Architecture on the Borderline: Boundary Politics and Built Space 2019005647, 9781138102811, 9781138102828, 9781315103419

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Information
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of contents
List of Figures
List of Contributors
Preface and Acknowledgements
Introduction: Architecture on the borderline
Securitisation and insecurity
Border architectures
Border camps
Border heritage
Frontier, boundary, margin
References
Part One Frontier
1 Eurasia’s historical space of palimpsest—desert, border, riparian and steppe
Place: from centre to periphery
Choreographies: negotiating the riverine crossings
Mappings: re-imagining landscapes and escaping flatland
Meanings: materiality and the riverine archive
Notes
References
2 Intersecting sovereignties: Border camps and border villages in wartime North America
Material deprivation
Physical dislocation
Life in the border camps
Intersectional environments
The afterlives of camps
Notes
References
3 Data displacements: Transmitting digital media and the architecture of detention
Redefining data
A humanitarian turn
Islands of big data
Seeing beyond physical borders
Refugee media
Archiving detention
Disgrace and humanitarian architecture
References
4 Archipelagos and enclaves: On the border between Jordan and Palestine-Israel
Connect–disconnect
Connection
Disconnection
Bypassing
Asymmetric permeability of spaces: the highway networks in Palestine-Israel
From bypass roads…
… to sterile roads
Travel from A to B8
The Trans-Israel Highway
The diffusion of the model
Postscript on the society of control
Author note
Notes
References
Part Two Boundary
5 The wall against borders: Contesting Fortress Europe
Aggressive humanism
White Crosses at the Iron Curtain
The dead are coming
Conclusion
Author note
References
6 En route: The networked mobile border camps of Northern France
Migration flows, borders and border camps
The versatile geographies and spatialities of Northern France’s border camps
Calais Jungle camp and container camp (2015–16)
Grande-Synthe (Dunkirk) Basroch and Linière camps (2015–17)
Paris makeshift and institutional migrant camps (2015–17)
Conclusive remarks on a continuously changing reality
Note
References
7 Mapping the war: Everyday survival during the siege of Sarajevo
The siege of Sarajevo
Within the siege line: the new landscape of war
Within the city: The Sarajevo Survival Guide
Representing war and the city: Warchitecture
Mapping the destruction: Urbicide Sarajevo
Mapping daily life: ARH
Charting the future: Sarajevo: Dream and Reality
Projections of the city: the universal message of the art
Uniting the divided city
Notes
References
8 Filling in the gaps: Walls without limits and sovereignty with exceptions
Control the hole: walls and gaps/the lack of walls
From deterrence to propulsion: gaps and pushing out the border
Rajar
States normalising exception
From wildlife refuge to hole
Inverting a politics of exclusion
Conclusion
Notes
References
9 Confronting Koreas and the DMZ
The DMZ in the reproduction of difference
Ideologies and urban space
DMZ as a place: landscaping the visible DMZ
The DMZ as terror
DMZ and the imaginary: configuring the invisible DMZ
Other expressions
The DMZ: a conclusion
Notes
References
Part Three Margin
10 The remembered village between Europe and Asia-Minor: Nea Magnisia at Bonegilla
Border camp heritage
Nostalgia
The Asia Minor catastrophe
The new Greek colonies
The remembered village
The village at war
Journey to Australia
A place for Nea Magnisia?
Displacement heritage
Notes
References
11 Postcolonial urbanisms and the cultural politics of redeveloping Kowloon East, Hong Kong
Border contestations of postcolonial time and space
The postcolonial meanings of old Kai Tak
Kwun Tong Town Centre: dystopian remembrances
To Kwa Wan: waiting for the metro
Border thinking and apocalyptic agency
Acknowledgements
References
12 Pushing boundaries: Heritage resilience of minority communities in post-war Sri Lanka
Muslim identity in the war’s aftermath
Pushing boundaries
Conclusion
Notes
References
13 Where do we draw a line?: Heritage, identity and place in global heritage
UNESCO and heritage-related borders
Tangible and intangible heritage
Authorised Heritage Discourse (AHD)
Heritage and the creation of borderlands: the Temple of Preah Vihear and the question of national boundaries
Intangible cultural heritage and Indonesian batik
Conclusion
Note
References
Index

Citation preview

Architecture on the Borderline

Architecture on the Borderline interrogates space and territory in a turbulent present where nation-​state borders are porous to a few but impermeable to many. It asks how these uneven and conflicted social realities are embodied in the physical and material conditions imagined, produced or experienced through architecture and urbanism. Drawing on historical, global examples, this rich collection of essays illustrates how empires, nations and cities expand their frontiers and contest boundaries, but equally how borderline identities of people and places influence or expose these processes. Empirical chapters covering Central Asia, the Asia Pacific region, the American continent, Europe and the Middle East offer multiple critical insights into the ways in which our spatial imagination is contingent on ‘border-​thinking’; on the ways of being and navigating frontiers, boundaries and margins, the three themes used to organise their content. The underlying premise of the book is that sensitisation to border conditions can alter our understanding of the static physical spaces that service political or cultural ideologies, and that the view from the periphery opens up new ways of understanding sovereignty. In exploring these various spaces and their transformative subjectivities, this book also reveals the unrelenting precarity of contesting and living on the margins, and related spaces and discourses that are neglected or suppressed. Anoma Pieris is a professor at the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, University of Melbourne. She has published widely on nationalism, citizenship and sovereignty. Recent publications include Hidden Hands and Divided Landscapes: A Penal History of Singapore’s Plural Society (2009); Architecture and Nationalism in Sri Lanka: The Trouser under the Cloth (2012); Assembling the Centre: Architecture for Indigenous Cultures. Australia and Beyond (2015), co-​authored with Janet McGaw; and Sovereignty, Space and Civil War in Sri Lanka (2018).

THE ARCHITEXT SERIES Edited by Thomas A. Markus and Anthony D. King Architectural discourse has traditionally represented buildings as art objects or technical objects. Yet buildings are also social objects in that they are invested with social meaning and shape social relations. Recognising these assumptions, the Architext series aims to bring together recent debates in social and cultural theory and the study and practice of architecture and urban design. Critical, comparative and interdisciplinary, the books in the series, by theorising architecture, bring the space of the built environment centrally into the social sciences and humanities, as well as bringing the theoretical insights of the latter into the discourses of architecture and urban design. Particular attention is paid to issues of gender, race, sexuality and the body, to questions of identity and place, to the cultural politics of representation and language, and to the global and postcolonial contexts in which these are addressed. The Optimum Imperative Czech architecture for the socialist lifestyle, 1938–​1968 Ana Miljacki Urban Latin America Images, words, flows and the built environment Edited by Bianca Freire-​Medeiros and Julia O’Donnell The Socialist Life of Modern Architecture Bucharest, 1949–​1964 Juliana Maxim Architecture on the Borderline Boundary politics and built space Edited by Anoma Pieris Neocolonialism and Built Heritage Echoes of Empire in Africa, Asia, and Europe Edited by Daniel Coslett

Edited by Anoma Pieris

Architecture on the Borderline Boundary Politics and Built Space

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 selection and editorial matter, Anoma Pieris; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Anoma Pieris to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Pieris, Anoma, editor. Title: Architecture on the borderline : boundary politics and built space / edited by Anoma Pieris. Description: New York : Routledge, 2019. | Series: The architext series | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019005647 | ISBN 9781138102811 (hb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781138102828 (pb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315103419 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Architecture and society. | Architecture–Political aspects. | Borderlands–Social aspects. Classification: LCC NA2543.S6 A6335 2019 | DDC 720.1/03–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019005647 ISBN: 978-​1-​138-​10281-​1  (hbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​138-​10282-​8  (pbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​315-​10341-​9  (ebk) Typeset in Frutiger by Newgen Publishing UK

Contents

Figures Contributors Preface and Acknowledgements

vii xii xv

Introduction Architecture on the borderline Anoma Pieris

1

Part One Frontier 1 Eurasia’s historical space of palimpsest—​desert, border, riparian and steppe Manu P. Sobti 2 Intersecting sovereignties: border camps and border villages in wartime North America Anoma Pieris 3 Data displacements: transmitting digital media and the architecture of detention Sean Anderson and Jennifer Ferng 4 Archipelagos and enclaves: on the border between Jordan and Palestine-​Israel Alessandro Petti Part Two Boundary 5 The wall against borders: contesting Fortress Europe Mirjana Ristic 6 En route: the networked mobile border camps of Northern France Irit Katz 7 Mapping the war: everyday survival during the siege of Sarajevo Dijana Alić

13 15

36

57

77

101 103 119 139

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Contents

8 Filling in the gaps: walls without limits and sovereignty with exceptions Miguel Díaz-​Barriga and Margaret Dorsey 9 Confronting Koreas and the DMZ Ross King Part Three Margin 10 The remembered village between Europe and Asia-​Minor: Nea Magnisia at Bonegilla Anoma Pieris 11 Postcolonial urbanisms and the cultural politics of redeveloping Kowloon East, Hong Kong Daniel P.S. Goh 12 Pushing boundaries: heritage resilience of minority communities in post-​war Sri Lanka Melathi Saldin 13 Where do we draw a line? Heritage, identity and place in global heritage Natsuko Akagawa Index

157 178

195 197

221

237

257

275

vi

Figures

INTRODUCTION 0.1

Map showing the physical sites or cities covered by this anthology

xvi

CHAPTER 1 1.1

1.2

1.3 1.4 1.5

1.6 1.7 1.8

Arab arrivals from the west and the two historic ‘crossing points’ on the Amu Darya river [above]. Trans-​river movement corridors created at the trans-​river crossing points 1 & 2 [below] The ‘network map’ of strategic forts, cities and stopping points on both banks of the Amu Darya, connecting the Karakum and Kyzlkum deserts The expanse of the Amu Darya along the Karakum desert viewed from the Chilpik (Shilpik) Qala (dakhma) in Karakalpakstan Two contrasting character profiles of the river Cargo trucks awaiting customs clearance on the Uzbekistan side of the Farab-​Pristan (Amul) border crossing [top]. Local tea-​house (chaikhana) structure on the Amu Darya banks at Farab [centre]. Pontoon bridge crossing between Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan [below] The Amu Darya River viewed in a series of interconnected topographical maps Arrivals across the Oxus The legacies of departure

17

19 20 22

24 26 30 32

CHAPTER 2 2.1 2.2 2.3

Concentration (internment) camps for people of Japanese ancestry in the West Coast states of Canada and the USA Plan of the Manzanar Relocation Centre, California Manzanar War Relocation Centre from tower, Ansel Adams

37 42 43

vii

Figures

2.4 2.5 2.6

Model of New Denver, BC Harris Ranch Old Man Camp, New Denver, BC, 1945 Japanese evacuees find themselves in new settlement—​Slocan area, New Denver, BC, 1942 2.7 Manzanar, Pond, Block 12 (close view) 2.8 Elevated photo of New Denver, BC 2.9 Manzanar Children’s Village, watercolour by Kango Takamura, 1943 2.10 Sanatorium, New Denver, 1943

44 44 45 47 48 50 52

CHAPTER 3 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4

3.5 3.6

Rasmus Degnbol, Europe’s New Borders at The Museum of Modern Art Australian immigration detention facilities The first temporary detention centre on Christmas Island, Territory of Christmas Island Australia asylum seekers, a man standing on a balcony at the East Lorengau Refugee Transit Centre, Manus Island, Papua New Guinea Bathrooms from Oscar complex, Manus Island, Papua New Guinea The Museum of Modern Art, ‘List of Deaths’

58 61 63

63 71 73

CHAPTER 4 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8

The matrix of control, 2005 The regime of forbidden roads Bypass road No. 60, Beit Jalla Bypass road No. 60, Beit Jalla Travel from A to B, 2003. Mapping multiplicity Travel from A to B, 2003. Framing multiplicity Travel from A to B, 2003. Framing multiplicity Travel from A to B, 2003. Framing multiplicity

84 87 88 88 90 91 91 91

CHAPTER 5 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6

Location of ZPS actions, map White Crosses Memorial White Crosses cross the EU border White Crosses removed Billboard with a photograph of Memorial to the Unknown Immigrants in front of the German Chancellery building The improvised refugee cemetery

107 108 109 110 113 114

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Figures

CHAPTER 6 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8

The location of some of the makeshift camps in Northern France and the camps in Calais, Grande-​Synthe and Paris The entrance to the Orthodox Ethiopian church The Jungle and le CAP container camp in Calais The Jungle and le CAP container camp in Calais The Jungle reshaped by demolitions and construction Appropriated shelters which almost doubled its original size in Linière camp, Grande-​Synthe The makeshift Metro la Chapelle camp in Paris ‘The bubble’ in Centre Humanitaire Paris-​Nord

120 125 126 128 129 131 132 133

CHAPTER 7 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7

Map showing the siege lines around Sarajevo ‘Little soldiers’, children playing ‘war’ in the besieged city ‘Sniper! Be careful’, a street-​sign warning A leaf from the catalogue Warchitecture Zoran Doršner’s proposal for transformation of Sarajevo apartments into facilities for survival ‘1984 Sarajevo 1994’ and ‘Wake up, Europe!’, Design ‘Trio’ Sarajevo ‘Enjoy Sarajevo 1993’ and ‘It will never be Sarajevo 1993’, Design ‘Trio’ Sarajevo

140 141 145 147 151 153 154

CHAPTER 8 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8 8.9

US Customs and Border Patrol map of wall locations in Texas A sign from Sabal Palm Sanctuary that reads: ‘Through the Fence, Over the Levee … No Passport Needed!’ The location of the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge US Customs and Border Patrol map showing where gaps in the wall are proposed to be filled, including at Santa Ana in white Our children running along the canopy trail at Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge The end of the wall at the Hidalgo Pumphouse A protestor with sign that reads: ‘Women are the wall and Trump will pay’ at the Save Santa Ana rally Protestors with an Ocelot costume at Santa Ana rally Miguel Díaz-​Barriga surrounded by maps at the information booth

158 163 166 167 168 169 172 173 173

ix

Figures

CHAPTER 9 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6

The DMZ A Pyongyang parade The Kumsusan Palace of the Sun Inside the reconstructed Gyeongbokgung Palace, Seoul Seemingly disordered Seoul space: (left) Gangnam, (right) Namdaemun The Joint Security Area (JSA)

180 182 183 184 185 186

CHAPTER 10 10.1 Bonegilla Migrant Experience 10.2 Map showing the extent of refugee settlements in Greece 1923–​26. Inset: Thessaloniki and surrounds 10.3 The grid of Nea Magnisia, as drawn by A. Kolokotronis 10.4 Refugee dwelling, showing extension. a. Model built by A. Kolokotronis [above]. b. Refugee house in Nea Magnisia in 2018 [below] 10.5 Kolokotronis café neon in Nea Magnisia. a. Sketch by A. Kolokotronis [above]. b. Plan [below, left]. c. Model built by A. Kolokotronis [below right] 10.6 Neighbouring homes. a.Model of the Hatzimarkos family home [above]. b. Model of the Hadjimarko home [below] 10.7 The church of St Athanasios. a. Model of church building and graveyard [above]. b. Reconstructed church of St Athanasios as it is visible today beyond an abandoned portion of express way [below] 10.8 The school building. a.Tasos Kolokotronis at home in 2013 with models of the school and the water mill [above]. b. The school today [below] 10.9 Nea Magnisia today, highlighting refugee houses 10.10 The street where Tasos lived, showing the café that has replaced their family home and café on the right

198 205 207

208

209 210

211

212 216 217

CHAPTER 11 11. 1 Runway of Kai Tak Airport, 2018 11.2 Map of Hong Kong Airport (left) Sub-​areas of Kai Tak, 2007 (right) 11.3 Development site under construction in 2015

222 226 227

CHAPTER 12 12.1 Conjectured map of Tamil Eelam

238

x

Figures

12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5

Bullet-​ridden interior of Meera Jummah Mosque, Kattankudy Wekanda Jummah Mosque, Slave Island, Colombo Floor plan of Wekanda Jummah Mosque, Slave Island, Colombo Wudu/​ablution area, Wekanda Jummah Mosque, Slave Island, Colombo 12.6 Demonstration of prayer—​Welcome to Our Mosque programme, Pottuvil Jummah Mosque, Pottuvil 12.7 Minbar/​prayer niche on left and mihrab/lectern on right, Wekanda Jummah Mosque, Slave Island 12.8 Henna design corner, Welcome to Our Mosque programme, Kahatapitiya Jummah Mosque, Gampola

243 247 248 249 250 250 251

CHAPTER 13 13.1 Gopura 3, Preah Vihear 13.2 West gallery, Gopura 1, Preah Vihear 13.3 Cambodian soldiers guarding the Preah Vihear temple, near Thai border in Preah Vihear province 13.4 Provisional demilitarised zone 13.5 UN ponders intervention in Thai-​Cambodian temple dispute 13.6 Family-​run batik-​making workshop, Yogyakarta

261 261 263 265 267 268

xi

Contributors

Natsuko Akagawa is tenured at The University of Queensland. Her research looks at how ‘heritage’ is contested and negotiated at the community, national and international level and in multicultural, colonial and postcolonial contexts. She is interested in the way heritage assembles histories, memories, identities and emotions as articulated in policies, practices and imaginaries. She is the author of a monograph, Japan’s Cultural Diplomacy:  Heritage, National Identity and National Interest (Routledge Contemporary Japanese Series, 2015), and co-​editor of Intangible Heritage (Routledge, 2009)  and Safeguarding Intangible Heritage (Routledge, 2019). Dijana Alić teaches design, history and theory in the faculty of Built Environment at UNSW Sydney. In her research and teaching Dijana explores the relationships between architecture, society and politics. Her work has been published in numerous books, amongst which recent examples include Materiality in Art and Architecture (Routledge, 2016) and Sydney’s Martin Place: A Cultural and Design History (Allen & Unwin, 2016). Sean Anderson is Associate Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at The Museum of Modern Art and has taught and practised in several countries. A Fellow of the American Academy in Rome and the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, he has degrees from Cornell, Princeton and the University of California, Los Angeles. At MoMA, he organised the exhibitions Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Shelter (2016–​17), Thinking Machines: Art and Design in the Computer Age, 1959–​89 (2017–​18) and oversees the Young Architects Program (YAP). Sean is author of Modern Architecture and Its Representation in Colonial Eritrea: An In-​ Visible Colony, 1890–​1941 (Ashgate, 2015). Miguel Díaz-​Barriga is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Richmond (USA). He was a Zicklin Endowed Chair in the Honors Academy at Brooklyn College (CUNY), Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) and Professor of Anthropology at Swarthmore College. His research xii

Contributors

focuses on border security, Mexican American culture and border studies more generally. Díaz-​ Barriga has published numerous articles on citizenship, social movements, and visual anthropology and is finalising a book manuscript with Margaret Dorsey on border security titled, Fencing in Democracy. Margaret Dorsey is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Richmond (USA). Her research focuses on border security, Mexican American folklore and border studies more generally. As a former Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) she was founding curator of the Border Studies Archive. Dorsey is finalising a book manuscript with Miguel Díaz-​Barriga on border security titled, Fencing in Democracy. Her other book-​length projects include Linda Escobar and Tejano Conjunto Music (2013) and Pachangas: Borderlands Music, U.S. Politics, and Transnational Marketing (2006). Jennifer Ferng is an architectural historian and designer at the University of Sydney. She received her degrees in architecture from Rice University, Princeton, and MIT. Her research interests in the early modern art and architecture of Europe is viewed through the lens of colonial empire set in South America, Africa and Asia. Her projects that focus on contemporary aesthetics and politics also include extensive work on Australian immigration, borders and mandatory detention as well as design and the Anthropocene. Daniel P.S. Goh is Associate Professor of Sociology, National University of Singapore. He specialises in comparative-​historical sociology and studies state formation, race and multiculturalism, urban politics and religion. His published works can be found at www.danielpsgoh.com. Irit Katz is a Lecturer in Architecture and Urban Studies at the Sheffield School of Architecture and holds teaching positions at the Department of Architecture, Cambridge and the Cities Programme at the LSE. Her research focuses on spaces undergoing radical changes, particularly those reshaped by human mobility, displacement, conflicts and extreme inequalities. Her work is recognised in numerous awards and fellowships, including the SAH/Mellon Author Award, the RIBA President’s Award for Research and the Perry World House Fellowship at Penn. She has recently published the book Camps Revisited (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018). Ross King is a professorial fellow in the Faculty of Architecture Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and formerly dean of that faculty. His research has progressively shifted from the micro-​economics of housing sub-​ markets to conditions of urban environment, issues of urban design and concerns with urban environmental conditions in diverse Asian cities. His most recent books have been Heritage and Identity in Contemporary Thailand (NUS Press, 2017) and Seoul: Memory, Reinvention, and the Korean Wave (University of Hawai’i Press, 2018).

xiii

Contributors

Alessandro Petti is a professor of Architecture and Social Justice at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm and is a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He is an architect who combines theoretical research with an architectural, artistic and pedagogical practice engaged in the struggle for justice and equality. He founded ‘Campus in Camps’, an experimental educational programme in the Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem in 2012 with Sandi Hilal. With Hilal and Eyal Weizman, Petti created DAAR (Decolonising Architecture Art Residency) in Beit Sahour, Palestine, and published the book Architecture after Revolution. Petti’s latest publication is Permanent Temporariness (Art and Theory 2019), a book, catalog and archive that accounts for fifteen years of experimentation and creation of Hilal and Petti artistic research practice. Anoma Pieris is a professor at the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, The University of Melbourne. She has published widely on nationalism, citizenship and sovereignty. Mirjana Ristic is Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Sociology, TU Darmstadt. Her research is focused on political issues in architecture and urban design, including the role of buildings and public spaces in mediating nationalism, conflict, power, violence and resistance. She has a PhD from the University of Melbourne. Her publications include Architecture, Urban Space and War: The Destruction and Reconstruction of Sarajevo (2018), Mapping Urbanities (2017), co-edited with Kim Dovey and Elek Pafka, and Urban Heritage in Divided Cities (forthcoming in 2019), co-edited with Sybille Frank. Melathi Saldin has a BA (Honours) and MPhil in Archaeology from the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka. She has worked on archaeological projects in Sri Lanka and more recently in Australia. Melathi is currently reading for a PhD at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University, Melbourne. Her research looks at the politicisation of heritage and archaeology and how this informs the ways by which ethnic minority communities negotiate and position themselves and their heritage within the complex local–​global interplay of cultural politics, with special reference to post-​war Sri Lanka. Manu P. Sobti is a Higher Degree Research Coordinator/​Senior Lecturer at the School of Architecture, University of Queensland and was previously Associate Professor at the School of Architecture & Urban Planning (SARUP), University of Wisconsin-​Milwaukee (2006–​16). The landscape mappings of early-​medieval urbanities along the Silk Road and in the Indian Subcontinent remain central to his research. He is author of Chandigarh Re-​think (ORO Publishers, 2017)  and two forthcoming books Space and Collective Identity in South Asia:  Migration, Architecture and Urban Development (IB Tauris Press); and Riverine Landscapes, Urbanity and Conflict: Narratives from East and West (Routledge-​Taylor & Francis).

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Preface and Acknowledgements

Influenced by the ethical dilemmas posed by mass human displacement, this book looks for sophisticated insights into border-​related social and spatial complexities. The immanent insecurity experienced by immigrants and refugees is pervasive, it argues; their borderline condition is part of our shared existential landscape. We need to understand how the physical and psychological dimensions of this experience manifest in urban, material and environmental responses and realities. A symposium on ‘Border Thinking/​Thinking about Borders’ held in 2015 at the Institute of Post Colonial Studies in Melbourne preceded this book. The research and publication were funded in part by an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship titled Temporal cities, provisional citizens: architectures of internment FT140100190 from 2015–​18. The University of Melbourne provided an Establishment Grant that funded the related events and supports. Special thanks are due to Renee Miller-​Yeaman who assisted me in preparing the manuscript for publication, to Wendy Roberts and Catherine Woo who assisted her at various times, and Dhara Patel who drew maps for individual chapters. I am grateful to a number of colleagues whose comments and advice helped sharpen the manuscript. They include, in alphabetical order, Lachlan Barber, Nicolina Bobic, Julian Bolletter, Jeff Burton, Cecilia Chu, Lawrence Chua, Kapila D Silva, Rosetta Elkin, Claire English, Xavier Oliveras Gonzalez, Cole Harris, Lynne Horiuchi, Clara Irazabal-​Zurita, Sung Kim, Bart Klem, Hyun Kyung Lee, Mirjana Lozanovska, Rosemary Masters, Ali Mozzafari, Yuriko Nagata, Darko Radovic, Haripriya Rangan, Mirjana Ristic, Brett Shadle, Sidh Sintusingha, Maximilian Sternberg, Keiko Tamura, Jillian Wallis, Keren Weitzberg and Nigel Westbrook. My thanks also to the various museums and photographic archives that provided images for the book. These are acknowledged in individual chapters. My thanks to the series editors for accepting the book for publication and Trudy Varcianna at Taylor and Francis for shepherding the process. Anoma Pieris Melbourne 2018

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Figure 0.1  Map showing the physical sites or cities covered by this anthology. Drawn by Dhara Patel.

Introduction: Architecture on the borderline Anoma Pieris

Several seemingly liberal changes occurring during the final decades of the twentieth century triggered a perceptible shift from nation building to border security. They included the dissolution of Cold War geo-​political borders, European economic and political integration, the information revolution and pro-​ market reforms in China and India. These changes were soon eclipsed by greater securitisation after the September 2001 attack on New York, followed by siege conditions in several European cities and escalating conflicts in the Middle East. More recently, President Donald Trump’s new plans for the border wall between the USA and Mexico and his persecution of undocumented immigrant children, the rise of right-​wing politics in Europe, Brexit and anxiety in Asia over North Korea’s nuclear capacities suggest diverse national rebuttals against the prospect of a borderless world. Border securitisation appears coeval with neo-​liberalism. Some 68.5 million persons displaced globally (Edwards 2018) are casualties of this new border politics. In responding to these changed conditions, Architecture on the Borderline advances three aims, discussed in this introduction. The first aim is to understand how a discipline and practice deeply invested in nation building might address the violence implicit in territoriality. How can we understand the poverty, psychological trauma, physical opacity, environmental degradation and material absences evident as border conditions? Do we have the tools to record and represent these recurrent failures of nation-​state sovereignty. Acknowledging these failures forces us to recognise the ‘embedded statism’ (Taylor 1996) of architectural discourse, borrowing from a critique much debated in the social sciences. Due to the alignment of modernism with discrete nation-​building narratives as the foundation for pedagogy, institutionalisation and recognition, many architectural scholars, albeit acting critically, reinforce statist norms. A perspective from the periphery draws attention to places and subjectivities typically excluded from the cares and entitlements of the nation-​state. Two previous publications in the Architext series: Drifting: Architecture and Migrancy (Cairns 2004) and Ethno-​Architecture and The Politics of Migration (Lozanovska 2016) have raised issues of migration, mobility and marginality. This book investigates how physically marginal or divisive spaces are inhabited, navigated, 1

Anoma  Pieris

represented and politicised. The term borderline, used in psychology to describe social pathologies and personality disorders, captures the inherent instability of the spaces concerned, and their affective political power. In Borderlands/​La Frontera, Gloria Anzaldúa writes of the US-​Mexico border as a third country—​a border culture (1987, 3); a conceptual place from which to interrogate the centrality of the nation-​state, its determinations and values. A second aim of this book is to historicise a substantive range of examples that may illustrate this border condition across three themes. Part One, ‘Frontier’, examines issues of territoriality; the threat to borders from external forces and expansionist ideologies. Part Two, ‘Boundary’, explores how the divisive legacies of political borders are negotiated on the ground. Part Three, ‘Margin’, examines contestation and resistance at the physical or cultural periphery. This third part looks at border heritage. The thirteen chapters, elaborated forthwith, cover examples from Asia, Australia, the Middle East, the American continent and Europe (Figure 0.1). Given the relatively few architectural explorations of borders, and the tendency to illustrate rather than interrogate them, authors in this collection rely heavily on the interdisciplinary sub-​field of Border Studies (Wastl-​Walter 2011). A third aim of this book is to carve out space for new impermanent categories within architectural taxonomies through close analyses of ephemeral border phenomena, such as changing infrastructure, temporary barriers and refugee camps. The endurance of some features and erasure of others has largely determined what is historicised. Given the ethical neglect of related issues, there is a need to understand architectural history as contingent on these typically transient spaces alongside the more permanent structures we emulate. This need becomes more urgent as architects are called upon to design humanitarian facilities. Their affective impacts on displaced persons lives need to be recognised. In addressing these issues, authors respond to the broader environment of securitisation and insecurity in which architecture is immersed. SECURITISATION AND INSECURITY Admittedly, the global swing towards border securitisation has provoked multiscalar interrogations of geo-​political boundaries, well beyond architecture’s purview. Many of these focus on the ethical dimensions of globalisation. At first, following the fall of the Berlin Wall and European unification, the related discourse was celebratory, lauding flexible accumulation, fluid and borderless social mobilities and cosmopolitan identities, largely related to European immigration, labour and citizenship; it envisioned postnational or denationalised identities and tracked the transfer of neo-​liberal and democratic values in accelerated developments across the Global South. The frontier mentality of these political and economic ideologies and the protectionist responses of nation-​states heightened interest in the complexities of physical border phenomena. As Mathew Longo (2017, 2) observes, borders are not two-​dimensional entities measured by their

2

Introduction

permeability, they are ‘thick, multifaceted and bi-​national institutions that have evolved greatly in recent decades’ giving rise to new conceptions of sovereignty. Borders are ideological, physical and imagined spaces that ‘sit at the centre of contemporary politics’ (2). Following the attacks in New  York in September 2001, siege conditions in Europe and North America were linked to wars elsewhere—​in the Balkans, Africa, the Middle East and Afghanistan. Surveillance was directed towards internal enemies, casting suspicion on culturally different minorities and migrant groups. These cultures of securitisation likewise expanded to encompass socio-​economic insecurities in the wake of accelerated economic liberalisation in former Cold War nation-​states. Various forms of social repression relating to these structural changes were met with increasing antagonism, particularly following the 2008 Global Economic Crisis. These border conditions, conflicts and claims, and their related experiences of oppression or emancipation, were characterised by material, physical and spatial features most legible to geo-​political analyses. The term ‘precarity’ (Butler 2004), understood as ontological precariousness, became increasingly associated with the social impacts and uncertainties caused by neo-​liberal economic development. Much of the literature on insecurity uncovers the borderline subjectivities of those who lie outside but are nevertheless impacted by Euro-​centric epistemes. Critical ‘border thinking’, attributed to Gloria Anzaldúa (1987) and developed by Walter Mignolo (1999), describes the lived experiences of those who have been excluded from the production of modernity and its knowledge systems; of perspectives, conditioned by decolonisation, that speak back to political oppression (Mignolo and Tlostanova 2006, 206). Anzaldúa’s poetic reflections convey the psychic, social and cultural embodiment of hostility and insecurity. She writes (1987, 3), Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition. (Emphases in original)

Border-​related analyses consequently include insecurity as the ethical counterpoint to securitisation, evident in several scholarly works. Marina Gržinić’s anthology Border Thinking sees the so-​called refugee crisis as a crisis of European (global) capital (2018, 13); Mezzadra and Neilson’s Border as Method (2013) examines how the multiscalar proliferation of borders impacts working lives. Michael Agier’s Borderlands (2016) offers an anthropology of the migrant as a ‘decentred subject’. All borders, Agier argues, are social constructs. These social constructs are amplified where territory, sovereignty and cultural identity overlap. By embodying the condition of statelessness, refugees and migrants are potentially threatening to sovereignty.

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These are a few among many foundational volumes that raise the border as a figure of theoretical analysis. Through them current, global transformations in sovereign power, militarised violence and the scale of human displacement and mobility are exposed. Common to all of them is the recognition of how global economic integration and securitisation has exacerbated human vulnerability producing a different kind of political subject (Butler and Athanasiou 2013; Sassen 2014). How are similar sensibilities captured in architectural studies? BORDER ARCHITECTURES Borders in and of themselves have not attracted much architectural scholarship. ‘Architecture of the Borderlands’, a special issue of Architectural Design (Cruz et  al. 1999)  covered urban peripheries, abandoned spaces, marginalised communities and vernacular buildings bringing together scholars as diverse as Teddy Cruz, Anuradha Mathur, James Corner, Paul Andreu, Manuel De Landa and Mike Davis. Theirs was an effort at stepping outside the vastly apolitical space of professional design programmes to address a much neglected subject. Similar compendiums would appear again in the early 2000s with Design on the Borderlands (Kalantidou and Fry 2014) on ‘border thinking’ as a design practice. The book’s authors discussed the broader political-​epistemic frameworks of sites of friction, many of them in the Global South. The collection featured design-​ based approaches and agonistic, resistant acts, ranging from activism to informal architectural interventions. The border tours at the US-​Mexico border run by Teddy Cruz (Cruz and Boddington 1999) are examples of this tactical critique of border politics, also addressed in Borderwall as Architecture (Rael 2017). Design research conducted in this vein both engages with and counters the upsurge of interest in cosmopolitan consumer architectures—​popularised through seductive, image-​heavy publications that celebrate greater global economic integration. The agonistic practices described above use graphic manifesto formats to focus on cosmopolitanism’s dark counterpart. A number of spatial histories (Herscher 2010; Sorkin 2008; Kenzari 2011) present architecture as mediating political violence and the harm inflicted on architecture as a form of cultural genocide (Bevan 2016). New terms have been coined for describing the physical impact of violence such as ‘domicide’ (Porteous and Smith 2001) and ‘urbicide’ (Graham 2011), on the destruction of homes or cities. Similarly, war-​inflicted cityscapes are described as ‘warchitecture’ after the Bosnia-​Herzegovina Association of Architects’s 1992–​93 exhibit Warchitecture—​ Sarajevo: A Wounded City (Herscher 2010). The ‘Forensic architecture laboratory’ led by Eyal Weizman designs investigative tools for gathering material evidence of catastrophic events. Part creative works—​part investigative journalism, their work, published in Forensis (Franke and Weizman 2014), uses aesthetic interventions as a form of political commentary. However, while the exhibitions and publications that introduce these methods are highly provocative, their aestheticised spectacles too often mimic military technologies. Although useful for identifying disconcerting

4

Introduction

border phenomena, drawings and maps remain inherently problematic tools of colonisation and military strategy.

BORDER CAMPS The general global environment of precarity is a more recent focus of architectural scholarship. The 2016–​ 17 Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) exhibition, Insecurities:  Tracing Displacement and Shelter, drew attention to the physical environments experienced by refugees, globally. Jim Kennedy’s strident critique of refugee camp design policies and his book Structures for the Displaced (2008) raised related humanitarian concerns. Due to their global political volatility, public anxieties regarding refugee camps, detention environments and stateless populations have overtaken concerns regarding the social integration of minorities or migrants. These anxieties lay bare the abject outer limits of late twentieth-​century cosmopolitanism as circumscribed by nationalism or eroded by statelessness. We could argue, after Giorgio Agamben (1998), that camps are remote sites of exception when compared with other more embedded urban or domestic spaces of everyday ethno-​cultural encounter. Agamben describes the camps created for the Holocaust as containing populations who are included in the political realm but are physically excluded, segregated, denied civil rights and exposed to violence. Their reduction to what he calls ‘bare life’ prefigures the forms of disenfranchisement, dispossession and punitive exile experienced by refugees and asylum seekers today. The location of the camp at the limit of a geographical territory or at the periphery of the national imagination offers a compelling image of the defencelessness of human subjects against oppressive forms of sovereignty. The border camp manifests immanent or actual geo-​political tensions. Visual culture theorist Nicholas Mirzoeff (2005, 146) describes the camp as the panopticon for our time, at once the site of deployment of new visual technologies, a model institution for global culture and a powerful symbol of the renewed desire of nation states to restrict global freedom of movement to capital and deny it to people.

Although architectural scholars have focused more generally on camp typologies (Hailey 2009), the physical planning of refugee camps, the design of accommodation and the connection between border conditions and refugee housing globally have lately mobilised design professionals to intervene in this domain. As humanitarian relief environments simulate urban settlements (Herz 2012), due to their massive scale and substantial service infrastructure, their impermanence, fragility and resultant psychological disorientation become additional humanitarian concerns. These camps can be read as neo-​colonial outer limits of the neo-​liberal world order, most recently revisited as a spatial bio-​technology (Katz et al. 2018).

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BORDER HERITAGE Not all chapters are focused on the above-​mentioned issues. Given the increasing attraction of critical heritage studies for architectural scholars, the third part of this book reflects on contested forms of cultural patrimony. What are the methods, policies and archives excavated for these projects? Titles in the Routledge series on cultural heritage and collections like The Heritage of War (Gegner and Ziino 2012) and Places of Pain and Shame (Logan and Reeves 2008) examine sites where commemoration, territorial conflicts and cultural tourism intersect. For example, the economic tug-​o-​war between diverse interest groups and the clash of national and global interests often intensify around States Parties’ nominations for UNESCO world heritage sites. Heritage politics implicates architects as conservationists or consultants and has proved to be a significant platform for border-​related negotiations around cultural sites, values and tangible and intangible practices. Both local and global governance strategies are mobilised in settling disputes. Theories of ‘dissonant heritage’ (Tunbridge and Ashworth 1996) have been developed in examining social conflict around specific objects and places that are difficult to reconcile with normative histories. While we are familiar with memories of the Berlin Wall (Pugh 2014), for example, and adulate the many designs for Holocaust memorials, other neglected histories have been equally forceful in shaping this social terrain. This is particularly true of many less well-​known sites across Asia, seen retrospectively as contested heritage.

