‘Planted Over The Past’: Ideology and Ecology in Israel's National Eco-Imaginary

Boast, Hannah

doi:10.1080/14688417.2012.10589099

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 8 publications

(1 reference statement)

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“…26. In this sense, the work fits within Jill Bennett's conception of practical aesthetics: the aesthetic means through which art may open up a sensebased and affective process of apprehending the emotions, sentiments and passions of public life (Bennett 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

The politics of arrival: Israeli borderscapes and the boundaries of artistic space in Emi Sfard’sInvasive Species

Roei

2021

Journal of Aesthetics & Culture

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This article explores ecologically-inflected conceptions of home and belonging through a detailed study of Invasive Species (2017), an immersive media installation by emerging artist Emi Sfard. The installation comprises two interactive video works created with the help of 3D computer programs that can be updated in real time. Both works relate in different ways to Israeli landscape imaginaries, and examine the hidden relations between human and nonhuman "border crossers" that contribute to the way in which the national contours of the state of Israel are sustained, on material, aesthetic and conceptual levels. As I will argue, the installation's critical edge resides in part in its refusal to remain within the picture plane, implicating spectators in the depicted images through gaming technologies, and so interspersing questions of national boundaries with those of the borders of the gallery space KEYWORDS Borders; Landscapes; Zionism; eco-imaginaries; immersion; Israeli artThere is no such thing as a non-aesthetic figuration of the border.-Rosello and Wolfe Introduction: on boundary work and immersive experiencesBorders and boundaries are typically defined as demarcation lines. Whether geo-political, ecological, or cultural, whether real or imagined, once set they are perceived as anonymous entities, superseding the individual (Boer 2006, 3). Recent scholarship, however, asks that we rethink the boundary and its derivatives (borders, frontiers, and so on) less as entities, and more as functions: moving attention away from the "what and where" of the boundary to the "how and why" of its construction and maintenance. Addressing the boundary as an entity conceals the "boundary work" involved in its production (ibid, 4,6). This is true also in the case of natural phenomena (rivers, mountains, forests), that are mobilized in discourse as means for naturalizing-taking for granted-certain borders and border effects (Rosello and Saunders 2017, 29-30). Thinking of the boundary as a function, instead of as an entity, is not to say that borders are not real, in the sense that they have concrete effects in the world; but it does ask that more attention will be given to the economic, political, cultural and sensory practices through which borders are established and experienced (Rosello and Wolfe 2017, 8). "Boundaries cannot be wished away", writes Inge Boer, "but will serve their ordering purposes better . . . if we accept their existence but take them as uncertain; not lines, but spaces, not rigid but open to negotiation. The resulting uncertain territories are the ground we stand on, together" (Boer 2006, 13). Such an approach understands borders as ever-changing zones of transformation. It also offers a more active role to those that cross borders and to those that dwell at the border zones, in the design of the spaces that they traverse and inhabit: in the words of Mireille Rosello and Timothy Saunders, "when border-crossing actors (people, goods and ideas) travel, they traverse an inherently shifting and unstable ...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

The politics of arrival: Israeli borderscapes and the boundaries of artistic space in Emi Sfard’sInvasive Species

Roei

2021

Journal of Aesthetics & Culture

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“…The extensive monocultural planting of pine trees, funded by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in the early 1900s, is a notable example of how the landscape was reshaped to reflect the image of the state. Hannah Boast (2012) explains that from the 1930s onwards, Zionists chose the Aleppo pine to shape the dry lands of Palestine in the image of a 'more European' landscape. Since 1901, over 240 million trees were planted by the Jewish National Fund (Braverman, 2009).…”

Section: From Desert To Garden: a Concise History Of Settler Colonial...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultivating biodiverse futures at the (postcolonial) botanical garden

Hassouna

2023

Trans Inst British Geog

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This article examines ecological practices at the Palestine Museum of Natural History in Bethlehem, West Bank. Through an analysis of the museum's botanical gardens, the article explores what it calls ‘biodiverse futures’ as a spatio‐temporal alternative to the ecological domination of settler colonialism in Israel/Palestine. While much scholarship has focused on the environmental imaginaries that have informed colonial conquest in Palestine, this paper draws attention to the ways in which these relationships extend into constructions of the future. Combining the literature on environmental violence with the literature on futurity and decolonisation, this article develops an approach that foregrounds the relevance of ‘ecological temporalities’ in examining alternatives to settler futures in Israel/Palestine. To date, only a limited number of contributions have examined environmentalism as a powerful discursive tool for constructing the future. The case of the museum gardens highlights three interrelated aspects of the production of ecological counter‐futures: futures as knowledge, futures as (bio)diversity, and futures as survival. Drawing on ethnographic material and interviews with museum staff and volunteers, this paper contributes to the study of the temporalities of environmental violence and ecological resistance in Israel/Palestine.

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“…Ecocritical scholar Hannah Boast discusses this acute discrepancy with reference to both trees and water. With regard to the former, namely trees, Boast talks about the vast programme of tree-planting and afforestation undertaken by the Jewish National Fund since 1901 and demonstrates how this fundamental feature of Israeli history, whilst central to other disciplines, is only tackled obliquely in literature and literary criticism (Boast 2012). Boast offers ecocritical readings of two Hebrew literary texts that engage in some way with the renowned tree-planting project: AB Yehoshua's short story 'Facing the Forests' ('Mul Ha-Ye'arot', 1963) and Oz Shelach's novel Picnic Grounds, published in English in 2003.…”

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confidence: 99%

Reviewing Modern Hebrew literature through a green lens: an ecocritical reading of Mica Yosef Berdichevsky’s ‘The Red Heifer’ (‘Para Aduma’, 1906)

Miller

2014

Green Letters

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‘Planted Over The Past’: Ideology and Ecology in Israel's National Eco-Imaginary

Cited by 7 publications

References 8 publications

The politics of arrival: Israeli borderscapes and the boundaries of artistic space in Emi Sfard’sInvasive Species

The politics of arrival: Israeli borderscapes and the boundaries of artistic space in Emi Sfard’sInvasive Species

Cultivating biodiverse futures at the (postcolonial) botanical garden

Reviewing Modern Hebrew literature through a green lens: an ecocritical reading of Mica Yosef Berdichevsky’s ‘The Red Heifer’ (‘Para Aduma’, 1906)

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