This article was downloaded by: [ETH Zurich]On: 26 February 2014, At: 01:04Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Space and PolityPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cspp20

Potential, freedom and space:Reflections on Agamben’s potentialitiesin the West BankCamillo Boanoa & Benjamin Leclair-Paquetb

a The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL London, UKb ETH Zurich, SwitzerlandPublished online: 21 Feb 2014.

To cite this article: Camillo Boano & Benjamin Leclair-Paquet , Space and Polity (2014): Potential,freedom and space: Reflections on Agamben’s potentialities in the West Bank, Space and Polity,DOI: 10.1080/13562576.2013.880010

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13562576.2013.880010

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arisingout of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Potential, freedom and space: Reflections on Agamben’s potentialities inthe West Bank

Camillo Boanoa* and Benjamin Leclair-Paquetb

aThe Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL London, UK; bETH Zurich, Switzerland

(Received November 2012; accepted July 2013)

A special kind of infrastructure has emerged around the West Bank, which lays bare Israel’scapacity to spatialise its colonial power and to constantly solidify its presence. Readingthese spatial devices through Agamben’s work, this paper proposes a reflective attempt toread this site of contemporary occupation through a “resistant” lens as a novel take onAgamben’s spatial topology and political aesthetics. The paper offers preliminary remarkson the search for alternative theoretical construction of Agamben “potentialities”. The paperallow speculations on the heterotopian nature of Israeli produced infrastructures, perceivedat once as actualised potentials in space, and spaces of potential.

Keywords: Agamben; conflicted spaces; Foucault; heterotopian infrastructures; Israel;potentiality; West Bank

Introduction

At the centre of geopolitical conflicts often lies the question of space (Kenzari, 2012); the Occu-pied Palestinian Territory is no exception. What has caused this particular case to become one ofthe most discussed amongst architects, urbanists and geographers lies in the recourses that Israelhas taken to achieve its political objectives. It has been said in different ways that urban planninghas effectively complemented the tanks and missiles in Israel’s territorial conquest over the Occu-pied Territories. Such attempts align with the notion of military-urbanism (Graham, 2010, 2011,2012; Iverson, 2011; Zureik et al., 2011) as urban planning mechanisms have reformed the spatialgrammar of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem (Gregory, 2004; Shlay & Rosen, 2010; Yif-tachel, 2006; Weizman, 2007). Theoretical investigations surrounding the case have given rise toa range of paradigms treating divided cities (Charlesworth, 2006; Fregonese, 2006; Safier, 2001,2006; Yiftachel, 1995) and civilian occupation (Segal & Weizman, 2003) as this conflict devel-oped into a major frontier-urbanism (Pullan, 2011) and a modern warfare (Fregonese 2012;Weizman, 2008) defined by vertical geopolitics (Elden, 2013; Graham & Hewitt, 2013).

This extreme case, where spatial interventions are no longer developed for the territory butagainst it, lays bare the critical importance of infrastructures in shaping networks within territoriesgoverned through differential politics. Through design and legislative control unleashed via plan-ning mechanisms, a series of devices has come to affect nearly all aspects of society, creating whatWeizman (2007, p. 7) calls “hollow land and vertical geopolitics”. This “urbanism of warfare” (deCauter, 2009, p. 30 ), shapes the essence of an overall system comprising a dispersal of fortress-

© 2014 Taylor & Francis

*Corresponding author. Email: c.boano@ucl.ac.uk

Space and Polity, 2014http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13562576.2013.880010

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

ET

H Z

uric

h] a

t 01:

04 2

6 Fe

brua

ry 2

014

like environments, enormous concrete barriers guarded by watchtowers and manned by machine-gun crews, connected by special routes and bypass roads, military convoys, patrols and check-points, which together form complex and contested space.

As Yiftachel (2006, p. 15) points out, these mechanisms complement a parallel strategy where“borders in a constant state of flux” play an integral part in the place’s military-urbanism. As such,these borders contest the recognition of the other or, as pointed by Gazit (2010), they mark a para-doxical condition where boundaries simultaneously include and exclude in a dialectical processbetween self and other; not simply a continuous process of reclaiming natural and altered land-scapes, but also entailing a reorganisation of the discursive field according to the imperative ornormalisation. As Samman (2006, p. 213) posits, “The Wall that runs through Jerusalem is notsimply erected on a naturally marked border, but [is itself] constructed in order to naturalise anotherwise artificial division”.

This paper will not describe each networked elements of this complex strategy of the “colonialpresent” (Gregory, 2004). Instead, it proposes to centre on particular infrastructures conceivedthrough military thinking and delivered by means of urban planning processes, which ultimatelyserve Israel’s purpose to compete against its adversary. The paper limits its focus on a particularsubtype of border infrastructures that operate as counter-arrangements “endowed with the curiousproperty of being in relation with all the others, but in such a way as to suspend, neutralize orinvert the set of relationships designed, reflected or mirrored by themselves,” recalling MichelFoucault’s (1997, p. 352) description of Heterotopias.

Reading such heterotopian infrastructure through Agamben allows us to elaborate on “politicsin matters” (Foucault, 1997, p. 255) not as the simple material embodiment of a unified politicalwill or as a product of a single ideology, but rather as a more complex gesture. Agamben comes todefine gesture via an alternative reading of the two sides of Aristotle’s famous distinction:between action (praxis) and production (poiesis), where gesture is neither a production nor anenactment but is “undertaking and supporting… breaking the false alternative between meansand ends” (Agamben, 1993a, p. 155). Such gestures draw parallels between Agamben’s philos-ophy of “potentiality” and Foucault’s notion of “heterotopia,” looking at the latter as spacescreated through the actualisation of (utopian/dystopian) potentials.

This paper assembles a series of observations supporting our hypothesis, which maintains thatIsrael’s colonial agency is losing sight of its impotentiality. We will expand on this and clarifyhow this separation from impotentiality – that is, from the capacity to-not-act on each andevery opportunity – leads up to impoverished freedom, ultimately separating Israel from itsability to resist. Following Agamben, such speculation indicates that potentiality is not simply“non-being…, it is neither simply the absence of an ability to, nor its negation” (Agamben,1999, p. 178). Instead, potentiality is “the existence of non-Being” it is the “presence of anabsence” (Agamben, 1999, p. 178).

As Giorgio Agamben’s (1942) voluminous body of works reveals a transversal spatialreading, his philosophy cultivates thoughts concerned with the deactivation of devices ofpower in the interest of a coming community that is present but still unrealised. His philosophicalenquiries contribute to the evolution of topological studies (Belcher, Martin, Secor, Simon, &Wilson, 2008; Boano & Marten, 2012; Giaccaria & Minca, 2011; Massumi, 1998) and yieldan optimistic rediscovery of “Potentiality”.