FRONTIER, BOUNDARY, MARGIN Undercurrents of territory, sovereignty and subjectivity run through the chapters in this book. The first theme of Frontier links territory to geo-​political landscapes accumulated, conquered or defended for empire building. Such broadly global perceptions of space pre-​date the much narrower parameters of the modern nation-​state. Manu Sobti (Chapter 1) writes of a multi-​layered riparian landscape divided by the thin sliver of the Oxus River later known as the Amu Darya; an ambiguous border zone between the Arab versus the Persian cultural realms. Reaching back to the medieval Islamic historic period when it fed the waterways of the Silk Road, Sobti conjures up a richly layered physical and social history of what is considered a non-​place. The Amu Darya served as the selectively permeable, border/​boundary condition for the Arab armies moving across the region of medieval Khorasan who forded this grand waterway at two crossing points and populated the cities of the riverine borderlands. The Second World War gave rise to a new world order, ending empires and imperial ambitions and carving out new nation-​states. Its violence was pervasive. Anoma Pieris (Chapter  2) examines the military exclusion zone defensively created by North American governments—​against the threat of Japanese invasion during the war—​as a border space. Citizens of Japanese ancestry resident within that zone were forcibly removed to concentration camps in the nations’ interior;

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Introduction

barrack cities and work camps where racial difference was pathologised. Pieris compares the 10,000-​person camp at Manzanar, California with a smaller group of camps in New Denver, British Columbia drawing attention to their internal social complexities. Borders, used as zones of excision, continue to filter and capture refugee arrivals, most notoriously and recently in Australia. Sean Anderson and Jennifer Ferng (Chapter 3) examine the controlled opacity of government-​supported offshore detention at Manus Island, Papua New Guinea and Nauru. They argue that the so-​called ‘global refugee crises’ is fuelled by digital media proliferation across numerous sites, but the circulation of data on detention environments obscures physical realities. Statistical data and visual representations feed social and political anxieties without adequately revealing the physical and human plight of their refugee subjects. Systems of security and control produce spaces of exclusivity:  the archipelago-​enclave described by Alessandro Petti (Chapter  4) as the model for Israel’s Occupied Territories. Behaviours at the globally sensitive border between Jordan and Palestine-​Israel manifest differently in other geographies and economies. Whereas the celebrated space of flows may create integrated global networks, the ‘matrix of control’ operates through disconnections and bypassing. In illustrating his ideas, Petti contrasts the time taken by Palestinians to navigate numerous border checkpoints with the easy passage of other privileged nationalities. He draws comparisons with features of modern highway design which allow wealthy citizens to bypass unwelcome social contact. All the chapters in this first part illustrate expansionist ambitions, whether by border crossing, exclusion or media proliferation, highlighting different manifestations of territorial sovereignty. The next part, themed Boundary, examines terrestrial borders secured by nations and negotiated by national and refugee subjects. Here, borders appear as walls, including traces of or gaps in walls, border camps, besieged cities and demilitarised zones. These borders are mediated by physical spaces and constructions, even though their presence may be temporary. The relative freedoms afforded Europeans within the European Union and their strategies to manage the forced migration influx have given rise to a new aggressive field of political activism. Mirjana Ristic (Chapter  5) examines the humanist actions of the German collective of political artists ZPS:  ‘Centre for Political Beauty’. She focuses on a number of counter-​monuments erected, removed, transported and recreated in a dynamic political practice where histories of the Berlin Wall are mobilised and multiplied for protesting EU border policies. Whereas the wartime border camps described by Pieris were authorised spaces placed out of sight in the nations’ interior, contemporary refugee camps in Northern France appear proximate, dynamic and hyper-​ temporary. Irit Katz (Chapter  6) traces their creation, destruction and movement across Northern France alongside the changes made by particular municipalities in their refugee reception policy. Her focus is on several key, makeshift and institutional camps

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created at the heart and outskirts of Calais, Dunkirk and Paris, including Calais’s controversial ‘Jungle’ camp. Katz describes their seemingly bipolar formal and informal spatial conditions as mutually constitutive relationships that evolve alongside regimes of humanitarian assistance and governmentality. The next three chapters in this part illustrate the divisive function of borders; siege lines, border walls or demilitarised zones that cleave and carve up territories with multiple irreparable social effects. While radically transformative, these effects become embedded in everyday experiences and embodied by the affected populations. Among the most familiar contemporary examples is the siege of Sarajevo recounted by Dijana Alić (Chapter  7) through a series of survival strategies. Trapped behind a frontline of more than 60 kilometres, Sarajevo’s citizens devised multiple ingenious aesthetic practices for documenting conditions, circulating information and contextualising the destruction for both local and international audiences. These included the Sarajevo Survival Guide, the Warchitecture exhibition by the Association of Architects of Bosnia and Hercegovina and a series of graphic artworks by Design Trio. These artists juxtaposed nostalgic recollections against current transformations to record life in the besieged multicultural city. Among the two most politically volatile borders, globally, the US-​Mexico border wall and the Korean Demilitarised Zone are maintained by the unevenness of neo-​liberal economic globalisation and by resistance to it, respectively. These walls have earned considerable recent media attention due to President Donald Trump’s efforts at reinforcing the first border while dismantling the second, in paradoxical national and international policies. Authors Miguel Díaz-​Barriga and Margaret Dorsey (Chapter 8) focus on plans to close a gap in the border wall and activism against it at the Texas, Santa Ana Wildlife Refuge, situating the struggle against walls in relation to a wider politics of environmental justice, minority, migrant or sexual identity and civil liberties. They argue that the US security state renders the gaps at borders as crisis conduits for violence, crime and barbarism, while protestors, employing ‘border thinking’ re-​imagine them as conduits of life. Conversely, the demilitarised zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea is an opaque, resilient barrier of Cold War hostilities in Asia, discussed by Ross King (Chapter 9). Its opacity encourages hyper-​representations of the attendant ideological dialectic. The institutions of state in both North and South, confined in their constructed imaginings of the other, define themselves as that other’s virtuous opposite, he argues. King examines the respective capital cities of North and South Korea as irreconcilable imaginaries feeding back into their respective fantasies of good and evil, where a vision of Stalinist order, discipline and grandeur confronts the disorder and seeming venality of capitalism-​beyond-​control. He illustrates these oppositions through architectural monuments, urban form and cinematic culture. The third part, themed Margin, explores the relatively new field of critical heritage studies, which has grown in scope and significance in the past three decades. Central to its emergence is the increasing participation of Asian governments in UNESCO nomination processes, economic expansion of the heritage tourism sector and the consequent politicisation of tangible and intangible forms of heritage

8

Introduction

amongst various stakeholder groups. Borders figure in this arena in multiple ways, since cultural heritage often crosses political boundaries and countries or cities may need to negotiate rights over heritage. Several authors in this part are drawn from outside architecture and offer interdisciplinary perspectives on border space. Affective memories of border experiences, frequently suppressed by immigrants, may materialise in later life in extraordinary ways. At the Bonegilla Migrant Experience, a national heritage-​ listed former border camp site, they appear as migrant memorabilia brought by post-​Second World War European immigrants to Australia. But as Anoma Pieris (Chapter 10) uncovers, some of their memories weave tales of other border habitations or crossings. A group of architectural miniatures at the heritage site document Nea Magnisia, a refugee village in Thessaloniki, Greece, created following the forced population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923. Nostalgically reconstructed by an immigrant to Australia, this border space between Europe and Asia is incongruously positioned in a site dedicated to new beginnings. Dismantled border spaces are often re-​politicised through urban renewal because of their symbolic potential. Hong Kong’s Kai Tak Airport acted as a critical Cold War border prior to the Handover from Britain to China in 1998. Daniel Goh (Chapter 11) examines the evolving cultural politics surrounding the redevelopment of this site and its neighbourhood as responding to a utopian postcolonial urban vision advanced by the state. Faced with local resistance and civil activism, the state invented a new participatory urbanism that co-​opted democratic processes for technocratic planning prompting diverse responses from its critics. The challenge of maintaining and protecting minority heritage against majoritarian cultural hegemony becomes particularly acute in a post-​war context, such as Sri Lanka. Hostile actions against their community have prompted Muslim civil society organisations to initiate programmes for greater social engagement across religious groups. Melathi Saldin (Chapter 12) describes the Welcome to Our Mosque programme as an inspired response to a simmering post-​war environment plagued by government inaction and neglect of minority heritage. She describes how while minority identities are sharpened defensively in that context, the actions of civil society groups aim at pushing the imposed boundaries. Sites at the national border or shared culture practices can cause conflicts over cultural patrimony. Given the several competing applicants for UNESCO world heritage nominations Natsuko Akagawa (Chapter 13) asks ‘Where do we draw a line?’ She examines legislative challenges surrounding two contentious forms of border heritage. At the Preah Vihear site on the Thailand-​Cambodia border, an ancient Hindu temple is disputed between two neighbouring countries. The cultural patrimony of the Batik, textile painting tradition is claimed by both Malaysia and Indonesia. The borders essentialised by the several claimants are social constructions politicised as concrete boundaries. In the many ways described across this anthology, architecture mediates border spaces and border conditions as they are experienced and imagined over time. But these borders – as socially constructed, temporary and often precarious

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phenomena – cannot be materially fixed. Interpretations of borders encompass rites of passage, contestations, memories, affective boundaries, objects of dispute and more. Historicised and multiplied, they challenge the grip of nation-​state sovereignty on populations, territory and knowledge. REFERENCES Agamben, G 1998, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford, Stanford University Press, California. Agier, M 2016, Borderlands: Towards an Anthropology of the Cosmopolitan Condition, Polity Press, Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA. Anzaldúa, G 1987, Borderlands/​La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Aunt Lute Books, San Francisco. Bevan, R 2016, The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War, Reaktion Books Ltd, London. Butler, J 2004, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence, Verso, London. Butler, J and Athanasiou, A 2013, Dispossession: The Performative in the Political, Polity, Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA. Cairns, S (ed.) 2004, Drifting: Architecture and Migrancy, Routledge, Abingdon; New York. Cruz, T and Boddington, A 1999, Architecture of the Borderlands, Academy Editions, John Wiley and Sons, Chichester, West Sussex. Cruz, T, Skidmore, DR and Boddington, A 1999, ‘Architecture of the borderlands’, Architectural Design, vol. 69, nos 7/​8, Academy Editions, John Wiley and Sons, Chichester, West Sussex. Edwards, A 2018, Forced Displacement at Record 68.5 million, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, 19 June, viewed 12 October, 2018, . Franke, A and Weizman, E 2014, Forensis: The Architecture of Public Truth, Sternberg Press, Berlin. Gegner, M and Ziino, B 2012, The Heritage of War, Routledge, Abingdon; New York. Graham, S 2011, Cities under Siege: The New Military Urbanism, Verso, New York. Gržinić, M 2018, Border Thinking: Disassembling Histories of Racialized Violence, Sternberg Press, Berlin. Hailey, C 2009, Camp: A Guide to 21st-​Century Space, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Herscher, A 2010, Violence Taking Place: The Architecture of the Kosovo Conflict, Stanford, Stanford University Press, California. Herz, M 2012, From Camp to City: Refugee Camps of the Western Sahara, Lars Muller Publications, Baden, Switzerland. Kalantidou, E and Fry, T 2014, Design in the Borderlands, Routledge, London. Katz, I, Martin, D and Minca, C 2018, Camps Revisited: Multifaceted Spatialities of a Modern Political Technology, Rowman and Littlefield, London. Kennedy, J 2008, ‘Structures for the displaced: Service and identity in refugee settlements’, PhD thesis, International Forum on Urbanism, TU Delft. Kenzari, B 2011, Architecture and Violence, Actar, Barcelona. Logan, W and Reeves, K 2008, Places of Pain and Shame: Dealing with ‘Difficult Heritage’, Routledge, London; New York. Longo, M 2017, The Politics of Borders: Sovereignty, Security and the Citizen after 9/​11, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. Lozanovska, M 2016, Ethno-​Architecture and the Politics of Migration, Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, London; New York.

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Mezzadra, S and Neilson, B 2013, Border as Method or the Multiplication of Labour, Duke University Press, Durham. Mignolo, W 1999, Local Histories/​Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking, Princeton University Press, New Jersey. Mignolo, WD and Tlostanova, MV 2006, ‘Theorizing from the borders: Shifting to geo-​ and body-​politics of knowledge’, European Journal of Social Theory, vol. 9, no. 2, 205–​221. Mirzoeff, N 2005, Watching Babylon: The War in Iraq and Global Visual Culture, Psychology Press, Hove, UK. Porteous, JD and Smith, SE 2001, Domicide: The Global Destruction of Home, McGill-​ Queen’s University Press, Kingston, ON. Pugh, E 2014, Architecture, Politics and Identity in Divided Berlin, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pennsylvania. Rael, R 2017, Borderwall as Architecture: A Manifesto for the US-​Mexico Boundary, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA. Sassen, S 2014, Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Sorkin, M 2008, Indefensible Space: The Architecture of the National Insecurity State, Routledge, New York. Taylor, PJ 1996, ‘Embedded statism and the social sciences: Opening up to new spaces’, Environment and Planning A, vol. 28, 1917–​1928. Tunbridge, JE and Ashworth, G 1996, Dissonant Heritage: The Management of the Past as a Resource in Conflict, John Wiley and sons, Chichester. Wastl-​Walter, DP 2011, The Ashgate Research Companion to Border Studies, Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Farnham.

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Part One Frontier

1: Eurasia’s historical space of palimpsest—​ desert, border, riparian and steppe Manu P. Sobti

On my multiple journeys to the remote corners of Central Asia, only recently did I recall objectivising the desire to see what had historically constituted the purported edges of the Eurasian landmass. Where were its beginnings and endings? How were its edges (both intended or otherwise) ever defined? Since time immemorial, in viewing the totality of their vast and unbroken steppe, Central Asian nomadic hordes had marked passage, journey and promontories across this terrain, creating burial mounds (kurgan), commemorative tomb towers, elaborate tent encampments and occasionally even cities. My own search for historic border conditions across this cultural crucible via new mappings was similar to the actions of these nomads, whose annual perambulations had but acknowledged the bigger logic inherent in the Eurasian landscape. This was its unique geography within a composite of few cities and vast networks, wherein peripheries remained more important than did canonical centres—​something that conventional tourist maps have still never adequately explicated. In uncovering these evocative stories of beginning and endings, of withins and withouts, I quickly discovered that city dwellers across the modern-​day ‘stans’ retain no visual or nostalgic memories of the grand river Oxus (later known as the Amu Darya) that had created the very edges of their world for many millennia.1 Also, while the urban dweller, embroiled in the predictable tribulations of the everyday no longer remembers this ‘place’ history, even the entrapment of the last surviving nomads is now woefully complete within the conundrum of arbitrary borders and boundaries drawn by the region’s current nation-​states. In fact, besides ‘disappearing’ as an imperceptible line separating yet connecting two among the largest of the Central Asian Republics (Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan), the Amu Darya’s contentious history has made it an anomaly within the region’s geo-​politics. So, while re-​imagining this waterway is an understandably gargantuan task, seeking out its true relevance as an important landscape truism, remains even more complicated.

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PLACE: FROM CENTRE TO PERIPHERY In June, of the year 632 CE, momentous news of the Prophet Mohammad’s death in the nearby city of Medina reached the unruly sodalities of nomadic tribes occupying the desert wastelands of Arabia. Following this critical missive, the truce previously afforded by the Prophet’s authority rapidly disintegrated to make way for a radical brand of internecine conflict. In the decades following, the social and militaristic unrest—​termed by contemporary historians as the Riddah—​spilled well beyond the borders of the Arabian Peninsula (Shoufani 1973, ch. 3; Donner 1986, 65–​7). The armed hordes of the earlier expeditions moved steadily eastwards. Initially they succeeded in creating a buffer zone between the Islamic state and the powerful Sassanid and Byzantine empires. Thereafter, under Caliph Abu Bakr’s control (reign 632–​34 CE), these forces moved to proselytise substantial populations.2 Most importantly, they began initiating the process of urban transformation (tamsir) in the territories that were rapidly conquered, employing the armed encampment or garrison (misr) as the basis for legislating multiple new settlements.3 Upon engulfing the geographical regions of Persia and Mesopotamia, they abruptly halted deep in the east, at what had until then represented the very edges of their known world (Le Strange 1905, 460–​2; Brauer 1995, 1–​7). Here, within the sands of the vast and inhospitable Turkmen desert, lay the sliver of a legendary waterway that Alexander the Great had first crossed in 332 BCE (Holt 1989, 19–​21). In following upon Alexander’s (or Iskandar’s) grand legacy of ‘river-​ crossing’ and conquest, the Arabs4 re-​named this waterway from the original Oxus to Jayhun (or Gihon)—​endorsing it as one among the four streams of paradise. And, paradise did indeed lie on the other bank of this waterway, a salubrious Eurasian steppe dotted with prosperous oasis urbanities straddled along nomadic caravan routes. For the Arab armies, crossing the Oxus (Jayhun in Arabic) symbolised glory, unchallenged access to the prosperous region of Mawarannahr (Arabic for ‘that which is beyond the river [Jayhun]’) and a foothold to an empire in Hindustan. While signifying an evident geographical barrier within an otherwise vast landscape, the river and its flood plain had always remained an inviolate, in-​ between space (Spuler 1958, 233–​40). With the arrival of the Arab hordes, the Oxus also strongly delineated a distinct, yet permeable cultural boundary, situated strategically at a global borderland separating Persia (more specifically Khorasan) and Central Asia. In effect, a zone of exchange between two cultural and spatial realms was created—​the Arab versus the Persian, the inhospitable desert versus the friendly steppe (Figure 1.1). Upon arriving at the Amu Darya, and spurred by the success of the Riddah raids, the Arab forces forded the riverine borderland of the Amu Darya on multiple occasions between 650 and 751 CE (Bartold 1928, 329–​30). The quick forays of early years were followed by sustained expeditions by 700 CE, culminating in decisive control and habitation of the region’s several urban centres by 750 CE (Gibb 1923, 16–​17; Starr 2015, ch. 4). Following the conquests of Merv in 652 CE and Bukhara in 715 CE, the Arab incursions focused on the strategic control

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Figure 1.1  Arab arrivals from the west and the two historic ‘crossing points’ on the Amu Darya river at Chardzou (Lebap) and at Khodjeli (Urgench) [above]—​connecting Merv to Bukhara (right), also Merv with the region of Khorezm (left), via Urgench, Biruni and Khodjeli (located further westwards). Trans-​river movement corridors created at the trans-​river crossing points 1 & 2 [below]. ©Manu P. Sobti, 2017.

Manu P. Sobti

of two major crossing points along the river’s length. The first of these was at Chardzou, situated at about the mid-​length of the Amu Darya and in proximity to the medieval metropolis of Merv. Chardzou had emerged from the foundations of the traditional settlement of Amul5 as the crucial transit point that connected the landscape promontories between Merv with nearby Bukhara (350 kilometres to the north-​east), and subsequently turning eastwards towards Samarqand, about 280 kilometres away (Le Strange 1905, 403–​4). Urgench—​the second crossing point highlighted in the era of the Arab crossings—​was located further downstream and westwards. It connected the beginnings of the deltaic lands of the Amu Darya to the Turkmen desert near the medieval city of Beruni, serving as the beginning of a caravan route that ran south of the river, subsequently connecting eastwards to join the desert road that led to Merv (Sobti 2006, 828–​9; Tolstov 1954–​55, 106–​33). In al-​Tabari’s words, the Arabs mainly approached the river from the south-​west, travelling across the bleak desert wastes from the grand oasis of Merv, the launching base for their many expeditions (Yarshater 1985–​99, Vol. 23). The geographical divide was crossed at Chardzou or Urgench, ingeniously employing pontoons, platforms and boats for this purpose. So lucrative were these trans-​desert routes between Merv, Bukhara and Urgench that they were afforded protection by caravanserais and defensive trade fortresses, known as rabat or ribat. Each ribat housed detachments of armed soldiers (gazi), who were ‘fighters for the faith’ and later protected merchant caravans and their travellers (Masson 1966, 9) (Figure 1.2). Today, a thousand years later, both Chardzou and Urgench remain as two among four international crossing points between the modern-​day nations of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan located on the opposite banks of the Amu Darya. Of course, the cultural context of Central Asia has dramatically changed, and so has the relevance of this riverine geography, thereby provoking myriad questions. How did this medieval encounter between the two culturally removed worlds—​one characterised by its accretive, urban conurbations of propinquity, the other relishing detached encampments and suburbia—​and suitably exaggerated by the borderland condition of the Oxus River, affect the making of cities in Central Asia? How did the Oxus contact zone—​divisive locally as it was internationally—​acknowledge the multiplicity of urban experiences and the agency of multiple actors? Why did the Oxus or Jayhun remain (as it still does), as the infamous and depleted Amu Darya, a border determining the geo-​politics of Central Asia? Finally, would it be topical to reconsider this sliver of a riverine west–​east divide between Iran and Central Asia—​often positioned within the space-​time continuum of early medieval Islamic history—​as a ‘cultural condenser’ of historical significance? Within this conundrum of intertwined inquiries, this chapter establishes interpretations of the border and borderland for the syncretic populations who inhabited the expanding urban centres of Mawarannahr across the river. It articulates how this borderland was a site where choreographies of passage were effectively negotiated. Finally, it offers insights into how re-​imagined mappings of this landscape archive could influence human histories (Figure 1.3).

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Figure 1.2  The ‘network map’ of strategic forts, cities and stopping points on both banks of the Amu Darya, connecting the Karakum and Kyzlkum deserts. Each of these sites is mentioned in al-​ Tabari’s accounts and confirmed by archaeological reports in the last few decades. Merv, Samarkand and Bukhara were the most important cities within this network. ©Manu P. Sobti, 2016–​17.

Manu P. Sobti

Figure 1.3 The expanse of the Amu Darya along the Karakum desert viewed from the Chilpik (Shilpik) Qala (dakhma) in Karakalpakstan, an autonomous territory situated in current-​day Uzbekistan. The Chilpik dakhma (Tower of Silence) was built during the first century CE, and remained in use until the arrival of Islam in Khorezm in the seventh century. ©Manu P. Sobti, 2014.

CHOREOGRAPHIES: NEGOTIATING THE RIVERINE CROSSINGS Characterised by their social prowess and sheer numbers, the incoming Arab hordes crossing the river evoked reaction, acculturation and finally conversion to the socio-​cultural mentalité of their conquerors among the indigenous populations of Eurasia. In effect, beyond the logistics of invasion, the trans-​Oxus mobilities were also a ‘cultural’ project of sorts. The geographical details of these expeditions were also highlighted in multiple, medieval Arab and Persian histories. A case in point was Muḥammad Ibn Aḥmad al-​Muqaddasi’s (945–​1005 CE) exemplar compendium on the provincial geographies of the Islamic domain (al-​ Muqaddasi 1994, 15–​22). Al-​Muqaddasi’s Ahsan at-​Taqasim fi Ma’rifat il-​Aqalim described the iqlim of Central Asia (titled as al-​Mashriq, literally ‘the Orient) within the fourteen regional (and functional) geographies identified in the Islamic world of his epoch. Compiled roughly two centuries following the Arab invasions on Central Asia, the narrative implicitly highlighted the dramatic metamorphosis of two grand metropolises—​Nishapur and Samarqand. The former had served as a transit point towards Merv, the latter as a destination once the river had been crossed and Bukhara was conquered. The Ahsan narrative was matched by the social choreographies detailed in Muhammad ibn Jarir al-​Tabari’s (838–​923 CE) Tarikh al-​Rusul wa al-​Muluk or Tarikh al-​Tabari (Yarshater 1985–​99, Vol. 16). Beyond place histories, transition and arrival points within an unfamiliar cultural matrix, the Tarikh documented human mobilities as ‘thick histories’, circumscribing the progress of the Arab military at major camping and crossing points in the Amu Darya frontier zone. In its self-​conscious examination of human movements across the landscape, al-​Tabari’s Tarikh also illustrated the relentless process of the Arab tamsir and the proliferation

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of Islamic urban traditions. In summary, by imparting significance to the role of the armed hordes as agents of urban transformation, the Tarikh showed that while passage and journey across the Amu Darya and its contentious borderland were critical acts, even more imperative were arrivals on the other side of the waterway. The Ahsan and Tarikh were followed by Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn al-​Narshaki’s (899–​959 CE) Tarikh-​i Bukhara (Frye 1954). Al-​Narshaki’s work extolled Arab arrivals in the cities and settlements of Mawarannahr. His engaging memoir on ‘most prosperous’ Bukhara was replete with observations describing how the incoming Arabs interacted with the local populace consisting of nomadic tribes and Turkish chieftains—​a genuine synthesis of nomadic and sedentary populations, one provocatively set within the act of war. If al-​Tabari’s travelogue described passage and journey for the Arab hordes in search of urban destinations, and culminated in ‘thick descriptions’ of place and time as encapsulated in al-​Narshaki’s Bukharan urbanscape, this suitably contrasted with the diachronic perspective central to al-​ Muqaddasi’s work. Beyond the militaristic vein inherent across the three accounts, these were also potent renditions of the liminality created by the river as the site where culturally diverse populations effectively interacted. Describing such a riverine geography—​ its history, temperament and embedded stories uncovers the temporality of an undescribed landscape, one replete with unrecorded human and animal choreographies (Sobti and Hosseini 2016, 33–​7). While the riverine borderland served as the site of the critical crossings from desert to steppe, little ostensibly happened on the Oxus itself, save for a series of insignificant towns. Before the Arab arrivals (and ‘crossings’), the waterway had existed as a distinct frontier for human movements—​a barrier that separated yet inherently connected two cultural realms, with a conspicuous, 2500 kilometres east–​west span that was markedly exaggerated by the selective points of its viable crossings. Not that the river was impassable elsewhere, but that in historical terms these crossing points served as cultural crucibles and paths to the important cities of the region. In contrast to other waterways, both within Asia and beyond, the Amu Darya did not create fecund settings for settled culture in the era of the Arab invasions. Even agricultural practices within the riparian plain relied largely on the long and deep-​cut irrigation canals (karez/​qanat) that ran roughly perpendicular to the river’s direction of flow (Nomani 1977, 62–​75; Masson and Sarianidi 1972, 35–​42). Therefore, most (if not all) major urban settlements were situated further inland, within the range of 50 to 100 kilometres distant from the river’s flood plain. In this regard, especially significant were Bukhara, Samarqand, Penjikent, Termez and Merv, in addition to multiple other, regional centres. While some amongst these urban exemplars were the origins and destinations for the mass of moving armies, others served as precursors to launch larger expeditions (Figure 1.4). The Arab trans-​ river movements also coincided with the process of the monumental urban expansion (tamsir) initiated in the Persian, Turk and Sogdian world that lay eastwards (El-​Babour 1981, 48). Accompanied by the diffusion of Islam north and east, this resulted in the displacement of the landed elite (dihqan) populations around urban centres (Frye 2012, 27–​32). In its synthesis of

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Figure 1.4 Two contrasting character profiles of the river. The meandering and sluggish Amu Darya seen through breaks in the mud banks near Hazarasp (see upper-​ left corner of ‘network map’ in Figure 1.2); and the Amu Darya at Lebap subdivided into multiple streams (Crossing 1 near Amul in Figure 1.2), as viewed from an aeroplane window. ©Manu P. Sobti, 2014 & 2018.

mainstream Islamic city-​building traditions with nascent, quasi-​nomadic Sogdian urbanity, the tamsir directed expansion around the cores and peripheries of pre-​ existing settlements, transforming military encampments into urban quarters and later impressive cities. As agents of this unprecedented encounter between disparate worlds, the Arab armies intervened in the cities of Sogdiana, Bactria and Khwarazm to create the most vital centres of urban life, distinct in several ways from other parts of the Dar al Islam. Traditional cities in the Islamic world further west and south of Central Asia had a dense structure within an encircling wall,

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and eventually the residential areas were found to extend beyond the wall, only to be protected by another wall. However, in Central Asia a unique and further stage of development witnessed the move of the main administrative functions and markets into this outer residential area, thereby abandoning the central core entirely (Sobti 2005, 225–​31). In this so-​called ‘suburban-​city’ model, which pre-​ dates our notions of suburbia by more than a thousand years, this outer area of the city (the rabad) became the locus of political and commercial activity. In due course the process repeated itself as the residential areas overflowing beyond the walls of the rabad were surrounded by a third outer wall. In effect, some of the biggest settlements were surrounded by ‘rings’ of multiple rabad (Sobti 2002, 217–​30). Multiple suburbia around urban cores underscored one additional significance attributed to the Oxus borderland. Unlike earlier armed expeditions that had crossed the river, the Arab forces arriving in Mawarannahr never intended to return to their homelands. Instead, in the centuries following the early invasions, and certainly after 700 CE, their skirmishes were replaced with elaborate siege and settlement plans. In this scenario, both the standing and disbanded battalions assimilated widely among the local population, often occupying the rabad districts of conquered cities on a permanent basis. In most cases, the rabad grew progressively denser and more labyrinthine (Bartold 1984, 13–​14), incorporating newly introduced building typologies, including the mausoleum, the four-​iwan madrasa and the Friday mosque (Le Strange 1905, 125–​35), built and patronised by elite migrants. In effect, not only did cities in Mawarannahr differ from those elsewhere in their morphologies, but also accommodated a diverse mix of sedentary, migrant and migrating populations, who collectively resided within the urban core and at the peripheries (Figure 1.5). Within this proliferating landscape of cities with multiple rabad districts, the Amu Darya remained barely visible. Yet far beyond the belts of expanding suburbia and deep within the agrarian hinterland, it emerged on the horizon. Defined by low mudbanks, it meandered unpredictably through a desolate and unpeopled landscape, its breadth and current marking it a stealthy invader in this terrain of interspersed cites. Not only did the Amu Darya’s mercurial banks move and split over its recorded history, but it may have also changed course entirely. Several accounts systematically documented the purported connection of the Amu Darya to the Caspian Sea as late as the early thirteenth century, versus its current-​day drainage into the Khwarazm watershed of the Aral Sea (Crews 2009, 193–​4). At Chardzou, for instance, the grand ‘mouth’ of the Amu Darya had divided into its four distinct canals, attesting to the traditional Persian name of this province—​ Lebap. The bed of the Oxus was similarly variable. Until at least the early-​medieval times, and corresponding with the Arab invasions, it was dammed by two gargantuan engineering marvels, described by al-​Muqaddasi in 985 CE as built of wood, stonework and adobe, resembling wickerwork (Herzfeld 1947, 347–​51). The first of these structures lay near Amul (today’s Chardzou), the first historical crossing point across the river. The other was at Gurganj (today’s Urgench), where the river bifurcated into two distinct beds; one running westwards towards the Caspian Sea

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Figure 1.5 Cargo trucks awaiting customs clearance on the Uzbekistan side of the Farab-​Pristan (Amul) border crossing [above] (see Farab on Crossing 1 on the Uzbekistan side of the river—​‘network map’, Figure 1.2). Local tea-​house (chaikhana) structure on the Amu Darya banks at Farab [centre]. Pontoon bridge crossing between Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan [below]. ©Manu P. Sobti, 2015 & 2017.

Eurasia’s historical space of palimpsest

via the Surykamysh depression, the other forking northwards to become the Aral Sea watershed (Juvaini 1997, 121–​3). The indelible indentations of these geographies remain visible on maps today, suggesting how cataclysmic events undeniably altered the hydrological profile of the river, negating the possibility of nearby settlements (Gerasimov et al. 1952, 55) (Figure 1.6). MAPPINGS: RE-​IMAGINING LANDSCAPES AND ESCAPING FLATLAND Within Eurasian histories, the Amu Darya’s mercurial flood plain created a vacillating zone that facilitated complex, socio-​ cultural exchanges. This seemingly insignificant, riverine landscape ‘fissure’ was substantially more than a linear delineation. Small and large settlement sites led to the two riverine crossing points, these in turn realising multiple moments for human choreographies that traversed the breadth of the steppe and resulted in a network of interconnected places (Le Strange 1905, 433–​6). In negotiating the desert, the river, the riverine and the steppe zones, mobile populations also reached the peripheries and centres of the region’s cities. They invested the formal structures of these destinations with a flavour that bespoke their links to cultural homelands left behind and enabling aspirations to others created in the process. Exactly how these arrivals were choreographed remains largely undocumented. While the accounts of al-​ Muqaddasi, al-​ Tabari and al-​ Narshaki provide clues, even the resulting maps have remained simplistic representations since much of the Amu Darya’s complex borderland history continues to remain an ‘unresolved’ (if not idiosyncratic) cartography. Soviet-​era maps, prepared to promote the state’s strategic gamut, self-​ consciously employed a straightforward horizontality of representation to unambiguously mark the river within this politically contentious border region. This camouflaged the complexity of cultural spatiality, alongside any recognition of the medieval, pre-​modern or more contemporary processes that this borderland site had encountered. Doreen Massey’s (2005, 27–​31) exposé in For Space on ‘slices through space’, examines the biases inherent in our uncritical dependence on ‘mapped’ and ‘vertical’ observations of this kind in the following words: the problem only comes if you think that the vertical distance lends you the truth. The dominant form of mapping, though, does position the observer, themselves unobserved, outside and above the object of the gaze. None the less, what worries me here is another and less-​recognized aspect of this technology of power; that maps (current Western-​type maps) give the impression that space is a surface—​that it is the sphere of a completed horizontality.

In reaction, the examination of the borderland space of the Amu Darya must therefore be systematically removed from the normative notions of space as a surface and space as a container. Instead, it must be viewed as a tabula rasa for human history to be enacted or as a ‘finite’ entity (vessel) for activity to occur within. The ‘surface and space’ of this historical borderland must be appreciated as particularly

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Figure 1.6  The Amu Darya River viewed in a series of interconnected topographical maps, looking from the Lebap Crossing towards the north-​west. ©Manu P. Sobti, 2015–​18.

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composed and/​or realised by the multiple permutations of transnational human movements documented in the historical accounts, each permutation creating a distinctive narrative of ‘non-​places’ and ‘transient’ peoples. In other words, it would be an interrogation of how these populations moved, where they stopped and encamped within this terrain, where they ruminated on the militaristic prowess of the Central Asians and finally how they reconciled to fording the river. It is only through a conscious engagement with these choreographies that this cartographic ‘flatland’ would be effectively re-​charted to fathom the space-​time continuum that the landscape (and river) witnessed. In describing the ‘temporality of landscape’, archaeologist Tim Ingold states how ‘with space, meanings are attached to the world, [while] with the landscape they [meanings] are gathered from it’ (Ingold 1993, 155, emphases in the original). Therefore, in its deep examination of the origins, passage and destinations of these remarkable cultural journeys from desert to steppe, and across the crossings on the Oxus riverine border, this chapter significantly departs from current ontologies of mobility in the disciplines of geography and to some extent architecture and urbanism. Characterised in large measure by an overarching dependence on neo-​ liberal/​post-​industrial theories to explain the causality of cultural (and in this case migrational) displacements of bodies and peoples, many studies continue to rely on maps ‘as lines’ versus maps as the beginnings of ‘thick descriptions’ (Geertz 1973,  3–​30). In re-​ examining this layered riverine sliver—​ its multitude of trials and tribulations—​from desert to steppe, border to territory, this investigation therefore moves beyond the ‘sterile opposition between the naturalistic view of the landscape as a neutral, external backdrop to human activities, and the culturalistic view that every landscape is a particular cognitive or symbolic ordering of space’ (Ingold 1993, 152). Instead, it presents an alternative perspective from the Global South, unpacking layers of this historical borderland condition that served as the settings for momentous journeys. It highlights the destination cities that became ‘home’ to the moving armies, suggesting how the transmission of what could be defined as ‘cultural indigeneities’ across this geographical space was perhaps as important as the contestations that these migrations provoked upon the arrival of these contingents in destination cities across this legendary river. It also suggests the ‘excavation’ (a term borrowed from archaeology) of the ‘sliver of the Oxus borderland’ as a thick and conflated ‘historical space of palimpsest’, thereby identifying its four stages through the careful reading of historical records. These were the so-​called ‘desert, border, riparian and steppe’, in that order. In its emphasis on journey, passage, interaction and the spaces produced, yet critical in its reconstruction of the hybrid nature of the cities, the chapter effectively disentangles the issues of conflict, reconciliation and interaction writ large in the historicity of the urban and borderland spaces, this one located in the epicentre of the contentious geo-​politics of the ‘Stans’ in Central Asia. For the advancing Arab (and significantly non-​Arab) forces, the Amu Darya formed the north-​eastern edge of Khorasan. This riverine sliver was a frontier land,

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an active bulwark against the enemies of Islam, whether Iranians or Turks. But did this seemingly ‘external’ frontier on the empire’s periphery where the ‘Muslim polity adjoined an “Unbeliever” one’ potentially function as a veritable Dar al-​Harb (land of war) of the Quranically mandated permanent state of Holy War (Brauer 1995, 11)? Or, was it a contentious zone of exchange? While the word ‘frontier’ still remains the best English term to describe this boundary condition, Arab sources employ a multitude of terms to describe this ambiguity, including thagra, hadd, nib and awasim. What is then implied is the notion of the river as a ‘buffer zone’ between two territories—​in this case, one that separated the Dar al-​Islam from the Dar al-​Harb. However, given that the river was perceived as a boundary condition, it also seemed accessible in certain ways, across the two crossing points. On these lines, the Arabic sources especially praise the fighting talents and valour of the Khorasanites from this ‘zone’ of the Dar al-​Harb, emphasising that they were ‘a shield for the Muslims against the Turks’; the latter being ‘the bravest, the toughest and most persistent enemies’ which the Muslims had ever encountered (Sharon 1983, 53). The incessant military activity on the Khorasanite front obliged the Muslim warriors to maintain a perpetual state of alertness and remain in the field for long periods. Within the contemporary context, Newman’s concept of a ‘borderless’ world, one where the ‘barrier impact of borders’ became relatively insignificant—​could perhaps have been closer to what the Amu Darya borderland would have been in the era of the Arab invasions (Newman 2006; Hourani 1991; Ewing 1998). MEANINGS: MATERIALITY AND THE RIVERINE ARCHIVE The story of the Amu Darya borderland therefore remains intertwined with the destinies of Eurasia’s migrating and nomadic communities. This pattern of mobilities harnessed the river’s geography, embedding it deep within societal memories, formally recorded and otherwise. Meanwhile, the symbolic significance of this borderland continued for several centuries until the 1700s, when state boundaries began to undermine human movements across Eurasia (Geiss 2003; Barfield 1989). Russian control in the 1870s served as a precursor to the changes initiated by the Bolsheviks in the early 1920s, when Eurasia’s internal borders were arbitrarily delineated by Soviet bureaucrats in Moscow (Khalid 2009). Lenin in his letter to the Communists of Turkestan initiated the investigation of how many states Central Asia ought to have and what these should be named. While the idea of sovereign and independent ethnic-​based states was largely alien for the locals, even the conception of a divided Turkestan was unthinkable at this point in time. In fact, the Russian anthropologist and well-​known Central Asian scholar, Vasily Vladimirovich Bartold (1869–​1930), warned that Central Asia had no historical experience in the paradigm of an ethnic state (Bartold 1925, 93–​111; Ubaidulloev 2015, 79–​87). It would therefore be erroneous to divide the region along ethnic lines, and via superficial borders that leveraged the apparent divisiveness of geographical separators, such as the Oxus River than ran across Eurasia’s heart. Bartold had recognised that

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the terms borders and boundaries within Eurasia’s uniquely nomadic condition were anomalies, and given the Amu Darya’s role as a cultural unifier, should be replaced with the term ‘territory’ (Bartold 1963–​77; Thomas 2018). Nevertheless, this sentiment was disregarded when the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (created from the Turkestan Krai of Imperial Russia in 1924) proceeded to demarcate the borders and communication infrastructure of the fifteen Soviet Republics, an action based on a strong belief in the unbreakable union of these Republics (Freni 2013). These actions assumed that ‘eternal interdependence’ would form a natural bond between these cultural entities owing to their historical and geographic proximities. Within the Central Asian Republics, where historical process had pre-​determined a culturally connected population despite diverse geographies, the border delinations were particularly detrimental to cultural cohesion. As a result, numerous, in some cases disputed, border segments were never clearly delimitated, nor formally demarcated. This process remains incomplete even today, and while several ‘land borders’ have become impregnable, the formidable Oxus and medieval Amu Darya has gradually become a convenient ‘buffer’ zone separating the relatively fertile Uzbek steppe from the desolate, unbroken expanse of the Turkoman desert. Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan—​the two states in question—​ literally ‘hold’ the Oxus borderland as a thickened ‘buffer’ zone impacting the region’s cultural and historical continuities (O’Hara 1999, 21–​41). Few locals ever approach the river (now mostly designated as ‘no-​man’s land’) for several kilometres on either side, let alone consider it to be a permanence connected to their historical identities. In the last few decades this perceived crisis has only exacerbated, aggravated by the contentious sharing of the Amu Darya’s water, its decreasing discharge, diminishing basin and deteriorating ecological conditions preventing possibilities of future reconciliation (Klötzli 1997, 19–​24) (Figure 1.7). John Prescott’s monumental study of boundaries explains how ‘buffer states have been constructed on frontiers when two strong neighbours decided to reduce the possibility of conflict between them’ (1965, 46–​7). Do the Central Asian nations mentioned fall into this particular category? Do they risk imminent conflict? If not, should boundary or bounded-​ness be re-​stated under the rubric of territoriality to allow for this historical riverine demarcation to re-​emerge from the shadows as Eurasia’s historical lifeline? How should the Amu Darya be re-​ connected to the vast geo-​historical system of which it was once an intrinsic part? Given this layered history, it may also be timely to move beyond our own scholarly preoccupations with the Oxus borderland merely as a natural landscape so as to identify its critical role as the setting for historical events, as the confluence of interactions and as a porous front of cultural exchanges. In efforts to excavate what happened at this decisive borderland, this chapter has followed site clues to ‘past choreographies’, as best suggested by Carol Burns and Andrea Kahn (2005) in their publication Site Matters. Yet, the inquiry has also consciously moved away from the architect’s acquisition of site as a place of intervention, invoking a relatively more humanistic stance that reconstructs site as a complex palimpsest anticipating new interpretation in some future age.

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Figure 1.7 Arrivals across the Oxus. A view of the river crossing between Turkmenabat (Turkmenistan) and Farab (Uzbekistan) showing the Amu Darya Pipeline Bridge built in 1964 [above]. The Poi Kalyan Kosh in Bukhara, showing the Mir-​i Arab Madrasa (left) and the Kalyan Mosque (right) [below]. Following the Arab conquest of the city in 715 CE, Bukhara became a major cultural and religious centre, with the Poi Kalyan Kosh already in place and subject to many future reconstructions. ©Manu P. Sobti, 2016–​18.

This ‘sital palimpsest’ of the Oxus borderland also challenges how Eurasia’s past is viewed, and the overarching reliance on ‘acceptable’ histories as those replete with the chronologies of political events. Could this suggested re-​writing of Eurasian histories be deployed as an anti-​paradigm to the area studies that characterise most of the scholarship? In recent humanities thinking, it is widely accepted that objects and artefacts are invested with particular agency, but this understanding is not commonly extended to landscapes. Rather, any notion that engages the agency of landscape is often regarded as synonymous with

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environmental determinism. In moving beyond the limitations of the conventional archive, this chapter therefore proposes how this imbalance may be redressed by investigating how landscape as an archive may now be invested with agency without being environmentally deterministic. On these lines, while it would be possible to question what agency (if at all) the landscape possessed, it would also be viable to view landscape as a potential means of territorial organisation and creative production. This study employed three main textual sources, besides map archives and surveys. These included the geographer al-​Muqaddasi’s Ahsan at-​Taqasim fi Ma’rifat il-​Aqalim, al-​Tabari’s Tarikh al-​Tabari and al-​Narshaki’s Tarikh-​i Bukhara. If studies on the Near Eastern and Central Asian past have to come to terms with the present and future, and if the true nature of Persianate Civitas has to be eventually revealed as a unique phenomenon, it is timely that we engage these medieval voices. But even beyond these sources, it is the documentation of the Oxus landscape itself, including the river’s mercurial flood plain and the sliver of space along its banks, that undoubtedly serves as our biggest research repository. Have current studies on Central Asia and its historical mobilities indeed exhausted this particular source, examining aspects of the Amu Darya beyond its potamology? The most compelling question for this project is, therefore, how the limitless archive of such a riverine landscape must be explored, organised and interpreted. To extend upon Michel Foucault’s (2010, 131) Archaeology of Knowledge, if history is a network of documents in the archive, I now have to make this riverine archive ‘speak’ to me. Perhaps, in searching to deploy material culture and the practice of archaeology as a potent form of dwelling, landscape can be perceived as constituting an enduring record of the multiple generations who once inhabited it, and left something of themselves in passing. In conclusion, I offer the provocation that given the longue durée of Eurasian histories, the Amu Darya borderland was not ‘land’, neither was it ‘nature’ nor ‘space’—​rather, it was the palimpsest of temporality. A temporality embedded in the landscape, and awaiting scholarly excavation (Figure 1.8). NOTES 1

2

3

The Amu Darya was regarded in ancient times as the boundary between Iran (Persia) and Tūrān (Central Asia). See Spuler (1990, 996–​7); Le Strange (1905, 433–​45); and Bartold (1928, 64–​179). Contrary to appearances, the composition of these mobile armies was not always monolithic. In fact, it was far removed from our present-​day definitions of the term. Also, the Arabs were not always one unified army and were composed of several diverse tribes, where inter-​tribal relations and conflicts determined their mode/​s of settlement. For an overview, see Crone (1980); Pipes (1981); Bosworth (1976, 201–​ 12); and Sharon (1983, 51–​71). See also note no. 4. Wheatley suggests that the term ‘tamsir’ as employed in the scholarship ‘originally denoted the transformations of the separate sections of a military encampment into the quarters of a developed city’ (2001, 375). For plural ‘Amsar’, see Hillenbrand (1999, 59–​98), and ‘Misr’ in The Oxford Dictionary of Islam.

