Shortly after the June 1967 War, in which Israel seized vast territories beyond its borders, the ... more Shortly after the June 1967 War, in which Israel seized vast territories beyond its borders, the Israeli government removed Israel's internationally recognised border (the Green Line) from all official maps of the state. Since then, Israeli maps misrepresent the state's sovereign territory and the occupied territories as one territorial unit. This article examines the changing of Israel's national map by drawing on agnotology, the study of the production of ignorance, and critical settler colonial cartography scholarship. It first demonstrates that the misleading map has detrimentally eroded the legibility of the state's territory for Israelis and impeded their ability to comprehend its geography, to argue that spatial ignorance may substantiate settler colonial endeavours. The article then turns to charting the 'geography of ignorance' that has underwritten the governmental decision to change the map. It argues that as government ministers resorted to dissembling their obliviousness to evade their complicity in an act of cartographic duplicity, they were misguided by their own cartographic misapprehensions. Ignorant of the 'logo effect' of national maps, they were unaware that by changing the map they were amalgamating Israel's colonial expansionism into the spatiality of Israel's nationhood. Since the deliberate inducing of ignorance is unruly, and the ramifications of such endeavours can easily escape the intentions and understandings of its propagators, agnotology research should account for how those who conspire to hamper the knowledge of others may be led astray by their own ignorance.
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2017
Highly securitized sites, such as airports, are increasingly using screening methods designed to ... more Highly securitized sites, such as airports, are increasingly using screening methods designed to purge racial profiling from their practices. In these contexts, not only are profiling methods seen as unlawful, but are also perceived as ineffective from a security perspective. Instead of basing security screenings on a perceived ‘dangerousness’ of social categories, these new screening methods aim to rely on automatic and objective criteria. This paper examines the shaping and effects of these security procedures, claiming that this redesigning of security technologies in accordance with practices which are presumably scientific, measurable and objective, has resulted in the creation of new categories of ‘threatening’ persons. Specifically, we show how the category of ‘normal’ has become central to security sorting and how, therefore – unintentionally yet necessarily – these procedures and technologies have become apparatuses of social normalization. People who deviate from given nor...
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2013
Research on the Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank has emphasized not only that these checkpoin... more Research on the Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank has emphasized not only that these checkpoints have dire implications for the Palestinians living there, at the personal, familial, and communal levels, and devastating effects on the Palestinian economy, but also that they have far-reaching consequences for the ability of the Palestinians to establish an independent political entity. At the same time, analysis of the Israeli forms of domination over the Palestinians has also stressed the role of a Palestinian governing authority in sustaining the Israeli rule, since the former relieves the latter of its responsibility to care for the occupied Palestinian population. This paper aims to address this apparent contradiction claiming that a comprehensive analysis of Israeli forms of domination requires a spatial examination of the operation of sovereignty with an assessment of governmentalizing arrays. This combined analysis suggests that a Palestinian sovereignty, but one which is em...
Shortly after the June 1967 War, in which Israel seized vast territories beyond its borders, the ... more Shortly after the June 1967 War, in which Israel seized vast territories beyond its borders, the Israeli government removed Israel's internationally recognised border (the Green Line) from all official maps of the state. Since then, Israeli maps misrepresent the state's sovereign territory and the occupied territories as one territorial unit. This article examines the changing of Israel's national map by drawing on agnotology, the study of the production of ignorance, and critical settler colonial cartography scholarship. It first demonstrates that the misleading map has detrimentally eroded the legibility of the state's territory for Israelis and impeded their ability to comprehend its geography, to argue that spatial ignorance may substantiate settler colonial endeavours. The article then turns to charting the 'geography of ignorance' that has underwritten the governmental decision to change the map. It argues that as government ministers resorted to dissembling their obliviousness to evade their complicity in an act of cartographic duplicity, they were misguided by their own cartographic misapprehensions. Ignorant of the 'logo effect' of national maps, they were unaware that by changing the map they were amalgamating Israel's colonial expansionism into the spatiality of Israel's nationhood. Since the deliberate inducing of ignorance is unruly, and the ramifications of such endeavours can easily escape the intentions and understandings of its propagators, agnotology research should account for how those who conspire to hamper the knowledge of others may be led astray by their own ignorance.
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2017
Highly securitized sites, such as airports, are increasingly using screening methods designed to ... more Highly securitized sites, such as airports, are increasingly using screening methods designed to purge racial profiling from their practices. In these contexts, not only are profiling methods seen as unlawful, but are also perceived as ineffective from a security perspective. Instead of basing security screenings on a perceived ‘dangerousness’ of social categories, these new screening methods aim to rely on automatic and objective criteria. This paper examines the shaping and effects of these security procedures, claiming that this redesigning of security technologies in accordance with practices which are presumably scientific, measurable and objective, has resulted in the creation of new categories of ‘threatening’ persons. Specifically, we show how the category of ‘normal’ has become central to security sorting and how, therefore – unintentionally yet necessarily – these procedures and technologies have become apparatuses of social normalization. People who deviate from given nor...
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2013
Research on the Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank has emphasized not only that these checkpoin... more Research on the Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank has emphasized not only that these checkpoints have dire implications for the Palestinians living there, at the personal, familial, and communal levels, and devastating effects on the Palestinian economy, but also that they have far-reaching consequences for the ability of the Palestinians to establish an independent political entity. At the same time, analysis of the Israeli forms of domination over the Palestinians has also stressed the role of a Palestinian governing authority in sustaining the Israeli rule, since the former relieves the latter of its responsibility to care for the occupied Palestinian population. This paper aims to address this apparent contradiction claiming that a comprehensive analysis of Israeli forms of domination requires a spatial examination of the operation of sovereignty with an assessment of governmentalizing arrays. This combined analysis suggests that a Palestinian sovereignty, but one which is em...
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Papers by Merav Amir