Moving from spatial techniques of governance (Agamben & Dailey, 2005, p. 2) that produce atopographical juridical-territorial exclusion – where the Foucaultian influences are evident andwell documented – this paper aims to integrate the notion of heterotopia, not as a static pieceof infrastructure but as a contentious process of radicalisation. This is partly achieved throughthese border infrastructures’ permanent state of flux and from the alteration of human relationsinto uncanny social constructions defined by normalised feelings of fear, hate and intolerance

2 C. Boano and B. Leclair-Paquet

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

ET

H Z

uric

h] a

t 01:

04 2

6 Fe

brua

ry 2

014

(Savitch, 2005). Acknowledging that Agamben’s production has been highly influential on recenturban and spatial debates, mainly through his popular Homo sacer where the notion of “state ofexception” and his concept of “the camp”were defined, this paper strives to concentrate on lesser-known incisive concepts that can offer a reinvigorated political possibility as it considers thenotion of potentiality as central gesture. Adopting an integrative theoretical approach, the aimis to contribute to Foucault’s influence on Agamben’s oeuvre especially in its development ofthe notion of power, language and methodology. As such, this paper builds on, and furtherenriches, the existing body of work developed around the relevance of Agamben’s philosophyon space (Boano, 2011; Boano & Floris, 2005; Boano & Martens, 2012), this time insistingmore on the actuality of heterotopic topologies. In doing so the paper also contributes to thedebate over borders, whose meaning lies both on the lines of signification created from exceptionand their elastic geography (Weizman, 2007, p. 5), as well as in what they do in their actualités notmerely intended as its present but in “les actualités” which as both Foucault and Agamben showare order of the actual. Recovering Agamben’s potentialities in the erudite elaboration of Bartleby(Melville, 1853, p. 45) – the Melville” scrivener with his haunting refrain “I would prefer not to” –allows us to speculate on an alternative civil disobedience.

Constructed, then as a speculation around the material actuality of border infrastructures in theOccupied Palestinian Territory and in line with Agamben’s topological reflections, the paper sup-ports the proponents of the topological approach that have questioned the binary between trans-formation and invariance: between potential and actual. From architecture (Massumi, 1998), toresearch on networks and virtual space (Terranova, 2009), to social and cultural theory (Lash& Lury, 2007), to border studies (Mezzadra & Neilson, 2008, 2012).

The first part of the paper offers an outline of those spaces that exist “outside all places”; ofactualised utopias. It offers preliminary evidence about ways by which such heterotopian infra-structures materialise the utopia of total colonial control. In order to render visible this colonialpresent, the paper offers an outline of the spatial problematic of the Occupied Territories,where control devices are purposely visible rather than disguised in the urban realm. In orderto sustain the central query of the paper, the second part of the paper builds on Agamben’sconcept of Potentiality. It presents preliminary findings that allow this paper to speculativelyposit Israel’s heterotopian infrastructure as material indications that the colonial agency has lostits inability to not do, thereby losing humanistic freedom to automatised processes. Despitetheir complex elaborations however, heterotopian infrastructure cannot separate West Bankersfrom their impotentiality; they cannot influence West Bankers’s foundation of potentiality.

Foucault’s heterotopia

In an exceptional lecture, Michel Foucault asserted that in every civilisation there exist spaces“outside all places” that function as realised, or materialised utopia. He maintained that thesespaces “have the curious property of being in relation with all other sites, but in such a way asto suspend, neutralize, or invert the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror, orreflect” (Foucault, 1986, p. 24). Foucault’s heterotopia would break, and even subvert, thelogic ingrained in dominating spaces as they would expose an alternative to the status quo. AsLieven de Cauter (2004, p. 59) outlines, “the lecture was more an intellectual exercise for Fou-cault than an elaborated theory”. Notwithstanding, a fair deal of ink has been spilled aroundthis intriguing concept.1

“Because they are utterly different from all the emplacements that they reflect or refer to”,Foucault (1998, p. 178) called “heterotopia” the range of spaces that exist at the edge of agiven culture. Heterotopia represent real life instances where utopian notions could be activatedand materialised; where potential could become actual. If at one level they are the embodiment of

Space and Polity 3

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

ET

H Z

uric

h] a

t 01:

04 2

6 Fe

brua

ry 2

014

utopias – actualised potential in space – at another level they become spaces of potential; incu-bators charged with the capacity to extend the dominating cultural space by incorporating other-ness into the mainstream. Such is the way that some of the forgotten building stock of theIndustrial revolution was first turned into lofts by marginalised artistic communities in citieslike New York and Montreal; when out of use and rundown architectural remnants meantcheap rent for working-living spaces. It is not long after that these were re-adapted by the domi-nant culture to house “yuppies” and the likes, seduced by a romanticised vision of bohemianliving and a return to an architecture that had finally aged enough to regain popular interest.These industrial vestiges, by and large gentrified in contemporary times, have most recentlybeen recuperated by creative industries marching in rhythm with the political economy ofcapital, at last confirming the end of the once heterotopian programming. Elsewhere along thespectrum of heterotopia can be found prisons: spatial devices conceived to recuperate individualsoperating outside the confines of the law; utopian spaces for their capacity to huddle and restrictdeviant agencies, yet dystopian from the perspective of the agencies over which they exercisecontrol.

Henri Lefebvre, who submits to a similar interpretation of the term, also uses the concept of“utopia” as an important point of departure to explore the concept of heterotopia. He considersu-topie to be “a paradoxical space where paradox becomes the opposite of the everyday”, andfor heterotopias to be their material realisation (Lefebvre, 1970/2003). Lefebvre goes on toexplain that heterotopias are generally constructed by anomic groups before being “eventuallyreclaimed by the dominant praxis” (1970/2003, p. 129). He writes that for long, “elementswere expelled from the centre to still rural peripheral heterotopies, which have since beenchanged into “suburbs”, habitat receptacles, typified by a highly visible form of isotopy”(p. 129). Although this paper constructs its argument based primarily on Foucault’s exploration,Lefebvre’s contribution on the question of actualising, spatialising and mainstreaming utopianprograms deserves our full attention. As de Cauter (2004, p. 61) reminds us, Foucault’s “laterreflections on the panopticon as a paradigmatic heterotopia of modernity (Discipline andPunish, 1979) put an end to this neutral or somewhat romanticizing view of heterotopia asother space.” When he interlaces this notion with his disciplinary work, it becomes obviousthat heterotopias can be used in totalitarian agendas. Like Foucault’s biopolitics, these spacescan eventually be expanded and normalised into everyday life. Again in Discipline andPunish, Foucault (1979) describes how the two paradigms of urban management, during theMiddle Ages, were crafted onto a partition stemming from disease control. On one hand, theextreme measures of control in the city against the plague, through partitions, inspections andcontinuous registrations; and on the other, the measures of exclusion against lepers trying toenter the city, through borders and protection from the outside. This dual paradigm embodiedin the urban aftermath of fear – the obsession with health and body, and the role of power admin-istration – has been inherited, in different forms and conceptions, in the evolution and mor-phology of modern cities: either controlling stability at all costs by purging inner contestation,or protecting the whole from external menaces; but in any case fencing out and partitioning ter-ritories. Again heavily ascribed to Foucault, Agamben’s (2006) view of the hybrid paradigm ofexclusion/control relies on a collateral biopolitics of space, one that is nuanced by the deliberatestrangeness of its emerging sites: odd, indefinable, characterless and generic, and thus at oddswith conventional understandings of how cities are composed. The urban landscape is nolonger a puzzle of discernible pieces; the parts move and change because the rules of exceptionlead to a constant uncertainty, a condition beyond spatial linguistics, and into the spatial trans-formation of power. Foucault’s outline of spaces that exist “outside all places” but still relateto them, giving them the capacity to suspend, neutralise, mirror etc., is presented as a phenomenonthat can question the dominant logic of spaces and challenge the status quo.