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Figure 1.8 The legacies of departure. One among the several saxaul trees around the twelfth-​century mausoleum of Mohammed ibn-​Zeid (descendant of Caliph Ali in the fifth generation, 1112–​13 CE) at Sultan-​Kala in Merv (Turkmenistan) [above]. Hundreds of strips of cloth hang from the tree, representing prayers offered by visiting pilgrims—​a survival of pre-​Islamic, nomadic practices continuing well into current day. A view of the Merv Archaeological Site, showing the Gyaur Kala, Sultan Kala and Sultan Sanjar’s mausoleum (built around 1157 CE) viewed from the Hellenistic Erk Kala (established in the sixth century BCE and enlarged by Alexander the Great in 332 BCE) [below]. ©Manu P. Sobti, 2016–​18.

4

5

Daniel, in his notes on the history of Arab colonisation in Iran, illustrates how the term ‘Arabs’ did not denote only the desert tribesmen and peoples of the remoter areas of the Arabian Peninsula, but would have also included a number of Arabic-​speaking sedentary or semi-​nomadic people living within or in near proximity to the two major pre-​Islamic empires of the Middle East (1986 [updated 2011], 210–​14). Ibn Hawkal described Amul or Chahar Juy (literally ‘Four Canals’) now Chardzhou, as a ‘fertile and pleasant little town, of great importance by reason of the constant passage of caravans going to and coming from the countries beyond the Oxus’ (Le Strange 1905, 403–​4).

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REFERENCES Al-​Muqaddasi 1994, Ahsan al-​Taqasim: The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions, trans. B Collins, Centre for Muslim Contribution to Civilization: Garnet Publishing, Reading, UK. Barfield, T 1989, The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China 221 BC to AD 1757, Blackwell, Cambridge, MA. Bartold, V 1925, ‘Tadzhiki Istoricheskii ocherk’ [The Tajiks—​A Historical Essay], in N Korzhenevskii (ed.), Tadzhikistan [Tajikistan], Tashkent, 93–​111. —​—​—​ 1928, Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasions, trans. T Minorsky and C Bosworth, Luzac, London. —​—​—​ 1963–​77, Sobrani Sochineni [Complete Works], 9 vols, Izdatelctbo Vostochnoi Literaturi, Moscow. —​—​—​ 1984, An Historical Geography of Iran, trans. S Soucek and ed. C Bosworth, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Bosworth, C 1976, ‘Armies of the Prophet’, in B Lewis (ed.), Islam and the Arab World: Faith, People, Culture, Random House, London. Brauer, R 1995, ‘Boundaries and Frontiers in Medieval Muslim Geography’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series, vol. 85, no. 6, 1–​73. Burns, C and Kahn, A 2005, Site Matters: Design Concepts, Histories and Strategies, Routledge, New York. Crews, R 2009, For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Crone, P 1980, Slaves on Horses: The Evolution of Islamic Polity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. Daniel, EL 1986 (updated 2011), ‘ “ARAB” iii. Arab settlements in Iran’, Encyclopaedia Iranica, II/​2, 210–​214, viewed 30 December 2012, . Donner, F 1986, The Early Islamic Conquests, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. El-​Babour, M 1981, ‘Urban networks in eastern ‘Abbasid lands: An historical geography of settlement in Mesopotamia and Persia, ninth-​and tenth-​century AD’, PhD thesis, University of Arizona, Phoenix. Ewing, K 1998, ‘Crossing borders and transgressing boundaries: Metaphors for negotiating multiple identities’, Ethos, vol. 26, no. 2, 262–​267. Foucault, M 2010, The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, Vintage Books, New York. Freni, S 2013, ‘The Soviet nationality policy in Central Asia’, Inquiries Journal/​Student Pulse, vol. 5, no. 3, 1–​31, available at . Frye, R (trans. and ed.) 1954, History of Bukhara; translated from a Persian abridgement of the Arabic original by Narshakhī, Mediaeval Academy of America, Cambridge, MA. —​—​—​ 2012, Bukhara: The Medieval Achievement (Bibliotheca Iranica: Reprint Series), Mazda Publishers, Santa Ana, CA. Geertz, C 1973, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, Basic Books, New York. Geiss, P 2003, Pre-​Tsarist and Tsarist Central Asia: Communal Commitment and Political Order in Change, Routledge, New York. Gerasimov, I, Kovda, P and Letunov, P (eds.) 1952, Glavnyj Turkmenskij kanal: prirodnye uslovija i perspektivy oroshenija i obvodnenija zemel’ juzhnykh rajonov Prikaspijskoj ravniny Zapadnoj Turkmenii, nizov’iev Amu-​Dar’i i zapadnoj chasti pustyni Kara-​Kumy [The Main Turkmenskij Canal: Natural Conditions and the Perspectives of Irrigation and Supplying with Water of the Lands of Southern near-​Caspian Valley in Western Turmenia, the Lower Lands of Amu Darya and The Western Part of the Karakum Desert], Akademija nauk SSSR, Moscow.

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Gibb, H 1923, The Arab Conquests in Central Asia, Royal Asiatic Society, London. Herzfeld, E 1947, Zoroaster and His World, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Hillenbrand, R 1999, ‘Anjar and Early Islamic Urbanism’, in GP Brogiolo and B Ward Perkins (eds.), The Idea and Ideal of the Town between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, EJ Brill, Leiden, Netherlands. Holt, F 1989, Alexander the Great and Bactria: The Formation of a Greek Frontier in Central Asia, EJ Brill, Leiden, Netherlands. Hourani, A 1991, A History of the Arab Peoples, Belknap Press, Cambridge, MA. Ingold, T 1993, ‘The temporality of the landscape’, World Archaeology, vol. 25, no. 2, 152–​174. Juvaini, A-​M, J 1997, Genghis Khan: The History of the World-​Conqueror, trans. J Boyle, University of Washington Press, Seattle, WA. Khalid, A 2009, ‘Culture and power in colonial Turkestan’, Cahiers d’Asie Centrale vol. 17/​ 18, 413–​447. Klötzli, S 1997, ‘The Water and Soil Crisis in Central Asia: A Source for Future Conflicts? Environment and Conflict’, in Project (ENCOP) Occasional Paper 11, ETH Zurich and Swiss Peace Foundation, Zurich. Le Strange, G 1905, Lands of the Eastern Caliphate: Mesopotamia, Persia, and Central Asia from the Moslem Conquest to the Time of Timur, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. Massey, D 2005, For Space, Sage Publications, London. Masson, M 1966, Trudii—​Iuzhno-​Turkmenistanckoi arkheologicheskoi kompleksnoi expeditsii—​Tom XIII, Ashgabat, Izdatelctbo, Turkmenistan. Masson, V and Sarianidi, I 1972, Central Asia, South Turkmenia before the Achaemenids, Thames and Hudson, London. ‘Misr’, in The Oxford Dictionary of Islam, J Esposito (ed.), n.d., Oxford Islamic Studies Online, viewed 7 October 2016, . Newman, D 2006, ‘Borders and bordering: Towards an interdisciplinary dialogue’, European Journal of Social Theory, vol. 9, no. 2, 171–​186. Nomani, F 1977, ‘Notes on the economic obligations of peasants in Iran, 300–​1600 AD’, Iranian Studies, vol. 10, nos 1–​2, 62–​75. O’Hara, S 1999, ‘Irrigation and water management in Turkmenistan: Past systems, present problems and future scenarios’, Europe–​Asia Studies, vol. 51, no. 1, 21–​41. Pipes, D 1981, Slave Soldiers and Islam: The Genesis of a Military System, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. Prescott, JRV 1965, The Geography of Frontiers and Boundaries, Hutchinson Press, London. Sharon, M 1983, Black Banners from the East I: The Establishment of the Abbasid State, Magnes Press (Hebrew University), Jerusalem, and EJ Brill, Leiden, Netherlands. Shoufani, E 1973, Al-​Riddah and the Muslim conquest of Arabia, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, ON. Sobti, M 2002, ‘A palimpsest of cultural synthesis and urban change: Bukhara after the Islamic invasions’, Built Environment, vol. 28, no. 3, 217–​230. —​—​—​2005, ‘Urban metamorphosis and change in Central Asian cities after the Arab invasions’, PhD thesis, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA. —​—​—​2006, ‘Transoxiana’, in J Meri (ed.), Medieval Islamic Civilization Encyclopaedia, Vol. 2, Routledge Taylor and Francis, London, 828–​829. Sobti, M and Hosseini, S 2016, ‘Persian Civitas: Revised Readings on Networked Urbanities and Suburban Hinterlands in Erich Schmidt’s Flights over Ancient Cities of Iran’, in M Gharipour (ed.), The Historiography of Persian Architecture, Routledge, New York,  14–​40.

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Spuler, B 1958, ‘Der Amu Darja. Eine Fluss-​Monographie’, in J Deny, Jean Deny Armağani, Türk dil Kurumu, Ankara, 231–​248. —​—​—​1990, ‘Amu Darya’, in Encyclopaedia Iranica, I/​9, 996–​997, viewed 30 December 2012, . Starr, S 2015, Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Thomas, A 2018, Nomads and Soviet Rule: Central Asia under Lenin and Stalin, IB Tauris, London. Tolstov, S 1954–​55, ‘Arkheologo-​etnograficheskaya ekspeditsiya v Khorezm 1955/​56 gg.’, Sovetskaya Arkheologiya, 106–​133. Ubaidulloev, Z 2015, ‘The Russian-​Soviet legacies in reshaping the national territories in Central Asia: A catastrophic case of Tajikistan’, Journal of Eurasian Studies, vol. 6,  79–​87. Wheatley, P 2001, The Places Where Men Pray Together, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL and London. Yarshater, E (ed.) 1985–​99, The History of al-​Tabari, 39 vols, trans. F Rosenthal, State University of New York Press, Albany, NY.

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2: Intersecting sovereignties: Border camps and border villages in wartime North America Anoma Pieris

Following the Japanese navy’s surprise aerial attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, both the US and Canadian governments issued exclusion orders: Executive Order 9066 (February 19, 1942)  and the order-​in-​council PC1486 (January 16, 1942), respectively, authorising the forced removal of people of Japanese ancestry, including birthright citizens, from the sensitive West Coast areas of North America.1 These orders created an artificial coastal border zone on one side of North America while dispersing fragmented spaces designed for civilian exclusion in remote parts of the interior geography. In the USA, some 118,803 civilians (Kashima 2003, 136)  were removed to seventeen, so-​called ‘Assembly’ or ‘Reception Centers’ (in fairgrounds, race tracks and stadia) and from there to ten hastily, purpose-​ built ‘Relocation Centers’; places of illegal detention and incarceration (Daniels 1981; Robinson 2001). These facilities were distributed in the West Coast military areas 1 and 2, demarcated by the Western Defense Command and Fourth Army as exclusion zones (Burton et al. 2000, 34–​44). Two separate agencies: the (military) Wartime Civilian Control Administration (WCCA) and the government’s War Relocation Authority (WRA), appointed to oversee the forced removal, administered their incarceration (Figure 2.1). Across the 49th parallel, the ‘mass uprooting’ of a smaller population of 21,460 Japanese Canadians, some 75% of whom were naturalised or Canadian-​ born citizens, was overseen by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) under the British Columbia Security Commission (BCSC) (Miki and Kobayashi 1991, 16, 31; Robinson 2009, 98–​101 and 132–​3; see also Adachi 1976; La Violette 1948; Broadfoot 1977). A  further 3000 persons, forcibly removed from islands and areas outside Vancouver, were detained in the former Pacific National Exhibition buildings in Hastings Park. Able-​bodied men were sent to roadwork camps and dependent females, children, elderly persons and invalids were incarcerated 100 miles (approximately 160.9 kilometres) eastward in the mountainous interior of British Columbia. Many community leaders were arrested and detained in both the USA and Canada.

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Drawn by Dhara Patel. Adapted from maps published in Miki and Kobayashi (1991, 30) and Burton et al. (1999, 35, 39, 51).

Figure 2.1  Concentration (internment) camps for people of Japanese ancestry in the West Coast states of Canada and the USA, showing military areas 1 and 2 for the USA and the 100 mile exclusion zone in Canada. Camps indicated include for the USA: 1. Manzanar, 2. Poston, 3. Gila River, 4. Topaz, 5. Tule Lake, 6. Minidoka, 7. Heart Mountain and 8. Granada (Jerome and Rohwer are off this map); and for Canada: 1–​10 (from top down) Tashme, Greenwood, Slocan City, Lemon Creek, Popoff, Bay Farm, Rosebery, New Denver, Sandon, Kaslo (camps outside British Columbia are not included).

Anoma Pieris

Comparisons between the US and Canadian facilities indicate how sovereignty was re-​interpreted and applied in the wartime context. In the USA, the incarcerated civilians were confined to purpose-​ built barrack environments; in Canada, to repurposed or purpose-​built rural settlements. The conversion of these frontier architectures into borderland spaces of deprivation and their easy transformation to carceral environments suggests disturbing co-​relations between incarceration and citizenship made evident in built form. A further comparison of two of these camps: the 10,000-​person concentration camp at Manzanar in California and a cluster of ‘internment’ camps for some 1500 persons at New Denver, a village in the mountainous Kootenays region in British Columbia is instructive. The liberal values and opportunities projected in these settler architectures were subverted by incarceration, under the terms of wartime sovereignty. Using these camps as its starting point, this chapter investigates how these over-​determined spaces of exclusion were encountered and altered through domicile. Incarcerated civilians were subjected to programmes of assimilation and to administrative and military control. They were denied the opportunities, freedoms and security afforded by liberal democracy and being defended by American and Canadian troops overseas. But despite these forbidding conditions and continued surveillance, they displayed remarkable resilience in surviving the camps. This chapter uses a spatial lens to uncover that history. Some notes on terminology. The US and Canadian governments, at that time, used numerous euphemisms such as ‘evacuation’, ‘detention’ or ‘relocation’, to veil the violence of the mass incarceration, enabling control of the incarcerated population under national rather than international law (Miki and Kobayashi 1991, 24). Manzanar was called a War Relocation Center and the camps in Canada ‘internment camps’. Although typically used for enemy aliens (foreign nationals of a hostile power), the term ‘internment’, pervaded the literature. ‘American concentration camps’ is the more current term (see Daniels 2005). The peculiar intersection of wartime sovereignty with the racist legacies of these two settler societies produced a ‘state of exception’, a term used by Giorgio Agamben (1998) with reference to the suspension of rights afforded under state sovereignty in Nazi concentration camps. In North America, ‘Japanese’ ancestry became a reductive category for those targeted for forced removal, negating their other achievements and identities, and suspending their civil liberties. Nevertheless, given the inter-​generational complexity of the community, diverse political or cultural relations to sovereignty persisted in the camps. Forms of individual agency, multiple place histories and the everyday and relational permeations of power produced attributes of what Avery Gordon describes as ‘complex personhood’ (1997). This complexity remained integral to the incarcerated population’s socio-​ political consciousness and irreducible to the narrow determinations of normative sovereignty. One way of understanding this social complexity is through intersectional theory (Crenshaw 1989; Grzanka 2014), an approach which argues that specific acts and policies create burdens that flow along intersecting axes of identity (such

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as gender, class, sexual orientation and race). Innocent men, women and children, including elderly persons, were inadvertently implicated in the political persecution of cultural and/​or racial groups. In the case of the forced removal of people of Japanese ancestry, Japan’s hostile actions cast undue suspicion on a natal or communal identity category that had been historically discriminated against in racist immigration policies. Their exclusion continued earlier forms of racialised violence through which white settlers expropriated land from Native American communities (Veracini 2010, 97; Bateman and Pilkington 2011, 206). However, Japanese immigrants who arrived in America during the late nineteenth century were also part of the settler influx, in competition for these expropriated resources and lands (see Fujikane and Okamura 2008 for Hawaii). Both racist policies and settler dynamics interlaced in their reception. Wartime exclusion orders compounded discriminatory legislations, including anti-​miscegenation laws, that had denied Asian immigrants naturalisation, suffrage, land ownership and access to professions in late nineteenth-​and early twentieth-​ century North America, restricting their socio-​spatial mobility (Daniels 1981, 174–​ 80; Robinson 2009, 14–​15, 24; CWRIC 2000, 290–​2).2 Transcontinental migrations between Canada, the USA and Hawaii were also restricted at times. Such policies were fuelled by racist lobbies and were countered by second-​generation Japanese American (Nisei)/​Japanese Canadian (Nikkei) organisations who sought to prove their patriotism. When compared with other Asian communities whose former governments sided with the Allies, or the many European immigrants who could be similarly linked to the Axis partnership, people of Japanese ancestry were singled out en masse for segregation in 1942. MATERIAL DEPRIVATION Following the exclusion orders, West Coast minorities of Japanese ancestry lost their properties in distressed sales or had them confiscated in processes shepherded by government agencies. In the USA, the Farm Security Administration (FSA), acting as a sub-​agency under the WRA, redistributed their agricultural lands to alternative operators, offered them compensation and later managed farm labour camps where young Japanese American men and women would be employed (Hewes 1942; Robinson 2009, 83). The Canadian government seized and sold ‘evacuee’ land and property paying out small allowances from which the incarcerated population paid for housing and provisions, or in the case of self-​supporting ‘evacuees’ was used to pay for alternative placements in the interior (Daniels 1981, 187). These losses of land and livelihood occurred at a time when West Coast cities, placed on a war-​footing, would expand and prosper through military industry (Hise 1997). The racial tensions, generational divisions and conflicted loyalties of the preceding era intensified after the Pearl Harbour attack (Robinson 2009, 36–​9). Although sharing common cultural roots, the political processes that regulated citizenship divided the community: Japan-​born immigrants (issei) in the USA could not be naturalised or own agricultural property, unlike their America-​born progeny

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(nisei and sansei—​some 62% of that population) (Robinson 2009, 14–​15, 24). Naturalisation remained open to immigrants to Canada (Robinson 2009, 274; Miki and Kobayashi 1991, 16–​18). A third category of kibei, were US-​born but educated in Japan. Consequently, immigrants and citizens of Japanese ancestry in North America had complex relationships with US or Canadian sovereignty. Immigrants who retained their Japanese nationality, due to legal restrictions, became vulnerable once war broke out. Hostile encounters with Japanese Imperial troops in the Pacific theatre of war, where many American or Canadian servicemen were captured, aggravated latent prejudices in the West Coast populations where Asian immigrants were a fast-​growing minority (CWRIC 2000, 67). Operational racist stereotypes activated by the military and media masked more complex social realities (80). PHYSICAL DISLOCATION When compared with the repurposed settlements in Canada, US facilities occupied the square mile grid apportioned to Western territories by Thomas Jefferson, in a pattern synonymous with city planning. Remote sites in the desert landscape, Mississippi flood plains and two Native American reservations were converted into camps. Granada, Colarado; Heart Mountain, Wyoming; Jerome and Rohwer, Arkansas; Manzanar and Tule Lake in California; Topaz, Utah; and Gila River and Poston in Arizona retained the rigidity of the grid iron while Minidoka, Idaho scattered several grid blocks (Burton et al. 2000, 2, Figure 1.1; Bancroft Library, JAER Records, Final Reports, vols I–​V, 1946, reel 148; National Archives, Washington, DC, Records Group 210). Military-​style barracks were constructed for each facility to accommodate large numbers ranging from 8000 persons at Granada to 20,000 at Poston, both camps in Colorado (De Witt 1943, 256). Tule Lake in California was used by the administration to segregate those identified as dissenters, or unwilling to comply. The camps were built to the minimum requirements of health and sanitation at USD 56 million at that time (Burton et al. 2000, 40). The camp settings in British Columbia were distinctive from the USA, as the mountainous terrain of the Kootenays region obviated the need for surrounding walls or fences in many camps. Ghost towns of the former silver-​mining industry—​ built on traditional lands of the region’s Sinixt Nation, who had been depopulated by disease and dispersed during the previous two centuries, were repurposed for ‘internment camps’ at Slocan City, Greenwood, Sandon, Kaslo, New Denver and Rosebery (Daniels 1978, 5–​7). New towns were built at Tashme and Lemon Creek (Slocan extension was a composite of Slocan City, Bay Farm, Popoff and Lemon Creek) (Miki and Kobayashi 1991, 30). Apart from these housing centres, there were road work camps for males over eighteen years of age, sugar beet fields and self-​supporting projects in the interior (Smith 2000, 106; Robinson 2009, 171–​5). Tashme was the only camp inside the hundred-​mile zone modelled after the American grid plan (Reid and Carter 2016, 27). As with Tule Lake, dissenters were sent to the Prisoner of War camps at Angler, and later at Petawawa, both in Ontario (Robinson 2009, 196; Daniels 1981, 185).

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In the Owens Valley, California, 220 miles north of Los Angeles, the military and later the WRA leased 5415 acres including an extant but depopulated town grid from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power under EO 9066 (Burton et al. 2000, 163). This land, expropriated from the Indigenous Paiute during the mid-​nineteenth century, had been used for the Manzanar irrigation colony with a nominal underlay of roads and services useful for the camp layout. The Owens Valley Reception Center was built on the site in March 1942, using some 1000 workers hired by Griffith and Co. of Los Angeles, a firm employed in other prestigious military projects. The facility was converted into a War Relocation Center operating from June 1942 to November 1945 with a peak population of 10,046 persons (Kitayama 2018). The majority of those incarcerated at Manzanar came from the Los Angeles area while smaller numbers came from Stockton, California and Bainbridge Island, Washington (Burton et al. 2000, 163). Three generations, including Japanese immigrants and Japanese American citizens, arrived at Manzanar in late March 1942 to a city of thirty-​four residential blocks separated by five fire-​breaks, more reminiscent of a military cantonment than a place of even temporary domicile (Unrau 1996, vol. 1, 220–​5, 281–​92, 470–​ 6; vol. 2, maps and plans, 835–​48) (Figure 2.2). They saw it through a cloud of dust raised by bulldozers auguring the dust storms that would sweep across the site and seep through the tar paper insulation of their barrack walls (Unrau 1996, vol. 1, 189, based on the Silverman Report [1946] 174–​5 and interviews 206). Residential blocks each contained nineteen green lumber, gable roofed 6 x 30.5 metre (20 x 100 foot) barracks: fourteen for accommodation, two latrines, a laundry, recreation (community) hall and mess hall (Figure  2.3) (Unrau 1996, vol. 1, 227–​80, 261). Standard barracks were divided into four to six living units or doubled up across the width to form the mess hall, still adhering to the rigid military grid. The anonymity of and lack of privacy in these structures, qualities desirable for disciplining troops, reduced the incarcerated population into an undignified collective (see site plans in NARA, WRA Records, Manzanar, Record Group 210). Military police lived on the camp perimeter, while timber-​framed staff housing for 250 WRA administrative staff at the so-​called ‘Beverley Hills’ area in the south-​west section of the camp, purpose-​designed in September 1943, asserted their relative entitlements (Unrau 1996, vol. 1, 247). As noted by Lynne Horiuchi (2015, 108–​9), when renowned FSA architects Vernon de Mars and Garrett Eckbo proposed designs for civic recreation areas at Manzanar (in plans that were never implemented) their designs for staff housing included landscaped gardens and community structures absent in proposals for the rest of the camp. These same FSA architects were reputed for many enlightened community planning schemes in designs for depression era (1930s) labour camps built for drought-​stricken white share-​croppers from the Midwestern states and southern plains (Imbert 1997, 122). Conversely, the Canadian camps were so-​called residential ‘shacks’ shared by two families each, except for Popoff which had multi-​unit barrack structures. New Denver on Slocan Lake was the centre of operations for all of the camps in the Slocan Valley. Here, the Selkirks, the Purcells and the Eastern Monashee mountains

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newgenrtpdf

Figure 2.2  Manzanar War Relocation Center, California, Records of the War Relocation Authority, 1941–​89, Record Group 210, National Archives, USA, NAI 4688259.

Intersecting sovereignties

Figure 2.3 Manzanar War Relocation Center from tower. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Ansel Adams, photographer, LOT 10479-​2, No. 8, LC-​DIG-​ppprs-​00199.

acted as natural barriers and, apart from guard posts at points in the Slocan Valley, freedom of movement was permitted between camps. In total, there were five camps in New Denver’s immediate vicinity with three associated with the village. The Orchard Camp (Figure 2.4) was located on a parcel of land, south of Carpenter Creek, adjacent to the municipality’s boundaries while other neighbouring camps included the sixty-​acre Harris Ranch and two-​acre Nelson Ranch found to the north and south of the town and leased to the Security Commission. Cole Harris, the grandson of J.C. Harris, the owner of Harris Ranch (at that time) remarks that camps created beside well-​established populations such as Harris Ranch, New Denver, Kaslo and Greenwood were different to camps without that proximity (Harris 2015, 1). As with the remote towns in the USA asked to accommodate large Asian populations, the region’s long-​term residents approached the prospect with misgivings, opposition and gradual adaptation (3). There were two variations of camp housing in New Denver:  buildings repurposed for accommodating the incarcerated population and houses built from scratch. As detailed by his grandson, Cole, J.C. Harris leased his land and ranch house to the Security Commission for USD 50 per month (Harris 2015, 6, 9, 10). At the peak of the occupation fifty men and two cooks were accommodated in the Harris ranch house (Figure  2.5) with around 150–​200 men, women and children in the houses on the Far Field (around six persons per house) (13). In the houses purpose built for their accommodation, two families shared a common hearth. In some communities, like Sandon, Kaslo or Slocan, Japanese Canadian carpenters, supervised by white foremen, repaired unused buildings, but in other

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Figure 2.4 Model of New Denver, BC, Nikkei National Museum, 2010.1.1x. The Sanatorium is the large building to the right.

Figure 2.5 Harris Ranch Old Man Camp, New Denver, BC, 1945, Izumi Family collection, Nikkei National Museum, 2012.29.2.2.33.

sites like New Denver, shacks were purpose built for the families (Harris 2015, 11)  (Figure  2.6). The Commission converted the covered skating rink to offer temporary accommodation (in addition to tents) and set up a carpenter shop for making prefabricated components. J.C. Harris wrote that the winter of 1942–​43 was exceedingly harsh, ‘the huts were wet and draughty, and with wartime scarcities there was no material to fix them’ (14).

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Figure 2.6 Japanese evacuees find themselves in new settlement—​Slocan area, New Denver, BC, 1942. Photograph by Leonard Frank for the British Columbia Security Commission, Nikkei National Museum,1994.69.4.16.

LIFE IN THE BORDER CAMPS The loss of civil liberties at Manzanar was conveyed through spatially congested, basic and temporary facilities and disciplinary and labour regimes. The regimented numbering pattern that purportedly democratised US urban form anonymised the incarcerated population, an indignity famously conveyed by Miné Okubo in her 1946 graphic book Citizen 13660. WRA/​WCCA regulation forbade certain forms of public gathering. Quite apart from these systemic deprivations, the incarcerated population lived in barbed-​wire enclosures with guard towers and inward-​focused search lights (Burton et  al. 2000, 45), turning these environments into ‘Prison Cities’ (Horiuchi 2005). Movement in or out of the camp, if permitted, was under escort by military police garrisoned at the site. Other aspects of the physical plan impacted family cohesion. The military or work camp model was adapted in the common washing and messing facilities while rigid linear arrangements restricted views of the surrounding panorama. There were few civic amenities, excepting the community barrack building in each block and an auditorium purpose built in 1944. The incarcerated population adapted utility spaces and community halls for their various activities. They created recreational spaces in the fire-​breaks. They struggled to domesticate the hostile expanse. The New Denver camps appeared comparatively humane. The plan for the Orchard Camp was a loose domestic arrangement of 8.5 x 4 metre shiplap timber shacks, built by some of the incarcerated men under boat builder Phillip

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Matsumoto. This plan was later reconfigured as a loose suburban grid.3 Shizuye Takashima (1991, 16)  describes their house as a ‘summer bungalow’ of two rooms, flanking a kitchen—​shared by two families (four adults and three children). The central hearth and chimney enabled family cohesion—​unlike the communal messes in the US camps. But, consequently, families had to provision themselves and women were consumed by domestic labour. Everyday tedium, long lines outside the mess hall, lack of privacy in the sleeping compartments and lavatories were among the main complaints of the US camps (see Houston and Houston 1973, 23). There were disruptions to the  community caused by influxes or depletion of camp population, particularly once younger men and women were recruited via the FSA as seasonal workers. Problems related to provisioning, including the equitable distribution of food, poor health, depression, poor insulation from bad weather were also symptoms of their impoverishment and disorientation. Depictions of Manzanar by photographers like Ansel Adams (1944) (see previous Figure  2.3) convey the stark regimented conditions. Toyo Miyatake (Adams and Miyatake 1978), an incarcerated photographer from Los Angeles, who brought a contraband camera inside the camp and later operated a photo studio there at Block 30, individualised his subjects, at a time when, as noted by Jasmine Alinder (2009, 101), the racist discourse was obsessively rendering people of Japanese descent as an indistinguishable, homogeneous mass. The population incarcerated at Manzanar were not passive recipients of these environments as many photographs of the camp reveal. At the earliest opportunity they adapted their barrack quarters to simulate some semblance of their former lives. Culturally familiar food, religious practices and various forms of recreation were organised. When compared to the nearby townships of Lone Pine and Independence, Manzanar was a carceral boom town with chapels or temples of various dominations, sports fields and golf course, picnic areas and parks, and judo and kendo dojos. The cooperative enterprise ran two gift shops, a beauty parlour, a barber shop, a dressmaking shop, a shoe repair shop, a watch repair shop, a mail order counter, a sporting goods store, a laundry, a flower shop; held outdoor movies and ran the Manzanar Free Press (Burton 1996, 92–​3). The camp population raised its own livestock, and farmed food-​crops, herbs and guayale (93, 95) countering their civic deprivation through collective efforts. By August 1942, the camp was planted with Victory gardens; a pleasure garden, Merritt Park, gradually took shape during 1943; a golf course and several parks and picnic areas, an outdoor theatre and several sports fields provided various options for recreation (82). Picnic areas often included walkways, bridges and fire pits. Individual barracks were softened by borders of planting and rustic fencing (see Burton 2015). Prized among these were the linear block gardens located in the common areas alongside some of the mess halls (Figure 2.7). They provided aesthetic relief for the long lines queuing outside at mealtimes and individualised each segment of the grid. Similar transformations occurred at New Denver. There was some limited interaction between the Japanese Canadian residents and the townspeople (Harris

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Figure 2.7 Manzanar, Pond, Block 12 (close view), No. 285 A, Box 55. Manzanar War Relocation Center records (Collection 122). Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA.

2015, 20–​1): they met at the Bosun Hall in New Denver and in theatrical events, dances, sporting competitions, school productions and church activities (Shimizu 2008, 14, 20, 30, 32). They highlighted their needs during visits by Red Cross representatives. Takashima (1991) writes of multiple appeals to the BCSC by her father and others for plumbing, lamps, a bath house, all of which would be given incrementally over the three-​year period. Wood sheds were added to keep the poorly insulated homes warm in sub-​zero temperatures. A communal bath house constructed by them in 1943 was converted into a community Kyowakai Hall with an Otera (Buddhist temple/​shrine) at one end (NIMC pamphlet). In the spring and summer months, the residents at the Orchard Camp transformed the spaces around their shacks into vegetable plots and ornamental gardens (Shimizu 2008, 16, 34) (Figure 2.8). Takashima (1991, 39–​40) writes how the men of the two families who shared their shack cleared, turned and hoed the ground that first spring—​ created flowerbeds in the front and vegetable plots at the back, and planted a row of fir trees to separate their two gardens. Meanwhile the gardens around the ranch house benefited from an elderly resident population with time on their hands. Returning from a visit to her former home in July 1943, Mrs Harris wrote of the flower garden and vegetable garden declaring, ‘I have never seen it [the ranch house] look more beautiful than it does now’ (Harris 2015, 16).4 Her grandson describes a mosaic of ornamental gardens with small waterwheels that turned in the creek and bridges, one of which was big enough to walk across (17–​18). Whereas racial covenants and expectations of assimilation had constrained similar forms of cultural expression in pre-​war American cities, like for example, the Japanese garden tradition, in the camps they found new purpose and reciprocity.

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Figure 2.8 Elevated photo of New Denver, BC, Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre Archives, 2001.9.6. The Sanatorium is the large building in the background.

Tenacious signs of defiance or resilience (Helphand 2006, 155–​200), they were powerful means for humanising incarceration; all the more potent in the Canadian case with its metaphor of uprooting. However, the aesthetics of the camp gardens drew on multiple intersectional cultural practices, of Japanese-​style ornamental garden creation, of immigrant gardeners’ knowledge of local flora and the hybrid forms of place identification through cultivation for consumption or pleasure that invariably mark settler landscapes (Hirahara 2000). By offering a means of identity construction in the face of social oppression, the immanent complexity of the carceral space was unveiled. INTERSECTIONAL ENVIRONMENTS While intersectional theory, as developed in critical race theory and feminist sociology, exposed patriarchal or racial discrimination, it also sensitised us to these intra-​group complexities. However, the approach paid less attention to minority embodiment of diasporic political or transnational sensibilities. Within the population incarcerated under the exclusion orders multiple and intersecting inter-​ generational political relations produced competing axes of identity. Family groups splintered along these lines. When wartime sovereignty introduced new forms of racial discrimination, individualised forms of social mobility based on class, education or professionalisation were suppressed. In the scenarios described here, denial of civil liberties created an artificial social boundary between those with Japanese ancestry and other citizens and immigrants across North America.

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For example, at Manzanar, while everyday social divisions occurred along inter-​ state, place-​ based groupings, between residents of Bainbridge Island in Washington and those from Los Angeles or elsewhere in California; group division around issues of national loyalty factionalised the camp. Those aggrieved by incarceration were affronted by US patriots; such as the members of the Japanese American Citizens League who cooperated with the administration. A  so-​called ‘riot’ at Manzanar in December 1942 brought these internal tensions to light. A  compulsory loyalty questionnaire, distributed two months after this incident in 1943 (CWRIC 2000, 203), further polarised these positions by posing two questions: number 27—​regarding willingness to serve in the US-​military forces, or for women in the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (later the Women’s Army Corps); and number 28—​asking Nisei to renounce loyalty to the Japanese Emperor and swear allegiance to the United States. The US military began drafting men from within the camps from January 1944. Education programmes at the Manzanar high school modelled assimilatory American values. While the push and pull of sovereign power deepened national and generational differences based on language, cultural practices and politics, communal subjectivities were further differentiated by gender, age, sexuality, cultural practices, language, religion (whether Buddhist, Catholic or Protestant or other religions, sects or denominations) and class. Incarceration was experienced differently across these identity categories. Biographical accounts remind us of the irreducibility of any cultural group to either racial or national characteristics, and alert us to how human vulnerabilities vary. Meanwhile the many external pressures aimed at humiliating this population made outward expressions of Japanese culture politically sensitive. Their material dispossession, racial segregation and further differentiation by gender and by productivity; their removal into assembly centres in stalls meant for livestock, quarantine and subsequent incarceration, denied and subverted the spatial freedoms that Japanese migrants to the USA or their US-​born children and grandchildren associated with civil liberties. These processes also degraded camp populations as subordinate dependants and compliant manual workers. This perception was deepened through forms of civic deprivation in the barrack cities. Other stand-​alone facilities for particularly vulnerable groups such as orphaned children or elderly persons, further exposed individual frailties. Manzanar was the only US war relocation centre to include an orphanage, a separate self-​sufficient ‘Children’s Village’ located in the fire-​break south of Block 29, near the camp hospital (Figure 2.9). Its barrack buildings were larger and better insulated with porches at either end and internal shower and toilet facilities. There were three separate barracks each for staff, boys and girls (Unrau 1996, vol. 1, 233, based on Project Report No. 3, Manzanar Project Reports and vol. 2., 607–​9). Writing on the experiences of some of its 101 occupants, Catherine Irwin (2008) describes the children as ‘twice-​orphaned’; the majority of them came from three California orphanages, Shonien (Children’s Garden) and Maryknoll Catholic Home in Los Angeles and the Japanese Salvation Army Home, San Francisco. The number

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Figure 2.9  Manzanar Children’s Village, watercolour by Kango Takamura, February 20, 1943, gifted to Lillian and Harry Matsumoto, Collection of County of Inyo, Eastern California Museum, Independence.

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also included children whose parents had been detained, who were from broken families, whose mothers were hospitalised or who had been born out of wedlock to women in the camps. Although a mixed marriage non-​exclusion policy came into force from September 1942, the incarceration of some nineteen mixed-​race children as well as children of Japanese ancestry from non-​Japanese foster families shows how rigidly the military had enforced the exclusion order. Referring to H.E. Whitney’s (1948) study of homeless children of Japanese ancestry, Wilber Sato observes that WRA statistics revealed that 209 ‘homeless or otherwise’ exempted children were left behind in sanatoria, mental and penal institutions, hospitals and orphanages (Burton 1996, 91) with equally troubling consequences. There was a strong sense of group cohesion under Superintendent Lillian Matsumoto who had accompanied the orphans from Shonien. The micro-​ community lasted for the duration of the camp, amplified due to a dedicated staff, strict routine and religious rituals. The village was further emplaced through a garden setting, with gazebo and rustic fencing and 10,600 square feet of lawn (Burton 2015, 61). With the closure of the camps after the war, the government dispersed the children to institutions, kin or to foster parents and the facilities were dismantled. In the Canadian case, segregation by gender, and removal of productive males to road works camps or able families to self-​supporting camps heightened perception of the interior camps as dependencies. But government policy made exceptions for Eurasians and Japanese married to other ethnic groups (Daniels 1981, 185)  so that only fifteen Japanese girls were removed from the Oriental Home in Victoria to Assiniboia, Saskatchewan, both facilities in this case operated by the Women’s Missionary Society of the United Church (Oikawa 2012, 204–​5). As outlined by Mona Oikawa, the church was thus implicated in the displacement process (34). Her more strident critique is reserved, however, for the Hastings Park hospital or the five hospitals associated with the interior camps, which by segregating spaces of contagion amplified socially embedded racialised pathologies (210). Hospitals were also integral to the US camps, essential given the numbers incarcerated, but also indicative of their total social segregation. At New Denver, a 100-​bed Tuberculosis Sanatorium (the ‘San’) was built to receive patients from Hastings Park and other camps on the lake shore adjacent to the camp (Figure 2.10). Some 212 patients were treated between1942 and 1947 (Hastings Park 1942 n.d.). The ‘San’ is described as a modern facility with doctors and dental offices, x-​ray and other spaces, a kitchen, two dining rooms, men’s and women’s wards, two sun porches, staff quarters, a library and a pavilion built in 1944 for patients awaiting discharge. Japanese gardeners cared for the vegetable plots and lawns and at least one of the doctors, Dr Uchida, was of Japanese descent (Hastings Park 1942 n.d.). By January 1943, the Japanese Canadian population in the village had risen to 1500 persons, due to the presence of this facility. Young Japanese Canadian girls were trained as nurses, and once they relocated, family members of patients took over carers’ duties (Hastings Park 1942 n.d.).

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Figure 2.10 Sanatorium, New Denver, 1943. Irene (nee Anderson) Smith photographic collection. Nikkei National Museum, 1996.155.1.73. View from the lake.

