Israel as homotopia: Language, space, and vicious belonging

Erez Levon, Tommaso M. Milani

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

17 Scopus citations

Abstract

Israel has recently succeeded in presenting itself as an attractive haven for LGBT constituencies. In this article, we investigate how this affective traction operates in practice, along with the ambiguous entanglement of normativity and antinormativity as expressed in the agency of some gay Palestinian Israelis vis-à-vis the Israeli homonationalist project. For this purpose, we analyze the documentary Oriented (2015), produced by the British director Jake Witzenfeld together with the Palestinian collective Qambuta Productions. More specifically, the aim of the article is twofold. From a theoretical perspective, we seek to demonstrate how Foucault's notion of heterotopia provides a useful framework for understanding the spatial component of Palestinian Israeli experience, and the push and pull of conflicted identity projects more generally. Empirically, we illustrate how Israel is a homotopia, an inherently ambivalent place that is simultaneously utopian and dystopian, and that generates what we call vicious belonging.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)607-628
Number of pages22
JournalLanguage in Society
Volume48
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 1 2019

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Language and Linguistics
  • Sociology and Political Science
  • Linguistics and Language

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Israel as homotopia: Language, space, and vicious belonging'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this