4 C. Boano and B. Leclair-Paquet

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

ET

H Z

uric

h] a

t 01:

04 2

6 Fe

brua

ry 2

014

Fenced condos, gated communities and satellite cities are symptoms of urbanisms which havebeen portrayed in the literature as military (Graham, 2011), splintering (Graham & Marvin, 2001),or even carceral (Soja, 2000). At the core of such urbanisms lies the mechanism of fencing itself: the(fencing) wall “is a reminder of how spatial typologies and social tensions contribute to shape anurbanism of exception” (Boano & Martén, 2012, p. 3). Types, and typological urbanisms,emerge (or reemerge) precisely from a flow of energy and pressure engineered by particularurban actors at specific times to deal with particular situations (Grahame Shane, 2011). They cer-tainly lever on the concept of heterotopia by hardening its fences and content, making it inflexible,impenetrable and governed through principles of exclusion and control: they never reach, but defi-nitely look at the extreme condition in which the heterotopic type becomes camp. In becoming typesthey blur any spatial linguistics and still represent a language (Lathouri, 2011), becoming the ident-ifiable norm which “offers designers the advantage of a speedy response and a standardisedproduct” (Grahame Shane, 2011, p. 128), uncontrollable and unshapable by the users; a heterotopiawhose use has been displaced toward a higher level, sacralised.

Infrastructures for an offshore urbanism, in dry territories

Eyal2 Weizman’s Hollow Land (2007) offers a critical reading of the Israel-Palestine conflict thatfocuses around the role of space, social sciences and aesthetics in meeting the axiomatic inten-tions of a colonial enterprise, extra-ordinarily taken place between territorial neighbours. He out-lines that while “defence engages directly with the concept of war”, the concept of securityinterlocks with the notion of conflict (p. 107). Security, Weizman writes (p. 107), “erects barriersand channels and rechannels the flow of people and resources through space.”While this is true ofmany urban environments, the spatial effects of barriers in the Occupied Territories has takenheightened proportions that have allowed for an urbanism where security devices are no longerdisguised within urban design strategies, but are instead self-evidently superimposed onto the ter-ritory. Denuded from its camouflage dress and wearing instead the uniform of safeguard and pro-tection, bypass roads, fenced off settlements, checkpoints, watchtowers and the Separation Wallvisibly undermine basic notions of urban planning, paradoxically using its very techniques: urbandesign interventions (Weizman, 2007), planning by-laws,3 and master plans.4

Edge infrastructures between spatial planning and colonial precepts

Modern geopolitical dynamics have transformed borders into active tools of protection and reclu-sion, ultimately becoming the “central feature of the architecture of global politics” (Williams,2009). Border conditions become visible when territorial barriers are formed, emerging as physicalinfrastructures or special areas of separation within a territory (Rumford, 2010). Borders designatethe margins of authority as they delineate the limits of juridical territories, simultaneously acquiringa territorial status of their own. In a constant search for defining their positions between inside andoutside, border spaces become sequences of complex, often blurred and fluctuating boundaries thatat once filter and allow for selective trespassing (Cruz, 2010; Petti, 2002) (see Figure 1).

We can find convincing examples of this within the extensive taxonomy of borders con-structed by Israel in and around the West Bank, each conceived to either separate WestBankers from international territories (for example the border with Jordan, Lebanon), fromIsrael proper (for example, the Separation Wall), Israeli settlements (for example, fences, gates,trenches), or from other towns within the West Bank (for example checkpoints).

In June 2011, OCHA (the UN office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs)documented a total of 522 obstacles interfering with Palestinian movement within the WestBank. While some of these barriers were developed to regulate movement between two political

Space and Polity 5

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

ET

H Z

uric

h] a

t 01:

04 2

6 Fe

brua

ry 2

014

territories – as is normally the case – other obstacles were instead implemented to control move-ment between portions of a single political space. In these instances, the filter itself became theother space, separating two parts of the same.

Heterotopian infrastructures: Border spaces and spatial barriers

Weizman (2006, p. 84) declared that “[i]f borders are abstract lines which designate the edges ofjurisdictions, barriers make those limits physical.” This statement articulates the binary compo-sition of edge conditions. The Oslo Accord culminated in the legislative division of the WestBank into three main types of territories, which consequently formed a series of new bordersthroughout the territory:

Areas A, (18% of West Bank territory) are territories that remain under full Palestinian control, whereIsraelis do not have a legal right to enter.Areas B, (22% of West Bank territory) are territories under Palestinian administrative control andIsraeli military control. As such, Israel has the right to overrule any Palestinian decision for securityreasons.Areas C, (60% of West Bank territory) are territories under full Israeli administration (military andcivil).

The most expansive repertory of border spaces in the West Bank exists at the liminal spacebetween Areas B and C, and at the frontier of Israeli settlements. This division of controlannounced the reconfiguration of the territorial and political landscape of the West Bank,where Palestinian administered territory would only exist between extensive residual spaces

Figure 1. Fluctuating Border.

6 C. Boano and B. Leclair-Paquet

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

ET

H Z

uric

h] a

t 01:

04 2

6 Fe

brua

ry 2

014

subjected to Israeli bylaws. This has effectively transformed the West Bank into a series of dis-connected archipelagos dispersed within an extended Israeli geopolitical backdrop.

These new territorialities have been delimited using 0.02 millimeter felt tip pens on 1:20,000maps (see Figure 2). As we resize these maps at a scale of 1:1 to observe the edges of jurisdictionbetween Areas A/B and Areas C, we realise that these border spaces have a width of nearly fivemetres, where no juridical status has been designated. These lines cutting through the West Banktraverse houses, religious buildings, parks, commercial property, office building, etc. and leave

Figure 2. Jericho Area A/C Line Map.Note: Scale: 1:20,000.

Space and Polity 7

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

ET

H Z

uric

h] a

t 01:

04 2

6 Fe

brua

ry 2

014

behind five metre-wide corridors that call neither under Palestinian or Israeli legislative control: aclear defect in the architecture of occupation (Figure 3). As a result, 142 rings are left with a dis-puted status in the West Bank; it remains unclear whether Israel or Palestine have administrativejurisdiction over these atoll-like territories (see Figure 4a and Figure 4b.). This production of anew geography further problematises these legislative irregularities as the West Bank is onlyleft with full control over a series of detached archipelagos floating within residual land undercolonial control (Figure 5). The situation becomes ever more complex as Israel commonlyaddresses the land of Area C as national territory in internal discourses, thereby using thespatial division of Oslo while injecting it with a political meaning different from what hasbeen negotiated.5

Foucault (1998, p. 181) contends, “heterotopia has the ability to juxtapose in a single realspace several emplacements that are incompatible in themselves.” Much like the example ofthe theatre that he uses to exemplify his point, Israel also superimposes different scenes

Figure 3. Area A/C Line Cutting Through Jericho.Note: Scale: 1:500.

8 C. Boano and B. Leclair-Paquet

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

ET

H Z

uric

h] a

t 01:

04 2

6 Fe

brua

ry 2

014

onto the stage of abstract territorial edges. Yiftachel and Yacobi’s description of Israeli colonies inthe West Bank is also consistent with Foucault’s description. They write that:

Domestically [Israel] has presented the Palestinian occupied territories as part of the “eternal Jewishhomeland”, thereby including Jewish settlers in those territories as full state citizens, despite the factthat they live outside the official bounds of the state. At the same time, internationally, Israel has pre-sented the same occupied territories as “temporarily administered,” thereby excluding their Palesti-nian residents from political participation, leaving them powerless to shape the future of their ownhomeland. (Yiftachel & Yacobi, 2006, p. 172)

This conflicted classification of political territories hauls positions in disagreement, whichmirror Israel’s inconsistent discourses. Border spaces protecting these enclaves collate sovereignfrontiers and temporalities inside other political spaces, making these territorial patches at oncesovereign and occupied. These devices have thus become evidence of the utopian ideologyreflected through them; material transpositions of a self-contradictory taxonomy of political space.