Barriers to post-​war social reintegration were far greater in Canada than in the USA. Despite the lack of any evidence of their disloyalty, Prime Minister McKenzie King advocated forced repatriation of Japanese Canadians in 1944. A survey was conducted on whether they chose voluntary relocation further east within Canada or repatriation to Japan (Kage 2012, 12). Unsure of their prospects in Canada and intimidated by these pronouncements some 4000 persons left in March 1946 (18). By January 1947, the remaining population had reduced to 6776 persons; they were not allowed back to their places of origin until April 1949 (Reid and Carter 2016, 47; Miki and Kobayashi 1991, 51). In fact, New Denver’s sanatorium continued to treat invalid Japanese Canadians after the war and some families with family members undergoing treatment there remained in the Orchard long after other camps in the valley had been salvaged. The village also gathered other aged and invalid former-​camp residents unable to travel east of the mountains once restrictions were lifted in January 1946. The provincial administration awarded deeds to those residents who had occupied their homes for more than ten years, several of which were modified from shacks. The Sanatorium was later converted to a residential school for 104 culturally Russian ‘Sons of Freedom’ Doukhobor children removed from Perry Siding under British Columbia’s Protection of Children Act between 1953 and 1959 (Righting the Wrong 1999, 17; Sunahara 1981, 91). The building was fenced in and members of the RCMP patrolled the grounds (50). As with Japanese Canadians, forced removal was a radical intervention in the family lives of these communities. THE AFTERLIVES OF CAMPS This chapter has offered insights into two prominent wartime camp environments in North America outlining the very different responses they elicited in those incarcerated there. One challenge in uncovering their physical history has been the

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almost complete demolition of the facilities in the post-​war years. These processes followed the revocation of the exclusion orders and return of many from among the camp populations to their former cities after the war. There, impoverished and confronted by lingering hostility they began rebuilding their shattered lives. Political changes, when they occurred several decades later, were formulated around the cause of civil liberties, which in turn positioned the Japanese American or Japanese Canadian communities as a vocal minority. However, their battles were internal to their respective political geographies. The Japanese American Citizens League prompted the US Congressional Commission hearings in 1980 forging pathways to redress and culminating in the August 1988 Civil Liberties Act (Miki and Kobayashi 1991, 64–​ 5). The National Association of Japanese Canadians, inspired by successes south of the border likewise reached a settlement in September 1988.5 Physical traces have proved important for acts of reparation, recognition or commemoration. Four years after the 1988 national apology to Japanese Americans, the abandoned camp site at Manzanar was declared a National Historic Site, managed by the National Parks Service. Certain remains, such as the ‘soul consoling tower’, cemetery and former auditorium, would become central features of this commemorative landscape. Similarly, at New Denver, a Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre was established on the former Orchard site during the 1990s, by a group of those who had been incarcerated there during the war (McAllister 2010). At both these sites the National Park Service assisted by members of the Japanese community have repurposed or simulated architectural and landscape features for interpretive strategies. At Manzanar three new barrack buildings and one rehabilitated 1942 mess hall convey aspects of incarceration to visitors, while the abandoned gardens are being uncovered from under layers of dust and scrub. At New Denver, the site includes the community hall with the original Otera (shrine), and three former residential ‘shacks’. These are tied together by a Heiwa Teien (peace garden) designed by the renowned landscape designer Roy (Tomomichi) Sumi, who was incarcerated successively at the Tashme, Rosebery, New Denver Camps and Blue River Road Camp (Sumi and Shimokura 2015). The messages of tolerance expressed through these new facilities call for empathetic co-​curation between government agencies, town councils, people of Japanese ancestry and other local communities. Their lessons appear manifested in minority struggles for and achievement of related civil liberties in North America. The exclusion orders were troubling responses to a global border conflict that eventually brought down both German and Japanese imperialism, ended protracted international warfare and initiated decolonisation across Asia. These changes hardened aspects of nation-​state sovereignty and shifted emphasis to nation building. The alienation of supposedly ‘subversive’ minority citizens during times of national emergency and the erosion of transnational links by insular patriotism are part of its negative legacy. Such practices raise ‘statelessness’ as a border condition and an intersecting axis of identity.

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NOTES 1

2

3 4 5

Funding for this research was provided by the Australian Research Council, Future Fellowship FT140100190, Temporal Cities, Provisional Citizens: Architectures of Internment 2015–​2018. My particular thanks to Ross Cole, Amanda Murphy (Recreation and Cultural Services Coordinator for the Village of New Denver) and Paul Gibbons at New Denver and to Jeff Burton and, in particular, Rosemary Masters at Manzanar for their comments on material presented here. Thanks also to Lynne Horiuchi, a partner on the related research project, who commented on early drafts of this chapter. In the USA, the Alien Land Law of 1913 prohibited the ownership of agricultural land by aliens ineligible for citizenship, and the Alien Land Act of 1920 prohibited leasing and sharecropping. The Immigration Act of 1924 imposed restrictive quotas, where Japan had a zero quota. Under a Gentleman’s agreement of 1907–​08 between Japan and the USA, emigrant numbers were controlled. In Canada, the Chinese Immigration Act excluded Chinese in 1923. The camp was reconfigured in approximately 1942/​43 and again between 1957 and 1960 when title was deeded to occupants by the BCSC. Granny to Ellen, Bosun Ranch, July 5, 1943, family files. Redress was led at that time by the National Japanese Canadian Citizens Association.

REFERENCES Adachi, K 1976, The Enemy That Never Was: A History of the Japanese Canadians, McClelland and Stewart, Toronto, ON. Adams, A 1944, Born Free and Equal, US Camera, New York. Adams, A and Miyatake, T 1978, Two Views of Manzanar: An Exhibition of Photographs, Frederick S Wight Art Gallery, University of California, Los Angeles, CA. Agamben, G 1998, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA. Alinder, J 2009, Moving Images: Photography and the Japanese American Incarceration, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, IL. Bancroft Library, Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Records 1930–​1974, Final Reports, vols I–​V, 1946, reel 148. Bateman, F and Pilkington, L 2011, Studies in Settler Colonialism: Politics, Identity and Culture, Palgrave Macmillan, New York. Broadfoot, B 1977, Years of Sorrow, Years of Shame: The Story of Japanese Canadians in World War II, Doubleday, Toronto, ON. Burton, J ed. 1996, Three Farewells to Manzanar, National Parks Service Publications in Anthropology, Tucson, AZ. —​—​—​ 2015, Garden Management Plan: Gardens and Gardeners at Manzanar, National Park Service, Manzanar National Historic Site, CA. Burton, J, Farrell, MM, Lord, FB and Lord, RW (eds.) [1999] 2000, Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites, National Parks Service Publications in Anthropology, Tucson, AZ. Crenshaw, K 1989, ‘Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics’, The University of Chicago Legal Forum, vol. 140, 139–​167. CWRIC [1997] 2000, Personal Justice Denied: Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, University of Washington Press, Seattle, WA.

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Daniels, R (ed.) [1944] 1978, Department of Labour, Canada, Report on the Administration of Japanese Affairs in Canada, 1942–​1944, Arno Press, New York. —​—​—​ [1971] 1981, Concentration Camps USA: Japanese Americans and World War II, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., New York. —​—​—​2005 ‘Words Do Matter: A Note on Inappropriate Terminology and the Incarceration of the Japanese Americans’, in L Fiset and G Nomura (eds.), Nikkei in the Pacific Northwest: Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians in the Twentieth Century, University of Washington Press, Seattle, WA, 83–​207. De Witt, JL 1943, Final Report of the Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast, 1942, Government Printing Office, Washington, DC. Fujikane, C and Okamura, J 2008, Asian Settler Colonialism: From Local Governance to the Habits of Everyday Life in Hawai’i, University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu. Gordon, A 1997, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN. Grzanka, PR (ed.) 2014, Intersectionality: A Foundations and Frontiers Reader, Westview Press, Boulder, CO. Harris, C 2015, Mist and Green Leaves: Japanese Canadians on Harris Ranch, Chameleon Fire Editions, New Denver, BC. Hastings Park 1942: New Denver Sanatorium n.d., Japanese Canadian Hastings Park Commemoration and Education Project, viewed 18 January 2019, . Helphand, K 2006, Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime, Trinity University Press, San Antonio, TX. Hewes, LI 1942, Final Report of the Participation of the Farm Security Administration in the Evacuation Program of the Wartime Civil Control Administration Civil Affairs Division Western Defense Command and Fourth Army, Farm Security Administration, United States Department of Agriculture, San Francisco, CA. Hirahara, N (ed.) 2000, Greenmakers: Japanese American Gardeners in Southern California, Southern California Gardners’ Federation, Los Angeles, CA. Hise, G 1997, Magnetic Los Angeles: Planning the Twentieth-​Century Metropolis, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD. Horiuchi, L 2005, ‘Dislocations and relocations: The built environments of Japanese American internment’, PhD thesis, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA. —​—​—​2015, ‘Architects at War: Designing Prison Cities for Japanese American Communities’, in B Tauke, K Smith and C Davis, Diversity and Design: Understanding Hidden Consequences, Routledge, New York, 101–​120. Houston, JW and Houston, JD 1973, Farewell to Manzanar, Houghton Mifflin Company, New York. Imbert, D 1997, ‘The Art of Social Landscape Design’, in M Treib and D Imbert (eds.), Garrett Eckbo: Modern Landscapes for Living, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 106–​177. Irwin, C 2008, ‘Twice orphaned: Voices from the Children’s Village of Manzanar’, PhD thesis, Center for Oral and Public History, California State University, California. Kage, T 2012, Uprooted Again: Japanese Canadians move to Japan after World War II, trans. C Merken, Ti-​Jean Press, Victoria, BC. Kashima, T 2003, Judgement without Trial: Japanese American Internment during World War II, University of Washington Press, Seattle, WA. Kitayama, G 2018, Manzanar, Densho Encyclopedia, viewed 19 January 2019, . La Violette, FE 1948, The Canadian Japanese in World War II, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, ON.

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McAllister, E 2010, Terrain of Memory: A Japanese Canadian Memorial Project, UBC Press, Vancouver. Miki, R and Kobayashi, C 1991, Justice in Our Time: The Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement, Talonbooks, Vancouver with National Association of Japanese Canadians, Winnipeg. National Archives, USA (NARA), Records of the War Relocation Authority, 1941–​1989, Record Group 210. Nikkei Internment Memorial Center (NIMC), visitor pamphlet, Village of New Denver. Oikawa, M 2012, Cartographies of Violence: Japanese Canadian Women, Memory and the Subjects of Internment, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, ON. Okubo, M 1946, Citizen 13660, Columbia University Press, New York. Reid, LK and Carter, B 2016, Karizumai: A Guide to Japanese Canadian Internment Sites, Nikkei National Museum and Cultural Centre, Burnaby, BC. Righting the Wrong: The Confinement of the Sons of Freedom Doukhobor Children, Public Report No. 38. 1999, Ombudsman, Province of British Columbia. Robinson, G 2001, By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. —​—​—​ 2009, A Tragedy of Democracy: Japanese Confinement in North America, Columbia University Press, New York. Shimizu, H 2008, Images of Internment: Life in the New Denver Internment Camp, 1942–​ 46, Ti-​Jean Press, Victoria, BC. Silverman, ME 1946, Appendix 25 in RL Brown and R Merritt, Final Report, Manzanar, vol. 1, pp. A 174–​5, RG 210, Entry 4b, Box 71. Smith, GS 2000, ‘The Japanese Canadians in World War II’, in K Saunders and R Daniels, Alien Justice: Wartime Internment in Australia and North America, Queensland University Press, Brisbane, QLD, 93–​113. Sumi, E and Shimokura, H 2015, ‘Roy Tomomichi Sumi: Renowned designer and architect of Japanese gardens’, Nikkei Images 20, no. 3, 16–​18, Nikkei National Museum and Cultural Centre, Burnaby, BC. Sunahara, AG 1981, The Politics of Racism: The Uprooting of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War, James Lorimer Ltd, Toronto, ON. Takashima, S 1991, A Child in Prison Camp, Scholastic Library Publishing, Toronto, ON. Unrau, HD 1996, The Evacuation and Relocation of Persons of Japanese Ancestry During World War II: A Historical Study of the Manzanar War Relocation Center, US Department of the Interior, National Parks Service, Denver, CO. Veracini, L 2010, Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview, Palgrave Macmillan, New York. Whitney, HE 1948, ‘Care of the homeless children of Japanese ancestry during evacuation and relocation’, thesis (Master of Social Welfare), University of California, Berkeley, CA.

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3: Data displacements: Transmitting digital media and the architecture of detention Sean Anderson and Jennifer Ferng

In October 2016, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City organised an exhibition entitled Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Shelter in response to the ongoing challenges related to the global refugee crisis in the Americas, Europe and Oceania. Since the founding of the Department of Architecture and Design in 1932, the Museum has been closely aligned with a handful of non-​government organisations that developed out of early twentieth-​century wartime endeavours, including preliminary incarnations of what would become the International Rescue Committee in 1933 (IRC). With the careful planning of Margaret Solari Barr and her husband, the Director of MoMA, Alfred Barr, the nascent Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC), begun in late June 1940, sought to assist artists and art historians as well as their families to escape from Europe and settle in the United States. The ERC would later merge with the International Relief Association in 1942 to form the International Rescue Committee (Boyer 2001, 675). Along the same lines, conceived around the architectural spaces of humanitarian practices and the detention of asylum seekers and refugees, Insecurities brought together the works of artists as well as architects and designers, who have addressed pressing issues related to borders, detention centres and refugee camps. Exploring the spatial conditions that undergird the complexities behind xenophobia and visual images, digital representations of data in architecture redefine what we do not see—​or are allowed to see—​casting the mandatory detention of asylum seekers and refugees on offshore islands into a deceptive exercise in public participation. Outside of MoMA’s second floor gallery, a large format image by the Danish photographer Rasmus Degnbol, stretching from the floor to the ceiling, illustrated the rocky shoreline of Lesbos, Greece, scattered with discarded orange life jackets heaped into piles nearby (Figure  3.1). Seemingly commonplace, the image was often passed by the public without any comments or discerning looks. However, upon closer inspection, the tangible presence of the life jackets along the edges of the Lesbos shoreline has been transformed into symbols of border security that act as deterrents for boat arrivals, providing evidence of the extensive loss of life

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Figure 3.1  Rasmus Degnbol, Europe’s New Borders: ‘Over 100.000 life vests and rubber boats lie in a almost 10 meter high pile on the island of Lesbos, Greece on 31 October 2015. In 2015, Greece received well over 800.000 refugees and migrants. All primarily arriving by boat over the Aegean Sea from Turkey. The local island struggled to cope with the influx on its shores.’ Reprinted photograph from the above series. Installation view of the exhibition, Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Shelter. October 1, 2016–​January 22, 2017. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Digital Image © 2018 The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photograph by Jonathan Muzikar.

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in transit globally. This graphic backdrop, quietly illustrative of violence and death, became one of the most popular walls in front of which to take selfies during the exhibition at MoMA. MoMA is just one site for observing and questioning the nature of the ongoing global refugee crisis. Before this exhibition, few other public discussions or exhibitions had attempted to rectify the absence of architects involved in the design and making of shelters for the displaced. As a distressing site for selfies, including a group of young men posing as dead individuals, the exhibition evidenced some of the widespread desensitisation that visiting members of the public experience upon viewing these digital images, whether taken in Europe or Australia. These young male visitors, who seemed to have very little understanding about the loss of life in places like Lesbos, are indicative of a public culture distanced from the real-​life consequences of seeking asylum. Like the photographic backdrop of the Insecurities exhibition, images of offshore processing illustrate the practice of sending asylum seekers to immigration detention centres located in countries outside of Australia. The policy under Prime Minister John Howard was initiated in 2001–​08 and resurrected again in 2012 by the Australian Labor Party headed by former Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Given the inaccessibility and isolation of these inhumane spaces, their reception is mediated by forms of mass media which this chapter seeks to interrogate. It begins with a discussion of the global representations of detention environments at MoMA followed by an evaluation of the specific ways in which Australian and international humanitarian organisations represent and archive the practices of mandatory detention in Manus Island, Papua New Guinea and Nauru. We attempt to analyse and critically examine how the saturated nature of the digital image has come to define another frontier of the global refugee crisis—​ that is, a frontier defined by and for mass media including journalistic reportage and digital consumption. In a contemporary age of social media, this digital frontier is marked by new conditions for the maintenance and framing of archives and databases. Archives belonging to humanitarian organisations, news agencies and activist organisations often possess timely information about the migrations of asylum seekers and refugees, fluctuating with any given city, country or year (e.g. United Nations High Commission for Refugees—​UNHCR, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection in Australia as well as the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the Australian Human Rights Commission). These archives, by extension, provide contemporary trajectories that present visual perspectives from geographically distant sites like Lesbos in the Mediterranean and Manus Island in the Bismarck Sea. Rather than depending upon the paper-​based archives of libraries and museums, these digital archives of humanitarian aid circulate ever-​changing information about the detention and resettlement of asylum seekers and refugees. With such rapid shifts regarding access to information, we begin to understand the expanding scales of the global refugee crisis by way of the simultaneity of visual and spatial representations. Much of the imagery presented among news outlets offers very little clarity on the spaces for offshore detention due to government limits on journalists

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covering these issues. Those that have been able to document the islands’ detention centres have been circumspect in offering any definitive formal notation of the architecture that has been used. In addition to our own field documentation, we have often relied on media representations to ‘see’ past the fences. The history of mandatory detention in Australia, for instance, can be summarised by the Parliament of Australia website that offers key statistical data and literature on the policies implemented by the Australian Government (Phillips and Spinks 2013). Introduced by the Keating Government (Australian Labor Party Government led by Paul Keating) through the enactment of the Migration Amendment Act 1992, initially meant for Indochinese unauthorised boat arrivals, the procedure hardened through recurrent legislative processes throughout the 1990s, such as visas and detention charges aimed at covering the associated costs. These procedures, which multiplied in the subsequent decades, targeted unlawful, non-​ citizen maritime arrivals including those with valid asylum claims. They peaked under the coalition Howard Government culminating in the notorious Pacific Solution introduced in 2001. Under this policy, designated offshore islands—​Christmas Island, Ashmore and Cartier Islands, and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands—​were excised from Australia’s migration zone under parliamentary rule; unauthorised arrivals were collected and then immediately transferred to offshore processing centres built by third-​party contractors under Australian management (Figure  3.2). Although this policy was officially suspended under the Rudd and Gillard Governments in 2008, detention environments continued to operate, accompanied by highly politicised debates on poor housing conditions, detainee protests and the legality surrounding the practice of mandatory detention. From 2001 to 2018 detention infrastructure fluctuated with the taxonomy of onshore-​related environments at one point including thirteen immigration detention centres (IDCs) across major cities and regional centres, immigration residential housing, immigration transit accommodation in major cities and alternative places of ‘community’ detention including hospitals and schools. Examining the public dimensions of offshore immigration detention centres, the disjunctive relationships across digital data, the individuals that they represent and the designed spaces in which they are detained serves to undermine preconceived notions about the place(s) of asylum seekers and refugees. In ongoing Australian policies regarding mandatory detention, the role and validity of data implicates how architecture is conceived of within present refugee emergencies. Statistics such as 14,438 unauthorised boat arrivals, when compared with 2090 unauthorised air arrivals from 2011 to 2012 (Phillips and Spinks 2013, appendix b, 41)  obscure the more complex geo-​political processes by which refugees are moving into housing, neighbourhoods and cities (Australian Statistics Bureau 2014). As of May 2018, numbers indicate that at least 1957 individuals remain in ‘all forms of detention’, including mainland, community and offshore sites which have decreased from a high of 10,201 since July 2013 (Asylum Seeker Resource Centre 2018). Data displacements—​ the act of numbers representing real places, policies and spaces—​facilitate a rupture among the media images represented by

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Figure 3.2 Australian immigration detention facilities, adapted and compiled from online graphics and data provided by the Australian Government and published in news media between 2013 and 2016.

Drawn by Dhara Patel. Base map—​www.eduplace.com/​ss/​maps/​pdf/​se_​asia_​pac_​polnl.pdf

these numbers and the harsh realities endured by asylum seekers and refugees as revealed in Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) reports (e.g. AHRC report for 2011–​12). Specifically, the economic data behind the funds spent on the detention sites and border control of asylum seekers indicate a different dimension to the refugee crisis. Between 2013 and 2016, the cost of establishing and maintaining offshore processing systems and facilities, including those in resettlement countries was budgeted at AUD 3.6 billion (Button 2016). Here, architecture exists not only in the physical built environment but also among the virtual documents and panoply of online published data that paint a specific picture of mandatory detention. For this chapter, we intentionally resist first-​hand accounts or experiences of these sites, such as those provided on outlets like the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the Guardian and offer an alternative:  that mediated experiences through visual images of detention architecture now surpass political expediency when observing these sites of continued displacement. We seek to describe a mediated reality in which the images and numbers presented by mass media offer a set of conclusions regarding the practices of offshore immigration detention.

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We have drawn on two online archives, of the Australian Human Rights Commission and UNHCR, in order to parse mass media’s influence in shaping the public face of the global refugee crisis. Data simultaneously empowers and disaggregates humanitarian agendas by fashioning new virtual borders through which to comprehend the expansion of human rights into the digital realm. Offshore immigration detention sites, redefined in mass media by their numeric data, disrupt the factual descriptions of incarceration by disseminating a multitude of haphazard images. Whether of carceral facilities or of detainees, these visual facsimiles transmitted across digital media are changing the ways in which public audiences view the ethics of asylum and mandatory detention. REDEFINING DATA According to recent UNHCR estimates, more than 65.6 million asylum seekers and refugees continue to move around the planet in search of refuge and shelter (UNHCR 2018a). Triggered by the continuing conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, threats by ISIS/​Daesh and global climate change, many of these refugees have been perpetually in transit for several years. Many European governments, committed to the ideals of a borderless Europe, are deeply conflicted over how to deal with divisive issues related to immigration, identity and Islam. Compared with their European counterparts like Germany and Sweden, the Australian Government has accepted a relatively small proportion of asylum seekers and continues its policy of mandatory detention against those who attempt to cross into Australian territory by boat. Detention centres can, like data, assume the role of islands within islands: places which are remote and bounded. Comparable to other islands that typically receive influxes of asylum seekers such as Lesbos, Greece and Lampedusa, Italy, the Australian offshore processing centres of Manus Island (2001–​04 and 2012–​17) and Nauru (2001–​08 and 2012–​present), likewise, can be envisioned through data’s displacements generating alternate versions of architecture. An island republic in Micronesia, Nauru is often represented as a regional partner of Australia whereas Christmas Island, in the Indian Ocean, has been an Australian external territory since 1958. Both became active as detention or regional processing centres capable of accommodating at least 800 persons in 2001 (Figure 3.3). The Manus Island Regional Processing Centre in a highly segregated former US military encampment (Figure 3.4) remained open to only men. Inferior physical facilities, remoteness and fragility continue to place detainees at risk. Nauru remains inhospitable for the remaining men, women and children with numerous cases of illness and severe injury due to the extreme climate, location of the centre and inadequate shelter. From these leased sites of confinement, one is able to recognise how economic and legal challenges contribute to continued oppression of asylum seekers. When Prime Minister John Howard decided to ‘push back the boats’ in 2001 by instigating the Pacific Solution (Phillips and Spinks 2013, 9), the protections afforded by refugees and asylum seekers in Australasia were upended. Under these principles of deterrence, all asylum seekers arriving by boat were not guaranteed

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Figure 3.3 The first temporary detention centre is pictured on Christmas Island, Territory of Christmas Island, Friday, August 16, 2013. Photograph by John Pryke, courtesy Australian Associated Press photo archive 20130817000764157865.

Figure 3.4 Australia asylum seekers, a man standing on a balcony at the East Lorengau Refugee Transit Centre on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. Photograph by Aziz Abdul, July 17, 2018, courtesy Australian Associated Press photo archive 20180718001354491218.

permanent settlement in Australia, and consequently, both the Coalition and Labor National Party reinforced this policy of mandatory detention when it was reactivated in 2012 (Phillips and Spinks 2013, 9). The Australian Government’s quota for refugees in 2015–​16, for example, remained only at 17,555 places, in contrast with the 284,371 refugees accepted by Germany in the same year, following the peak of the so-​called European refugee crisis in 2015 (AIDA 2015). Offshore contexts that include immigration detention centres, such as those situated in Papua New Guinea and Nauru by Australia and managed by third-​party security contractors, such as Transfield services or Serco Australia Pty Ltd, no longer embody physical places of engagement but rather have become more relatable as two-​dimensional,

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media updates that flatten the ongoing global refugee crises. Consequently, the imaging of the Global South and other geographies constituting flows within postcoloniality, are reified by the continued subjugation of men, women and children across Australia’s rampant immigration detention programme. A HUMANITARIAN TURN Law historian Samuel Moyn (2010) has argued that the twinned histories of humanitarianism and human rights became conflated during the last few decades of the twentieth century. It has become difficult to disentangle the origins of human rights and the ethical responsibilities of modern-​day welfare states. He claims that humanitarian activists are seeking solutions to indigence without challenging the wealth embedded in these states:  ‘this alternative history is forced, therefore, to take as its main challenge understanding why it was not in the middle of the 1940s but in the middle of the 1970s that human rights came to define people’s hopes for the future as the foundation of an international movement and a utopia of international law’ (7). Yet, out of this seemingly complex network of ideas, as Moyn suggests, human rights should be treated as a human cause and as a ‘recognisably utopian program’ (1). In attempting to construct alternative ‘data archives’ associated with the two Australian offshore sites of Manus Island and Nauru, we hope to revise the notion of the border as a spatial disciplinary practice. Moreover, while mass media, whether on government or humanitarian websites or highly regarded news outlets, has not only distorted numerous details concerning these Pacific sites, it has inadvertently obscured many of the inhumane processes that detainees must endure. Suspended somewhere between media representations and the centres’ remote locations, images from the press and data statistics feed gaps in the public imagination. ISLANDS OF BIG DATA Big data rendered by mass media, put forth by the World Economic Forum and the Immigration Policy Lab at Stanford University, provide snapshots of the global refugee crisis (Rango 2015). Both digital data and digital images reflect how statistics have either assisted or impeded refugee resettlement. Like statistics, images as a form of documentation are also part of policy approaches that must attend to the public perception of refugee-​related issues. The variety of diffuse information, type of sources and velocity of exchange obscure the few architectural efforts that attempt to house refugees in diverse countries around the world. Measured against the maintenance of immigration detention centres, interconnections between digital data and photojournalistic endeavours have drawn sparing attention to the inhumane treatment of asylum seekers. The UNHCR and Save the Children organisations and websites, for example, contract professional photojournalists to document detainment and displacement sites across the

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world to support their humanitarian initiatives and assistance. In contrast, the physical conditions of architecture, including the maintenance and expansion of facilities, have decreased. We can no longer separate the broadly disseminated imagery of detention architecture, easily available to media-​consuming publics, from that of data concerning the ongoing confinement of asylum seekers. In fact, statistics and their accompanying images are radically intertwined and have become inseparable as sources of evidence informing the public about the global refugee crisis. By comparison, within the discipline of architectural history, big data has grown as a topic of speculative interest for architects, historians and urban planners, as witnessed by the growth of university majors like urban science (MIT 2018). Data mining and computational methods are being employed by the Urban Policy Lab at the University of Sydney, for instance, to solve problems in urban design and planning (Gurran and Sarkar 2017). Architectural history has now begun to intersect with cultural studies and histories of technology to probe what Mario Carpo has called the ‘nouveau data-​riche’ technologies of today (Strachan 2015). This trend signals a marked disparity among the ‘big-​data logic’ of architectural tools that now dominate contemporary practices, framed by mass customisation and file-​to-​factory technologies. Data-​driven tools and algorithms, no longer simply instruments of design, are now being used by researchers at the Immigration Policy Lab (2018) to match resettled refugees with appropriate cities and forms of employment. Furthermore, low-​cost building strategies used at detention facilities such as prefabrication systems are approaches in which the tent as well as the mass-​produced shelter or ‘caravan’ have become symbols of disregard for those humans required to live in them while at the same time representative of minimum efforts to ‘house’ the asylum seeker and refugee. Such contradictions are amplified by media images in which the shelter, or lack thereof, has become a substitute for visualising a universal condition. The visual redaction of violence towards asylum seekers and their attendant detention architecture in Australia remain central to the government’s restrictive immigration policies. One of the long-​ standing debates within the Australian Parliament focuses on how to curtail the number of maritime arrivals (Phillips 2017). With the enforced militarisation of borders throughout the world, perceptions of the maritime border as a militarised space through which civilians may pass have not only become intensified but also spawned similar systems of restrictive immigration. ‘Centres of residence and repatriation’ (CPR), for instance, attempt to deal with the increased numbers of ‘illegal’ arrivals such as those processed and detained through the policies established by Fortress Italia in Europe (Curzi 2017). In 2013, under Australia’s Operation Sovereign Borders, the National Liberal Coalition revived offshore processing centres in Manus Island and Nauru to halt the influx of asylum seekers arriving in Australia ‘illegally’ by boat. Numerous activists, journalists and consulting humanitarian organisations were often denied access to these same centres, and their isolation on geographically remote islands contributed to their growing invisibility on the world stage, out of the media’s eyes and away from public life. Papua New Guinea recently ruled that the processing

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centre at Manus Island would be closed since it was deemed unconstitutional and the centre violated the human rights of the detainees (Doherty 2017a). As a result, electricity and water were cut to the centre and 600 men were forcibly moved to three new transit centres located near the town of Lorengau (Fox 2017). Nauru’s geography, likewise, and history of industry have posed similar challenges for asylum seekers detained on the island. Even though phosphate mining at the end of the nineteenth century ravaged Nauru when the German empire annexed the country as a colony, there were no legislation or environmental standards put into place to regulate the mining industry (Doherty 2016). Consequently, the health and well-​being of asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island is greatly diminished not only by degraded physical circumstances but also by the continued repression and denial of mental difficulties on an ‘island of despair’ (Amnesty International Australia 2016). SEEING BEYOND PHYSICAL BORDERS Images of the global refugee crisis not only take over public consciousness but also populate media outlets that determine how these offshore detention centres are perceived and understood. Journalists and filmmakers have resorted to recruiting detainees or relief workers to photograph the architecture and layouts of Manus Island and Nauru. Some whistleblowers even depend upon secretly deposited mobile phones in detention centres to acquire images of their interiors. Director Eva Orner used these same methods when filming Chasing Asylum (2016) that showcased unprecedented visual documentation of both sites. An asylum seeker on Manus Island, Behrouz Boochani’s self-​made documentary Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time (2017), was shot entirely on his mobile phone and possesses the tagline: ‘the core concern is freedom, only freedom’. The footage depicts, in the words of Boochani, the ‘coarsening banality and repetition of indefinite detention’ (Chauka 2017). In a recent interview for the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), Irish conceptual documentary photographer Richard Mosse (2017) stated that many photographers have taken part in documenting the refugee crisis, but the similarity of their portrayals compounds public blindness to nuanced issues. Humanitarian organisations that seek to expose the inhumane conditions under which these individuals live find their distance and inaccessibility challenging. Even journalists who seek to expose some of these detention centres contribute to the same public blindness of which Mosse speaks. The confluence of data and digital images in addition to textual and coded information and their distillation and dissemination are central to determining how images of dwellings characterise the punitive environments of Manus and Nauru. For refugees across the world, the lack of formalised design is matched only by an absence of territory or ‘home’ for multiple populations. But what is a refugee’s architecture? Often imposed by governmental agencies, designs conceived for refugee and asylum seekers frequently match a certain conception of what they

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‘should’ be instead of what they ‘could’ be. On the physical peripheries of immigration processing centres, such as those in Australia’s offshore islands and elsewhere in Europe, one finds a conglomeration of found materials that serve as a basis for the most basic shelter. No longer exemplifying any definitive typology, architecture for the displaced has been itself condensed by a proliferation of media that seek to maintain an image of the refugee as trapped within an endless system of mass-​produced shelters, tents and camps. The invisibility of detention centres, conversely, allows for other questions about the conception of human rights among internet-​driven, ‘globalised’ societies. Inaccessibility is used to deter and erase, not only by nations that seek to dismiss the asylum seeker and refugee but also by disregarding those governments that indefinitely house and detain them. Within a socio-​political spectrum that allows for the visual suppression of the refugee and asylum seeker, how do they represent themselves? The appearance of detention architecture is amplified by its absence in mass media. Different values are ascribed to each mode of visualisation. The subjectively determined differences between journalism and ‘historical’ photographs are becoming more prominent—​ journalism and public commentary are also now a means of curating public life. The multitude of data and imagery concerning refugees on land and at sea challenges the fixity associated with architecture and to this end, only the images and objects of this multifold crisis—​of boats, life vests, camps and deserts—​stand in for the refugee experience. Few, if any, asylum seekers and refugees can actively construct an architecture that offers some temporary relief. Rather, the gender-​segregated Yongah Hill Immigration Centre in Western Australia, one of few remaining onshore detention centres, exemplifies how designers sometimes treat such projects as holding cells for ‘illegal’ immigrants (Grant 2016). ‘Custodial design’ becomes a central conceit to the management of both established and emergent conflict zones. However, while architects and engineers are involved with the design and building of detention centres and immigration facilities, they have only recently intervened in the design of refugee camps. While global forms of morality are conferred, if not constituted, primarily through digital data and their scaffolding of images, an emblematic yet ephemeral architecture is witnessed, even occupied virtually, by the same consumer of images (Moyn 2010). REFUGEE MEDIA Data and visual images accompany the rhetoric employed by the Australian welfare state and the immigration policy structured by the Australian Labor Party after 1946, when statistical data collection increased in response to the population growth of post-​Second World War immigration drives. Today’s big data accumulation, in contrast, relies on computational and sociological methods to map the economic and social dynamics related to housing and transportation. Proto-​urban environments including those of Australian immigration detention centres exist as

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multifaceted portals reachable by social media and the internet. By comparison, there is heightened reliance on mass media platforms to distil and disseminate data to various audiences. Both types of distillation freely provide profuse information about the role of civil society, simultaneously alluding to but rarely depicting living conditions experienced by displaced asylum seekers and refugees. Transgressive borders exist in the public realm where online imagery, film, video and social media converge as ‘off-​ modern’ environments (Boym 2017). Architecture respectively exists as dislocative ‘environments in transition’, as termed by Svetlana Boym, where we can imagine how digital media and its images of architecture emerge as a ‘new form of curating public life’ (2017, 52). Public life today is at once characterised by its participation with digital media and off-​modern time (30). The public, defined as much by algorithmic processes and external mechanised systems, also occupy spaces as visitors presented with choices amidst those events that structure how and why refugees are (mis)understood. An architecture of detention is not only associated with physical spaces but also of the digital numbers and images that reify the dislocative arenas which asylum seekers and refugees occupy. Just as refugees are physically displaced in geographic spaces, so too are the data and images fixing their movements across liminal territories onto which their stateless, spectral imagining is grafted. T.J. Demos and other scholars like Boym have postulated that a new mode of modernity—​ one based on the intersection of art, architecture and digital technologies—​has brought contemporary political phenomena into close dialogue with the temporality of digital critique (Demos 2013). Digital images and technologies have supported a new critique of mass media as being a tool of physical distancing and alienation where new media are used to reframe ‘old atrocities’. These crimes range from massacres, terrorist activities and secret torture and such political occurrences are magnified when seen through images alone (Perera 2014–​2017). Estrangement, according to Suvendrini Perera, parallels the ‘lethal imaginaries of nationalism’, and is performed through ‘enactments of citizenship’ when refugees are seeking lines of flight from their home country. The border, as intimated by Perera, is perceived across a ‘landscape of state violence characterised by militarisation, occupation, and fear’ (Perera 2016, 3). One might offer that because of the prevalence of digitally rich environments in which we live today, how we construct ourselves as individuals, as citizens and as members of a nation or sovereign realm possibly directly impacts how asylum seekers and refugees understand themselves. Outside of conventional socio-​political orders, yet visible from within a tight network of cell-​phone and internet-​driven communications technologies, these individuals remain contrary to yet embedded within conflicting structures of nationhood. This mode of engagement is present among architectural practices that employ new media, video and live animations. Evidenced in contemporary video installations such as Diller+Scofidio and Renfro’s (2008–​2009) immersive video work EXIT, forced migrations and human displacements are better visualised as dynamic statistics in motion. Based on definitions of speed and virtual reality

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established by Paul Virilio, the 360-​degree viewing screen zooms in and out of focus, centring upon diverse types of geo-​coded data taken from 100 sources, sometimes related to refugee movements, electronic transfers of money or the prevalence and expansion of environmental pollution. With contributions by architect Laura Kurgan, media scholar Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin, the installation is presented as a dynamic mapping commissioned by the Foundation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris for a 2008 exhibition entitled Native Land Stop Eject held in Paris. It became an opportunity to demonstrate the outreach of global warming. Drawing upon institutional sources such as UNESCO and the World Bank, the installation was conceived as continuously updated and includes more recently added data since 2015. Its six narratives—​Sending Money Home, Political Refugees and Forced Migration, Natural Disasters, Rising Seas and Sinking Cities, Speechless and Deforestation—​dissect the associated variables related to human migrations. The installation purports that individuals displaced by wars, persecution and violence have reached an all-​time peak in the twenty-​first century. Nevertheless, notions of the uprooted citizen as a purveyor of fallible identity still pervade how we are tied to the challenges surrounding human migrations and forced displacements. ARCHIVING DETENTION Can the websites of Australian Government-​funded bodies be assessed as arbiters related to the architecture of detention? While the presentation of information related to their activities may demonstrate that an organisation is at work for those that access their specific websites, public data about Australasian detention centres are often contextualised in terms of the numbers of asylum seekers who have been given refugee status against those who have failed to reach Australian territory (Refugee Council of Australia 2018). Two data-​rich website environments by the Australian Human Rights Commission and the UNHCR are competing realms for demonstrating how asylum is being denied to men, women and children who attempt to find refuge in Australia. On the one hand, for the government, the removal and/​or return of the illegalised asylum seeker is best portrayed as absent from the country and maintained within the realm of numeration. The living conditions inflicted upon them by the government and third-​ party operators managing sites of detention, conversely, remains unseen and therefore can be denied. One example for such data arises from a 2014 report published by the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), founded in 1986 and formerly headed by Gillian Triggs. More recently, what is most striking about the opening webpage of the Commission is its long list of immigration detention statistics taken from the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (ADIBP 2017). A recent entry from June 1, 2018 and previously from June 1, 2017 enumerated that there were approximately 1262 individuals in detention facilities, with some 281 of them based on Christmas Island. Illegal maritime arrivals (IMA) were estimated

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at around 371 persons on Nauru and 803 on Manus Island (ADIBP 2017). If the architecture of detention can be framed by numbers and data, it is compelling that the buildings of these offshore processing centres are defined by the number of inhabitants (bodies) that reside there per year. Ubiquitous within the Australian Human Rights Commission website is the tagline ‘everyone, everywhere, everyday’ that attempts to situate the problem of human rights across varying contexts. The terms of engaging the global refugee crisis have been less prevalent among more locally focused Australian media sites. These news outlets like ABC (2016) have focused more on the inhuman conditions around offshore processing in Manus Island and Nauru. The AHRC provides some of the close monitoring of the contraventions against basic human rights in Australia and this includes broader issues such as disability rights, racial discrimination and sexual harassment. The organisation claims there is a singular opportunity to remediate the conditions of places of detention. Current Human Rights Commissioner Edward Santow reports that Australia’s ratification of the Optical Protocol to the Convention against Torture may be a step in protecting the human rights of detainees. Through regular and unannounced visits, problems in places of detention can be identified more quickly. On the AHRC website, media images of the Manus Regional Processing Centre are taken from the outside peering inwards, framing blurry dongas and generic prefabricated containers that intersect with the landscape. More often, images highlight the security fences surrounding the buildings (behind multiple layers of metal, meshing and chain link), with asylum seekers’ hands intertwined within the sections of chain-​link fence. Striking depictions include those of poor hygienic facilities at the centre. As of November 24, 2017, images from the site’s newsreel illustrate two men inside on one side of a security fence while patrolmen in army fatigues stand on the opposite site. An additional photograph shows four bathrooms from the Oscar complex situated on concrete blocks consisting of white prefabricated units with dark narrow doorways marked by garbage bins standing alongside (Figure 3.5). Such images exemplify how Australia’s states of deterrence are potentially effective in garnering support for pervasive carceral detention. Their ubiquity underscores how easily images of chain-​link fences, tarp tents and poor sanitary conditions have become synonymous with Australia’s offshore detention practices. Digital images in the media presented by the AHRC constitute many of the objects, people and contexts surrounding immigration detention but when considering the architectural efficacy of these sites, line drawings completed by children living in immigration detention centres in Manus Island and Nauru are more prominently displayed (AHRC 2014). As part of their mission securing human rights compliance, AHRC visited immigration detention facilities to speak with children living in detention, and the drawings collected and represented as a form of evidence show stick figures representing the children themselves wearing unhappy facial features while situated behind telltale vertical iron bars masquerading as

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Figure 3.5 Bathrooms from Oscar complex, Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. Photograph by Ian Rintoul, Refugee Action Coalition. This image appeared on Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) News, Gallery: Inside Manus Island Detention Centre, on July 30, 2016.

straight lines. How such drawings made by children reveal the totality of detention is indicative by their representational logic that then may be exploited by media outlets. Evidentiary images are not provided as mirrors or reminders by the AHRC, but as forms of competing visual evidence of an asylum seeker or refugee’s degradation. The AHRC duplicated these drawn pictures on a separate section of their website. State Parties reassure the public that ‘if a child is capable of forming his or her own views, the views of the child should be given due weight according to the age and maturity of the child’ (AHRC 1990). However, there is little data presented to support educational initiatives that were seemingly abandoned by the operators of immigration detention sites. What can artistic imagination offer a child (or adult) but a momentary escape from an environment that was created to engender self-​loathing and a sense of criminality? Boredom, perhaps, remains the most destructive aspect across global detention sites for those who must endure days and months on end without access to education or meaningful work (Cousins 2014; Mares 2014; Renzaho 2016, 269). Such notions embody the imposition of violence within spaces endemic to trans-​continental migration while also internal to those data-​driven policies that websites are attempting to refigure. One of the drawings in the website’s collection illustrates how prefabricated containers perform as shelter for asylum seekers. Prefabricated architecture is displayed plainly and outlined in crayon with two windows and a central door in each module. Bordered by a chain link fence, several other children’s bodies are presented as lines, surrounded by a field of small circles while the prefabricated container-​shelters are established in the background. Another drawing depicts a detention centre as a petite orange tent marked by a solitary window—​located above; a single line of stick figure children is frowning behind a gridded section of lines or bars.

