Performing Participation/Protest: Performing Participation/Protest: The Semiotics of National Identity The Semiotics of National Identity and Commemorative Rituals in a and Commemorative Rituals in a

Heritage Site in Jerusalem Heritage Site in Jerusalem

Chaim NoySapir College

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Stags of performanceStags 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

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Ammunition Hill National Ammunition Hill National Memorial Site, JerusalemMemorial 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

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Contested spacesContested 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)

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SightsSights

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The visitor bookThe visitor book

VB on Pedestal

VB Hall & Installation

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The Book’s possibilitiesThe 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

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9.8.05 The visit taught us of the difficult battlesand 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.

Diaspora and Israel Diaspora and Israel

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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

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Center – Periphery – Zionist ethosCenter – 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

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Ethnicity Peripherialized Ethnicity Peripherialized

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Golani Respect!!!

All the paratroopers shall die!!

I was here

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August, 2005

זה לא כוח שלנו'אלא מה

ישתבח שמו לעדגוש קטיף

(undated)עם תום הגירוש של יהודים

מגוש קטיף צריך לבנות מוזיאון

יד ושםלזכר חבל ארץ

שנגדע נחרב ונעלםבידי רשעים ארורים

בלי לב בלי חמלה

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ConclusionsConclusions• The ontology of performance

concerns presence and presencing;• So we may ask who is/are absent

from the pages/stages of commemoration?

3. Palestinians (who live near-by), and

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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.

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Thank you

Chaim NoyJune, 3 2009Jerusalem