Continuing on this descriptive analysis through Foucault’s principle on systems of openingand closing, security barriers’ heterotopian properties deepen. As with most systems of territorialprotection, the security barriers that protect settlements are equipped with a regulated system ofopening and closing, closely inspired by gated communities. The solidity of the barrier varies

Figure 4a. Extract from Decolonizing Architecture’s Atlas of Atolls in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Space and Polity 9

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

ET

H Z

uric

h] a

t 01:

04 2

6 Fe

brua

ry 2

014

across settlements, ranging from low-tech fences for new outposts to concrete walls equippedwith barbwires and camera surveillance systems for colonial towns. Guards supervise theentrance, allowing in only residents and their pre-approved guests. While these devices wereintended to protect residents from the local Palestinian population, they simultaneously“conceal a curious exclusion”, not referring here to the obvious exclusion which keeps non-

Figure 4b. West Bank Archipelagos.

10 C. Boano and B. Leclair-Paquet

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

ET

H Z

uric

h] a

t 01:

04 2

6 Fe

brua

ry 2

014

residents outside (a basic principle of gated-communities worldwide), but to the self-imposedexclusion from the territorial realm beyond the liminal spaces of settlements.

The system of opening and closing, which is devised for increased security, contains settlersinto a series of detached territories deprived from the much richer social and natural landscapes,located within the subjectively conceived “outside”. The system of opening and closing blocks ofsettlers from much of their immediate environment. If the precarious economic situation in theWest Bank has played a role in encouraging cross-cultural encounters in Areas B and C, Israelisremain legally, socially, economically and culturally blocked off from Areas Awhere much of theWest Bank’s activities are concentrated. Looking at the Palestinian town of Husan (located withinan Oslo Accord Area B) as an example where a service industry catering to the residents of BeitarIllit has recently emerged, the neighbouring picturesque town of Battir anchored between a seriesof agricultural terraces and century old olive trees, also the host of one of the most animated publicparks in the region, remains out of reach for segregated settlers.

Security barriers conceived to keep Palestinians outside Israeli colonies have simultaneouslyisolated settlers outside the landscape on which they were sold, multiplying the perceived distancebetween the colonial environment and the “hilly landscape dotted by green olive orchards [which]enjoys a pastoral calm,” that a certain sales brochure for the settlement of Emmanuel describes. Incertain instances, new registers of landscape are projected onto these barriers. This is the case withan array of concrete walls on which rainbows and blue skies have been painted which aredesigned to protect settlers travelling on road 443 from West Bankers in the town of BirNabala. Speaking of these walls, Shmuel Groag (2006, p. 182) writes that “an imagined orientalistview of reality replaces the panorama of the actual community, all the while masked by the argu-ment that such a wall is necessary to guard the security of passing travelers.”

Heterotopian infrastructures: Bypass roads

The term “bypass roads” refers to the system of road networks that can only be used by Israelisand internationals, and that has been created to facilitate ground circulation between settlements

Figure 5. Har Homa bypass road.

Space and Polity 11

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

ET

H Z

uric

h] a

t 01:

04 2

6 Fe

brua

ry 2

014

and Israel proper, bypassing Palestinian areas for security needs. These roads effectively hold thesame geopolitical status as any other Israeli land. Like embassies, bypass roads have become net-worked foreign territories that penetrate all of the West Bank without ever entering it. Bypassroads allow settlers to quickly move within and across the territory, encouraging the colonisationof the West Bank and, by default, increasing the size of extra-territorial Israeli islands.

While the history of bypass roads dates back to the Israeli occupation of 1967, the term wascoined during the Oslo peace process. From that point on, Israel intensified its efforts to increasethe magnitude of bypass roads as part of its policy to coerce “facts on the ground”. These roads,built primarily for security needs and to facilitate military and colonial movement beyond theArmistice Line, also led to the expropriation of many Palestinians.

The Jerusalem Eastern Ring Road’s development resulted in the expropriation of as much as“1250 acres of privately-owned lands from East Jerusalem Palestinians, and the destruction of 43buildings in the Jabal al-Mukaber neighborhood alone” (Groag, 2006, p. 182). Aware of the legalloophole that excuses expropriation for “security needs”, the safety of Israelis has effectively beenused as a justification to reinforce its position in the Occupied Territories.

Since the eruption of the second Intifada in September 2000, West Bankers lost nearly allaccess to the 800 kilometres of bypass roads that have been constructed throughout the WestBank to facilitate movement beyond the Armistice Line. While USAID money destined tosupport the development of Palestinian territories has been used to cover the cost of some ofthese roads, the primacy of settlers’ security, threatened by car bombs and arbitrary stoning,has indefinitely suspended the right of West Bankers to access the network.

Writing on bypass roads, David Newman (2006, p. 84) explains that “[w]ith significantimprovements in Israel’s transportation system, an increasing number of “development town”residents are commuting on a daily basis to their places of work in urban centers.” Thispassage offers an insight from a perspective that considers settlements in the West Bank assuburbs to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Newman later addresses bypass roads as highways linkingthe periphery to the centre, recalling a quintessential mid-century development model of Amer-ican heritage.

From a West Banker perspective, unable to access the spaces connected through these roads,(often physically blocked with cement blocks, trenches, earth mounds, barbwires and iron gates),these are by and large perceived as spatial barriers central to the system of occupation (Groag,2006, p. 182) (Figure 5). Their legal designation works alongside a segregational systemleaning on iconographies reflecting the modernist aesthetics associated with the Europeanisationof Israel post-1947.

Shmuel Groag (2006, pp. 177–178) concedes that the “quality, size and nature of each road(… ) is a fair indicator of whether Palestinians or Israelis move along it”, allows the reader tounderstand that the aesthetics of each set of roads juxtaposes sign systems affiliated with culturalgroups at opposite sides of a divided spectrum (Figure 6). “While Palestinian neighborhoods lackbasic urban utilities and decent infrastructure, Jewish neighborhoods are fully serviced” (Yiftachel& Yacobi, 2006, p. 173). The projection of symbols charged with a long heritage of colonial dom-ination helped in producing a Palestinian “imaginative geography”6 that folded the demarcationbetween Israelis and Palestinians – perceived as the inverse of each other – like the negative of afilm, Arabs and Jews. Israel can layer a road network that has become nearly as symbolic as itsnational flag within the regional context onto the territorial base of its adversary. These character-istics coupled with their correspondence with Oslo Accord principles has earned these roads thenickname “Forbidden Roads Regime,” which has been devised and popularised by the IsraeliNGO B’Tselem (2004). In a post-Oslo publication discussing their role, the NGO explains that“dozens of islands separated by a sea defined as Area C,” (B’Tselem, 2004) are now connected

12 C. Boano and B. Leclair-Paquet

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

ET

H Z

uric

h] a

t 01:

04 2

6 Fe

brua

ry 2

014

by their own transportation infrastructures solidifying the heterogeneity of two systems layeredonto the West Bank. A fabula in construction, mythical and real.

The “Forbidden Roads Regime” highlights the tension between contrary elements nonethelessjuxtaposed into a singular space. The devices’ heterotopian aura is accentuated further as we con-sider their heterochronic dimension, which in turn has contributed to the conceptualisation of a“Palestinian space-time” asymmetric to “Israelis space-time”. As Foucault explains, heterochro-nias refer to spaces in rupture with time; as with the museums where it never ceases to accumulate,or festivals, where the transitory nature of time is projected onto a site.