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Former Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs points out that the dangers of third-​country processing still persist for the offshore island detention centres maintained by the Australian Government. For Triggs, and those agencies working to close the facilities, living conditions at both facilities remain woefully far below acceptable international standards at each location (Triggs 2017). These qualities remain distant across those snapshots and drawings collected by the AHRC website-​archive. Recalling the artist-​led protests against Transfield’s sponsorship of the 2015 Sydney Biennale—​one of its principal sponsors that also maintains detention centres—​the absent body of the refugee is an exemplar of socio-​political exchange in Australia although muted within the confines of the AHRC website (SBS News 2014). Positioned as prisoners and as usurpers of agency, images of so-​ called ‘detainees’ have merged imperceptibly (and incommensurably) with the territory. Compared with the Australian Human Rights Commission, the UNHCR represents a broader transnational organisation assisting asylum seekers and refugees worldwide. Since 2014, the UNHCR has consistently criticised the Australian Government’s treatment of asylum seekers. Francis Crépeau’s November 2016 visit to Australia and Nauru characterised the country’s system of detention centres as being in ‘contravention of its international human rights and humanitarian obligations’. This ‘punitive approach to migrants’ only served to erode their human rights (Crépeau 2016). Filippo Grandi, UNHCR High Commissioner, felt compelled to comment soon after on the Australian Government’s decision not to settle asylum seekers with their family members. He regarded offshore processing as neither a ‘feasible nor legal situation’ (Doherty 2017b). Referring to their strategy of detention guidelines (UNHCR 2012), the UNHCR states that indefinite detention is illegal, and that law should establish maximum time limits for detention. Further, the right to family life is considered a fundamental human right protected by the United Nations. Under the link to ‘Asylum and Migration’, the UNHCR website (2018b) highlights an image of asylum seekers wrapped in yellow foil blankets on the prow of a boat sailing on the ocean. As refugee journeys become more perilous, there are fewer images of the minimal dwellings associated with offshore locations for detention. In the wake of such editorial decisions, the appearance of anonymous human faces and universal suffering, from islands and sites far and wide, have come to stand in for the global refugee crisis while architecture has been occluded from this curation of public life. DISGRACE AND HUMANITARIAN ARCHITECTURE In a short review completed by The New Yorker (2016) of the Insecurities exhibition, the magazine writer employed the word ‘disgrace’ to describe the passivity of the American public in the face of the global displacements experienced by more than 65 million people. He focused not on architecture in its commentary but instead the ‘shattering objects’ displayed in the exhibition—​for example, a ‘colour

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coded plastic bracelet’, primarily used by Doctors without Borders to measure arm circumference in the wake of malnutrition. Situated at the door to The Museum of Modern Art’s gallery, this petite object could be read as a condensation of the entire exhibition’s trajectory. Scaled interventions in the shape of ‘shattering’ objects provide material form to the mitigation of human rights worldwide. But when the bodies of refugees and asylum seekers go missing—​or are removed from view—​we are left only with digital data as a remnant of facticity. Outside a second set of doors to the same gallery, an enlarged spreadsheet, seemingly innocuous, lined the corridor’s walls covering a door (Figure  3.6). The spreadsheet, otherwise known as ‘The List of Deaths’, was an updated compilation by the organisation, United for Intercultural Action. Supplied with information by over 400 agencies throughout the world, the list detailed the names, locations and descriptions of all those persons known to have perished whilst waiting for entrance to a nation, attempting to secure a visa or while in transit. Thousands of nameless entries were also present for the locations in which a boat sank or a body washed upon a shore or was found in an anonymous hotel room. Here, while data equals death, the reprinting of these numbers allowed for a kind of mass burial. Institutional memory lingers at the periphery of these conditions. For MoMA, the online cataloguing of every exhibition executed in its history is but one way to ensure connectivity across site and non-​site, data and authorial dimensions. Images of exhibitions, artwork checklists and press releases all supply networks for an architecture predicated on the image. For the countless individuals in transit today, how data simultaneously tracks and captivates observers is but one way in which to cut across a purposeful erasure of conditions whilst giving voice to those who do not possess one. Continued disappearances demand new practices

Figure 3.6 The Museum of Modern Art, ‘List of Deaths’, as displayed at the entrance to the Michael H. Dunn Exhibition Gallery. Installation view of the exhibition, Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Shelter. October 1, 2016–​January 22, 2017. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Digital Image © 2018 The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photograph by Jonathan Muzikar.

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within architecture, such as data-​driven journalism and other digital documents, to ensure that one specific ‘truth’ does not supersede the rest. Online archives, which capture statistics and images alike, including those held by institutions like MoMA, serve to redefine the humanitarian crises of displaced asylum seekers and refugees through the selection, editing and dissemination of digital images. We are thus confronted by two oppositional representations of the architecture of detention: that the dimensioning of physical spaces of detention and disciplining of other bodies in far-​off places has been reduced to a momentary viewing of an image. While physical spaces have been imposed onto asylum seekers as a form of trauma, visual signifiers of the global refugee crisis continue to circulate through the proliferation of numbers, facts and figures, obscuring the real facts around how detention practices are enacted. REFERENCES Amnesty International 2016, Island of Despair: Australia’s ‘Processing’ of Refugees on Nauru, Amnesty International Australia, 17 October, viewed 8 October 2018, . Asylum Information Data Base (AIDA) 2015, Country report: Germany, November, European Council on Refugees and Exiles, available at . Asylum Seeker Resource Centre 2018, Detention and Refugee Statistics, ASRC, 31 May, viewed 12 October 2018, . Australia. Dept. of Immigration and Border Protection (ADIBP) 2017, Immigration Detention and Community Statistics: 30 June 2017, Australia. Dept. of Home Affairs, available at . Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) News 2016, ‘Inside Manus Island Detention Centre’, ABC News, 30 July, viewed 12 October 2018, . Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) 1990, Convention on the Rights of the Child, AHRC, available at . —​—​—​ 2011–​12, Annual Report 2011–​2012, AHRC, available at . —​—​—​ 2014, Drawings by Children in Immigration Detention, AHRC, available at . Australian Statistics Bureau 2014, Where Do Migrants Live?, ABS, 18 March, viewed 8 October 2018, . Boyer, PS (eds.) 2001, Oxford Companion to United States History, Oxford University Press, New York. Boym, S 2017, The Off-​Modern, Bloomsbury, London. Button, L 2016, At What Cost? The Human, Economic and Strategic Costs of Australia’s Asylum Seeker Policies and the Alternatives, UNICEF Australia, available at Refugee Council of Australia, . Chasing Asylum 2016, DVD recording, Nerdy Girl Films, Melbourne (film released 2016, directed by E Orner).

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Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time 2017, Sarvin Productions, Netherlands (film originally released at Sydney Film Festival, Australia, 2017, directed by B Boochani and AK Sarvstani). Cousins, S 2014, ‘When you’re not bored, you’re scared: Syrian asylum seekers in Bulgaria’, SBS News, 1 July, viewed 25 September 2018, . Crépeau, F 2016, Press Conference Special Rapporteur for the Human Rights of Migrants, Canberra, United Nations Information Centre Canberra, online video, viewed 28 November 2017, . Curzi, CL 2017, ‘Guilty of Travelling: When Immigration Detention is Worse than Prison’, University of Oxford Faculty of Law, weblog post, 5 July, viewed 28 August 2017, . Demos, TJ 2013, The Migrant Image: The Art and Politics of Documentary during Global Crisis, Duke University, Durham, NC. Diller+Scofidio and Renfro 2008–​2009, EXIT, 45-​minute panoramic installation, Foundation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, available at . Doherty, B 2016, ‘A short history of Naru, Australia’s dumping ground for refugees’, Guardian, 10 August, viewed 10 July 2017, . —​—​—​2017a, ‘Decay, despair, defiance: Inside the Manus Island refugee camp’, Guardian, 16 November, viewed 1 June 2018, . —​—​—​2017b, ‘UNHCR says Australia must end offshore detention and stop dividing families’, Guardian, viewed 28 November 2017, . Fox, L 2017, ‘Manus Island detention centre to permanently close today, 600 men refusing to leave’, ABC News, 31 October, viewed 29 November 2017, . Grant, E 2016, ‘The architecture of detention: Why design matters’, Architecture Australia, vol. 105, no. 5, 5 December, viewed 29 November 2017, . Gurran, N and Sarkar, S 2017, ‘Big data on accommodation sharing in urban Australia’, paper presented at the fifth International Conference on Computers in Urban Planning and Urban Management, 11–​14 July 2017, Adelaide, Australia, available at . Immigration Policy Lab, Stanford University and ETH Zurich 2018, Projects: Harnessing Big Data to Improve Refugee Resettlement, IPL, available at . Mares, P 2014, ‘Asylum seekers and the dignity of work’, The Conversation, 24 July, viewed 25 September 2018, . MIT News 2018, ‘MIT faculty approves new urban science major’, 5 June, viewed 26 September 2018, . Mosse, R 2017, NGV Triennial Melbourne: Richard Mosse, National Gallery of Victoria, viewed 15 March 2018, . Moyn, S 2010, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

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Perera, S 2014–​2017, Australian Research Council Project: Old Atrocities, New Media: Terror Images and Visual Military Complex, Australia-​Asia-​Pacific Institute, Curtin University. —​—​—​ 2016, Survival Media: The Politics and Poetics of Mobility and the War in Sri Lanka, Palgrave Macmillan, New York. Phillips, J 2017, Boat Arrivals and Boat ‘Turnbacks’ in Australia since 1976: A Quick Guide, Parliament of Australia, 17 January, viewed 8 October 2018, . Phillips, J and Spinks, H 2013, Immigration Detention in Australia, Parliament of Australia, 20 March, viewed 8 October 2018, . Rango, M 2015, ‘How big data can help migrants’, World Economic Forum, October 5, viewed 15 October 2018, . Refugee Council of Australia (RCOA) 2018, Statistics on People Seeking Asylum in the Community, RCOA, 29 June, . Renzaho, A (ed.) 2016, Globalisation, Migration and Health: Challenges and Opportunities, Imperial College Press, London. SBS News 2014, ‘Biennale of Sydney cuts ties with sponsor Transfield’, SBS News, 7 March, viewed 25 September 2018, . Strachan, F 2015, ‘Architecture and the second digital turn’, University of New South Wales, Newsroom, 2 September, viewed 15 October 2018, . The New Yorker 2016, ‘Insecurities: Tracing displacement and shelter’, The New Yorker, viewed 15 October 2018, . Triggs, G 2017, Asylum Seekers, Refugees, and Human Rights: Snapshot Report 2nd ed., Australian Human Rights Commission, Sydney, viewed 12 October 2018, . UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 2012, Guidelines on the Applicable Criteria and Standards Relating to the Detention of Asylum-​Seekers and Alternatives to Detention, published on refworld, viewed 3 December 2017, . —​—​—​ 2018, Figures at a Glance: Statistical Yearbook, UNCHR USA, viewed 22 January 2018, . —​—​—​ 2018b, Asylum and Migration, UNHCR, viewed 12 October 2018, .

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4: Archipelagos and enclaves: On the border between Jordan and Palestine-​Israel Alessandro Petti

There are three border crossings between Jordan and Palestine: the Allenby/​King Hussein Bridge is the closest one to Jerusalem. It is built on the lowest ground in the area, at the same level as the Dead Sea. The border is not a line. It is a space with depth to it. It is made of similar materials to those in cities but used differently. Inside the border, the rules are few but essential. All flows are strictly monitored and controlled. The border is a machine which tears apart everything that crosses it into separate, classifiable elements, only to put them back again together, somehow or another, when they exit. This applies to people, too, not just objects. Tala, my daughter, was born in Bethlehem on a beautiful spring morning in the month of February. She was birthed in a clinic built with funds from the Japanese government and tended by a Palestinian nurse who spoke perfect Neapolitan, learned during a long stay in Naples where he had studied. After the first few days spent rejoicing in her arrival, we found ourselves faced with a dilemma: how is Tala going to be able to cross the border and get out of the Occupied Territories? How will the border machine work on her, with a Palestinian mother, Sandi, and an Italian father? If Tala leaves Bethlehem as an ‘Italian’ she’ll only be able to come back as a tourist; if she leaves Bethlehem as a ‘Palestinian’ she will be treated as such by the Israeli army; she will not be able to move freely around the Occupied Territories and Israel. By being half-​Italian and half-​Palestinian, Tala puts the pre-​established spatial and political order into crisis, revealing the fiction of national belonging and all the politics that stem from it. The mere thought of having to face with her the device that awaits us on the Jordanian border, the only entry and exit point for Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, is deeply disturbing to me. The idea of being forced to be stripped bare by the border machine makes almost any certainty you have about your rights and existence falter. The border machine is interactive architecture: it changes depending on the citizenship of the person who crosses over it. As a prototype of biopolitical architecture, maybe in its purest form, it becomes porous depending on the nation it belongs to: it constructs and deconstructs itself

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depending on the relationship that each individual has with the state; a regulating device that mediates between birth and nationhood. We hire the usual group taxi, a dilapidated yellow Mercedes. Concerns about the trip are magnified by the sense of uncertainty. How many times have I heard it said that the real problem is not knowing what the rules are? Take the roads, for example. The Israeli army can decide for security reasons to blockade a given part of a road used on a daily basis by thousands of Palestinians. The blockade is enforced by deploying patrols, roadblocks and barriers. After a few months, even though the roadblocks have been removed, the Palestinians—​fearful of running up against soldiers and being arrested—​choose not to use the road anymore, thus leaving it to the exclusive use of the colonists. The regime of prohibitions is implemented by verbal orders given by Israeli military officers who control a given area of the territory. Palestinians found on a road prohibited to them or for which they lack the required permit risk being put into jail or having their vehicle confiscated. They are forced to use group transportation vehicles that shuttle between one checkpoint and another. The first time I arrived here from Jordan, I met up with the Jordanian police and then with the Israeli forces, assisted by a Palestinian police unit. Now the Palestinians have been moved away from the border and have set up a sham border of a non-​existent state on a piece of land measuring 150 by 500 feet (approx. 46 x 152 metres). The Palestinian border is like a service station that leads nowhere. The border machine is not located on state lines; rather, it acts on the boundaries of Palestinian cities and villages. A barrier appears in front of our vehicle. We get out of the taxi and climb onto a bus that stops again after a few yards. Some Palestinian policemen climb on to check documents and luggage. The bus starts again and stops a few yards later; they make us get off. We pick up our suitcases from practically the same spot where we made our entry. I am flooded by a sense of overwhelming sadness. The idea of Palestinian sovereignty appears to have achieved its final form in this place: a miniscule plot of land inside of which all procedures are complied with for a border crossing into … nowhere. The real border is 5 miles away. The police and the people in transit diligently recite their parts in this puppet theatre; everybody knows that it is make-​believe, but no one objects to it. Back in the bus, we leave for the real border, presided over this time solely by Israelis. As an Italian citizen in a taxi, I  could have reached the border directly. Sandi and Tala, as Palestinians, had no way of avoiding this sham performance. The trip from Bethlehem to Amman—​less than 125 miles—​takes more than eight hours. We continue our journey, this time in the direction of the real border. After hours of waiting to enter the border zone, the moment comes to show our documents. Many ‘Westerners’ with privileged passports do not understand the anxiety of people who are faced with the possibility of being sent back. The Palestinian travel document is once again the paroxysmal expression of this control device. It is a travel document, not a passport, and it does not even specify a nationality. Even though Tala is registered on my passport, for the Israelis and

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Palestinians she is Palestinian, and must follow the same route as Sandi, a different one from mine. I enter the area for non-​Palestinians. Air conditioning and men in Bermuda shorts. I feel ashamed of myself for accepting this privileged treatment … me, here, with the tourists, and them, over there, hoping not to be sent home. Dazed, I obey the orders issued to me: ‘pay here, open there, get up here, go there, step down, step up, sit down’. After a few hours, I cross the bridge. I am in Jordan. I immediately start looking for the Palestinian exit, but it is not easy to find. The building is constructed so as to prevent human traffic flows from ever meeting up, like in hospitals, where areas and routes for healthy people and patients are kept rigorously separated. Breathlessly, I  search among lazy Jordanian policemen and sweaty tourists for the door connecting the area reserved for Palestinians within the area for everyone else. I finally find the door, and before opening it, I feel like Jim Carrey in The Truman Show (1999) when he discovers the hidden door in the painted blue skyscape that may possibly eject him into the real world. CONNECT–​DISCONNECT CONNECTION Contemporary cities and territories have been depicted by many scholars and the media as fluid spaces, without borders, lacking an exterior and continuously traversed by flows (after Harvey 1989; Castells 1996–​98). Interconnected global cities form an autonomous transnational space (Sassen 2002). There exists a rhetoric and an imaginary tied to globalisation, to the new freedom of movement and to the elimination of distances made possible by new electronic and mechanical infrastructures. These representations of the urban and territorial reality seem to implode when something goes wrong. Today, albeit with some effort, a widespread awareness is growing that, parallel to the proliferation of new digital technologies, financial and economic networks, the number of borders, barriers and checkpoints for the protection of select networks is multiplying. While flows of information and capital become ever more intangible, the fortification of physical space is accelerating. This has created a territorial system in which the archipelago (the smooth space of flows) and the enclave (the spaces of exception) cohabit (Petti 2007). These two figures inhabit the same space, but their cohabitation is asymmetrical. On the one hand, we have a global elite that is managing the space of flows, living in an archipelago-​type world, which it perceives as the only world, with no exterior to it; while on the other, the suspension of the rules of the archipelago creates legal and economic vacuums that make the enclave system a black hole, a shadowy periphery. The archipelago is a system of connected islands; enclaves are simply islands; it can accommodate both legal and illegal flows inside its space, whereas enclaves have no type of connection:  they are isolated by forms of power that may be internal or external to them, a power they submit to or which they exert. There is a substantial difference between being enclosed and enclosing oneself: it is what distinguishes a concentration camp from a luxury community.

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In my analysis of the spatial form of the archipelago-​enclave, the territorial model of the Occupied Territories is based precisely on controlling the rights of movement and residence. The archipelago-​enclave model has put into crisis the notion of citizenship which had defined the political relationship of the individual with the city ever since the classical age. In the era of globalisation, citizenship is no longer a factor of inclusion and equality that goes beyond religious and racial belonging. It has become an element of exclusion and discrimination, the device an elite uses to manage global flows of people, in complete contradiction with the proclaimed universality and equality of the so-​called fundamental rights, especially those of freedom of movement and residence. Inclusion–​exclusion and connection–​disconnection are logics according to which cities were constructed and continue to be constructed. In his book The Capsular Civilization, Lieven De Cauter (2004, 11) claims that gated communities and immigrant camps or detention centres are mirror images of each other, as with tourist areas and ghettos. The camp is the counterpart of the fortress. A fortress is an exclusion machine, while a camp is a reclusion machine. De Cauter thus points out that to reflect on cities and territories at the same time, we must think in dual terms (80):  entertainment versus control, opening versus isolation. Connection is what makes archipelagos necessary and possible, while disconnection is what generates enclaves. A group of islands creates an archipelago when relations or connecting spaces exist between one island and another, namely, when a space for the flows exists. Manuel Castells (1996–​98) asserts that in contemporary cities this space is constituted by flows of information, organisation, capital, images and symbols; and thanks to new communication technologies, this flow is able to generate an integrated global network. For Castells, the space of flows is a form of space capable of shaping new urban conditions and a new type of society, the networked society. This space is governed by the most affluent members of the elite who live in super-​connected cities and spaces, from where they exert enormous power. He describes them (1996, 412–​15) as composed of three layers of material supports comprising a circuit of electronic impulses (microelectronics, telecommunications, computer processing, broadcasting systems and high-​speed transportation), the flow space constituted by its nodes and hubs and the spatial organisation of the dominant, managerial elites. For Castells, the space of these intangible flows is the fruit of technological innovations that have allowed people who are geographically distant to participate in shared social practices. From this point of view, the practices of control and segregation that are exerted on the movement of people in the physical space remain marginal.1 The theorists of cyberspace believed that access to new technologies would give life to a world with no more borders or barriers, in which bodies would dematerialise into cyberspace. This vision remained a utopia, belied by the dramatic evidence of billions of people who are excluded both from access to these networks and from free circulation in a world presumed to be without borders. Quite to the contrary, movements of bodies in physical space have become

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subject to ironhanded control on the part of government and private entities. The consequences of these developments have yet to be explored. The illusion of a world without fences has been replaced by a reality in which the spaces of freedom have been occupied by an evolving form of power that has traced out the passage from a disciplinary society to a society of control foreseen by Michel Foucault. Apropos of this, Gilles Deleuze (1990, 174–​5—​paraphrased) writes that: the control society is a type of society in which mechanisms of control become increasingly ‘democratic’ … The normalizing devices of discipline that act within our shared everyday practices are intensified and generalized in societies of control; unlike disciplinary societies, however, this control extends well beyond the structural places of social institutions by means of a free-​floating network. In societies of control we are continually monitored, and our movements are systematically recorded and filed away by means of a free-​floating security network: we are all potential criminals.

If Foucault (1977) discerned the spatial model of the disciplinary society in the prison and panopticon, where deviant behaviour was brought into line with normalcy, in the control society, in addition to creating normalising institutions and penetrating the very nature of the body (digital fingerprinting and DNA testing are obvious examples), power invades the entire territory. Public and private spaces including homes and institutions are increasingly subject to widespread and generalised surveillance. The space of flows, both tangible and intangible, is the favoured space where power exercises its control. Occupation of these places is what puts an elite in a position of dominion. Whereas, on the one hand, the elite can exchange information and travel faster, on the other, the majority are denied the universally recognised right of movement and residence. To explode the contradictions of a space of flows whose access is fortified, controlled and monitored, this study will focus on the tangible displacements of bodies in space. An approach that investigates the regimes imposed on movements of bodies in space has the advantage of making the forms of power explicit. This perspective was also suggested by Castells (2003) who noted in his theory of urbanism in the information age (1996) that cities are simultaneously structured and destructured by competing logics: the logic of the space of flows, on the one hand (which link individual places into a network connecting people and activities in distant geographical locations), and the experiential logic of the space of place (experiences and activities within the confines of the nearby territory) on the other. Castells believes that spaces of place are redundant and superfluous in the organisation of the space of flows and power. In Castells’s view, they have no capacity per se to construct a critical discourse on contemporary cities and society. Spaces of place become ‘black holes of informational capitalism’ (Castells 1998, 166–​7). The point of departure, rather, should be a perspective that comes from within the places where the legal foundations of cities and states are instituted,

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where relations between the city and its inhabitants are created, where the borders between a territory and a people are established. These are the spaces of exception, places that are anything but marginal to understanding how power is exercised over space. DISCONNECTION From the perspective of control over infrastructure network flows, while these methods act to reinforce connections, they are also the instrument by which entire parts of territories and populations are controlled, filtered and segregated. A space of mobility and flows for some always implies the existence of barriers for others. The creation of an infrastructure network presupposes a more or less conscious spatial and social ideology. Disconnection from the networks generates a fragmented territory consisting of a set of separate, isolated enclaves that are segregated and suspended. The infrastructure network is the element that serves to enhance connections and the disconnections. This apparently banal feature has been underestimated by modernist urban planners, for whom modern infrastructure networks were the support for a harmonious spatial and social order (see Graham and Marvin 2001, 40–​2). The road network, and the electric, water, sewer and communication grids were imagined to reach everyone in the same manner and at the same cost. The virtually standardised and uniform modernist infrastructure was constructed by the state in the collective interest. This ideology, which in some ways continues to survive even today, was put into crisis by two factors: the inadequacy of the rational paradigm, including planning, which was too rigid and bureaucratic to include the new dynamics of the urban agglomerations; and the privatisation of the infrastructure networks, aimed at connecting the most affluent and most lucrative islands. This is the process of infrastructural subdivision and spatial fragmentation that Graham and Marvin (2001) described as ‘splintering urbanism’. This process, begun in the 1970s, has by now transformed many cities. New urban areas such as shopping centres, amusement parks, residential complexes, airports and resort villages are connected through a selective infrastructure network capable of forming an autonomous, privatised space, putting the notion of public space and the very idea of city into crisis. The concept of bypassing is fundamental for understanding how disconnection functions in spatial models. BYPASSING With the collapse of the modernist ideal, private networks providing potentially high-​efficiency services for their customers were developed. Fibre-​optic networks, superhighways, tunnels and bridges, and new energy networks tend to bypass the old networks or be superimposed on top of them, connecting some parts of the territory and ignoring others that are less appetising from a business point of view. For the places and people that are bypassed, all that remains are the

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public networks or informal mechanisms. The bypass exists in all infrastructure networks, but it is most obvious in highway systems. Today, the highway system is redirecting the development of residential settlements and our way of moving around in space. In the 1990s, privatisation radicalised technologies of control, differentiating various groups based on the power they held over the space. This has created a territory that can be crossed at different speeds depending on the person’s income, and national, ethnic and social belonging. Electronic devices such as sensors and closed-​circuit video cameras watch over access points and monitor toll payments. Surveillance goes hand in hand with exclusion. Only the wealthiest users can bypass the congested public streets and gain access to the privileged road networks. The same roadways that were seen as devices for progress and modernisation in the visions of Frank Lloyd Wright (1955) and Le Corbusier (1986 [1923]) are revealed as instruments of control and segregation. An investigation of the tangible flows of people, rather than intangible flows of information and finance, must be given priority to bring to light regimes of control over movements. It is for this reason that this study has chosen to focus on the functioning of the highway infrastructure. The layout of a street can have the same importance as a border; it can include or exclude, unite or divide, create belonging or estrangement. This point of view is radically opposed to the perspective that bases its analysis on the rhetoric of a world without borders where nation-​states no longer exercise any power. In our view, old and new borders are being reinforced in both contemporary society and space, and nation-​state politics appear to be anything but worn out. A look at the regime of control imposed on our everyday movements in space is sufficient to make this clear.

ASYMMETRIC PERMEABILITY OF SPACES: THE HIGHWAY NETWORKS IN PALESTINE-​ISRAEL FROM BYPASS ROADS… The Israeli colonies in the Occupied Territories are strategic points for controlling the territory (see Benvenisti and Khayat 1988; Weizman 2007; Allegra et al. 2017). As points of control dispersed across a ‘hostile territory’, the settlements could not function unless they were connected to each other and to Israel through a continuous and uniform infrastructure. The link between colony and infrastructure can be viewed as the binary control code at work in the West Bank (Figure 4.1). The combination of these two elements generates what Israeli anthropologist Jeff Halper (2000a) defines as the matrix of control. If we compare the map of the West Bank territory with the plan of a prison, we note that: a) the prison officers’ guard posts correspond to the colonies situated on the hills; b) the corridors that allow for the cells to be policed correspond to the highway networks that bypass the Palestinian villages; c) the cells where the prisoners are incarcerated correspond to the villages inhabited by the Palestinians.2 In addition to linking settlements, the

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Figure 4.1  The matrix of control, 2005. Image by Alessandro Petti.

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highway system blocks development of Palestinian villages, creating borders and barriers between communities that at one time were connected. According to the B’Tselem report (2004, 7–​8), Contrary to the customary purpose of roads, which are a means to connect people with places, the routes of the roads that Israel builds in the West Bank are at times intended to achieve the opposite purpose. Some of the new roads in the West Bank were planned to place a physical barrier to stifle Palestinian urban development. These roads prevent the natural joining of communities and creation of a contiguous Palestinian built-​up area in areas in which Israel wants to maintain control, either for military reasons or for settlement purposes.

This strategy of controlling the flows and using the roads as barriers has its roots in the history of the occupation of the West Bank. Immediately after the 1967 war, in addition to the construction of Jewish outposts, a highway system allowing the circulation of military and civilian vehicles was needed to control the occupied territory. According to Benvenisti and Khayat (1988), during the decade of 1967–​77, the highway networks were planned primarily along the North–​South axis. Since there was no desire for integration with the Israeli highway system, no roads running east–​west were planned. Attention was focused particularly on consolidating Highway 90, which runs from north to south along the border with Jordan and is easily reached from Jerusalem via Highway 1. According to the military strategists, in the event of an Arab invasion, this would have allowed military vehicles to easily reach the border and respond to the attack. During the next decade, with the presentation of the new master plan for the settlements of Judea and Samaria, the geo-​political strategy for constructing the networks changed: The Settlement Master Plan for 1983–​1986 … expressly states that one of the primary considerations in choosing the site to establish settlements is to limit construction in Palestinian villages. (B’Tselem 2004, 7)

The plan envisaged clearing distances between 130 and 400 feet for the construction of new highway routes, well over the lengths area required for the planned traffic speed and density. For major and regional roads, the clearance distance reached up to 2000 feet (approx. 609 metres). This brought the total of the area occupied by the infrastructure network to 91,923 acres, almost the entire built area of the West Bank (in 1987 the built area covered 106,255 acres). Given these proportions, it seems clear that the objective of the plan was not to connect Palestinian villages but rather to build a matrix that would cage them in. The decision to dedicate such a large area to the infrastructure was a strategic expedient to physically and bureaucratically curb Palestinian expansion. The clearance distances specified in the plan allowed for the demolition of a significant number of houses. For security reasons, the new Palestinian houses could not be built less than 1.86 miles (approx. 3 kilometres) from highways. This regulation did not apply to Jewish settlements, which were built based on special urban plans.

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The new master plan envisaged an integrated network between the colonies and Israel and at the same time introduced regulations designed to restrict almost any growth of the Palestinian villages. Many objections were raised, although they were ignored, while the approval procedures remained unclear. Although the plan was never formally approved, based on the regulations contained in it, the occupation forces went ahead with the expropriations and demolitions needed for the construction of roads reserved for the exclusive use of Israeli settlements. The plan included the design of an infrastructure network that connected the West Bank settlements with the metropolitan areas of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Driven by lower rents, state incentives and the possibility of living far from the most congested areas, many Israeli residents decided to go and live in the new West Bank colonies, which were well served by a new and efficient highway grid. During the peace process in the 1990s, this logic reached its apex. According to the B’Tselem report (2004, 7), Starting in 1993, with the signing of the Declaration of Principles between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (Oslo I) and the redeployment of Israeli Defence Forces to the West Bank, the bypass road system gained momentum. In 1995, new road construction reached its peak. Israel began the construction of over 62 miles of roads in the West Bank alone, more than 20 percent of all roadwork performed in that year.

The new extensive highway grid provided Israel with spatial control over the West Bank. The bypass road system is designed to link the Israeli colonies, cutting off Palestinian villages, and to effectively incorporate the West Bank into Israel proper. The flows are under direct control of the Israeli security force, which directs them through permanent and temporary checkpoints, barriers and military patrols. For a Palestinian traveller, there is no possibility whatsoever of going from one city to another without passing through one or more checkpoints. The matrix of bypass roads that circle the major Palestinian cities is a formidable straitjacket. Most of the highways were constructed on land belonging to Palestinians. The expropriations carried out by Israel in the Occupied Territories since 1967 were, and continue to be, an instrument of colonisation and control. Before the 1990s, expropriations were carried out for ‘military reasons’. Once the geo-​political situation changed, so did the pretexts for the expansion of new settlements and the construction of new roads. During the Oslo peace process, Israel expropriated land in the name of the ‘public interest’, claiming that the bypass roads were also useful to Palestinians. During the second Intifada, the expropriations were continued for ‘security reasons’.3 The line between military and civil law—​between standards and exceptions does not exist. From time to time a space of legislative ambiguity is created to produce a formal justification.4 By observing the transformations of the regimes imposed on the use of roads in the Occupied Territories, the evolution of the strategies aimed at the control and surveillance of undesired population flows becomes clear. Over time, although built in the name of the ‘public interest’, the bypass roads that allow

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Figure 4.2  The regime of forbidden roads. Image by Alessandro Petti.

Alessandro Petti

Figure 4.3 Bypass road No. 60, Beit Jalla. Photograph by Alessandro Petti.

Figure 4.4 Bypass road No. 60, Beit Jalla. Photograph by Alessandro Petti.

Israeli colonies to bypass the Palestinian villages became increasingly exclusive in character, transforming into ‘sterile roads’—​Israel military jargon for roads that have been decontaminated of Palestinians. … TO STERILE ROADS Although the bypass roads were not built in the interest of Palestinian cities and villages, whose growth they served to block, before the second Intifada (September

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2000–​February 2005)  most of the roads were accessible to virtually everyone. Their use by Palestinians was limited, however, by several factors:  lack of entry and exit roads near Palestinian cities; almost complete lack of road signs indicating Palestinian towns; public transportation stops restricted solely to Israeli colonists and soldiers. When the second Intifada began, Israel drastically cut Palestinian access to many of the roads in the West Bank, including various bypass roads. It is a regime of arbitrary and unwritten prohibitions, categorised by B’Tselem (2004), the Israeli association for human rights, as follows: a) roads that Palestinians are completely forbidden to use; b) roads that can be used by Palestinians only if they have a special permit that is extremely difficult to obtain5 and with a restricted use of vehicles;6 and c) roads whose access is controlled by checkpoints, some permanent and others temporary (Figs 4.2, 4.3 and 4.4). The regime is implemented by officers of the Israeli security forces through verbal orders and has dramatic effects on mobility. Palestinians caught using a road forbidden to them or lacking a permit risk being arrested and having their vehicle confiscated. B’Tselem (2004, 42) notes regarding this regime of prohibitions that: The policy is entirely based on verbal orders given to soldiers in the field. The strongest proof of the regime is the local population’s awareness of its existence. Palestinians have almost completely ceased using many of these roads, even when entry to the road is not blocked by physical obstacles or staffed checkpoints. In response to questioning by B’Tselem, the IDF [Israeli Defence Forces] let it be known that an order from 1970 granted the authority to restrict travel and movement to anyone who is not an authorized military commander.7

This regime of prohibitions is enforced using permanent and temporary checkpoints, barriers that block the roads and military patrols. In many cases, travel on the roads using one’s own vehicle is forbidden. Therefore, to be able to travel, Palestinians use group transport vehicles that shuttle between one roadblock and another. B’Tselem (2004) estimates that there are seventeen roads whose access is completely prohibited to Palestinian vehicles (about 75 miles—​120.7 kilometres); ten roads whose access is partially prohibited (150 miles—​241 kilometres); and fourteen roads whose use is restricted (225 miles—​362 kilometres). It must be kept in mind that these distances are relative to a territory with an average width of 30 miles (48.2 kilometres) and an average length of 190 miles (305.7 kilometres). Forbidding access to even a few miles of a road can mean causing entire areas to be disconnected. TRAVEL FROM A TO B8 In January 2003 we conducted a two-​day field study, presented in the form of a video installation, revealing the effects of the regime imposed on the sterile roads. On the first day we travelled along the route taken by an Israeli colonist to go from the Kiriat Arba colony to the Kedumim colony; the next day we travelled

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Figure 4.5  Travel from A to B, 2003. Mapping multiplicity. Image by Alessandro Petti.

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Figure 4.6 Travel from A to B, 2003. Framing multiplicity. ©Multiplicity (Stefano Boeri, Maddalena Bregani, Maki Gherzi, Matteo Ghidoni, Sandi Hilal, Alessandro Petti, Salvatore Porcaro, Anniina Koivu, Francesca Recchia, Eduardo Staszowsky). Fieldwork Sandi Hilal, Alessandro Petti and Salvatore Porcaro. [left] Israeli path: bypass Road A60 south. [right] Palestinian path: Wall at Abu Dis.

along the route taken by a Palestinian to reach the city of Nablus, starting from Hebron. Both trips start and finish at the same latitude (Figure 4.5). The first trip, in an Israeli taxi, took 1 hour and 5 minutes; the second, using various Palestinian group taxis, took 5 hours and 20 minutes. Along the route taken by the Palestinian traveller, we had to pass through a number of checkpoints, cover some distances on foot and change taxis; whereas for the route the Israeli traveller took, we used the bypass roads and passed through the checkpoints without being stopped (Figs 4.6, 4.7, 4.8).

Figure 4.7 Travel from A to B, 2003. Framing multiplicity. ©Multiplicity. [left] Israeli path: bypass Road A60 central. [right] Palestinian path: country road to avoid checkpoint.

Figure 4.8  Travel from A to B, 2003. Framing multiplicity. ©Multiplicity. [left] Israeli path: bypass Road A60 north. [right] Palestinian path: on foot to the checkpoint.

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As recorded in our logbook: Palestinian trip from Hebron to Nablus: 60 miles. Total time: 5 hours 20 minutes. January 13, 2003. We leave from the historical center of Hebron in the H1 special zone, where Palestinians are under a semipermanent curfew. On foot, we head toward the first checkpoint separating the historical center from the rest of the city. We take a group taxi which drives us as far as the limits of Area B. The road is blocked by a barrier built by Israel to stop vehicles with white Palestinian license plates from entering Bypass Road 60. We get out of the taxi and pass through the barriers on foot. On the other side, we find a bus reserved to Palestinians that goes as far as Bethlehem, which stops during the trip to take on other passengers. There are no cars with white license plates on this part of the road; the bus is the only vehicle allowed to travel along the bypass road from Hebron to Bethlehem. We stop in front of a checkpoint at the gates of Bethlehem. The soldiers search the bus. Shortly afterwards, we get off the bus and pass through the checkpoint on foot. On the other side, we find other group taxis which we use to continue our trip. We cannot proceed north using Bypass Road 60, which bypasses Bethlehem going toward Jerusalem, because it is forbidden to Palestinians who do not have the special entry permit. We are forced to detour toward the south-​west. At Beit Sahur, we change taxis again. We go down a secondary street that is particularly dangerous, with lots of checkpoints. Whether or not we will be able to take this route is uncertain; we come across various Israeli army jeeps that are patrolling the roads. The taxi drivers call each other on their mobile phones to exchange information on which roads are passable and free of military patrols. Taking various winding roads, we get to Al’ Ubeidiya. The taxi driver asks us to get out here because there is a mobile checkpoint up ahead that the car cannot drive around. Following the other passengers, we go around it on foot and further on, 500 feet in the distance, we find other taxi drivers waiting to take us to the next checkpoint. We reach Abu Dis. The taxi stops next to huge reinforced concrete retaining blocks that divide Abu Dis from East Jerusalem. Another taxi takes us toward the north, confirming that we can get at least as far as Ramallah, but not further than that. They tell us that once we get to Ramallah we will find out if there are any taxis for Nablus. During the trip, we leave Area B near Ma’ale Admim, taking Road 1 until it intersects with Road 458. Here, we see a lot of cars with yellow Israeli license plates and group taxis with white Palestinian plates. We get to the Khalandia checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah, where we find a taxi for Nablus. We go back along a section of the road to be able to hook up with Bypass Road 60 going north. We are surrounded by a large number of colonist cars. We continue our trip without stopping. Various colonies come into view as we drive past them. When the road narrows and becomes unpaved, there are no more colonies to be seen. Long before reaching Nablus, the taxi

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abandons the main road to take a secondary street running through an olive orchard to avoid a checkpoint that you cannot get through. The street leads onto the bypass road. We drive along it for a short distance upto the Nablus entry checkpoint. We cross it on foot, showing our European passports to the soldiers, who are very surprised to find us there. Many of the Palestinians are forced to go back. Once we’ve crossed the checkpoint, we take a new taxi which drives us to Nablus. The taxi drivers in Nablus tell us that we cannot continue north because there are no passable roads; the army has closed all the roads today. But after a few minutes, one taxi driver claims that he knows which roads to take to get around the checkpoint. We get into his taxi and take a dirt road, in the middle of the countryside, until the taxi driver tells us to get out before a checkpoint that will lead us back onto a normal road. In the distance, soldiers shout at us with their rifles pointed saying no one is allowed through here. Our journey ends. Israeli trip. From Kiriat Arba to Kedumim: 60 miles. Total time: 1 hour 5 minutes January 14, 2003. From the colony of Kiriat Arba, with a yellow-​plated Israeli taxi, we start off on Bypass Road 60. We pass through the first checkpoint we come to without stopping. We note that some of the sections of the road we are on are the same ones we travelled along in the Palestinian bus. There are no cars with white Palestinian license plates. We pass through the checkpoint before arriving at the entry to Jerusalem. We bypass Bethlehem through a tunnel and a viaduct. At some points, the road is protected from stone-​throwing by barriers. The bypass road literally climbs across the Palestinian village of Beit Jalla, passing over it like a bridge. We drive through the traffic for Jerusalem, continuing northwards. At the checkpoint, we are stopped and, after a few questions, allowed to continue. We proceed to the colony of Kedumin, where our journey finishes.

