johannessen, Runa

PY - 2018/1

Y1 - 2018/1

N2 - Whether manifest in built structures or invisible infrastructures, architectures of control in the occupied Palestinian West Bank is structurally defined by endemic uncertainty. Shifting lines and frontiers are recorded on the terrain, creating elastic zones of uncertainty necessitating navigational agility in everyday life conduct. The essay presents the case of the covert building of a chicken farm and house-to-become, where Palestinian landowner HH speculates in the territorial uncertainty and potential flexibility of the line dividing Area B from Area C, crossing his plot. HH’s disguised building efforts illustrates how different architectures of control come together to inform a practice of navigating unstable conditions by deploying the mental attitude of mētis, akin to but not identical with Henri Lefebvre’s notion of tactics. By giving an account of how flexibility adheres to the territory through its lines and laws, and how the very structure of the occupation has changed over the years, I seek to make visible the ways in which architectures of uncertainty compensate for the fleeting terrain that HH is probing.

AB - Whether manifest in built structures or invisible infrastructures, architectures of control in the occupied Palestinian West Bank is structurally defined by endemic uncertainty. Shifting lines and frontiers are recorded on the terrain, creating elastic zones of uncertainty necessitating navigational agility in everyday life conduct. The essay presents the case of the covert building of a chicken farm and house-to-become, where Palestinian landowner HH speculates in the territorial uncertainty and potential flexibility of the line dividing Area B from Area C, crossing his plot. HH’s disguised building efforts illustrates how different architectures of control come together to inform a practice of navigating unstable conditions by deploying the mental attitude of mētis, akin to but not identical with Henri Lefebvre’s notion of tactics. By giving an account of how flexibility adheres to the territory through its lines and laws, and how the very structure of the occupation has changed over the years, I seek to make visible the ways in which architectures of uncertainty compensate for the fleeting terrain that HH is probing.

U2 - 10.1163/9789004355620_007

DO - 10.1163/9789004355620_007

M3 - Book chapter

SN - 978-90-04-35560-6

T3 - Architectural Intelligences

SP - 87

EP - 107

BT - Architecture and Control

A2 - Ring, Annie

A2 - Steiner, Henriette

A2 - Albrechtsen Veel, Kristin Eva

PB - Brill

CY - Leiden

ER -