The accumulation of time in its relation to movement has become faster for Palestinians usinga destitute road system designed between a series of “no-go” zones. As Yiftachel and Yacobi(2006: 174) state, “[c]heckpoints, and now the fence/wall, are forcing West Bankers to use alter-nate routes such as the infamous and perilous Wad an-Nar (Valley of Fire/Hell) road to the east ofthe city.” Since West Bankers lost their right to use Road 60 (Derech Hevron) to transit betweenBethlehem and Ramallah (and to transit via Jerusalem located in between), the 30 minute journeynow takes around two hours via the perilous Wad an Nar; a name which loosely translates to“Valley of Hell”, in reference to the frequent accidents that occur on this narrow and un-lit andun-paved spiraling road (Figure 7).

These infrastructures of separation maintain the capacity to function inside the Israeli matrixconceived around the utopia of a defined and palpable Jewish biblical land freed from any threatand thereby escaping the dystopic memories of World War II, and the long history of repression ofthe Jewish people. Settlement barriers evoke the feeling of security that is at the heart of Israel’squest for a safe motherland freed up from anti-Semite sentiments. Operating as heterotopias ofillusion, these infrastructures “have the role of creating a space of illusion that denounces allreal space, all real emplacements within which human life is partitioned off, as being evenmore illusory” (Foucault, 1998, p. 184).

The settlement barriers’ reliance on technological devices, from modern apparatus of surveil-lance to postmodern security aesthetics, exposes another paradox, this time between the era in

Figure 6. Bethlehem to Ramallah, Road for Palestinian use.

Space and Polity 13

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

ET

H Z

uric

h] a

t 01:

04 2

6 Fe

brua

ry 2

014

which they exist and the cultural-historical period they hope to regain. While this descriptionmight evoke the principle of heterochronia – “heterotopias connected with temporal discontinu-ities” (Foucault, 1998, p. 182) – the fact that these infrastructural heterotopia navigate betweenperfected spaces and spaces of illusion makes them quintessential examples of Foucault’s hetero-topia; perfected spaces, at once real and imaginary. They merge Foucault’s heterochronias withthe notion of heterotopias of fantasy, as the efficacy of these infrastructures of security only pro-vides a make-believe perfected space, in reality deprived of the power of the occult that wouldeliminate non-Jewish agencies from the land it aggressively claims.

The complex systems of heterotopian infrastructures we sketched above are more than just afixed partitioning – both figuratively and literally – given its evolving significance in the variousnarrative that try to explain them, as well as the physical adaptations they have suffered over theyears in response to political pressures and “elastic geographies” (Weizman, 2007, p. 5). Alongwith the other mechanics that suffuse the border (checkpoints, wires, cameras, etc.), the wall ispart of the constant transformation that such a place of exception receives from agency and par-ticipation (restricted and permitted); a reminder of how spatial typologies and social tensions con-tribute to shape an urbanism of exception (Boano & Marten, 2012) and “a political geography of

Figure 7. Wad-an-Nar.Source: Benoit Burquel.

14 C. Boano and B. Leclair-Paquet

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

ET

H Z

uric

h] a

t 01:

04 2

6 Fe

brua

ry 2

014

walls” (Till et al., 2013) (Figures 8, 9). These nested borders are not the negative of the city thatlies beyond, but instead a part of its currency. What is clear is that borders have shifted functionfrom being the outer limits of authority to being increasingly territorially fluctuating boundaries,representing rather the centre of authority and expressing a territorial logic of their own. The ter-ritorial and political landscape of the Occupied Palestinian Territory is reconfigured creating a

Figure 8. Separation Wall, Frontier Urbanism, Bethlehem.

Figure 9. Separation Wall at Checkpoint 3000, Bethlehem.

Space and Polity 15

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

ET

H Z

uric

h] a

t 01:

04 2

6 Fe

brua

ry 2

014

series of archipelagos of overlapped sovereign and occupied spaces (see Figure 1). Mobilitybetween these overlapping spaces are regulated by a heterogeneous system of opening andclosing that are intended to protect Israeli residents, but simultaneously exclude them from theterritorial realm beyond the liminal spaces of settlements in the name of security and its sacredgesture. This exclusion has been attended to by the construction of bypass roads, a system ofroad networks that only Israelis and international visitors can use. These bypass roads hold thesame geopolitical status as embassies, penetrating the West Bank but that are not formally apart of Palestinian soil. Still, the development of bypass roads has implied the expropriation ofPalestinian land. For the Palestinians these road networks are perceived as spatial barrierscentral to the system of occupation and segregation. The bypass road symbolises the relationshipsbetween the two parts: good roads for Israelis, poor roads for Palestinians. This influences thespace times of Palestinians as they must dedicate more time to transportation, using a destituteroad system. This fast infrastructure for Israeli’s operates as heterotopias of the illusion of securityin the Israeli matrix.

This descriptive analysis, on the one hand, exposes ways by which Israel choreographscomplex networks of security infrastructure articulated around the nexus of colonial planningstrategies. These devices effectively strengthen Israel’s position in the Occupied Territories bycementing its presence while carving up a space between West Bankers and their potentiality.On the other hand, Israel has accomplished just the opposite for itself, explicitly alienating itsown impotentiality.

Agamben’s potentiality and an optimistic outlook on Palestinian circumstances

Potentiality is often understood in relation to actuality. In a way not so dissimilar to the relationthat utopias have with heterotopias. Potential is generally defined as something not-yet actual, butthat over time and through the principle of development has the power to become. Agamben, whofrequently draws on Aristotle in his own explorations on the notion of potentiality, connects thisposition with what the Greek philosopher called generic potentialities. Borrowing the sameexample as Aristotle to illustrate these “generic potentialities”, Agamben (1999, p. 179) writesthat the child “is potential in the sense that he must suffer an alteration (a becoming other)through learning” in order to reach a state of actuality.

Agamben follows Aristotle in defining another source of potentiality, going beyond the binaryof potential/actual. In an essay titled “Potentiality,” (1999) Agamben expresses a shared sense ofconcern with Aristotle for a second type of potentiality that they refer to as existing potentiality; aterminology used to describe potential that already “belongs to someone”, a potential that isalready accessible. Agamben writes:

Whoever already possesses knowledge, by contrast [to the child], is not obliged to suffer an alteration;he is instead potential, Aristotle says, thanks to a hexis, a “having”, on the basis of which he can alsonot bring his knowledge into actuality by not making a work, for example. (Agamben, 1999, p. 179)

Agamben supports this concept through the example of the architect who is said to have thepotential to build, or the poet who has the potential to write poetry. A parallel example exists inIsrael’s potential to erect checkpoints, walls and settlements throughout the West Bank in AreasC, where administrative and military power has been transferred onto them with the Oslo Accord(although the Accord legally expired in 1999). While Agamben’s “architect is potential insofar ashe has the potential to not-build,” (1999, p. 179) Israel’s potential to not act seems to have goneastray.