The regime of prohibitions instituted ‘for security reasons’ effectively restricts the freedom of movement of three-​and-​a-​half million people on the basis of their national belonging.9 Similar sorts of practices have also been put into effect inside Israeli territory. The Trans-​Israel Highway, a 220-​mile toll highway built in the most densely populated area of Israel, has become the main axis of the matrix of control. THE TRANS-​ISRAEL HIGHWAY Highway 6, the Trans-​Israel Highway, was officially completed in January 2004. It extends from the border with Lebanon, in the north, to the city of Be’er Sheva in the south. The roads that traverse Israel and the West Bank from east to west all intersect with it.10 By observing Palestine-​Israel from the point of view of its infrastructure network, its space—​seemingly separated by walls and borders—​is seen to be completely unified. The islands of the colonial archipelago in the Occupied Territories are joined together and connected with Israel through an efficient and

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continuous highway system. The highway runs parallel to the wall for a long section, showing that the space of flows and apparatuses of exclusion are complementary. The wall acts as a membrane that allows some flows to pass while blocking others; together with Highway 6, it forms a single system capable of including and excluding, connecting and disconnecting. This logic does not apply solely to the West Bank: it also invades the territory of Israel. Halper (2000b, 3) writes, The government’s long-​standing and explicit policies of ‘Judaizing’ the Galilee … to ensure a Jewish majority here, and preventing territorial contiguity between cities, towns and villages will be furthered by the highway’s construction … The Trans-​Israel Highway will require massive expropriations from Palestinian communities in Israel, while limiting their natural expansion through highway and Jewish settlement construction that primarily serves the Jewish population. Eighty-​five percent of the land to be confiscated for the road’s construction is from Arab landowners in a state where only 3% of the land is Arab and remains unconfiscated.

The highway was constructed by a private company that obtained special status through a law voted into existence by the knesset in 1995 that allows it to confiscate land. Public interest is thus contracted out directly to a private company. The legal status of these companies is ambiguous. Public and private functions are mentioned depending on the contexts the companies are involved in. The highway is equipped with a ‘free flow’ toll system which eliminates the need for the driver to stop at the booth. When the vehicle enters the highway, it is scanned and photographed by an optic surveillance system. The vehicle owner’s data are collected by the private company through direct access to the Ministry of Transportation databases. The owner receives the bill for the amount owed directly at his or her home. Failure to pay can result in the owner’s driving licence being withdrawn, and, in more serious cases, the private highway police can confiscate the vehicle. THE DIFFUSION OF THE MODEL Practices for control and surveillance of the flows analysed so far are not specific to the Palestinian Occupied Territories. They appear in other geographical contexts—​from Australia to East Asia to North America—​and they take form in various ways: in the functioning of the toll-​road bypass freeways in the large urban agglomerations of Los Angeles, Toronto and Melbourne; in the use of highways as ‘sanitary cordons’11 used to divide new settlements for the emerging classes from the informal settlements of Istanbul, Jakarta and Manila; in the use of pedestrian bypasses in office centre complexes. Alongside the privatisation that has taken place in many sectors during recent years, the system of private toll highways, has quickly taken on a rapidly growing role. In many cities, private highways have been superimposed directly on top of the old congested public transport network. The Riverside SR 91 Freeway

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in Los Angeles, Highway 407 in Toronto and the CityLink Project in Melbourne are highway routes built as networks for bypassing crowded public streets. New major roadways in Istanbul, Jakarta and Manila are used as genuine sanitary cordons that divide residential neighbourhoods from the slums. This new generation of highways is used to bypass urban areas that are considered unsafe, and to restrict the growth of undesirable populations. The new toll systems that are built into the highway routes function as devices for control, for cataloguing and for automatic surveillance. Toll highways built to bypass overcrowded public roadways use electronic control systems for entry and exit points so that drivers are freed from having to stop at toll booths. Some have toll fares that vary depending on the time of travel and the traffic flow. The construction companies that built them offer reserved spaces for paying customers who want to get across the city quickly. Offering faster travel times, toll highways can determine the lines along which future expansion of the settlements will develop. Given their size, this type of privatised space, which is increasingly occupying the lands of the large conurbations, puts the very notion of public space into discussion. Writing on Transurban CityLink in Melbourne, a 14-​milelong highway that links the most affluent neighbourhoods with the downtown area and the airport David Holmes (2004, 177) notes, ‘At issue is the future of public space itself, in its social, technical and aesthetic forms.’ This is true from the point of view of bypassing of traditional agora like markets and the parking-​based streetscapes, to the further privileging of the super-​regulated private spaces of shopping complexes, another cocoon for which the freeway is the link. The creation of tollway spaces to travel from one area of the city to another contributes to the fragmentation of the territory: financial centres, luxury residences and shopping centres are the islands connected by toll networks that bypass spaces and populations in the archipelago of colonies found in major conurbations. Highway routes are not exclusively spaces for flows, but can act as sanitary cordons that separate affluent neighbourhoods from slums. In Istanbul, in the wake of a period of economic and political renewal, new settlements for the emerging class offer ‘Western lifestyles’, social comfort and security from crime, and refuge from the multi-​ethnic, chaotic and polluted city. For example Esenkent and Bogazkoy are two postmodern-​style settlements built west of the city, composed of luxurious apartments furnished with swimming-​pools and gardens (Aksoy and Robins 1997). They are separated by informal villages with houses constructed randomly along the highway routes that mark out the new class and identity confines inside the metropolis. The same highways that were considered instruments of progress and modernisation in modernist ideology have become obstructions and barriers in Istanbul, blocking the growth of informal settlements. For Teresa Caldeira (1996), they have been perverted:  the separation between pedestrian and vehicular traffic, which for modernism represented a victory for human health, is seen in Istanbul to be a strategy for prohibiting improper use of the major roadways. Individual private

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transport has been privileged, excluding the people who use public transport. Similarly, empty urban spaces conceived as ‘the right distance between buildings’ or ‘green belts’, have been transformed into areas where sculpture-​like, fortified ‘designer’ buildings are located. The use of highways as a sanitary cordon can also be found in the endless suburbs of Jakarta, where gated communities, shopping centres and office areas are linked by public or private toll highways (Kusno 1999, 163). The privileged social classes have moved to the safest and least polluted places in the  vast outskirts, abandoning the old unhealthy city with its poor infrastructures. The major roadways that link the islands of the wealthy bypass the old city centre by soaring over it (163). In Manila, to build the new toll-​road bypass network called the Metro Manila Skyway, various informal neighbourhoods were demolished, forcing the inhabitants to evacuate. To reinforce exclusive use of the highway network that connects the residential islands, access is forbidden to traditional vehicles like Jeepneys, buses and motorcycles (see Shatkin 2005). POSTSCRIPT ON THE SOCIETY OF CONTROL During his lectures at the Collège de France between 1977 and 1978, Foucault (2007) investigated the passage of a disciplinary society into a society of security; a society in which there is a general economy of power which has the form of, or which is dominated by, the technology of security. Using three historical examples, he outlined the distinction between discipline and security in their respective ways of dealing with the organisation of spatial distributions. His first example was the project by Alexandre Le Maître (27–​30), where the relation between sovereignty and the spatial arrangement of the capital are paramount. Foucault associated this spatial project with the age of law, in which the security mechanism is both legal and juridical. He illustrated its function through the treatment of lepers (24), who were excluded from the city through laws and regulations (see Shamir 2005, 206). Foucault’s second example was the seventeenth-​century town of Richelieu, built using the form of the Roman camp (2007, 31–​2), with the grid embodying the instrument of discipline where power hierarchies are established through the structural formation of the space. Foucault associated this spatial project with the institution of the modern legal system. During the plague between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the behaviour, circulation and contact between people in Richelieu was highly regulated as a feature of its securitisation. The third example was Nantes (32), where the space was organised in response to hygiene, trade and other types of networks. The suppression of city walls caused increasing insecurity due to the influx of the floating population of beggars and, vagrants, provoking a division between good and bad circulation (18). Foucault associated this project with the age of security. However, he cautioned that these three mechanisms do not appear chronologically. When a technology of security is put into action, for example, it may make use of or, at times, multiply juridical and disciplinary elements (9). This schema helps us to arrive at a better understanding of how the wall built by Israel to encircle Palestinian towns, for example, is indeed a disciplinary

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mechanism, but one which acquires force only due to the security mechanism of the road system. Indeed, if discipline acts in an empty space through isolation, hierarchy and repression, security, on the other hand, allows for a certain amount of circulation, since its objective is not to block flows but to monitor them. Security does not tend, like discipline, to resolve the problem, but, rather, to manage probable events that are only partially controllable while attempting to minimise the risks. Where discipline gives architectural form to space: consider how Israeli guard towers and military camps are organised in the layout of a prison plan, to allow for surveillance even when there is no one observing and guarding from the towers. Where security structures and regulates an environment within a multi-​functional and transformable framework: consider how the permanent and mobile checkpoints work, not by attempting to resolve the problem of armed attacks, but, rather, by reducing their probability, in the same way that taking digital fingerprints for the identity cards issued to Palestinians by the Israelis marks the passage towards a biopolitical power that invades the very nature of humanity, transforming a people into statistical data. For security, control of the road circulation is equally important as the juridico-​legal apparatus and the disciplinary apparatus. The problem is not one of delimiting the territory, as it is for the disciplinary mechanism, or at least not exclusively so. It is a question of allowing circulation, controlling it, distinguishing between good and bad circulation and assisting movements, but in such a way as to eliminate the dangers inherent to circulation. I began this piece with a story, attempting to describe the asymmetrical functioning of the roads, for which there are no road maps or even written regulations prohibiting access. What we have here is not exclusion, a crude but blatant separation like South African apartheid, but a much more sophisticated regime. The problem is not about imposing a law that says no (if such a law exists) but about keeping certain phenomena at bay, within acceptable limits, by encouraging their progressive self-​ annihilation. The mechanisms in this type of control become increasingly ‘democratic’. It is for this reason that the socio-​political future of Palestine-​Israel is so relevant to countries that consider themselves to be liberal democracies. It is here that forms of government will come into being which will juxtapose freedom and domination, access and separation, liberalism and occupation. AUTHOR NOTE This chapter adapts excerpts from:  Alessandro Petti, Arcipelaghi e enclave. Architettura dell’ordinamento spaziale contemporaneo, edited by Maria Nadotti, 2007, Bruno Mondadori, Milan, Italy. NOTES 1

Castells’s (1989) analysis is largely based on research conducted during the 1980s and theorised as the space of flows (1996–​98) reflecting the thinking of that time: faith

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2

3

4

5

6 7 8

9 10

11

in the digital revolution, the end of history, the end of the nation-​state, cyberspace and so forth. Later, partly in response to changes on the geo-​political scene, Castells revisited these ideas. Jeff Halper (2000b) used the analogy between a prison plan and the map of the West Bank specifically to deconstruct the theory of the ‘generous offer’ that Barak made to Yasser Arafat in 2000 of 94% of the West Bank. Halper claims that only 2% of a prison space is required to control the inmates. By maintaining a modest 6% of the territory, Israel would thus have continued to control all the borders, as well as the underground and the air space of the Palestinian Territories. The expropriations occurred, depending on the cases in compliance with the laws in force prior to the occupation (Land Law: Acquisition for Public Purpose, Law No. 2 of 1953), or through the suspension of any of the regulations implemented for security reasons. The instrumental use of ambiguity and suspension of rules is also evident in the construction of roads created between colonies in the B areas, only subsequently legitimised through military orders. In the Occupied Territories, an Israeli Civil Administration is, in fact, headed by members of the military (and subject to military orders). Palestinians must apply to this administration for construction and work permits. As of July 2004, only 3412 Palestinians from among the 2.3 million Palestinians living in the West Bank hold a ‘Special Movement Permit at Internal Checkpoints in Judea and Samaria’. In actuality, Palestinians cannot travel from one city to another in their own vehicle. Order Regarding Defense Regulations (No. 378), 5730-​1970. This section is based on a video installation called ‘The Road Map’ by Multiplicity (Stefano Boeri, Maddalena Bregani, Maki Gherzi, Matteo Ghidoni, Sandi Hilal, Alessandro Petti, Salvatore Porcaro, Anniina Koivu, Francesca Recchia and Eduardo Staszowsky), see Hilal et al. (2004). Fieldwork and video recording were done by Sandi Hilal, Alessandro Petti and Salvatore Porcaro. Hilal et al. (2004) noted that the regime, based on the principle of separation through discrimination, bears clear similarities to South Africa’s former racist apartheid regime. Road 5 extends from the coast near Ramat, through the settlement of Ariel to the Jordanian Valley; Road 45, extends from Modin, through the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, to the Jordanian valley; Road 7, extends from Ashdod, passing through the settlements of Etzion and Ma’ale Adumim, to the Jordanian Valley. The north–​south highways in Israel, Highway 2, Highway 4 and the newly built Highway 6; expressways Highway 60 and 90 in the Occupied Territories, together with the east–​west routes listed above, form the main axes of the large-​scale grid, flanked by a secondary road system that completes the matrix. Translation of Cordon sanitaire, a French term for a zone around the city typically created to prevent the spread of infectious diseases.

REFERENCES Aksoy, A and Robins, K 1997, ‘Modernism and the millennium: Trial by space in Istanbul’, City, vol. 2, no. 8, 21–​36. Allegra, M, Ariel, H and Erez, M (eds.) 2017, Normalizing Occupation: The Politics of Everyday Life in the West Bank Settlements, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN. Benvenisti, M and Khayat, S 1988, The West Bank and Gaza Atlas, Jerusalem: West Bank Data Base Project, Westview Press, Boulder, CO. B’Tselem (The Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) 2004, Stop for Bus Check: Israel’s Discriminatory Road Regime in the West Bank, August, B’Tselem, Jerusalem.

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Caldeira, TPR 1996, ‘Fortified enclaves: The new urban segregation’, Public Culture, no. 8, 303–​328. Castells, M 1989, The Informational City: Information, Technology, Economic Restructuring and the Urban-​Regional Process, Blackwell, Oxford, UK. —​—​—​ 1996–​98, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, vols 1, 2 and 3. Vol 1: The Rise of the Network Society (1996); vol. 2: The Power of Identity (1997); vol. 3: End of Millennium (1998), Blackwell, Oxford, UK. —​—​—​2003, ‘Space of Flows, Space of Places: Materials for a Theory of Urbanism in the Information Age’, in S Graham (ed.), The Cybercities Reader, Routledge, London,  82–​93. Castells, M, Portes, A and Benton, LA (eds.) 1989, The Informal Economy: Studies in Advanced and Less Developed Countries, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD. De Cauter, L 2004, The Capsular Civilization: On the City in the Age of Fear, Nai Publishers, Rotterdam. Deleuze, G 1990, Negotiations, Columbia University Press, New York. Foucault, M 1977, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Pantheon Books, New York. _​_​_​_​_​_​ 2007, Security, Territory, Population. Lectures at the Collège de France (1977–​1978), ed. M Senellart, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, UK. Graham, S and Marvin, S 2001, Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and Urban Condition, Routledge, London and New York. Halper, J 2000a, ‘The 94 percent solution: A matrix of control’, MER (Middle East Research and Information Project), vol. 30, Fall, available at . —​—​—​2000b, ‘The road to apartheid?’, Kibbutz Trends, vol. 38, 3–​9. Harvey, D 1989, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Inquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, UK. Hilal, S, Petti, A and Porcaro, S 2004, ‘The road map’, Equilibri: Journal of Sustainable Development, no. 2, August, 237–​242. Holmes, D 2004, ‘Cybercommuting on an Information Superhighway: The Case of Melbourne’s CityLink’, in S Graham (ed.), The Cybercities Reader, Routledge, London, 173–​178. Le Corbusier 1986, Towards a New Architecture, Dover Publications, New York (origin. Fr. pub. Vers une architecture, 1923). Kusno, A 1999, ‘Custodians of (Trans) Nationality: Metropolitan Jakarta, Middle Class Prestige and the Chinese’, in H Dandekar (ed.), City, Space and Globalization: An International Perspective, Proceedings of an International Symposium, College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 161–​170. Petti, A 2007, Arcipelaghi e Enclave: Architettura dell’Ordinamento Spaziale Contemporaneo, Bruno Mondadori, Milan. Sassen, S 2002, Global Networks, Linked Cities, Routledge, London and New York. Shamir R 2005, ‘Without borders? Notes on globalization as a mobility regime’, Sociological Theory, vol. 23, no. 2, 197–​217. Shatkin, G 2005, ‘Colonial capital, modernist capital, global capital: The changing political symbolism of urban space in Metro Manila, the Philippines’, Pacific Affairs, vol. 78, no. 4, 577–​600. The Truman Show 1999, DVD recording, Paramount, Hollywood, CA (film originally released in 1998 and directed by Peter Weir). Weizman, E 2007, Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation, Verso, London and New York. Wright, FL 1955, An American Architecture, ed. E Kaufmann, Horizon Press, New York.

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Part Two Boundary

5: The wall against borders: Contesting Fortress Europe Mirjana Ristic

Freedom of movement for citizens within the European Union (EU) is increasingly contrasted with the challenges that the EU faces managing forced migration at its borders. ‘Fortress Europe’ is a colloquial phrase that has emerged to describe a constellation of border spaces and surveillance systems installed around and within the EU to halt the largest migration of refugees and asylum seekers that Europe has faced since the Second World War. Fences, checkpoints, camps and detention centres proliferate across the Schengen Area, forming an archipelago of security architectures designed to deter, prevent or manage attempts at clandestine crossings. While the efficacy of the new EU borders is questionable—​as the number of clandestine immigrant entries is rising (UNHCR 2015)—​it simultaneously exposes immigrants to vulnerabilities with often lethal effects. Since 2000, at least 30,000 immigrants have died in their attempts to reach the EU, while 600,000 per year are forced to live in detention facilities where their human rights to freedom and protection are jeopardised (Amnesty International 2015). This indicates that the seemingly borderless political geography of the EU and the freedom of movement of its citizens is sustained by a security architecture that disenfranchises immigrants (O’Dowd 2010). This chapter explores how refugees, asylum seekers and human rights activists mobilise architecture and urban space as mechanisms of struggle against violence, oppression and exclusion of forced immigrants at EU borders. It does so by looking at a paradoxical case of mobilising a former border as a tool of resistance against contemporary EU security architectures and practices. My focus is on the temporary appropriation of the heritage and memory of the Berlin Wall—​the most notorious geo-​political border, which divided the world into the Communist East and Capitalist West Blocs from 1961 to 1989. The case studies that I  will analyse include two campaigns by a German collective of political artists ‘Zentrum für Politische Schönheit’ (hereafter ZPS), which translates as ‘Centre for Political Beauty’. The first campaign involved a translocation of a Wall memorial from the former border zone between East and West Berlin to the border fence in the

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Spanish town of Melilla, which is an EU exclave on the African continent. The second involved translocating dead bodies of immigrants from the EU external border for burial in Berlin’s government quarter, also located in the former border zone between East and West Berlin. This action also referred to the Holocaust. By analysing the existing literature, media reports and internet research, I will discuss how, through appropriation and semantic inversion of architecture and urban space, the heritage and memories of one divisive ideological system are being used to counter the hypocrisy of a new supposedly liberal borderless order. The former borderland gains a new geo-​political role as a catalyst for human rights, social justice and inclusion. AGGRESSIVE HUMANISM ZPS was founded in 2009 by German political philosopher and action artist Philipp Ruch as a think tank for human rights activism (Pitscher 2015). ZPS made their first public appearance on May 8, 2009, when they brought and placed ten theses of political beauty on the entry façade of the German Parliament building, within view of numerous visitors (Pitscher 2015). They became the focus of public attention in 2014 through political art performances in public space that tackled the EU refugee crisis. Their core agenda is the struggle against violations of human rights through acts of genocide, border regimes and refugee policies. The group comprises six core members responsible for the conception of ZPS actions and pursuing extensive research as a means of preparation, about twenty members involved in planning and about fifty support members involved in execution (ZPS n.d.b). Most of the members are German citizens, but there are also descendants of immigrants and refugees who have fled the recent Middle East conflicts. ZPS also engage a varying number of volunteers and the public, mobilised through calls for participation in the execution of their public actions on social networks. Dissemination of their operations to broader German, European and international audiences is achieved through media, including newspaper, television, radio, social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, and the ZPS website, where they document their artwork and publish their statements. ZPS are an independent, non-​ profit action-​art group; their operations are funded through online donations from private individuals and fundraising campaigns (ZPS n.d.c, Rodríguez 2015). ZPS describe themselves neither as artists nor activists but as an ‘assault team’ aimed at establishing moral and political beauty while fighting to preserve humanitarianism (ZPS n.d.a). When compared with contemporary human rights campaigns that, in their view, are fought in an unobtrusive fashion through petitions and media statements (Lewicki 2016), ZPS pursue ‘aggressive humanism’ (ZPS 2015a); their struggle against violations of human rights through public art performances often involves practices of insurgency, disobedience and unlawful acts. They believe that art must revolt, shock and even hurt in order to provoke public attention and engagement (ZPS 2015a). Their artwork often mobilises painful collective memories from the Second World War and the Cold War that provoke the German

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nation by citing the legacy of human rights violations committed by German perpetrators. Through such artwork, ZPS aim to break public apathy regarding contemporary social injustice by questioning what the German nation has learnt from its past misdeeds. Their goal is also to critique and provoke the German state, as one of the most influential EU countries, to act on specific issues (ZPS n.d.a). The ZPS artistic appropriation of collective memory for political purposes can be related to the work of an earlier generation of political artists in Germany, including Jochen Gertz, Norbert Radermacher and Shimon Attie, who engaged with collective memories of the Holocaust and the Wall as a means of triggering the nation to acknowledge its past wrongdoing. Their agenda included experimenting with new forms of memory in public space, as they believed that traditional monuments failed to hold public attention and memory or did so insufficiently (Stevens et  al. 2012). According to James E.  Young (1992), this is because as memory is increasingly expressed externally, through built form, its internal experience by individuals lessens. He argued that monuments take over our obligation to remember, thus making us somewhat forgetful (273). As a response, these artists produced ‘counter-​monuments’—​new forms of memory that use inverse design strategies to contradict the intrinsic logic of conventional memorial places (271). They dishonour rather than glorify the subject/​object of their remembrance and these in turn change and disappear rather than become permanent. The artworks do not convey singular fixed narratives but ask their viewers to interpret ambiguous and multiple meanings provoking active interaction with the past, rather than its passive consumption. They also throw back the burden of memory on their viewers rather than relieve them from it (277). Among the most prominent examples: Jochen Gerz and Esther Shalev-​Gerz’s Monument to Fascism (1986) in Hamburg buried itself in the ground in order to leave the memory to people; Horst Hoheisel’s Aschrott Fountain (1987) in Kassel inverted the form of the original pyramidal fountain built by a local Jewish entrepreneur to create a void in the ground evoking the absence of Jews (Young 2000)  and Shimon Attie’s projection of pre-​Second World War images onto contemporary public space in Berlin (1992–​93) activated otherwise apathetic sites and providing insights into their forgotten histories. The counter-​memorial strategies in ZPS’s public artworks place distressing present events in the context of painful and shameful pasts as a means of breaking public indifference towards contemporary human rights violations. This involves artistic appropriation and transformation of the historic sites, heritage and memory of the Holocaust and the Berlin Wall into temporary counter-​ memorials that expose the lethal consequences of EU refugee policies. By confronting the public with the legacy of division, exclusion and persecution of ‘others’ by past German totalitarian regimes, they aim to raise awareness of the consequences of contemporary EU migration policies while questioning public responsibility and attitudes towards it. The sections that follow analyse the ways in which spatial, material and semantic features of the ZPS counter-​monumental artwork operate to challenge EU borders. They focus on how these artworks transform the form, meanings, use

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and subject of the existing Wall and Holocaust monuments into tools of struggle for societal change. WHITE CROSSES AT THE IRON CURTAIN ‘First Fall of the European Wall’ was a ZPS political action that took place on the eve of the twenty-​fifth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall (November 9, 2014). Just before the public celebration of the anniversary, the Wall memorial known as ‘White Crosses’ disappeared from Berlin’s government quarter, lying in the former border zone between East and West Berlin (Figs 5.1–​5.4). The memorial is composed of seven white crosses made of 3 millimetre-​thick steel plates attached to a 1 metre-​tall steel wire-​frame. They contain inscriptions of names and years of life and death of those who were killed trying to cross the border by swimming across Spree River, as well as an unknown victim. The crosses are located within the present-​day ‘Federal Band’ (Band des Bundes), a strip of governmental buildings that crosses the river at two points to create a spatial connection between the former East and West Berlin (Figs 5.1 and 5.2). The crosses are located on the pedestrian and cycling path along the riverbank facing an amphitheatre composed of 3.5 metre-​steep steps where people gather and enjoy the view across the river, which was inhibited by the Berlin Wall during the Cold War. As the names of the victims appear on both sides of the memorial, numerous tourists on the river cruises that frequently pass the site can also view them. White Crosses was stolen on November 1, 2014 in an action described as a ‘theatre play’ (ZPS 2014) involving more than sixty ZPS members, some acting as an audience to mock an academic lecture, others dressed as tradesmen performing restoration work on the site. While the lecture staged on the promenade diverted the attention of security guards and surveillance cameras, activist tradesmen in safety vests removed and loaded the crosses on a truck that then drove away. They pretended to measure the holes in the wire-​frame of the memorial as though preparing to mount replacement crosses, but they soon loaded these, too, onto another truck and removed them, undetected and unapprehended by security. By the time the authorities noticed that the monument’s frame was empty, the activists had disappeared. Two days after this incident, the crosses resurfaced outside the external Walls of the EU. Nine of them appeared outside the border strip in Melilla, a Spanish town in Morocco; three appeared on the outer side of the Bulgarian border; and two outside the Greek border (Rodríguez 2015) were attached to the spikes of their 3.5-​metre-​tall barbed-​wire fences. The ZPS justified their action declaring that the victims of the Wall escaped the celebrations of the twenty-​fifth Berlin Wall anniversary in an act of solidarity with the victims of the EU’s external wall (ZPS 2014). Their absence was temporary; the crosses were returned to their original place the day after the ceremony, on November 10, 2014. Although the Berlin Police regarded the action as a ‘severe case of aggravated theft’ (ZPS 2014) and pursued investigations, the artists did not face legal prosecution. According to

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Figure 5.1  Location of ZPS actions, map. Drawn by Mirjana Ristic.

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Figure 5.2 White Crosses Memorial. Photograph by Mirjana Ristic.

German law, the action could not be considered theft because the crosses were removed with the intention of returning them (Rink 2015). The stealing of White Crosses produced two counter-​monuments for fallen immigrants that challenged EU refugee policies. The first was the hollow Wall memorial in Berlin’s government quarter, which became a self-​abnegating monument that contested the purpose of its own existence. Instead of being present at the twenty-​fifth Berlin Wall anniversary, it disappeared in protest against the German politics of remembrance. Instead of honouring the victims of the Wall, it rejected its subjects of remembrance as a means of questioning the public on whom they choose to remember. The voids left in place of its key figurative and symbolic elements were marked by sticky notes with the name ‘Toumani Samake’, a twenty-​three-​year-​old refugee who died trying to cross the Melilla border fence. By superimposing the immigrant’s name onto the frame of the empty Wall monument, the ZPS tactics contested the hypocritical celebration of the fall of an old border, which ignored the suffering of thousands of fenced-​off refugees at new frontiers in Spain, Greece, Bulgaria and other EU member states (ZPS 2014). The voided Wall memorial exposed absences in the affirmative discourse of a borderless Europe and highlighted the fact that, two-​and-​a-​half decades later, the continent is still framed by boundaries that forcibly deny basic human rights and freedoms. The voided Wall memorial opened a window onto social inequality and exclusion resulting from the selective permeability of EU borders, which mediate uneven flows of capital, labour and goods (Mezzadra and Neilson 2013). The dislocated White crosses formed a parallel counter-​ monument as refugees from a divisive past mobilised to interfere in a present political reality. The relocated crosses contested EU borders both physically and discursively. They defied the power of EU border authority by traversing the architectures and practices of security that maintain EU sovereignty, using some of the clandestine practices deployed by immigrants attempting to cross into the EU. They also invested EU borders with new meanings by projecting memories of the divisive and ferocious

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Figure 5.3 White Crosses cross the EU border, reproduced with permission from the Centre for Political Beauty. Photograph by Patryk Sebastian Witt.

past onto the present. Attached to the outer side of the EU border fence, meanings of the Wall memorial were attributed to a new border where history was repeated. Like the Berlin Wall, the architecture of EU frontiers was designed not only to detect attempts of unauthorised border crossing but also to decrease immigrants’ mobility and prevent their passage into the EU proper by inflicting injury on their bodies. The fence, which was otherwise a silent instrument of a repressive EU border regime, was thus transformed into a monument to inequality and brutality mediated through its physical and material features. This counter-​memory (Foucault 1977) was also presented to broad international audiences through images that were distributed through television and other media. Immigrants living in the camp at Gourougou Mountain outside Melilla, on the Moroccan side of the border, participated in the action by taking photographs behind the crosses highlighting the names of the Wall’s victims (Figure 5.3). These pictures produced what Walter Benjamin has called ‘dialectic images’ (Gilloch 1996, ch. 3) to describe the scenes in which fragments of the past are juxtaposed with the present, interacting with and shedding light on one another. The photographs juxtaposed the victims of the historic and contemporary border regimes to raise awareness that, although the frontiers have moved to Europe’s periphery, the oppression and violence implicit in EU border politics is ongoing. Both works of art produced in the action of stealing White Crosses employed different counter-​monumental strategies to transfer the burden of remembering and dealing with memories onto the public (Young 1992). The removal of the crosses temporarily silenced the message of the original Wall monument. Peter Ehrenhaus (1988) argues that the absence of speech should not be understood as merely the refusal to speak, but rather as the encounter that invites individuals to question the meaning of silence in a context where we expect speech. Instead

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Figure 5.4 White Crosses removed, reproduced with permission from the Centre for Political Beauty. Photograph by Paul Wagner.

of the original inscription of the victims’ names and years of life and death telling the audience what to think, sticky notes with an inscription ‘there is no thinking here’ had been put in their place (Figure  5.4). Rather than conveying a didactic narrative of the past, the muted Wall monument asked large audiences attending the anniversary to reconsider the Cold War past and reflect on the present through the lens of the past. It triggered them to connect the absence of victims of the Wall from the commemorative ceremony with the absence of public empathy for the casualties of EU immigrant policies. The relocated crosses employed the opposite strategy. Their attachment to EU border fences constructed counter-​memories that raised voices against inhumane actions at the physical border, acknowledgement of which was also absent from public discourse. Both counter-​monuments made a powerful statement that history cannot be isolated from distressing present-​day realities (ZPS 2014). This campaign, which was described as the most publicised ZPS artwork, entered Germany’s political discourse through the media, provoking divided opinions amongst German politicians, police, journalists and the general public. Political opposition to the campaign came from members of the leading parties, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU). They regarded the action as pseudo-​humanitarian, tasteless and despicable because, they argued, it was disrespectful to compare the victims of the German Democratic Republic regime to those of EU refugee politics (ZPS 2014). The political support for the campaign came from parties in opposition, including the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and Greens, and non-​governmental organisations. They argued that the ZPS action demonstrated the potency of art to intervene in politics by setting creativity against the lack of imagination of the German authorities, who were not able to distinguish between crime and political art (ZPS 2014). This

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was a carefully choreographed work of art explicitly aimed at provoking shock and repulsion to attract the attention of broad public audiences and give prominence to refugee causes. The reactions that this aggressive-​humanitarian campaign provoked were a mirror image of the attitudes and sentiments right-​wing politicians expressed towards suffering immigrants at the EU’s borders. Not only did the ZPS’s political art shed light on the consequences of EU border policies, but also it exposed contradictions in political discourse and the (in)actions of its decision makers. For Michel Foucault (1977), counter-​memory is an alternative version of memory that is concealed, suppressed or denied in the often selective, dominant narratives of the past. This ZPS artwork unpacked, demystified and demythologised the official discourses inscribed in the memory of the Berlin Wall in order to produce new discourses of its contested history that shed light on contemporary forms of geo-​political division. They mobilised the memories of the Berlin Wall, perhaps the world’s most notorious border, to augment awareness of contemporary circumstances of refugees in despair, throwing themselves against barricades and barbed-​ wire fences. Through artistic appropriation and intervention, the Wall monument was transformed from a passive commemorative object into a political agent. It contested EU border politics by making its largely invisible brutality visible and by providing a channel for hearing the voices of the victims of such brutality. THE DEAD ARE COMING The plight of the casualties of EU border politics remains largely invisible to broader audiences in Europe and the world. When refugees die, their bodies are first put in metal coffins and displayed at the harbour, after which they are placed in body bags and piled in cold chambers in hospitals (ZPS 2015b). Those who die trying to cross the EU’s borders are commonly buried in mass graves with no names. For instance, in August 2010, in Sidiro, Greece, activists from Germany found a mass grave with the bodies of approximately 200 unidentified refugees of all genders and ages (ZPS 2015b). Although the local government proposed burying these people according to Islamic traditions, they were buried along a sandy path, in an area that was only later proclaimed a cemetery. In January 2013, in Catania, Italy, thirteen bodies were discovered in a storage hall (ZPS 2015b). They had laid there for eight months, due to bureaucratic failure. In June 2015, ZPS conducted a controversial action entitled ‘The Dead Are Coming’, which involved the exposure of immigrant deaths in public space in Berlin in order to contest the indifference of the state and nation towards the lethal consequences of EU refugee policies. In the first stage of the act, ZPS members exhumed and identified the bodies of refugees who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea and then transported them to Germany (Luyken 2015). The relocation of the corpses was conducted with the permission of their families and approval from several EU countries, after extensive negotiations and a number of near-​failures (Lewicki 2016). Ironically, although the immigrants did not manage

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to cross the border, their corpses reached the destination of their dreams. The initial idea was to bury the bodies of the dead immigrants outside the Chancellery building (Figs 5.1 and 5.5), which is the seat of the German government and the centre of the country’s political decision making (ZPS 2015b). As the activists were prevented from doing so, they brought the bodies into several cemeteries across Berlin—​ Friedrichschein, Kreuzburg, Mitte, Charlottenburg—​ where the victims were buried with dignity, as people with identities rather than merely numbers. Each funeral was attended by several dozen refugees, activists and members of the general public. However, the seats reserved for politicians, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, remained empty (Dyer 2015). The burial events, which were photographed by and reported in the media, disseminated highly provocative messages to broad public audiences. The action crossed EU borders both physically and symbolically. The relocation of the immigrant corpses from the periphery of the EU geo-​political space to the centre of EU decision making brought the distant issue of violence against refugees closer. The empty chairs at the burial events highlighted and condemned the disinterest of politicians in thousands of immigrant deaths. The second stage of the action, called ‘Memorial to the Unknown Immigrants’, was a proposal to build a memorial to the perished immigrants in Berlin’s government quarter. This was an imaginary counter-​monument aimed at triggering engagement with immigrant deaths at EU borders: a field of concrete stelae on a sloping ground, metaphorically evoking a graveyard for refugees. Designs such as this one draws an analogy to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (MMJE), which consists of 2711 concrete stelae, arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field, symbolically representing a Jewish cemetery. The visual reference of the Memorial to the Unknown Immigrants to the Holocaust memorial drew a parallel between their subjects of remembrance. The effect of this exaggerated comparison was to provoke shock as a means of augmenting awareness of the lethal consequences of EU migration politics and thereby communicating a message that Germany, as a leading EU state, should learn from the mistakes of its past political regimes. This connotation is relevant especially in the context of growing populist and neo-​Nazi movements expressing their xenophobic anti-​immigrant sentiments through increasing attacks on refugees in public space and growing cases of arson attacks on refugee housing (von Bieberstein and Evren 2016). As at the MMJE, the Memorial to the Unknown Immigrants engages the senses of its target audience rather than merely their gaze. The MMJE is an abstract counter-​memorial that encourages passers-​by to enter the slopping field of stelae and experience the memorial sensorially. Loss of sight of the surroundings and claustrophobia experienced as they go deeper into the field of stelae are aimed at conveying the feelings of Jews taken away from cities to concentration camps. The Memorial to the Unknown Immigrants was envisioned on Citizen’s Forum—​a square located in front of the federal Chancellery (see Figure 5.1) and within the strip of governmental buildings that formed the Federal Band linking the former East and West Berlin (ZPS 2015b). The square was designed to be a key meeting

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Figure 5.5 Billboard with a photograph of Memorial to the Unknown Immigrants in front of the German Chancellery building, reproduced with permission from the Centre for Political Beauty. Photograp by Nick Jaussi.

place of the reunited German nation (Kniewel and Schoen 2013). By occupying and transforming the central national square in front of the state’s main legislative building into the cemetery of the fallen immigrants, the German politicians would be forced to walk over the metaphoric graves before entering their workplaces. The effect of such a design strategy would be to confront German politicians with the consequences of their decisions and actions and provoke them to better handle ongoing breaches of human rights at the EU’s borders. The refugee cemetery was an imaginary project that was unlikely to get approval to be built. Instead, the ZPS displayed their vision of the project by presenting photographs of the imaginary cemetery on a billboard in front of the fence of the Chancellery building (Figure 5.5) (ZPS 2015b). The billboard bore the title ‘European Union is built here’, which not only marked the Chancellery building as a centre of EU decision making but also indicated that the EU is metaphorically built on the deaths of immigrants. Located to be visible to large audiences gathering at or passing across the square, the billboard was aimed at drawing attention to and confronting the public—​government employees, residents and visitors to the city—​with the brutality of the EU border regime. Fragments of the actual Citizen’s Forum and its virtual design were brought together as another form of ‘dialectic images’ (Gilloch 1996) that juxtaposed the present and the future. Not only did this display in front of a key German government building condemn politicians for ignoring the breach of immigrant human rights implicated in EU refugee policies, but it also played on attracting and influencing public sentiment. As the memorial cemetery was not built, several citizens set out to execute it by other means. This occurred in the last stage of the action, which was called ‘The March of the Determined’ and it took place on June 21, 2015. On the day of the performance, the ZPS published a statement on their Facebook page announcing

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Figure 5.6 The improvised refugee cemetery, reproduced with permission from the Centre for Political Beauty. Photograph by Nick Jaussi.

the action and disseminated instructions for the creation of pop-​up graves via social media. Of the 8000 or so people who indicated online that they would participate (Lewicki 2016), approximately 5000 predominantly German citizens appeared and marched through the central streets of Berlin towards the government quarter, carrying flowers and wooden crosses. Instead of ending at the paved Citizen’s Forum in front of the Chancellery building, the march ended on its eastern side, at the Platz der Republic, a grassy square in front of the German Parliament (Reichstag) (Figs 5.1 and 5.6), which was seen as the place where novel refugee policies should be brought (ZPS 2015b). Using shovels and spades, the protestors dug about 100 improvised graves into the lawn, planted flowers, and installed wooden crosses with inscriptions including: ‘pull down fortifications’, ‘borders kill’, ‘nobody is illegal’ and ‘people’ (World News 2015). The protestors thus staged a temporary counter-​memorial for those who died trying to cross EU borders and never received a funeral (Lewicki 2016) where the imprints of mock graves made a spatial statement that refugees belong here. Some of the protestors laid down on the ground, pretending to be dead in a public spectacle of solidarity with the victims. By claiming space for this memorial performance, they problematised the absence of a public sphere where such mourning can take place (von Bieberstein and Evren 2016). This campaign provoked strong reactions from the public and the German authorities. After the ZPS announced the action, the local police issued public statements warning that coffins or dead bodies were legally prohibited on the grounds of the government district (von Bieberstein and Evren 2016). During the protest, the police used force and clashed with protestors in order to remove them physically from the square. CDU and CSU politicians criticised the campaign as disconcerting, immoral and even obscene (ZPS 2015b), arguing that it crossed

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the boundary of reverence for the victims. Some comments in newspapers, such as Die Welt and Vice News, were aimed at discrediting the artists, claiming that, under the influence of drugs, they exhumed and transported the corpses of refugees from the EU’s external borders into Germany (ZPS 2015b). Proponents of the action, who were mostly members of non-​governmental human rights organisations, praised its artistic appeal as the contemporary equivalent of the ancient Greek play Antigone. Being described as an act that crosses the boundary between theatre and reality itself, the action inquired about what was more perverse: shifting the edges of piety and taste or the cynicism of EU refugee politics that ignores refugee suffering and consciously accepts their deaths (ZPS 2015b). It opened up a question of whether the shock provoked by the campaign was less horrifying than the reality of the situation at the EU’s external borders. This ZPS campaign was an articulation of the power of collective public action of concerned ordinary people (Arendt 1970, 44) seeking to provoke societal change. The action triggered refugee activists as well as ordinary citizens to dig 1000 improvised refugee graves in cities across Germany and Europe—​in parks, squares, next to sidewalks, on traffic islands, in juxtaposition to existing monuments, in front of building façades, below bridges—​for different audiences and forms of encounter. Throughout July 2015, they appeared on the streets of Munich, Hamburg, Cologne, Dresden, Hannover, Heidelberg, Münster, Kassel and Kiel in Germany; in public spaces of Vienna and Linz, Austria; Vaduz, Liechtenstein; Genf, Switzerland; and Luxemburg. By reclaiming the rights to occupy and adapt the city they enacted a symbolic appeal for reconsidering the human rights of refugees. Solidarity with them crossed borders, in this case. CONCLUSION In this chapter, I  discussed how the ZPS activists appropriated and adapted the heritage and memory of the Second World War and Cold War into a tool of resistance against the borders of the EU. This struggle involved the two-​fold practices of border crossing. The first was the inside-​out crossing through the dislocation of the memory of the Berlin Wall. Being disassembled from Berlin’s former borderland and reassembled onto Melilla’s border fence, the monument was converted to new ends. It juxtaposed the past and present mechanisms of separation in order to raise awareness that freedom of movement within the EU is maintained by the violence, coercion and oppression of Fortress Europe. The second was the outside–​in crossing whereby the physical corpses of dead immigrants were brought from the EU’s periphery to its centre. A public display of death became a means of transferring the violent consequences of the EU’s border politics to the centre of its political power. Both actions involved different forms of inversion—​using urban space and architectural relics of the past divisive regime to make visible the contemporary, largely invisible, politics of division. Both actions crossed borders not only in space but in time. They involved appropriation and transformation of existing monuments into temporary

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counter-​monuments that superimposed the past onto the present in order to critique EU migration politics through the lens of difficult Second World War and Cold War memories. The ZPS artwork involved a series of artistic strategies through which the past was transformed into the present-​past to highlight that social inequality and exclusion at EU borders is still ongoing, although shifted from the centre to the periphery. It also showed that memory does not belong to the past but plays an active role as a tool for critique, and for subverting the present. Henri Lefebvre (1991, 26) famously argued that urban space is both a mirror of society and an arena for its transformation. Monuments in public space often express the desires of state governments and political leaders to construct collective identities, establish a social order and hierarchy and/​ or assert political power (Vale 2008, 3). Conversely, the ZPS artwork demonstrates the capacity of counter-​monuments to act as tools for political resistance. What the ZPS refer to as the ‘EU war on defence’ is an asymmetric political struggle (Kaldor 2007, 7) in which political activists and refugees have less power than the security systems of the EU border regime. In this context, counter-​monuments operated as tools for the empowerment of a discourse on the refugee predicament—​more so than the refugees themselves. However, material and discursive transformation of heritage and memory produces alternative forms of power where there is little or none. The inversion of the monuments’ form, substitution of their commemorative subjects, the juxtaposition of past and present and provoking of repulsive reactions were all counter-​monumental strategies designed to empower marginalised groups in society to raise their voices and attract public attention. According to Young (1992, 270), the virtue of the counter-​monument is to initiate and maintain the ‘the never-​to-​be-​resolved debate’ about the past and provide feedback on the present. The ZPS actions created temporary counter-​ monumental works of art that provoked momentary disruption of the city’s everyday life in order to reflect their memorial preoccupations onto the public (Young 1992). When they were removed, what remained in their place were the questions and debates that they had initiated. Instead of standing permanently as physical reminders against past division, the ZPS empowered ordinary people to act against border politics. They showed the capacity of memorials to act outside of discourses of the past and play an active socio-​political role in the present. AUTHOR NOTE Mirjana Ristic’s work on this chapter was supported and funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation through an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellowship awarded from 2016 to 2018. REFERENCES Amnesty International 2015, ‘In detention in Europe’, SOS Europe Amnesty, viewed 30 October 2017 (no longer available), .

