Performing Participation

Performing Participation/Protest: The Semiotics of National Identity and Commemorative Rituals in a Heritage Site in Jerusalem Chaim Noy Sapir College

Stags of performance

Conceptualizing the visitor book as a social site: a public stage where actors’ actions are recorded and performed

Recording public acts of presence and participation

These are embodied and situated acts

A view that searches beyond content/theme, into ritualistic actions of inscriptions

Ammunition Hill National Memorial Site, Jerusalem

Complex Commemorating ‘67 Battle & War

Inaugurated 1975 on the historic battlegrounds:

Approx. 25,000-50,000 vis. per year

Organized groups

Intel. tourist/local sightseers

Exclusively Jewish

Highly Ideological: Zionist Militaristic Nationalism

Heritage tourism/museum studies

Contested spaces

Ideologically framed and charges spaces (metonymically interlinked):

Israel

Jerusalem

AHNMS

Museum

Visitor Book

Visitors arrive at and visit multiple spaces

“ Documents are composed in and of particular places” (Laurier & Whyte)

Sights

The visitor book VB on Pedestal VB Hall & Installation

The Book’s possibilities

Technologies of inscribing/possibilities of participation

Spatiality: Openspace

VB on Pedestal

100 pages / 1 year

1,300 entries

30% read / 3% inscribe

Diaspora and Israel 9.8.05 The visit taught us of the difficult battles and of the high and dear cost we paid in blood so that today we would be able to stroll and live in Jerusalem quietly and freely. It was very moving. [The] Shaked Family.

Basa"d [With God’s Help] To all the soldiers who willingly gave their lives for us, I want to express all my gratitude & emotions. Without you, we wouldn’t be standing here today. Thank you so much, on my behalf & on all of the Medinat Yisrael behalf for everything you have done for us. Sincerely, Omry Naftali, PA

Center – Periphery – Zionist ethos

Ultra-orthodox Jews from near-by Jerusalem neighborhoods

Visitors from peripheral towns and settlements

Bitton, Tiberias

Azulai, Beit-She’an

Levi, Yavne

Malka, Neve-Ya’akov

Ethnicity Peripherialized

Golani Respect!!!

All the paratroopers shall die!!

I was here

August, 2005

זה לא כוח שלנו

אלא מה '

ישתבח שמו לעד

גוש קטיף

(undated)

עם תום הגירוש של יהודים מגוש קטיף

צריך לבנות מוזיאון

יד ושם

לזכר חבל ארץ

שנגדע נחרב ונעלם

בידי רשעים ארורים

בלי לב בלי חמלה

Conclusions

The ontology of performance concerns presence and presencing;

So we may ask who is/are absent from the pages/stages of commemoration?

Palestinians (who live near-by), and

2. The Achusalim (Kimmerling) or Ashkenazi Elite:

The Ashkenazi Sabra embodied the ideals of being Israeli (Israeliness). They are missing from the book (in terms of signatures), but are embodied in the artifact of the respected and “mamlachti” book itself.