16 C. Boano and B. Leclair-Paquet

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

ET

H Z

uric

h] a

t 01:

04 2

6 Fe

brua

ry 2

014

Agamben identifies the key feature in Aristotle’s thoughts in this crucial notion of “existingpotentiality”; that of being capable of resisting one’s own potentiality. “The greatness – and alsothe abyss – of human potentiality is that it is first of all [the] potential not to act” (Agamben,1999, p. 181). Existing potentiality contain the power of negation, the freedom to resist; “potenti-ality is always also constitutively an impotentiality, [… ] the ability to do is also always the ability tonot do” (Agamben, 2009, p. 43). Israel’s heterotopian infrastructures are material evidence of thisinability to not do. They are some of the most obvious manifestations of this obsession with biopo-litical confinement so important to much colonial projects. Operating at the doorstep of illegality(and often, of legality), these spatial strategies have become tangible ingredients displaying the char-acter and ethos of the occupation, and in a way, demystifying the colonial politics and narratives thathave emerged as part of the plea against the fight over the Occupied Territories.

As Agamben (2009, p. 45) states “nothing make us more impoverished and less free then theestrangement from impotentiality.”Agamben argues that what separates human beings from otherliving beings is that we are the only “animals who are capable of their own impotentiality” (2009,p. 44). Deprived from this capacity – from our impotentiality – we are forced to translate potentialinto actuality, thereby losing our freedom to animal instinct. Echoing the thoughts of Aristotle,Agamben (1999, p. 182) explains how “human potentiality is in relation to its own privation,”and that there lies the origins of human power, “which is so violent and limitless with respectto other human beings.” Separated from its impotentiality, human power is left in a state whereall potentialities must be actualised, expressing its might and superiority on whichever agenciesit seeks to outdo.

What makes us human, according to Agamben, is precisely not our power of actualisation, butthe potential to not-be, which refers to the fact that we are capable of our own incapacity.Agamben therefore relocates freedom on the other side of the spectrum, not in actuality, but inthe domain of potentiality, which, as we have seen, is the mirror of impotentiality:

To be free is not simply to have the power to do this or that thing, nor is it simply to have the power torefuse to do this or that thing. To be free is, in the sense we have seen, to be capable of one’s ownimpotentiality, to be in relation to one’s own privation. This is why freedom is freedom for bothgood and evil. (Agamben, 2009, p. 44)

If impotentiality is the essence of potentiality, the root of human freedom can be found in ourcapacity to not-be; the power of freedom and human action subsists in the capacity to not act onevery potentiality. It is precisely in this non-active potentiality that fundamental passivity lays –and where passive resistance locates – its modus operandi.

What are the political consequences of defining freedom not in terms of actuality, but in termsof the potentiality to not-be? If “the greatness of human potentiality is measured by the abyss ofhuman potentiality,” (Agamben, 1999, p. 183) what kind of environment would a society incap-able of its impotentiality produce? Building on Aristotle’s radical work once again, Agambenwrites that:

Separated from his impotentiality, deprived of the experience of what he can not do, today’s manbelieves himself capable of everything, and so he repeats his jovial “no problem,” and his irrespon-sible “I can do it,” precisely when he should instead realize that he has been consigned in unheard ofmeasure to forces and processes over which he has lost all control. He has become blind not to hiscapacities but to his incapacities, not to what he can do but to what he cannot, or can not, do.(Agamben, 2009, p. 44)

In a way distressfully similar to what Agamben describes here, Israel continues its colonialstrategies across the Armistice Line in a way that suggests that it has started to lose sight of its

Space and Polity 17

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

ET

H Z

uric

h] a

t 01:

04 2

6 Fe

brua

ry 2

014

impotentiality. The devices Israel produces through the axiomatic of occupation have not onlybecome heterotopian from a Palestinian perspective, but have also become an other space,both imaginary and real for the better part of the world. As Israel ingeniously locates loopholesand legal grey zones from which to operate, it repeats its “jovial no problem,” leaving behind asense that its potential to impotentiality is slowly escaping its reach; that everything that can bedone is automatically done, suspending, in so doing, any process of reflection that might allow itto find within itself, the freedom it seeks for itself.

However complex and “biopolitically” charged these infrastructures have become, theycannot succeed in separating West Bankers from their impotentiality, leaving with them thepower to resist and ultimately, the foundation of potentiality. “Those who are separated fromtheir own impotentiality lose, on the other hand, first of all the capacity to resist” (Agamben,2009, p. 45); a capacity that leaves behind unpredictable pieces of impotentialities for WestBankers, who can still not do. The relative ease and extent with which Israel has been able tounleash its heterotopian infrastructures onto extra-territorial spaces implies the becoming of a pre-dictable agency, unable to not do; the biopolitical confinement it sought to proliferate to competewith its adversary has simultaneously taken over its own mechanism as the virile apparatus hasnearly ceased to consider self-restraint:

And just as it is only the burning awareness of what we cannot be that guarantees the truth of what weare, so it is only the lucid vision of what we cannot, or can not, do that gives consistency to our actions.(Agamben, 2009, p. 45)

Israel’s heterotopian infrastructures in the West Bank are material evidence of the situationtheoretically described here, where what Israel can not do becomes more blurred as each day pro-gresses. The mechanics of occupation have outdone their own agents.

Conclusion

Following Agamben’s spatial limit case – the state of exception – the heterotopian infrastructuresthis paper described are a clear spatialisation of potentials, which belong to the matrix of controlthat characterise the West Bank’s territorial configuration. Claiming that heterotopian infrastruc-tures produce a governmental potential to link specific arrays of discursive objects, proceduresand rationalities towards particular spaces is then central and well aligned with Foucault’sspatial articulation on the subject. However, foregrounding the idea of potentiality in the analysisof border topologies, this paper argues that a different understanding of Agamben’s philosophymight carved out the emergent spatialisation of the exception rather than its determinate spaces.

Situated on the edge of materiality, the state of exception has the potential to materialise or notto materialise actual spaces of exception. Agamben argues that this potentiality, “maintains itselfin relation to actuality in the form of its suspension; it is capable of the act in not realizing it, it issovereignly capable of its own im-potentiality” (Agamben, 1999, p. 45). Agamben finds the “rootof freedom” also within the “abyss of potentiality” (Agamben, 1999, p. 183). In developing het-erotopian infrastructure as potential and not simply actual we tried to offer an alternative reading,a more positive one that carves out possible spaces of agency within a “paralyzing and powerfulsystem of apparent impossibilities” (Weizman, 2007, p. 261). In doing so Agamben’s politicalpraxis becomes one of radical desubjectivation that refuses to be captured in a topological stateof exception. He writes, “We can say that between immanence and a life there is a kind of crossingwith neither distance nor identification, something like a passage without spatial movement”(Agamben, 1999, p. 223). Our understanding of the exception as topological, emergent and poten-tial does, however, point towards a way to propose, to seize the potential of emergence, the

18 C. Boano and B. Leclair-Paquet

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

ET

H Z

uric

h] a

t 01:

04 2

6 Fe

brua

ry 2

014

potential of topological transformation, to undermine the apparent fixity of current geometries ofpower. Agamben’s perspective can hence be made fruitful in critical research on urban policiesand critical architecture.

The debate on borders can not ignore the intricacies of the Occupied Palestinian Territorywhere the principles of exclusion have been molded into practice, and where spatial topologieshave brought an active dispositive of forces with the capacity to capture, orient, determine, inter-cept, model, control, or secure the gestures, behaviours, opinions and discourses of living beings.Such a paradigmatic case, when analysed under Agamben’s spatiology, becomes an effectiveinterpretative framework to illustrate border mechanics under a constant state of exception anda serial of tensions that are materialised in actuality.