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Arendt, H 1970, On Violence, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, MA. Dyer, J 2015, ‘Activists shame German Government by burying corpses of migrants in Berlin’, Vice News, 17 June, viewed 30 October 2017, . Ehrenhaus, P 1988, ‘Silence and symbolic expression’, Communication Monographs, vol. 55,  41–​57. Foucault, M 1977, Language, Counter-​Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY. Gilloch, G 1996, Myth and Metropolis: Walter Benjamin and the City, Polity Press, Cambridge, UK. Kaldor, M 2007, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era, Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA. Kniewel, A and Schoen, A 2013, Capital City: Berlin Parliament and Government District, DSK Deutsche Stadt-​and Grundstücksentwicklungsgesellschaft mbH and Co. KG, Berlin. Lefebvre, H 1991, The Production of Space, Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Oxford. Lewicki, A 2016, ‘The dead are coming: Acts of citizenship at Europe’s borders’, Citizenship Studies, vol. 21, no. 3, 275–​290. Luyken, J 2015, ‘Activists begin wave of refugee burials in Berlin’, The Local, 16 June, viewed 30 October 2017, . Mezzadra, S and Neilson, B 2013, Border as Method or the Multiplication of Labor, Duke University Press, Durham, NC. O’Dowd, L 2010, ‘From a “borderless world” to a “world of borders”: “Bringing history back in”’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, vol. 28, no. 6, 1031–​1050. Pitscher, M 2015, ‘Criminal artivism’, Medium, 4 October, viewed 22 November 2015, . Rink, T 2015, ‘Wie die Mauerkreuze verschwanden’, Tagesspiel, 16 June, viewed 22 November 2015, . Rodríguez, AR 2015, ‘The artist collective Center for Political Beauty: Connecting art and activism’, Widewalls, 20 September, viewed 22 November 2015, .Stevens, Q, Franck, KA and Fazakerley, R 2012, ‘Counter-​monuments: The anti-​monumental and the dialogic’, The Journal of Architecture, vol. 17, no. 6, 951–​972. UNHCR 2015, ‘The sea route to Europe’, UNHCR Tracks, 1 July, viewed 30 October 2017, . Vale, LJ 2008, Architecture, Power, and National Identity, Routledge, London. von Bieberstein, A and Evren, E 2016, ‘From aggressive humanism to improper mourning: Burying the victims of Europe’s border regime in Berlin’, Social Research, vol. 83, no. 2, 453–​479. World News 2015, ‘ “Borders kill”: Activists in Berlin dig 100 mock graves to highlight refugee crisis’, RT, 21 June, viewed 30 October 2017, . Young, JE 1992, ‘The counter-​monument: Memory against itself in Germany today’, Critical Inquiry, vol. 18, no. 2, 267–​296. —​—​—​ JE 2000, At the Memory’s Edge: After Images of the Holocaust in Art and Architecture, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT and London. Zentrum für Politische Schönheit (ZPS) 2014, The first fall of the European wall, ZPS, viewed 30 October 2017, . —​—​—​ 2015a, ‘Aggressive humanism’, Medium, viewed 30 October 2017, .

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—​—​—​ 2015b, The dead are coming, ZPS, viewed 30 October 2017, . —​—​—​ n.d.a, About, ZPS, viewed 30 October 2017, . —​—​—​ n.d.b, Contact, ZPS, viewed 30 October 2017, . —​—​—​ n.d.c, Support us, ZPS, viewed 30 October 2017, .

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6: En route: The networked mobile border camps of Northern France Irit Katz

The demolition of the makeshift camp in Calais known as ‘the Jungle’ at the end of October 2016 received significant media attention. Thousands of migrants,1 sternly supervised by French riot police, were seen queuing for registration and transfer by buses to reception facilities around France, where they could either claim asylum or would face deportation. Media crews also entered the vacated camp to interview the migrants who resisted eviction holding on to their dream to cross the Channel and arrive in the United Kingdom (UK). The media depicting workers in hard hats and orange jumpsuits equipped with sledgehammers and bulldozers pulling down the makeshift camp identified this site as a key symbolic space of Europe’s so-​called ‘migration crisis’. Located within the European continent yet at Britain’s threshold, caught between ambivalent practices and political rhetoric of border control, institutional neglect and ad hoc humanitarian care—​the Jungle became a living testimony to the limited capacity and willingness of some European states to deal with the irregular migrants in their territories; and to the fortification of other states which try to hermetically close their borders against irregular migration. As a self-​created urban-​like environment, which supported essential everyday needs, the Jungle also was the spatial manifestation of the migrants and their supporters’ resilience and resistance to their exposure and control (Katz 2017a). However, the Jungle was not the only camp created in Northern France as a result of the collision between irregular migration flows and border regimes. Many other camps were formed in the area, including institutional and makeshift camps formally created by state and municipal authorities (Figure 6.1). This chapter examines the rapidly evolving spaces of the border migrant camps created in Northern France between 2014 and 2017. While refugee camps are often analysed as isolated and isolating spaces of containment, which in many cases endure for decades (McConachie 2016; Ramadan 2013), border migrant camps, as this chapter demonstrates, are often dynamic, hyper-​temporary and highly connected spaces, part of the ever-​changing entanglements of intense

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Figure 6.1  The location of some of the makeshift camps in Northern France and the camps in Calais, Grande-​Synthe and Paris (2014–​17). Drawn by Irit Katz based on multiple sources.

En route

border practices and migration flows. The geographical areas where these camps are located could be defined, after Chenchen Zhang (2017) as ‘mobile borders’, active border zones that are constantly altered by the interplay of bordering practices and tempestuous mobilities which exceed them. Rather than sites where the ‘state of exception’ is ‘given a permanent spatial arrangement’ (Agamben 1998, 169), these camps create a highly ephemeral constellation of formal and informal spaces which is reconfigured by the border conditions they in turn partly constitute. These spaces are also part of a larger dynamic network of frontier spaces, borderscapes and en route spaces in France, Europe and beyond (Katz 2016; see Rajaram and Grundy-​Warr 2007). The border practices of different state and non-​state actors, the shifting vectors of migration flows and the turbulent movements of camps’ residents to, from and between them mean that people, materials, knowledge and support systems are constantly circulating across these spaces. These camps are spaces where the blockages to migrant journeys become visible, and also sometimes become political spaces of resistance and protest against exclusionary and abusive border regimes. The movements and networks that materialise in these en route camps are central to this chapter. Following a first section, which discusses the broad spatial and geo-​political meaning of border camps, the chapter focuses on a comparative analysis of the makeshift and institutional camps created at the heart and outskirts of Calais, Dunkirk and Paris (Figure 6.1). It reflects on their extreme and seemingly bipolar formal and informal spatial conditions and examines the networks of governance, humanitarian aid, materialities and irregular migratory movements that work between them. My analysis is based on several visits to these camps and online media data. The chapter seeks to expose both formal and informal political processes, showing how the nation-​state uses border spaces to halt, deter and manage irregular migrants, while also illustrating how migrants shape and transform camps to contest systems of governance, to negotiate their status and to enable irregular transnational mobilities. Border camps are highly versatile spatial entities that respond not only to migration flows and to the state politics and practices which aim to control them, but also to the complex material, human and political realities created by their very existence. These versatile and highly responsive spatial entities could be identified by Eyal Weizman’s (2007, 6–​7) term ‘elastic geography’ as part of ‘dynamic, constantly shifting, ebbing and flowing’ borders, creating flickering frontier spaces of conflicting agendas and actions. Camps are indeed detached and confining spaces yet at the same time they are strongly connected to various urban, national and transnational social and material networks of migration flows and humanitarian support. By understanding the connected spatialities, geographies and socio-​politics of these makeshift and institutional border camps, the conflicting border politics and practices that form, reshape and are enacted through them are illuminated. The camp is revealed as a flexible, tactical spatial instrument used in ongoing struggles over Europe’s borders;

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a tool which is shaped by networks and powers that work far beyond their specific spaces and geographies. MIGRATION FLOWS, BORDERS AND BORDER CAMPS The proliferation of institutional and makeshift camps during Europe’s ‘migration crisis’ was not a new phenomenon. Camps have long formed part of Europe’s bordering practices, either in a hidden manner or as part of its ‘border spectacle’, whereby the ‘illegality’ of the migrants ‘is rendered spectacularly visible’ (De Genova 2013, 1181). The maps created by Migreurop (2016) powerfully illustrate the present-​day archipelago of institutional camps in Europe and around it as carceral spaces integral to the coercive technologies aimed at controlling mobility and governing life. These maps and the statistics they represent also indicate intensified use of these camps. Although between 2011 and 2016 the number of institutional camps has slightly dropped due to temporary closures or state policies encouraging large migrant centres, their capacity has increased from 32,000 to 47,000 places. Whereas institutional camps are components in the states’ formal border regime, makeshift camps such as the Calais Jungle are created as by-​products of heavily controlled borders or temporarily blocked migration routes that create ‘bottleneck spaces’ of enduring suspension (Katz 2016). These camps are created by the actions and inactions of at least two national entities; the one which blocked its borders and the one in which the migrants are trapped and abandoned. Some of these camps are formed next to border crossings such as the Idomeni camp near the Greek-​Macedonian border, where more than 10,000 migrants lived through the winter of 2015–​16. Others are formed in more isolated locations along people-​smuggling routes used by human-​smugglers, such as the camp near the village of Norrent-​Fontes and near Angres in Northern France where migrants from sub-​Saharan Africa and Vietnam waited to be smuggled to the UK (Bulman 2016; Gentleman 2017). These makeshift border camps are not a new spatial feature in Northern France. According to Jessica Reinisch (2015), following the opening of the Channel Tunnel in 1994, many years before the Jungle camp was created in Calais, camps of different types and sizes were formed in the area. Border camps are not only formed at blocked or heavily supervised national borders or near routes leading to them, but also in cities where internal border control points often operate. ‘The city is but a stopover, a point on the synoptic path of a trajectory’ writes Paul Virilio (1977, 31) and the ongoing pixellation of the border (Ribas-​Mateos 2016) from lines that delineate territories to points that control fragmented networks of movement is primarily evident in cities. Cities create junctions for migration flows and localise modes of border control (Lebuhn 2013). Makeshift camps are often created at the centre and outskirts of metropolitan areas by migrants who either use the city as a jumping-​off point to other destinations or await entry to official states’ reception systems. Over recent years, informal camps were created, demolished and reappeared in central European

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cities such as Athens, Rome, Budapest, Belgrade, Brussels and Paris; many of them in or near major train stations which function as nodes of transnational mobility, and in port cities such as Patras, Calais and Dunkirk (Katz 2016). The spatial features of institutional and makeshift camps are inherently different, yet their spaces are often closely connected. Institutional camps are usually formed as instrumental, efficient spaces of multiple, standardised, repetitive and portable prefabricated shelters with basic infrastructure designated to provide for minimal needs. These camps form rigid and often alienating spaces where migrants are tightly controlled and managed. Conversely, many makeshift camps are created informally as precarious ‘make-​do’ and ‘make-​shift’ spaces. They are composed of basic tents and frail shelters made of simple, available materials such as tarpaulin sheets, sleeping bags and blankets stretched over a timber frame of branches or timber studs. Water is often provided through adjacent amenities such as service stations or train stations, toilets are substituted by the nearby landscape and bonfires or paraffin lamps and stoves are used for light, cooking and heating. When these perilous camps grow, local and international humanitarian organisations often become involved to provide basic essential amenities and services such as portable toilets, water tanks and mobile health clinics. In some cases, informal ‘public institutions’, businesses and facilities provide for the everyday needs of inhabitants. In many cases, makeshift and institutional camps are not formed in isolation but have mutual constitutive relationships. In Calais, following the appearance of informal encampments during the 1990s, the French Red Cross in Sangatte opened the first institutional camp, close to the Eurotunnel entrance in 1999 (Reinisch 2015). Similarly, a container camp was created by the French government at the heart of the Jungle camp in Calais, and following the endurance of makeshift camps in the city centres, formal camps were also opened in Grande-​Synthe near Dunkirk and in Paris. Makeshift camps were often created near institutional camps such as those formed outside the institutional Gradisca camp in Italy, where residents of the formal semi-​carceral camp socialised during the day (Atlin and Minca 2017, 38). These ‘border camps’ or ‘en route camps’ are materialisations and visible reminders of the fundamental inequality at the heart of liberal citizenship. While the transnational mobility of citizens can be considered as a right attached to the nation’s values of freedom, there are always unspoken or silenced ‘others’ (Cresswell 2006) whose mobility is regularly hindered and who travel in informal and illegal ways. While their mobility is prevented, migrants in these camps are also often abandoned without any formal institutional provision through what Davies et al. (2017) define as necropolitical ‘violent inaction’. At the same time this prevention of mobility, coupled with institutional neglect and brutality, encourages the emergence of alternative organised forms of non-​profit, humanitarian support. These organisations in turn create ever-​changing professionally, socially, spatially and materially mobile compositions and networks which sustain the fractured mobility of camp dwellers whose routes are blocked and whose informal survival mechanisms are repeatedly demolished.

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THE VERSATILE GEOGRAPHIES AND SPATIALITIES OF NORTHERN FRANCE’S BORDER CAMPS The camps in Northern France are part of a transnational network, a versatile global infrastructure in which unwanted populations are suspended and often circulated internally (Katz 2017b). Some of the institutional camps in the area fall within the French camp system whereby migrants are admitted into reception centres (CADA, Centre d’accueil de demandeurs d’asile) and ad hoc reception and orientation centres (CAO, Centre d’accueil et d’ orientation) from which they can apply for asylum, or into administrative detention facilities and centres (LRA and CRA, Local/​Centre de rétention administrative) where migrants await deportation (Cosi 2017). A study of the spatial and governmental dynamics of the institutional and makeshift camps in Northern France reveals their specific roles as part of the French-​UK border apparatus of spaces which not only host ‘people on the move’ but also—​materially, spatially, geographically, socially and politically—​transform, creating ‘spaces on the move’ which change in relation to the various powers that form and impact them. A  close examination of the makeshift and institutional camps formed in and around Calais, Dunkirk and Paris, and the relations between them, in the next three sections, highlights the meaning of their spaces, locations and forms of governance in relation to the forces that work within and upon them. CALAIS JUNGLE CAMP AND CONTAINER CAMP (2015–​16) From spring 2015 the Jungle camp in Calais grew rapidly, sometimes at a pace of 150 people arriving each day, accommodating a peak population of around 10,000 migrants. Although it started as a tent camp, similar to many other makeshift camps that appeared in Europe and Northern France during that period, with the efforts of its inhabitants and the non-​profit organisation and volunteers supporting them, a more substantial built environment gradually replaced the flimsy tents on the soaked sandy ground. Within a few months the Jungle developed to form a small, informal settlement serving many of the migrants’ everyday necessities. A  vibrant ‘high street’ was created, with dozens of grocery stores, restaurants, barber shops and bakeries while other ‘public buildings’ were added, including places of worship, a library and a language school (Katz 2017a, 6). Despite deplorable conditions and the indeterminate state of its residents, for many migrants the camp became a place of social belonging. ‘I keep coming back to the Jungle. I miss it’, said Ahmid, a Sudanese refugee, reflecting on the sense of fraternity in the Jungle, while adding that he could not ‘bear to be alone at the CADA’ (Calais mag 2016, 7; see also Gueguen-​Teil and Katz 2018). This sense of belonging was grounded in the camp’s distinct spatiality. The Jungle was initially formed in ‘neighbourhoods’ according to the national origin of its inhabitants, consisting of hubs of Eritrean, Darfurian, Afghan, Syrian and other nationalities. While these gradually blurred as the camp densified, it was

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Figure 6.2 The entrance to the Orthodox Ethiopian church, September 2016. Photograph by Irit Katz.

still possible to identify the intangible architecture the migrants carried with them and rebuilt in their temporary location, such as the Darfurian traditional semi-​ circular compounds, the Afghan restaurants with elevated hookah lounges and the Orthodox Ethiopian church (Figure 6.2) with its raised roof sections and turquoise coloured entrance gates. Graffiti, flags of home and destination countries and other signs and symbols created an additional layer to many shelters and buildings in the camp, further manifesting migrants’ identities and political agency through statements against racial discrimination or borders (Katz 2015). Hundreds of volunteers from France, but mainly from across the Channel, arrived to support the migrants in the Jungle, including architects and builders who constructed shelters and other buildings in the camp. Many migrants from the Jungle continued to visit the urban centre of Calais for their everyday needs, using bicycles to quickly cover the distance (Scafe-​Smith 2016). While anti-​migrant right-​wing demonstrations were held in Calais’s centre and members of far-​right militia have attacked migrants and volunteers in the camp, Calais’s residents and business-​owners received the migrants with a mix of

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Figure 6.3 The Jungle and le Cap container camp in Calais, April 2016. Photograph by Irit Katz.

caution, understanding and support. A  café owner has admitted that following requests of local clients ‘we don’t serve them [the migrants] anymore’, yet a local drugstore owner served them free of charge ‘because of what they’re going through’ (Calais mag 2016, 12–​13). The Jungle is usually examined as an informal camp, however the camp was created in its specific location following the involvement of Calais Centre-​Right mayor, Natacha Bouchart in January 2015. She issued a directive to dismantle all migrant makeshift camps that were scattered in and around the city thus concentrating new encampments at a specific location (Figure 6.1) while also ensuring their temporary appearance and function. The chosen area was a derelict site in the outskirts of Calais beyond a busy highway, next to the then newly opened Jules Ferry migrant centre, housing 100 women and children, where other migrants were permitted use of amenities and provided one hot meal a day. In November 2015, when approximately 6000 migrants lived in the Jungle, the local authorities were ordered by the French court to provide further for the migrants by installing essential facilities and infrastructure such as portable toilets, street lighting and communal water stations in the camp (Katz 2017a). The interventions of the French authorities were not limited to minimal acts of control and provision, but were also pursued through violent acts of destruction and construction. In January 2016, some 125 white shipping containers were installed and surrounded by a fence in a bulldozed area at the heart of the Jungle. Each container was equipped with heating and bunk beds for twelve people, pierced with windows, and placed in a rigid grid (Figure 6.3), creating the basic structure of the new institutional camp (Katz 2017a, 3–​4). The management of this humanitarian Camp d’Accueil Provisoire (le CAP, translated as temporary welcome camp), initiated by the French Government and supported by the financial aid of the European Commission, was put in the hands of La Vie Active which also managed the Jules Ferry migrant centre.

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Many migrants refused to move into the Calais CAP container camp despite poor living conditions in the Jungle, saying that the institutional camp is ‘the same as jail’ (BBC 2016). One of their main reasons was the requirement for registration with the prefecture, during which potential inhabitants were obliged to allow a biometric scan of their hands, as the camp’s turnstile gates opened only by an identified handprint. This process had significant legal implications following the Dublin III Regulations which assign responsibility for asylum seekers to the first EU state in which they make an identifiable claim (EUR-​Lex 2013). A  registered biological handprint was problematic for migrants who hoped to eventually claim asylum in the UK. In addition, the CAP container camp lacked important amenities such as cooking facilities and other basic services, and many migrants who moved there continued to depend on the Jungle for their everyday social activities and needs (Gueguen-​Teil and Katz 2018). The camps were thus interconnected through institutional and informal socio-​spatial entanglements (Figure 6.4). The French authorities’ decision to establish the CAP container camp on the Jungle’s former imprint was followed by the demolition of the Jungle’s southern and eastern parts in late February and early March 2016, leading eventually to the liquidation of the entire makeshift camp in October 2016. These waves of demolition violently reshaped the camp environment while heavily influencing the lives of resident migrants (Figure 6.5). Damage caused to the camp’s physical, social and cultural fabric could be described as a form of ‘urbicide’ (Graham 2002, 642) which denied the migrants ‘their collective, individual and cultural rights’ to a city-​like environment. These actions also forced many migrants to relocate, initiating human and spatial movements as chain reactions between and within the border camps in the area. Despite humanitarian rhetoric justifying the Jungle’s gradual demolition, these actions have, in fact, increased the precariousness of life there. For example, demolition of the camp’s southern part, home to over 3400 people, left some 129 unaccompanied minors unaccounted for and days after the Jungle was entirely ‘evicted’ refugee children were still sleeping rough in the demolished site. As ‘the archetypical object of humanitarian care’ (Zhang 2017, 18), unaccompanied minors were hosted in the CAP container camp during the Jungle’s final demolition (UNHCR 2016). Drone footage of the Jungle’s location, months after its demolition, showing the container camp isolated at the heart of the now empty site (Jungle News 2017), indicates the full transformation of this border area from a deplorable yet humanly created and well-​networked makeshift camp to a sterilised zone completely controlled by the state. The Jungle was not only a makeshift border camp created because of the migration controversies in the area around the Channel Tunnel, but it was also a site where contradicting border practices of control and care, abandonment and resistance materialised. The assemblage of mobility governance, strategies of resistance and humanitarian support have produced the Jungle’s spatiality through ongoing negotiations over boundaries, practices, relationships and identities, which being continuously reshaped, like borders themselves, were ‘manifold and in a constant state of becoming’ (Parker and Vaughan-​Williams 2012, 728).

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Figure 6.4  The Jungle and le Cap container camp in Calais, February 2016. Photograph by John McLellan.

Figure 6.5  The Jungle reshaped by demolitions and construction. Drawn by Irit Katz based on multiple sources, including Hanappe et al. (2015) and Hanappe and Hassan (2016).

Irit Katz

GRANDE-​SYNTHE (DUNKIRK) BASROCH AND LINIÈRE CAMPS (2015–​17) The camps which were created, changed, erased and reappeared in Grande-​ Synthe, a suburb near Dunkirk around 35 km east of Calais, offer a different example of geographical shifts, spatial transformations and social interactions in Northern France campscapes. In 2006, a makeshift migrant camp was set up on a plot of land designated for future development in Grande-​Synthe called Basroch. The camp usually consisted of a few dozen people who made their way illegally to the UK through the Dunkirk port. In the summer and winter of 2015, however, numbers soared from around 100 migrants in August to over 2500 in December including 200 children who lived there in squalid conditions, exposed to the freezing European winter. The camp, as expressed by one of the inhabitants, ‘wasn’t even suitable for animals’ (van Woensel Kooy 2016, 17). Around 90% of the refugees in the camp were Iraqi Kurds, and the rest were migrants from the Middle East and Asia. Several non-​profit organisations such as Emmaüs Solidarité and Medecins Sans Frontières (MSF) were struggling to support them (MSF 2016). Whereas in the Calais Jungle the authorities permitted migrants to build temporary shacks, Grande-​Synthe’s local authorities limited the construction of similar shelters. Instead, the municipality of Grand-​Synthe, led by the Green Party mayor Damien Carême, invited MSF to design and build a more adequate refugee camp in the area. This camp, named Linière, was opened in March 2016, and the organisation Utopia 56, with a reputation for managing rock concerts, was put in charge. While the Basroch makeshift camp was located at the centre of Grande-​Synthe, the Linière camp was created on a long strip of land to the east of the town (see location of both camps in Figure  6.1), enclosed along its length by railway and highway, its narrow openings supervised by police and volunteers. Unlike the CAP container camp in Calais, Linière was not a closed camp, and volunteers, visitors, migrants, as well as human smugglers (van Woensel Kooy 2016, 35) could enter and exit it without close supervision. According to camp residents, their increased distance from Grande-​Synthe town centre was its main fault. The camp, which was designed to host 1500 migrants, comprised identical prefabricated four-​person timber huts, nicknamed ‘chicken houses’. Their layout was less dense and rigid than that of the CAP container camp and the timber structures could be easily modified by their dwellers. Indeed, from the very first day the camp was populated, many huts were modified, some doubling their size with the help of volunteers who brought materials and assisted in the building process (Figure 6.6). These volunteers, many of whom arrived from the Jungle, also built other facilities in the camp such as communal kitchens and a school, bringing with them essential donations of building materials, food and clothes, indicative of the social and material connections between the camps in the area. Although at a different scale to those in the Jungle, similar small stands where migrants sold soft drinks, cigarettes and other items quickly sprouted across the camp, reflecting the agency of its inhabitants. However, for many of the

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Figure 6.6 Appropriated shelters which almost doubled its original size in Linière camp, Grande-​Synthe, April 2016. Photograph by Irit Katz.

camp’s residents who wished to cross to England and re-​establish their lives there, living in the camp was an almost unbearable reality: ‘This place is driving me crazy’ stated Diyar, an English literature student from Kurdish Iraq; ‘Despite the bad situation of Kurds in Iraq, I would rather be there now than stuck in France. I had a life there […]. And look where I am now’ (van Woensel Kooy 2016, 37). The camps in Grande-​Synth present a different spatial and geographical process of change when compared with the camps in Calais, yet they were all created by a constant evolution of interconnected formal and informal actions and typologies (see Katz 2017a). These camps, like others in Northern France and Europe, were also connected through networks of volunteers, materials and smugglers that moved between them alongside the migrants who moved from camp to camp. Following the final demolition of the Jungle many of its inhabitants arrived at the already overcrowded Linière camp causing internal friction between older residents and newcomers. In April 2017, a clash between groups of incoming Afghan and established Kurdish migrants, over accommodation in the camp’s communal kitchen quarters, sparked a fire that burnt the camp to the ground within hours. Thus, despite interdependency due to their shared predicament, co-​ habitation of groups provoked destructive tensions over scarce resources. The turbulent movements of the border campscapes in the area were therefore not only caused by the contradicting interactions between regimes of migratory control and resistance to them, but also by violent interactions of migrant groups. PARIS MAKESHIFT AND INSTITUTIONAL MIGRANT CAMPS (2015–​17) The creation of the Linière MSF camp in Grande-​Synthe, the first municipally initiated refugee camp in France, inspired the Socialist mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo to propose a similar humanitarian response to the dozens of makeshift camps

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Figure 6.7 The makeshift Metro la Chapelle camp in Paris, June 2015. Photograph by Irit Katz.

created in the city centre. In May 2016, Hidalgo announced the creation of the first refugee camps in Paris, to ameliorate the ‘shameful’ ‘unhealthy and dangerous’ conditions of the city’s makeshift camps. She claimed these camps have ‘become a source of disturbance for residents in the neighbourhood’ (Dewan 2016); however, the term ‘disturbance’ could be interpreted as a euphemism for the considerable public hostility towards the camps due to presence of large groups of migrants and resultant degradation of the physical environment. In addressing this issue, municipal authorities chose to locate the camps far from the city’s bourgeois neighbourhoods, but envisioned them as ‘welcome centres’ as an extension of the morally hospitable values of the city. ‘Paris will not stand by and do nothing as the Mediterranean becomes a graveyard of refugees’, declared the mayor, adding that ‘these migrant camps reflect our values’ (Henley 2016). The makeshift migrant tent camps that provoked this public announcement had existed in Paris for some years but grew rapidly and multiplied since spring 2015. Migrants lived in deplorable conditions and in very rough urban locations at the heart of the city. The Metro la Chapelle camp, for example, was surrounded by heavy traffic on all sides (Figure 6.7). Located on a traffic island between the two lanes of the busy Boulevard de La Chapelle, it was also placed under the number 2 metro railway line with the consistent deafening noise of the trains passing on the metal bridge above the tents. The Boulevard also functions as a bridge above the Gare du Nord railway tracks, the departure point of the Eurostar trains that crossed the Channel. With their exposed flimsy tents and mattresses, the migrants in the camp were barely protected from the harsh urban conglomeration of multiple traffic routes. While local Parisian and French charities such as Emmaüs Solidarité have supported the migrants, they suffered from multiple difficulties such as the lack of basic facilities like toilets and water taps causing a heavy smell of urine in the camp. Paris’s makeshift camps appeared, grew and were cleared on a regular basis, creating an internal movement of sub-​standard urban ephemeral spaces which sometimes hosted thousands of migrants. ‘Where can we go to in this freezing weather?’ asked Sultan, a twenty-​two-​year-​old refugee from Afghanistan who

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Figure 6.8 ‘The bubble’ in Centre Humanitaire Paris-​Nord, April 2017. Photograph by Irit Katz.

lived in a camp of more than 1000 migrants under Stalingrad Metro bridge in winter 2016. ‘We are chased from place to place’, he described; ‘They never help us. They just come every time, take our tents, and just leave us out in the cold’ (Urer 2016). Following Mayor Hidalgo’s declarations, two municipal camps were created in the northern and southern parts of Paris, the first for men and the second for women and families. The camp in northern Paris, named Centre Humanitaire (humanitarian centre) Paris-​Nord and nicknamed La Bulle (the bubble), was opened in November 2016 at a former railway depot at the city’s eighteenth arrondissement near Porte de la Chapelle. A day centre for migrants created at the entrance to the camp was designed as an extravagant curved inflatable structure coloured in yellow and grey (Figure 6.8). A day clinic was also included, as well as a hall accommodating 400 male migrants for usually five to ten days. This hall, which was previously used as a train logistics hub, has been divided into sections by prefabricated transportable shelters marked in different colours, each section including a canteen, toilets and showers (Paris-​Nord 2016). Similarly, the centre in southern Paris, named Centre d’hébergement d’urgence (emergency accommodation centre) Paris-​Ivry, was opened in January 2017 to accommodate 400 women and family members for up to three months. It was built on a site of an abandoned factory of the city’s Water Department, consisting of prefabricated timber shelters for three to seven people, six yurts used as canteens and a language school (Paris-​Ivry 2017). According to the architect Julien Beller who designed the Paris-​Nord centre, the aim was to plan ‘a dignified and beautiful space’ which will ‘create an example of how our cities can be more hospitable’ (Paris-​Nord 2016; see Poll 2017). This

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attitude of urban humanitarian hospitality was also reflected in the organisations that were invited to manage the centres: the charity Emmaüs Solidarité that was involved in supporting the makeshift camps in Paris and Grand-​Synthe, and Utopia 56 that helped manage the Linière camp there. Both appointments reflect institutional and humanitarian networks across France’s border camps. However, a closer look at both the urban location and planned duration of the Parisian camps, together with the administrative procedures and urban attitudes towards migrants that accompany them, suggests complexities beyond initial humanitarian intentions. Similar to the camps in Calais and Grande-​Synthe, the centres in Paris were also created as inherently temporary. From the very beginning, migrants were allowed to stay there only for a short period, such as a few days or months while both projects were created with a clear expiry date—​June 2018 for Paris-​Nord and January 2021 for Paris-​Ivry—​as the city has designated these sites for different future uses. Another similarity between the Parisian camps and the other border camps is their marginal location. While the migrants of both the Jungle and the Linière camp were pushed to the outskirts of Calais and Grande-​Synthe, beyond physical borders of busy traffic routes, the centres in Paris also pushed the migrants to the margins of the capital. Paris-​Ivry is located in a southern industrial zone beyond the périphérique ring-​road while Paris-​Nord is located at the furthermost limits of the city’s central administrative area, bounded between the périphérique to its north and the busy Boulevard Ney to its south, not very far from the northern banlieues where many immigrants live (Figure 6.1). While the architecture of these camps projects urban spectacles of hospitality, they push the migrants out of sight and mind. The decisive policy of intolerance to makeshift camps in other parts of Paris, which accompanied the establishment of these centres, reflects escalating public hostility. In addition, the limited size of the northern centre failed to answer the basic needs of the migrants, leaving many with no appropriate solution, and informal camps were constantly formed on the adjacent boulevards (Camilli 2017). Since the opening of the centres, however, the authorities in Paris have become intolerant of informal camps, and have conducted sudden mass evictions, blocked areas with rocks and metal fences (4 kilometres of which have been erected in a few months) and closed certain public water fountains (see Poll 2017; Katz et al. 2018). ‘It’s an architecture of hostility and inhospitality’, reflected a Parisian urban architect who wished to remain anonymous as the City of Paris is one of his clients (Couvelaire 2016). Additionally, the collaboration between municipal and state authorities in funding the Parisian camps has imposed a problematic layer of administrative surveillance upon them. While the bubble has retained its original role as an open day centre, a warm bed for a few nights has been conditioned by fingerprinting procedure. To be eligible, migrants must go to the prefecture’s Cesa, the centre for administrative status review (Centre d’examen de situation administrative) opened in the nearby police headquarters, where fingerprints reveal whether migrants are ‘Dublin’ or not. This means that, similar to the CAP container camp in Calais, migrants have to register their biometric data to receive a warm bed.

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Non-​Dubliners are dispatched to reception facilities around France where they can apply for asylum, while others may face deportation. In September 2017, Utopia 56 decided to leave the Paris-​ Nord project arguing that ‘the administrative treatment of refugees within the centre is anything but humanitarian’ and that it ‘has become an administrative trap for many refugees’ who ‘eventually end up in a deportation procedure’ (Utopia 56 2017). In this manner, the welcome centre with its architectural and Parisian values of hospitality has become a conditioned urban gateway to the French asylum or deportation systems, alongside the myriad conflicting practices that materialise in the ever-​changing border camp spaces. CONCLUSIVE REMARKS ON A CONTINUOUSLY CHANGING REALITY Flickering between existence and non-​existence, between abandonment, fierce biopolitical control, and between solidarity, unconditioned care and generous hospitality, the border migrant camps of Northern France are created and recreated according to constantly changing factors. Although the camps in Calais, Dunkirk and Paris are very different, they also present striking similarities which indicate their broader political meaning. All of these camps are temporary spaces, while most of the camps discussed in this chapter no longer exist; the institutional camps in Paris were initially created with a clear expiry date. The inherent ephemerality of these camps creates an ongoing human, spatial and material movement which shifts between processes of rapid creation, change and demolition. They are all spaces of exception formed outside France’s normal governmental and spatial order. They were created and evolved through ad hoc actions of multiple actors, including municipal and national authorities, the French court, local and international non-​governmental organisations, and the migrants themselves. Moreover, while border camps are often created in rural areas, many of these camps are distinctively urban. They are not only created within cities, but they are also initiated by cities, while being actively pushed to their urban margins (see Katz et al. 2018). Most significantly, these camps were formed, evolved and functioned as a constant negotiation between formal and the informal practices. While in the Jungle an institutional camp was erected at the heart of the makeshift camp and its residents continued to use its informal facilities, in Dunkirk an institutional camp replaced the makeshift camp and then itself evolved through a process of informalisation. In Paris, the institutional camps were created to replace the informal, yet makeshift camps were created outside their gates. Finally, these camps were isolated and isolating spaces, while at the same time they were spaces which were highly connected through human and material networks exchanging and redistributing migratory movements, volunteers, building materials, donations of food and clothes, as well as practices of governance. These different characteristics reveal these border camps as highly mobile spatial materialisations of a fierce political struggle between multiple actors through various spatial practices, underscored by opposing forces. Top–​down systems and

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camp spaces of institutional power aim to control, suspend and deter irregular migrants in different ways. This is countered by the migrants and those who support them who form and transform camps as part of their bottom-up practices and efforts to contest institutional (anti-​)migration politics while negotiating their human rights and entitlements. This struggle materialises in the different makeshift and institutional camp spaces, in the relations between them and in their turbulent mobilities which are also generated by factors far beyond their immediate physical contexts. These camps are the ‘spaces on the move’ which became the tactical instruments used by and for ‘people on the move’ in both institutional actions and resistance to them. The camp itself, as a space which could be quickly created, changed and demolished by both the powerful and the powerless, continues to reappear as a pivotal instrument in the ongoing power struggles within the ever-​ changing borderscapes of Northern France, Europe and beyond.

NOTE 1

In this chapter, I use the term ‘migrants’ as the most accurate shorthand to describe the situation of the inhabitants in these camps. On the problematic and changing categorisation of ‘refugees’, ‘asylum seekers’, ‘forced migrants’ and ‘economic migrants’ (see Crawley et al. 2016). The term ‘people on the move’ employed by the UN also acknowledges the arbitrariness of the division between refugees and migrants.

REFERENCES Agamben, G 1998, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford University Press, Stanford. Atlin, R and Minca, C 2017, ‘The Ambivalent Camp: Mobilities and Excess in a Quasi-​ Carceral Italian Asylum Seekers Hospitality Centre’, in J Turner and K Peters (eds.), Carceral Mobilities: Interrogating Movement in Incarnation, Routledge, Oxon, 30–​43. BBC News 2016, ‘Calais “Jungle” migrants resist container move’, BBC News, 15 January, viewed 20 April 2018, . Bulman, M 2016, ‘Hundreds of refugees return to “secret camps” near Calais in bid to reach the UK’, Independent, 26 December, viewed 20 April 2018, . Calais mag 2016, ‘Reinventing Calais: English Version’, le PEROU, April, viewed 20 April 2018, . Camilli, E 2017, ‘Reception of migrants in Paris crumbles at Porte de la Chapelle’, Open Migration, 19 July, viewed 20 April 2018, . Cosi 2017, ‘Types of accommodation, France’, Forum Réfugiés, Asylum Information Database (AIDA), viewed 20 April 2018, . Couvelaire, L 2016, ‘En Ile-​de-​France, des grilles pour empêcher les migrants de s’installer’, Le Monde, 23 December, viewed 20 April 2018, .