Agamben’s shift between Aristotle and Bartleby shows a new and different variety of “civildisobedience”. For Agamben, Bartleby exemplifies not only refusal to unacceptable conditions –not only civil disobedience – but also potentiality. As we tried to demonstrate, the interestingpotentiality is the one that never attains such actuality but remains potential, latent. As such, Mel-ville’s scrivener offers a fruitful way of understanding potentiality as the potentiality not-to-do ornot-to-be. Agamben’s usage of impotentiality (impotenza) does not mean inability, impossibilityor mere passivity, but rather the potentiality not-to. The difficulty arises once impotentiality andpotentiality are defined (as we did) with one another. One in its constitutive co-belonging with theother. How we do understand the passage to act when this is equally the product or the result of amodification of impotentiality? Or more simply, how potentiality is realised in the act? Agam-ben’s lessons challenge the conventional understanding of “what is possible – or potential – isthat with respect to which nothing is impossible or impotential” (Agamben, 1999, p. 183), stres-sing that what is potential can pass over into actuality only at the point at which it sets aside itsown potential not-to-be. To set impotentiality aside is not to destroy it but the opposite. We canread Bartleby’s “I would prefer not to” – as an index of inoperative power (Murray, 2010, p. 49)that is the ability to disrupt the function of power by refusing to either obey or reject it. ForAgamben is the final image of Bartleby:

[..] sometimes from out of the folded paper the pale clerk takes a ring – the finger it was meant for,perhaps, moulders in the grave; a bank-note sent in swiftest charity – he whom it would relieve, noreats not hungers any more; pardon for those who died despairing; hope for those who died unhoping;good tidings for those who died stifled by unrelieved calamities. On errands of life, these letter spreadthe death. (Meliville, 1995, p. 47)

The dead letter office is indicative of potentiality: is the letters not sent “the ciphers of joyus eventthat never took place. What took place was instead the opposite possibility (Agamben, 1999,p. 269).

All this outlines the potentials of Agamben’s work, calling for more empirical and theoreticalefforts, not only on the dehumanising aspect of architectural dispositive, the ban, the exceptionand the heterotopic infrastructure in their actualisation of the utopian total security and control,but also on the multiplicity of strategies that can contest them. Ultimately, it seems, Agamben’salternative is not about the destruction of the dispositives of exception, but in rendering theminoperative by liberating that which has been separated by them: profaning them.

AcknowledgementsWe would like to thank Marc Angélil and Stephen Cairns for their close readings of this paper in its draftform and their insightful feedback. And Stephen Graham and Vanesa Castan-Broto for allowing us topresent an earlier version of this work at the American Association of Geographer’s Annual Meeting.

Space and Polity 19

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

ET

H Z

uric

h] a

t 01:

04 2

6 Fe

brua

ry 2

014

Notes1. Worth noting several attempt to collate and archive heterotopian reflections with and beyond Foucault

stardom. See for example http://www.heterotopiastudies.com or http://thefunambulist.net2. The concept of Offshore Urbanism has been borrowed from Alessandro Petti, who developed the notion

in depth, using Dubai as a case study (see Petti, 2008).3. The Oslo Accord has led to the division of the West Bank, which has transferred the administrate of a

significant portion of the Palestinian territory to Israeli (all “Areas C”). With this, different planningsystems between Palestinians and settlers emerged (see military order 418, which would “laterpermit the extensive development of the settlements, alongside the imposition of severe building restric-tions in Palestinian communities” (Bimkom, p. 39). The same military order annulled local and districtcommittees in all of Area C, creating a centralized power instead: the Israeli military regime (Bimkom,p. 40). See references in: Bimkom (2008) “Prohibited Zone: Israeli Planning Policy in the PalestinianVillages in Area C”, Bimkom: Jerusalem

4. Master planning has been central to Israel’s project since 1948, when Bauhaus graduate Arieh Sharondeveloped the “Sharon Master Plan”: a single vision and layout that guided a series of colonial mega-projects throughout the 1950s until the late 1960s. Its objectives to host 2,650,000 habitants were met in1966. The Allon Plan (Yigal Allon, Minister of Agriculture and Director of the government SettlementsCommittee at the time) that followed in the aftermath of the 1967 War would become the second install-ment in this legacy. Rafi Segal and Eyal Weizman documented more recent plans for over 45 settlementsin the West Bank in an exhibit titled A Civilian Occupation, which was first presented at the StorefrontGallery for Art and Architecture in New York City, in 2002. An eponymous book followed, which con-tains an interview by Eran Tamir-Tawil with master planner Thomas M. Leitersdorf, a graduate from theArchitectural Association. He is responsible for the masterplans of Ma’ale Edummim and Emmanuel;two of the largest Israeli settlements in the West Bank (see Segal and Weizman, 2003).

5. Decolonizing Architecture’s project entitled The Red Castle and the Lawless Line explores this anomalyand the potential that lies within it. The project was presented for the first time at the 4th InternationalArchitecture Triennale of Oslo in 2010 at 0047 Gallery. It speculates on the speculative strategies insidethe liminal spaces of Areas C as territories. The presentation of the exhibit is available at: http://0047.org/exhibitions/view/55

6. The concept of “imaginative geography”was first developed by Edward Said, and explained at length inDerek Gregory’s (2004) The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq.

ReferencesAgamben, G. (1993a). Infancy and history: Essays on the destruction of experience. London: Verso.Agamben, G. (1993b). The coming community. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Agamben, G. (1999). Potentialities: Collected essays in philosophy. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Agamben, G. (2006). Metropolis. In: Metropoli/moltitudine seminario nomade in tre atti. Venice.Agamben, G. (2009). On what we can not do. In G. Agamben (Ed.), Nudities (pp. 43–45). Stanford: Stanford

University Press.Agamben, G., & Dailey, P. (2005). The time that remains: A commentary on the letter to the romans.

Stanford: Stanford University Press.Belcher, O., Martin, L., Secor, A., Simon, S., & Wilson, T. (2008). Everywhere and nowhere: The exception

and the topological challenge to geography. Antipode, 40(4), 499–503.Bimkom. (2008). Prohibited zone: Israeli planning policy in the palestinian villages in area C. Jerusalem:

Bimkom.Boano, C. (2011). ‘Violent spaces’: Production and reproduction of security and vulnerabilities. The Journal

of Architecture, 16(1), 37–55.Boano, C., & Floris, F. (2005). Cittá nude. Iconografia dei campi profughi. Milano: Franco Angeli.Boano, C., & Martén, R. (2012). Agamben’s urbanism of exception: Jerusalem’s border mechanics and

biopolitical strongholds. Cities, 34(10), 6–17.B’Tselem. (2004). Forbidden roads israel’s discriminatory road regime in the West Bank, information sheet

August 2004. Retrieved January 24, 2012, from http://www.btselem.org/download/200408_forbidden_roads_eng.pdf

Charlesworth, E. (2006). Architects without frontiers. London: Architectural Press.Cruz, T. (2010). The Political equator: Global zones of conflict. In M. Schoonderbeek (Ed.), Border

Conditions (pp. 130–144). Amsterdam: Architecture and Natura Press.

20 C. Boano and B. Leclair-Paquet

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

ET

H Z

uric

h] a

t 01:

04 2

6 Fe

brua

ry 2

014

de Cauter, L. (2004). The capsular civilization, on the city at the age of fear. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers.de Cauter, L. (2009). Feast in a War Zone, Palestinian Diary. Beyond No. 2, Values and Symptoms, 28–43.Elden, S. (2013). Secure the volume: Vertical geopolitics and the depth of power. Political Geography, 34(5),

35–51.Fregonese, S., (2006). The urbicide of Beirut? Geopolitics and the built environment in the Lebanese civil

war (1975–1976). Political Geography, 28(5), 309–318.Fregonese, S., (2012). Between a refuge and a battleground: Beirut’s discrepant cosmopolitanism.

Geographical Review, 2(3), 316–336.Foucault, M. (1970). The order of things: An archaeology of the human sciences. London: Routledge.Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline and punish. The birth of the prison. (A. Sheridan, Trans.). Harmondsworth:

Penguin.Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972–1977. Brighton:

Harvester Press.Foucault, M. (1986). Of other spaces. Diacritics 16(1), 22–27.Foucault, M. (1997). Of other spaces: Utopias and heterotopias. In N. Leach (Ed.), Rethinking architecture:

A reader in cultural theory (pp. 350–355). London: Routledge.Foucault, M. (1998). Different spaces. In J. D. Faubion (Ed.),Michel Foucault, Aesthetics, method, and epis-

temology (pp. 175–195). London: Penguin Books.Gazit, N. (2010). Boundaries in interaction: The cultural fabrication of social boundaries in West Jerusalem.

City and Community, 9(4), 390–413.Giaccaria, P., & Minca, C. (2011). Topographies/topologies of the camp: Auschwitz as a spatial threshold.

Political Geography, 30(1), 3–12.Graham, S. (2010). Cities under siege: The new Military Urbanism. London: Verso.Graham, S. (2011). The New Military Urbanism. In J. Tyner, & J. Inwood (Eds.), Nonkilling geography

(pp. 85–102). Centre for nonkilling geography Honolulu: Hawaii United States of America.Graham, S. (2012). When life itself is war: On the urbanization of military and security doctrine.

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 36(1), 136–155.Graham S., & Hewitt, L. (2013). Getting off the ground. On the politics of urban verticality progress of

human. Geography, 37(1), 72–92.Graham, S., &Marvin, S. (2001). Splintering urbanism: Networked infrastructures, technological mobilities

and the urban condition. London: Routledge.Grahame Shane, D. (2011). Urban design since 1945 – A global perspective. Chichester: Wiley.Gregory, D. (2004). The colonial present: Afghanistan, palestine, Iraq. London: Routledge.Groag, S. (2006). The politics of roads in Jerusalem. In P. Misselwitz & T. Rieniets (Eds.), City of collision,

Jerusalem and the principles of conflict urbanism (pp. 176–184). Basel: Birkhauser.Iverson, K. (2011). Ten years after 9/11. City: Analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action,

15(3–4), 389–391.Kenzari, B. (2012). Architecture and violence. Barcelona: Actar.Lash, S., & Lury, C. (2007). Global culture industry: The mediation of things. Cambridge: Polity.Lathouri, M. (2011). The city as a project. types, typical objects and typologies. Architectural Design, 81(1),

24–31.Lefebvre, H. (1970/2003). La révolution urbaine [The Urban Revolution]. Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press.Massumi, B. (1998). Sensing the virtual, building the insensible. Architectural Design, 68(5/6), 16–24.Melville, H. (1853). Bartleby, the Scrivener: A story of wall street. In Harrison Hayford, Alma A.

MacDougall, & G. Thomas Tanselle (Eds.), The Piazza tales and other prose pieces, 1839–1860(pp. 13–45). Evanston, IL and Chicago: Northwestern University Press and the Newberry Library, 1987.

Melville, H. (1995). The contemporary reviews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Mezzadra, S., & Neilson, B. (2008). Border as method, or, the multiplication of labour. Trasversal, 06–08.

Retrieved from http://eipcp.net/transversal/0608/mezzadraneilson/enMezzadra, S., & Neilson, B. (2012). Between inclusion and exclusion: On the topology of global space and

borders. Theory, Culture and Society, 29(4/5), 58–75.Murray, A. (2010). Giorgio agamben. Routledge: London.Newman, D. (2006). Colonization as suburbanization, the politics of the land market at the frontier. In P.

Misselwitz & T. Rieniets (Eds.), City of collision, Jerusalem and the principles of conflict urbanism(pp. 113–120). Basel: Birkhauser.

Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) (2011). West Bank movement and AccessUpdate, Special Focus 2011. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Occupied

Space and Polity 21

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

ET

H Z

uric

h] a

t 01:

04 2

6 Fe

brua

ry 2

014

Palestinian Territory. Retrieved January 19, 2012, from http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_movement_and_access_report_august_2011_english.pdf

Petti, A. (2002). Asymmetries, the road network in Israel-Palestine. Beit Sahour: Decolonizing Architecture.Petti, A (2008). Dubai Offshore Urbanism. In M. Dehaene & L. de Cauter (Eds.), Heterotopia and the city.

London: Routledge.Pullan, W. (2011). Frontier urbanism: The periphery at the centre of contested cities. The Journal of

Architecture, 16(1), 15–35.Rumford, C. (2010). Global borders: An introduction to the special issue. Environment and Planning D:

Society and Space, 28(6), 951–956.Safier, M. (2001). The struggle for Jerusalem: Arena of nationalist conflict or crucible of cosmopolitan co-ex-

istence. City, 5(2), 136–168.Safier, M. (2006). The cosmopolitan challenge in cities on the edge of the millennium: Moving from conflict

to co-existence. City, 1(3), 12–29.Samman, K. (2006). Cities of god and nationalism: Mecca, Jerusalem, and Rome as contested world cities.

Boulder: Paradigm.Savitch, H. V. (2005). An anatomy of urban terror: Lessons from Jerusalem and elsewhere. Urban Studies,

42(3), 361–395.Segal, R., & Weizman E. (2003). A civilian occupation: The politics of Israeli architecture. London: Verso.Shlay, B., & Rosen, G. A. (2010). Making place. The shifting green line and the development of ‘Greater’

metropolitan Jerusalem. City and Community, 9(4), 358–389.Soja, E. (2000). Postmetropolis: Critical studies of cities and regions. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Terranova, T. (2009). Another life: The nature of political economy in Foucault’s genealogy of biopolitics.

Theory, Culture and Society, 26(6), 234–262.Till, K.E., Sundberg, J., Pullan, W., Saltis, C., Makriyianni, C., Zincir Celal, R., … Dowler, L. (2013).

Interventions in the political geographies of walls. Political Geography, 33, 52–62.Weizman, E. (2006). Principles of frontier geography. In P. Misselwitz, & T. Rieniets (Eds.), City of collision,

Jerusalem and the principles of conflict urbanism (pp. 84–92). Basel: Birkhauser.Weizman, E. (2007). Hollow land, Israel’s architecture of occupation. London: Verso.Weizman, E. (2008). The politics of verticality (PhD thesis). University of London, London.Williams, V. (2009). Border politics: The limits of Sovereign power. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Yiftachel, O. (1995). Planning as control: Policy and resistance in a deeply divided society. Progress in

Planning 44(2), 116–184.Yiftachel, O. (2006). Ethnocracy: Land and identity politics in Israel/Palestine. Philadelphia: University of

Pennsylvania Press.Yiftachel, O., & H. Yacobi (2006). Barriers, walls, and urban ethnocracy in Jerusalem. In P. Misselwitz, & T.

Rieniets (Eds.), City of collision, Jerusalem and the principles of conflict urbanism (pp. 170–175).Basel: Birkhauser.

Zureik, E., Lyon, D., & Abu-Laban, Y., (2011). Surveillance and control in Israel/Palestine: Population,territory and power. London: Routledge.

22 C. Boano and B. Leclair-Paquet

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

ET

H Z

uric

h] a

t 01:

04 2

6 Fe

brua

ry 2

014