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Crawley, H, Duvell, F, Sigona, N, McMohan, M and Jones, K 2016, Unpacking a rapidly changing scenario: Migration flows, routes and trajectories across the Mediterranean, MEDMIG Research Brief No. 1, viewed 21 March 2019, . Cresswell, T 2006, On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World, Routledge, London and New York. Davies, T, Isakjee, A and Dhesi, S 2017, ‘Violent inaction: The necropolitical experience of refugees in Europe’, Antipode, vol. 49, no. 5, 1263–​1284. De Genova, N 2013, ‘Spectacles of migrant “illegality”: The scene of exclusion, the obscene of inclusion’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 36, no. 7, 1180–​1198.‫‏‬ Dewan, A 2016, ‘Paris to open its first urban refugee camps this year’, CNN, 16 September, viewed 20 April 2018, . EUR-​Lex 2013, ‘Regulation (EU) No 604/​2013 of the European Parliament’, EUR-​Lex, 26 June, viewed 20 April 2018, . Gentleman, A 2017, ‘Inside Vietnam City, the French holding camp for vulnerable UK-​bound migrants, Guardian, 11 September, viewed 23 January 2019, . Graham, S 2002, ‘Bulldozers and bombs: The latest Palestinian–​Israeli conflict as asymmetric urbicide’, Antipode, vol. 34, no. 4, 642–​649.‫‏‬ Gueguen-​Teil, C and Katz, I 2018, ‘On the Meaning of Shelter: Living in Calais’s Camps de la Lande’, in I Katz, C Minca and D Martin (eds.), Camps Revisited: Multifaceted Spatialities of a Modern Political Technolog, Rowman and Littlefield, London, 83–​98. Hanappe, C and Hassan, A 2016, Jungle de Calais—​10 Mars 2016, Studio report for École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris-​Belleville, d’approfondissement en architecture (ENSAPB-​DSA). Hanappe, C, Chombart de Lauwe, P and Malone, L 2015, Relevé de la Jungle de Calais—​8–​ 10 Octobre 2015, Studio report prepared by the students for École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris-​Belleville, d’approfondissement en architecture (ENSAPB-​DSA). Henley, J 2016, ‘Paris mayor plans official camp for homeless refugees’, Guardian, 1 June, viewed 20 April 2018, . Jungle News 2017, The Empty Jungle, online video, 21 January, viewed 20 April 2018, . Katz, I 2015, ‘From spaces of thanatopolitics to spaces of natality: A commentary on “Geographies of the Camp” ’, Political Geography, vol. 49, 84–​86. —​—​—​2016, ‘A network of camps on the way to Europe’, Forced Migration Review, vol. 51,  17–​19. —​—​—​2017a, ‘Between bare life and everyday life: Spatialising the new migrant camps in Europe’, Amps: Architecture_​Media_​Politics_​Society, vol. 12, no. 2, 1–​21, viewed 20 April 2018, . —​—​—​2017b, ‘A global infrastructure of camps’, MoMA medium, 10 January, viewed 20 April 2018, . Katz, I, Parsloe, T, Poll, Z and Scafe-​Smith, A 2018, ‘The Bubble, the Airport, the Jungle: Europe’s Urban Migrant Camps’, in I Katz, C Minca and D Martin (eds.), Camps Revisited: Multifaceted Spatialities of a Modern Political Technology, Rowman and Littlefield, London, 61–82. Lebuhn, H 2013, ‘Local border practices and urban citizenship in Europe: Exploring urban borderlands’, City, vol. 17, 37–​51.

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McConnachie, K 2016, ‘Camps of containment: A genealogy of the refugee camp’, Humanity, vol. 7, no. 3, 397–​412.‫‏‬ Migreurop 2016, ‘Map of camps’, Migreurop, viewed 20 April, . MSF 2016, ‘France: Update on relocation of migrant camp in Dunkirk’, MSF, 13 April, viewed 20 April, . Paris-​Ivry 2017, ‘Emergency Center Paris-​Ivry, Ivry-​Sur-​Seine 94200’, Arsenal TV, February, viewed 20 April 2018, . Paris-​Nord 2016, ‘Migrant Reception Center, Porte de la Chapelle, Paris 18’, Arsenal TV, November, viewed 20 April 2018, . Parker, N and Vaughan-​Williams, N 2012, ‘Critical border studies: Broadening and deepening the “lines in the Sand” Agenda’, Geopolitics, vol. 17, no. 4, 727–​733. Poll, Z 2017, ‘Bursting the bubble: A critical examination of hospitable Paris’, MSc. diss., University of Oxford Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford. Rajaram, PK and Grundy-​Warr, C 2007, Borderscapes: Hidden Geographies and Politics at Territory’s Edge, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Ramadan, A 2013, ‘Spatialising the refugee camp’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, vol. 38, no. 1, 65–​77.‫‏‬ Reinisch, J 2015, ‘ “Forever temporary”: Migrants in Calais, then and now’, The Political Quarterly, vol. 86, no. 4, 515–​522. Ribas-​Mateos, N 2016, Border Shifts: New Mobilities in Europe and Beyond, Springer, London.‫‏‬ Scafe-​Smith, A 2016, ‘Reading the camp’, BA diss., UCL Arts and Sciences and the Bartlett Development Planning Unit, London. UNHCR 2016, Transfer of residents out of ‘the Jungle’ site in Calais, France, UNHCR, 25 October, viewed 20 April 2018, . Urer, E 2016, Interviews with Refugees and Migrants in Paris, online video, Anadolu Agency/​Getty Images, 3 November, viewed 20 April 2018, . Utopia 56 2017, Utopia 56 is leaving the Paris Humanitarian Center, Utopia 56, 3 September, viewed 20 April 2018, . van Woensel Kooy, E 2016, ‘Living in between: How refugees and volunteers in negotiation (re)construct citizenship and humanitarian care in the camps of Grande-​Synthe, France’, Master thesis, Utrecht University, Netherlands, viewed 20 April 2018, . Virilio, P [1977] 2007, Speed and Politics, Semiotext, Los Angeles. Weizman, E 2007, Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation, Verso, London. Zhang, C 2017, ‘Mobile borders and turbulent mobilities: Mapping the geopolitics of the Channel Tunnel’, Geopolitics, 20 October, viewed 20 April 2018, .

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7: Mapping the war: Everyday survival during the siege of Sarajevo Dijana Alić

THE SIEGE OF SARAJEVO On April 6, 1992, the European Union recognised Bosnia and Hercegovina as an independent state. That same day marked the start of the siege of Sarajevo and the regular brutal assaults by artillery, tanks and other weaponry. The indiscriminate attacks became a daily occurrence, and in the first year most buildings, including historic monuments such as Gazi Husref Beg’s mosque and Bašcaršija mosque, came under direct fire. The buildings of the historic Bašcaršija precinct and the National Assembly were also targeted. The blockade lasted nearly four years, until late February 1996, becoming the longest siege in the history of modern warfare, outlasting the infamous Leningrad enclosure by a year. During its 1425 days, more than 11,500 people were killed (Figs 7.1 and 7.2).1 As with other wars, political debate shaped media coverage of the conflict and underpinned perceptions of the war and associated discussions. Spectacles of the daily assaults on Sarajevo were broadcast widely, as world powers debated the nature of the conflict and an appropriate response. On the world political stage, the disintegration prompted a range of new and old local, ethnic, national and religious alliances to surface, as the former socialist state fragmented into new nation-​states. Of all the republics of the former state, Bosnia and Hercegovina was in a particularly precarious position as it had no majority nationality or national name. Its mixed cultural and religious heritage, which had previously connected it to the secular and multicultural aspirations of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, became its major political disadvantage. This chapter explores a series of discourses and responses to the siege that emerged in Sarajevo which aimed to contextualise the destruction for both local and international audiences. It focuses on the voices of those who saw art and architecture as capable of transcending the limitations of war and the destruction imposed on the city. Documents such as the Sarajevo Survival Guide aided citizens’ and visitors’ navigation of changing boundaries and border zones within the city, instructing them on survival without transportation, hotels, taxis, telephones, food,

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Drawn by Dhara Patel, adapted from the siege line published in Prstojević (1994, 284–​5) overlaid on Sarajevo City Map, Intersistem Kartografija, Belgrade.

Figure 7.1  Map showing the siege lines around Sarajevo.

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Figure 7.2 ‘Little soldiers’, children playing ‘war’ in the besieged city. Photo © Milomir Kovacević.

shops, heating, water, information and electricity (Prstojević et  al. 1994). Other projects, such as Warchitecture—​ comprising an exhibition, catalogue, journal issue and political postcards—​were directed internationally, as a call for direct action and involvement. An associated exhibition, Sarajevo:  Dream and Reality, was also destined for a global audience, displaying the work of the city architects to international viewers. Loosely drawing on Henri Lefebvre (1991), Edward Soja (1996), Sarah Pink (2012) and others concerning the construction of space, this chapter discusses these on-​the-​ground projects as responsive constructions of new spatial representations of the war-​torn city. The immense military pressure on the city’s external borders was counteracted by the emergence of myriad social subspaces that resisted and tactically undermined further socio-​spatial division. These new formations not only defied the imposed system of social and spatial fracturing at a local level, but they extended the existential crises beyond the boundaries of the city to, at least temporarily, undermine the search for an ethnically homogenous nation-​state. The aesthetic and artistic discourses together offered an alternative platform (admittedly, built on socialist ideals) for conceptualising a political formation of the emerging state. Advocating the efficacy of, and desire for, a multi-​ethnic state, these cultural endeavours contributed to the city’s long multicultural history, but they also stood in a stark contrast to the harsh military realities and the ideological framework that drove the conflict. WITHIN THE SIEGE LINE: THE NEW LANDSCAPE OF WAR In the wake of the European Union recognising Bosnia and Hercegovina as an independent state, Sarajevo was completely cut off from the outside world by early May 1992. But within the city, the siege line was invisible. The frequent changes

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to the frontline were conveyed to citizens through limited daily local media reports and informally, verified through citizens’ impressions of the intensity of daily artillery fire and their individual experiences. Exact coordinates of the frontline might have formed a part of military briefings, but in the city formal maps were not required; information was circulated informally and anecdotally. As certain suburbs transformed into the frontline, residents moved farther into the besieged city or, if possible, they left, as abandoned buildings became frontiers. The city began to fragment along invisible lines of no-​go zones, shelters and private spaces, and art spaces that provided mental, if not physical, refuge. For the most part, spatial divisions were invisible although present: the frontline defined the parameters of the city; the shelling from above made movement limited and local; and diverse modes of attack by snipers and artillery rendered the daily engagements uncharted and unpredictable. The reality of war overlaid physical spaces, gradually incorporating the city’s symbols and monuments and citizens’ living experiences into the unique ‘representational spaces’ of a besieged city (Lefebvre 1991, 39). Created in response to daily ‘lived’ experience, the emerging spaces integrated, in diverse ways, producing the ‘perceived–​conceived–​lived triad’ that Lefebvre found essential for our understanding of the construction of social spaces (1991, 40). Though forged under extraordinary circumstances, the spatial ‘coding’ that emerged in the besieged city triangulated citizens’ psychological states of fear and resilience with their observations and assessment of physical environment and the perceived and real protection the city was able to provide. The conditions placed immense pressure of the most existential sort on Sarajevans as their daily engagements with the city and with their immediate surroundings became increasingly difficult. Extending Lefebvre’s argument regarding the nexus between social relationships and the production of space, Edward Soja argues that ‘all social relations become real and concrete, a part of our lived social existence only when they are spatially “inscribed”—​that is concretely represented—​in the social production of social space’ (1996, 46, emphasis in original). The omnipresence and fear of impending attacks tied the urban fabric to a social production of space. Local artist Afan Ramić (1992) reflected, in the daily paper, on the dangers of daily life and the restrictions on citizens’ mobility in the city, describing the impact of attacks on places and people: In between shelling and PAM-​a [submachine guns], from sniper fire to canon fire, from King Tomislav’s Street to the Old Bridge, from the city centre to Alipasha’s field, five times a day we are either late or are simply not destined to meet with our death. From report to report, from air raid to general emergency, we, it seems, live with limited information and evidence, and could be killed on a ‘relatively quiet day or night’.

The importance of considering places in conjunction with the practice and actions of living have been identified as crucial to our understanding of space. Sarah Pink has argued that the two together ‘provide us with analytical routes to

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understanding both human activity and the environment’ (2012, 4). Deliberations on how to go about daily life and the execution of everyday practices became the forces underpinning the spatial configurations of the besieged city, inscribing its meanings. WITHIN THE CITY: THE SARAJEVO SURVIVAL GUIDE The Sarajevo Survival Guide was written as a response to the everyday dilemma of existing in the city—​a how-​to guide to survive. It was produced by FAMA (Federal Agriculture and Marketing Authority), an independent media company that had worked in a ‘new genre’ of televised political entertainment during pre-​ war Yugoslavia. FAMA describes the project as the ‘first of its kind in the world—​a Michelin-​style guidebook’, containing thirty thematic categories that provide practical suggestions to those trying to navigate the space of and life in the besieged city (Prstojević et al. 1994). Its vast range of topics—​from the ordinary to the highly specific—​include recipes for cooking without the essential ingredients, advice on how to source water in the city and, ultimately, how to dodge sniper-​fire at the most dangerous intersections. The guide uses discussions and deliberations of everyday life to chart citizens’ engagement with the city. The intensity of events described, and the diversity of life lessons underscore the nature of the interconnections between ordinary life and extraordinary circumstances. The book’s key messages—​such as ‘Sarajevo, a unique city on the planet’, ‘Sarajevo can teach you how to survive the post-​cataclysm!’ and ‘Sarajevo is the end of the twenty-​first century!’—​present the city as a site of resistance. Embodying Pink’s argument that ‘activism is itself an everyday life activity’, the guide offers advice on survival that exceeds local relevance. Showing that ordinary life has ‘equal potential for activist practices as those of the global political arena’ (Pink 2012, 5), the guide’s maps for survival interlock the social and spatial transformations of Sarajevo during the time of the siege. A map, ‘Picado de Sarajevo’, within the guide identifies the city’s main monuments as targets in a war game. Written with a tongue-​in-​cheek tone that plays on the powerlessness of civilians in the face of military might, the discussion introduced Sarajevo thus: [Around] the city in the valley of the river Miljacka surrounded by mountains which made it the host of the 1984 Winter Olympics, in the very center of what was Yugoslavia, appeared: two hundred and sixty tanks, one hundred and twenty mortars, and innumerable anti-​aircraft cannons, sniper rifles and other small arms. All of that was entrenched around the city, facing it. At any moment, from any of these spots, any of the arms could hit any target in the city. And they did, indeed—​civilian housing, museums, churches, cemeteries, people on the streets. Everything became a target. All exits from the city, all points of entry, were blocked. (Prstojević et al. 1994, 5)

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Creating an imaginary scenario for readers, the guide indicates streets made desolate by daily assaults but still alive with the activities and movement of citizens: ‘People are driving recklessly in both directions. No one pays any attention to crashes. Broken cars are abandoned easily and damage is being negotiated in quick conversations’ (1994, 57). ‘Imagine driving through streets with no street lights’, the guide states (57), recognising the importance of our senses in comprehending the environment and signalling their exponential importance when living in a city under a siege. Even without the help of light, life in the city goes on. The section on city transport describes the destruction of public services, with trams, buses, vans and trolleys no longer operating: even when ‘the fuel is gone, passengers leave the bus and continue on foot’ (58). The myriad responses to changing urban spaces, established through human experience, observation, senses and humour, present Sarajevo as a city defiant to brute military force. The guide’s focus on survival as the most essential of human needs highlights aspects of life that are crucial and that transcend locality: ‘The war has not changed the climate. The moon is still shining, the sun rises, rains fall, and it snows, too’ (1994, 7). Illustrating the impossibility of stopping civilian life through military enclosure and control, the guide presents environmental and social conditions as elements that connect Sarajevo to the rest of the world. Imagining city spaces not as fixed locations but as ‘articulated moments in networks of social relations and understandings’, Sarajevo is conveyed as extending the boundaries imposed by war (Massey 1994, 154). This approach invokes Doreen Massey’s call for conceiving ‘places’ in relation to a broader context, ‘where a larger proportion of those relations, experiences and understandings are constructed on a far larger scale than what we happen to define for that moment as the place itself, whether that be a street, or a region or even a continent’ (1994, 154). The cynical tone of the Sarajevo Survival Guide echoes the mood of citizens at the time, trapped in bizarre yet deadly conditions. The lack of food, the guide sardonically suggests, has made Sarajevo ‘a city of slender people’, ‘No one is fat any more … there lies the secret of our great shape’ (Prstojević et al. 1994, 8). It charts a comprehensive agenda for negotiating daily life in a changing city, omitting social and political commentary regarding the cause of the war. The desire for human survival rendered all questions of national difference irrelevant, though restoration of a peaceful city was the guide’s ultimate goal. Providing a cheat sheet for all, it concludes: When you come to Sarajevo, be prepared and be mature. It might prove to be the most important decision you have ever made in your life … You should know when to skip a meal, how to turn trouble into a joke and be relaxed in impossible moments. Learn not to show emotions and don’t be fussy about anything … give up all your former habits. Use the telephone when it works, laugh when it doesn’t. You’ll laugh a lot. Despise, don’t hate. (1994, 93)

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Figure 7.3 ‘Sniper! Be careful’, a street-​sign warning. Photo © Milomir Kovacević.

The guide condensed the local conditions and focused the discussion of the city in terms of the boundaries created by the siege. Its home-​grown message of survival united the fragmented subspaces of the city and transcended the invisible lines of division (Figure 7.3). REPRESENTING WAR AND THE CITY: WARCHITECTURE The multifarious project titled Warchitecture brought unique insider perspectives to the siege’s impact on the city and its people.2 It resulted in a key exhibition and catalogue, documenting the physical cultural devastation; a special issue of ARH journal, expressing personal stories and representations of the siege; and a series of postcards by the graphic design group Trio, critically engaging with the politics of war and cultural destruction through a global visual language. The travelling exhibition Sarajevo:  Dream and Reality was developed in association with the broader project and it is discussed here as part of that intellectual endeavour. MAPPING THE DESTRUCTION: URBICIDE SARAJEVO In 1993, the Association of Architects of Bosnia and Hercegovina (Asocijacija arhitekata DAS),3 collaborated with Sarajevo’s art and heritage institutions in the publication of Warchitecture:  Urbicide Sarajevo, an exhibition catalogue that records the destruction of the city’s significant structures and built fabric. The organisers’ intent was to ‘professionally document the real proportions of the war[time] destruction, which are of the highest level on some buildings’ and vitally important to the ‘urban development, functioning and identity of the city

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of Sarajevo’ (Curic et al. 1993, n.p.). The intended audience was broad—​anyone who was interested—​and the approach to documenting and presenting findings was framed by shared professional knowledge and a belief in the universal value of art and architecture. The exhibition catalogue comprises loose sheets documenting the various damaged buildings and places. It is organised to represent ‘an open structure which enables further supplementation of data from other cities all over the Republic’ (Curic et  al. 1993, n.p.). The introduction broadly and briefly describes four chronologically ordered periods in Sarajevo’s architectural development: Ottoman; Austro-​Hungarian; inter-​World War; and contemporary. The descriptions sketch out the unique characteristics of the architecture during these periods, as well as their ties and interdependence. Each catalogue entry follows a similar format: a short text that captures a brief history of the building, accompanied by photographs and plan diagrams illustrating the extent of damage to the building. This is presented in parallel translations in French, English and German, and in some cases in Arabic, too, demonstrating the intention to address an international audience. The general description of each building, comprising the majority of text for each entry, gives information such as the genesis of the building, its relationship to larger trends/​ historical periods/​other structures, a morphological and/​or stylistic description and a brief assessment of its value and significance. The assessment differs for the various buildings, from an exemplar of a style/​period or a manifestation of particular building technologies/​techniques to the location for significant social activities/​programmes or its aesthetic value. The typical structure and approach to description and documentation suggest systematic efficiency and intended brevity, indicating an underlying sense of urgency. The presentation, as noted above, follows professional architectural conventions, and the site plan contains key information, such as the number of shells or mortars that landed on or around the structure. This approach and focus on quantifiable data appeals to a sense of objectivity, and the descriptions as artefacts quarantines the entries from possible ‘political’ interpretation, as suggested in the introduction to the catalogue. Unlike the Sarajevo Survival Guide, which overlooked the specific historical references in favour of more universal needs, Warchitecture: Urbicide Sarajevo is steeped in historical context (Figure 7.4). Each case study connects the damaged building to the specific historical moment, the site and the wider urban milieu. Using conventional mapping and documentation techniques, it presents the physical continuity of architecture as testament to both historical and cultural continuity. Stemming from the socialist government’s understanding of history as continuous progress, the exhibition confirms the importance of each monument to the collective understanding of the past. With due care taken to include the heritage of Sarajevo’s diverse ethnic and religious groups, the exhibition reinforced the architects’ and artists’ belief that the real target of war was multicultural coexistence.

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Figure 7.4  A leaf from the catalogue Warchitecture. © Association of Architects in Bosnia and Hercegovina.

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The accompanying exhibition, also titled Urbicide Sarajevo, was displayed in Sarajevo’s City Gallery in November 1993. In March 1994, it travelled to several European and American cities. The exhibition’s promotional slogans passionately advocated the role of architects in protecting the city’s urban fabric: ‘In circumstances of general destruction’, ‘Genocide and urbicide’, ‘Where life is reduced to elementary needs’, ‘Architects maintain their creative energy’ and ‘The spirit of the city.’ The term ‘urbicide’ came to signify the links between Bosnian ethnic and religious persecution and the systematic destruction of Bosnian architectural heritage. The aggression was represented as both cultural genocide and urbicide, the systematic destruction of aspects of urban life that symbolised Bosnia’s coexisting communities. Implicit in urbicide is the desire to annihilate the city’s collective coexistence and the ways of life it fosters (see Herscher 2007). MAPPING DAILY LIFE: ARH The objectivity and raw reality offered in the exhibition catalogue was balanced by the personal and emotive encounters presented in the special issue of ARH:  Magazine for architecture, town planning and design, published in June 1993 and with the issue title Warchitecture. Created in conjunction with the catalogue and the exhibition, the journal presented the broader context from which the exhibition emerged. A  call for contributions asked authors to ‘comment on the situation we are in, from your personal, social and professional point of view … You can do it by a text, drawing, poem or something at [sic] your own choice’, allowing for a variety of responses (Jamaković 1993, 100). The journal published a range of issues relevant to the citizens of Sarajevo. It included a philosophical contemplation of ‘war, architecture, and town’, the global aspects of the town’s destruction, the significance of the buildings under attack and their destruction, and stories of the daily lives of Sarajevans. The issue’s opening statement highlighted the fact that the journal was produced under extraordinary conditions: ‘written by oil-​lamp light and with the sound of a rocket launcher, which is the atmosphere of our everyday lives. Luck be with those who survive. Good luck, Sarajevo!’ (Jamaković 1993, 100). The difficulties and hardship under which it was produced were also expressed by a well-​known city architect, Said Jamaković (1993, 8): This volume of the ‘ARH’ journal was made during the holocaust, but we live in hope that it will end one day. The horrors we used to watch in films are but a pale reflection of all the psychological and physical harassment which has become a part of our everyday life. We live in constant fear for our children, our dearest, in fear for mere survival.

The tragedy of citizens’ daily existence was captured by a segment dedicated to colleagues killed during the war, titled ‘In memoriam’. A  page per person memorialised the ten city architects and artists killed in the attacks, with each

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entry presenting a picture of the lost colleague and a short description of their life achievements. Ivica Prolić’s contribution on daily life in the city warns citizens that chopping the trees for firewood would have devastating effects on the city’s climate, while another, titled ‘Eggless mayonaise’ [sic], a reference to the make-​do conditions in the city, presents ‘sequences and characters’ from everyday life: Out of a sequence of sketches, I pick out some of them, which seem to be characteristic. At first sight, they have nothing to do with Architecture itself, but I claim that, as it would be noticeable afterwards, all of them are interwoven from the same threads, events, and situated in the same space and context. (Prolić 1993, 72)

Unlike the exhibition and catalogue, in which the political message was deliberately suppressed, the journal clearly signalled its political stance. Jamaković names Serbia and Montenegro as the perpetrators of the destruction and declares the ‘devastation of the town of Sarajevo … clearly reveals the intention to destroy both the people and traces of civilisation in this area’ (1993, 8). The material he and his colleagues prepared and collated was made in the face of world resistance to comprehending the extent and gravity of the crimes committed. Given the limitations of the foreign press to fully acknowledge the destruction, he suggests the onus to report was on the local population. Adding that the relentless violence makes the collected evidence immediately outdated, Jamaković repeated his call for international involvement and aid. The ongoing tug-​of-​war between international powers for and against international intervention prolonged the uncertainties for the local people (Jamaković 1993, 8). Pavle Mašić’s contribution, ‘Sarajevo symbols’, argues that the religious buildings represent multi-​religious and multi-​ethnic coexistence—​the city’s core attributes, which the nationalist paramilitary forces were trying to destroy. ‘Cultural heritage is a remembrance of mankind’, he argued, referring to the presence of mosques, an Orthodox church, a Catholic cathedral and a Jewish synagogue within the parameters of the historic quarter, the Ottoman-​established precinct of Bašcaršija. Carefully describing each monument in its historical context and physical location, Mašić presents the extent of cultural heritage destruction, with an aim of demonstrating that the attacks on ‘mihrabs [niches in the walls of a mosque] and pulpits, mimbars [steps for a preacher in a mosque] and iconostases [a reference to Orthodox churches], towers and clock towers…’ are all a part of a deliberate attack on Sarajevo—​itself a ‘symbol’ of peaceful multi-​ethnic coexistence (1993, 42). The journal depicts the emotional state of the city as a landscape of despondency and frustration, reflecting a collective feeling of abandonment by the international community. The contributions, written by authors with diverse ethnic backgrounds, were a testament to the city remaining multicultural and inclusive, and they extended the political message that the urbicide was targeting Bosnian multicultural identity.

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CHARTING THE FUTURE: SARAJEVO: DREAM AND REALITY In 1995, Urbicide Sarajevo was exhibited at New  York’s Storefront for Art and Architecture Gallery and Parsons School of Design alongside a second exhibition—​ Sarajevo: Dream and Reality. Between March 1995 and May 1996, the exhibitions were hosted at the New  York Institute of Technology, Long Island; Mississippi State University, New  York; New  York State University, Buffalo; and St Peter’s College, New Jersey.4 Sarajevo: Dream and Reality was the result of an invitation by the National Institute for Architectural Education in New York City to Sarajevo’s Association of Architects to reveal the impact war had on the architecture and architectural production in the city. The exhibition format reflected the diverse architectural profession, displaying records of the destruction of select buildings; documentation of students’ and practitioners’ projects during the siege; and urban development and reconstruction plans for the post-​war city. The correspondence between the executive directors of the National Institute for Architectural Education and the Association of Architects DAS SABiH attests to the commitment of Sarajevo architects to produce the exhibitions despite the extraordinarily dire wartime conditions. In a letter to Sarajevo’s Association of Architects, Joan Bassin, executive director of the National Institute, stated the importance and resonance of the exhibitions: ‘All the architecture magazines announced the exhibition’, highlighting that ‘the most important critic, Mr. Herbert Muschamp, of the New York Times, wrote about it from an excellent point of view and with a lot of support’ (1995). In a review titled ‘Mourning the gorgeous mosaic that was Sarajevo’, Muschamp (1995) described the harrowing wartime [conditions] under which these projects were produced: no gas or electricity; broken computers, photocopy machines and other equipment; paper shortages; classes reduced to 30-​minute sessions held in constantly shifting locations.

Muschamp saw the architects as ‘guardians’ of history and continuity, linking past and future generations of designers faced with the task of rebuilding the city. The review highlighted a ‘chilling project’ by architect Zoran Doršner, who designed ‘what might be called a model dwelling for siege conditions’. Titled ‘Destructive “metamorphosis” of 35,000 apartments into urgent facilities for family survival shelter 100m2 in concentration camp Sarajevo 1993, 1994, 1995?’, the project presents a transformation of a typical modern three-​bedroom apartment into a survival shelter (Figure  7.5). Notes on the drawing list life, work, privacy and freedom as ‘things jeopardised’ by war conditions. Another set of notes presents central heating, the toilet and electric cooking as services the inhabitants were ‘no longer able to use’. Each set of conditions informs a particular range of modification. The transformation of apartments into ‘facilities for family survival shelter’ required a rain-​collection barrel on the external wall, a new chimney outlet for the wood stove to replace central heating, and plastic sheeting, provided by UNHCR, to cover broken windows and missing external walls. Internally, the rooms were

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Figure 7.5  Zoran Doršner’s proposal for transformation of Sarajevo apartments into facilities for survival. Courtesy of Dr Rajka Mandić (private collection). © Association of Architects in Bosnia and Hercegovina.

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modified to deal with aspects of destruction and threat. The section of the unit destroyed by heavy artillery and fire was modified into an open area and kitchen garden, while all sleeping arrangements were in one room. Meanwhile the kitchen, now equipped with the wood stove, was transformed into a multi-​purpose space suitable for cooking, leisure and socialisation. A section of the transformed apartment became a dedicated wood-​ chopping and water-​ container storage area, while the internal corridor, open to the elements, was to be fitted with the sandbag protection wall. Muschamp (1995) commented: Though occasioned by catastrophe, these two shows are heartening because they highlight a critical role for architects in a changing world. The architects who created these shows are not just designers of new buildings, or conservators of old ones. They are catalysts for cultural exchange. They are makers of places, but they are also actors on the world stage. As the Storefront show demonstrates, Sarajevo is a monument both to cultural difference and to the breakdown of tolerance. The refusal of these architects to surrender to that breakdown transcends their city’s fate.

He recognised the power of design to respond to changing conditions and to realign spatial expectations and habits, and the critical role of architects in reshaping futures. PROJECTIONS OF THE CITY: THE UNIVERSAL MESSAGE OF THE ART The graphic design group Trio used a series of postcards to reveal the suffering of Sarajevans and destruction of their city during the war. The work of the three young graphic designers was well known in Sarajevo when the war started. Working in the aesthetic tradition of political posters, Trio designed award-​winning album covers for Yugoslav bands, film posters and other publicity and promotional material. The postcard series was part of the larger Warchitecture project, and its distinctive card format underscored the postal nature of the message and its aim of dissemination. ‘This document has been created in war circumstances. No paper, no inks, no electricity, no water. Just good will’, declared the message on the back of each postcard design. The postcards established abstract and often satirical connections between renowned promotional and propaganda images and the desperation and tragedy of the Bosnian situation. The iconography drew on images recognisable to a Western audience and connected with the specific conditions in Sarajevo. The postcard titled ‘Sarajevo Winter 1992’ showed the city’s architectural icons, such as the Catholic cathedral and the historic Town Hall, scrambled together on a black background under a title referencing the heyday of the Winter Olympic Games, held in Sarajevo in 1984. A  similar message was depicted more clearly on the postcard ‘1984 Sarajevo 1994’, showing the five Olympic Rings punctured by gunfire. The postcard ‘Wake up, Europe!’ referenced the well-​known First World War

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Figure 7.6 ‘1984 Sarajevo 1994’ and ‘Wake up, Europe!’, Design ‘Trio’ Sarajevo. © Design Trio, Fabrika.

propaganda poster ‘Wake up, America!’ With its changed slogan, background of Sarajevo in ruins and its subtitle—​‘Sarajevo calls every man woman and child’—​ the postcard challenges Europe to rise from its slumber and questions the lack of support for Bosnians (Figure 7.6). Playing on the commercial interests gained by large corporations during war, one postcard is a take on Andy Warhol’s famous 1962 artwork Campbell’s Soup Cans, from The Museum of Modern Art, New  York collection. The well-​known ‘Campbell’s condensed’ slogan is transformed to ‘Sarajevo’s condensed’, and the can is punctured by bullet holes. Another postcard shows the city name in the recognisable style and font of the Coca-​Cola sign, but here it is written in two scripts: Latin and Cyrillic. The postcard in Latin carries the message ‘Enjoy Sarajevo 1993’, while the one in Cyrillic claims ‘It will never be Sarajevo 1993’—​a play on the fact that Serbian language is written in Cyrillic and the message that Sarajevo will never become a Serbian city (Figure 7.7). Unlike the content of the exhibition, catalogue and journal, which strived for precision and academic recognition, the postcards sent a sardonic message about the absurdity of war. In an interview published in 1995, one Trio member stated: We wanted people to think about Sarajevo whenever they saw the Coke logo, but the word ‘enjoy’ also has a special meaning. We think there is a lot of cynicism about our fate. We wanted to show what we feel about this. (Marshall 1995)

The postcard format allowed for easy and wide distribution, and a clear and powerful message established through recognisable imagery. This enabled Trio

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Figure 7.7 ‘Enjoy Sarajevo 1993’ and ‘It will never be Sarajevo 1993’, Design ‘Trio’ Sarajevo. © Design Trio, Fabrika.

to circumvent the elaborate task of finding fine points of connection between sender and recipient. Pop art and shared cultural references ensured that both the sender and recipient spoke the same language. With the city under assault and the buildings and heritage tumbling, these works conveyed a spirit of resistance, defiance and survival. UNITING THE DIVIDED CITY To the outside world, the multifarious Warchitecture project presented war-​torn Sarajevo not as a city cut off but an environment ‘constructed out of a particular constellation of social relations, meeting and weaving together at a particular locus’ (Massey 1994, 154). The exhibitions, events and publications built, in particular ways, on the significance and magnitude of the siege, constructing narratives of deep understanding regarding the city’s social and cultural milieus. The pieces published in ARH, including sketches of daily life, presented the very human dimension of the conflict’s impact, as did the emerging domestic spaces presented in Sarajevo: Dream and Reality. The Sarajevo Survival Guide addressed the existential issues of survival, while the special issue of ARH offered heartfelt and considered fragments of life under siege. The postcards extended the complexities of the message, combining the past and present of Sarajevo, connecting the city to a global cultural landscape and framing local events within a broader

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context of war. Instead of thinking of Sarajevo according to the line of siege, the artists and architects expressed it as transcending local boundaries. The range of their complex representations highlighted the importance of multiple perspectives conveyed through legitimate systems of representation—​exhibitions, catalogues and popular media. Versed in the use of visual material to communicate their ideas, they revealed Sarajevo’s multiple spatial representations to a broad audience. The significance of these projects extended beyond the public front, offering insights into the spatial transformations of a city under siege. From images to text and drawings, the projects illuminated the ways ‘constellations’ of social spaces had been constructed and gained meaning. The process highlighted the importance of daily life to understanding spatial formations. Though not explicitly stated, the residues of socialist and Marxist desire to describe and inscribe the world through practices of living underpinned the projects, combining theory and action. The ways citizens moved around the city, the ways they assessed and estimated their engagements with the outside world, the ways they collected water, or hid behind solid walls or looked for a shelter, all determined the spatial formations of the city. Importantly, these practices not only overlaid physical space with new meanings, and rendered physical space representational, but they also genuinely connected the people to their city. The Warchitecture project composed a vision of war-​torn Sarajevo as a space the ‘imagination seeks to change and appropriate’ in an effort to stop the carnage and restore humanity (Lefebvre 1991, 39). They built on the city’s familiar terrain, longingly connecting buildings and places to a disappearing identity of Sarajevo. Recalling the multicultural city they knew, the artists and architects presented new social and political terrains as these transformed in the enclosed city. The genuine and potent ideological message presented in the projects, however, was no match for the harsh political realities. Sarajevo endured a long siege (and a long war), which ultimately divided it. Yet, the projects sent out a message of the enduring connection between a city and its people, and the power of architecture and art in defining identity. NOTES 1

2

An earlier and shorter version of this research was presented at ‘Gold: The 33rd Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand’, University of Melbourne, Australia, July, 6–​9 2016. Realisation of the Warchitecture project was carried out by the Association of Architects DAS SABiH in collaboration with other institutions, including the City Civil Defence—​Special Unit for Cultural Rescue and Heritage Protection; Republic of Bosna-​Herzegovina’s Unit for Cultural and Heritage Protection; Sarajevo City Council—​ Architectural Unit for Preservation of Cultural Legacy and Cultural Heritage. The larger Warchitecture project included exhibitions, catalogues, the journal project as well as associated projects. The Urbicide Sarajevo exhibition was presented in Sarajevo in April 1993 and subsequently toured many European cities. The exhibitions Sarajevo: Dream and Reality, organised by Rajka Mandic, and Sarajevo: Wounded City (Urbicide Sarajevo) organised by Midhat Cesovic, were exhibited in the USA. NIAE and Parsons

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3 4

School of Design were instrumental in organising and presenting both exhibitions as were the people associated with the Storefront exhibition space in New York. Architectural Association (Asocijacija arhitekata Bosne i Hercegovine) was previously called Architectural Union of Bosnian and Hercegovina (Saveza arhitekata BiH). The Storefront for Art and Architecture titled the exhibition as Warchitecture—​ Sarajevo: A Wounded City. For more information see .

REFERENCES Bassin, J 1995, Letter to Mr Hasan Cemalovic, Association of Architects DAS SABiH, 24 February, private collection, courtesy of Dr Rajka Mandic. Curic, B, Delija, N, Grozdanic, I, Hadzirovic, M, Hasanbegovic, N, Hrelja, B, Hrelja, N, Kalauzovic-​Mandic, A, Sadikovic, A, Sefic, D and Spilja S (eds.) 1993, Warchitecture: Sarajevo urbicide, catalogue, Association of Architects of Bosnia Hercegovina (DAS SABiH), Sarajevo. Herscher, A 2007, ‘Urbicide, urbanism, and urban destruction in Kosovo’, Theory and Event, vol. 10, no. 2, available at . Jamaković, S 1993, ‘Framework’, Warchitecture, special issue, ARH: Magazine for architecture, town planning and design, no. 24, June, 8–​9. Lefebvre, H 1991 [1974], The Production of Space, Blackwell, Oxford, UK, and Cambridge, MA. Marshall, T 1995, ‘Market scene. Ironic postcards from a city at war: Two graphic artists portray the soul of Sarajevo from a palette of dark humor, anger and hope’, Los Angeles Times, 28 March, viewed 15 February 2016, . Massey, D 1994, Space, Place and Gender, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Mašić, P 1993, ‘Sarajevo symbols’, Warchitecture, special issue, ARH: magazine for architecture, town planning and design, no. 24, June, 41–​44. Muschamp, H 1995, ‘Architecture review: Mourning the gorgeous mosaic that was Sarajevo’, New York Times, 10 February, available at . Pink, S 2012, Situating Everyday Life Practices and Places, Sage, Los Angeles. Prolić, I 1993, ‘Eggless mayonaise [sic], sequences and characters of my everyday life’, Warchitecture, special issue, ARH: Magazine for architecture, town planning and design, no. 24, June, 72–​75. Prstojević, M 1994, Sarajevo: The Wounded City, PP ‘Ideja’, Sarajevo. Prstojević, M, Puljic, Z, Razovic, M, Wagner, A and Cosic, B 1994, Sarajevo Survival Guide, FAMA, Sarajevo. Ramić, A 1992, ‘Between two bullets’, Oslobodjenje, newspaper, Sarajevo, 14 July, n.p. Soja, EW 1996, Thirdspace, Journey to Los Angeles and Other Real-​and-​Imagined Places, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, UK.

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8: Filling in the gaps: Walls without limits and sovereignty with exceptions Miguel Díaz-​Barriga and Margaret Dorsey1

Along the banks of the Rio Grande in South Texas, the 2600-​acre Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge provides a habitat for ‘400 species of birds, 450 types of native plants, half of the US species of butterflies, and many endangered, or candidate species to be listed under the Endangered Species Act’ (National Wildlife Refuge Association 2017). ‘Santa Ana’, as locals call it, attracts over 160,000 visitors a year, and its infrastructure includes 12 miles of trails, a visitor’s centre, wildlife observation towers and a canopy bridge. Santa Ana also sponsors events for children including a programme that grants free admission to families with fourth graders. You can hike, as we did recently, along the Refuge’s trails to a scenic overlook of the Rio Grande—​ the international boundary between the United States and Mexico—​and gaze across the water onto Mexican land. Visitors will notice the omnipresent bird watchers laden with large-​lensed cameras and tripods on guard waiting, observing and capturing birds through the pixelated fields of their digital cameras. Also, at times, you pass border patrol agents loaded with mag-​lights, bulletproof vests and Glock-​like pistols as they ride their high-​mounted bikes around the Refuge or sit parked in their vehicles. You glimpse meta-​observation as both wildlife and their observers are observed. Santa Ana is a wildlife refuge and flashpoint for President Trump’s policies to erect a wall that spans the entire US-​Mexico border.2 Members of the Trump administration and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) representatives frequently state that the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) of South Texas, where we lived and conducted ethnographic fieldwork, will be among the first places where Trump will install his wall.3 From 2008 to 2010, the United States fenced approximately 650 miles of its 1954-​mile border with Mexico. This fencing shifts; it consists of stretches of Normandy-​style vehicle barriers, concrete walls, rusty metal bollards and metal mesh that is discontinuous, especially in Texas. Trump plans to fence the remaining 1279 miles, almost all of which is in Texas. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) map of the border wall in Texas (Figure  8.1) shows the extent to which

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Redrawn by Dhara Patel, based on Allison McCartney’s Border Fence Map focused on South Texas, downloaded from Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting and OpenStreetMap contributors, www.revealnews.org/​wall/​, under the open database licence, April 8, 2017.

Figure 8.1  US Customs and Border Patrol map of wall locations in Texas. The dark lines indicate areas where the wall was constructed. The arrows indicate the location of the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge.

Filling in the gaps

parts of the Texas/​Mexico border are not walled. The Texas-​Mexico border, a river, is 1254 miles long, and the DHS erected 100 miles of border wall north of the river.4 Fifty-​four miles of border wall exists in the RGV, and DHS officials have designated more than 1100 miles of Texas land as ‘gaps’ (US Customs and Border Protection 2017; Collier 2017). The Trump administration proposed to fill those ‘gaps’, ostensibly, as Trump noted in his 2015 speech announcing his presidential candidacy, to keep Mexican ‘rapists’ and ‘criminals’ out of the United States (Washington Post 2015). Closing the gaps, as we shall see, forms part of a larger project of militarising the borderlands and building a physical and digital surveillance net that extends both into the United States and across the globe (see Dorsey and Díaz-​Barriga 2015). Of Texas’s 1154 miles of unwalled terrain, DHS has targeted Santa Ana, a 3-​mile ‘gap’ that lies between segments of 18-​foot metal bollard fencing located in the towns of Donna and Hidalgo, as their starting point for ‘sealing the border’ (Figure  8.4). Congressmen, Mayors, as well as Native American, environmental and immigration rights activists demonstrated, delivered speeches and more generally protested additional wall construction at Santa Ana. Yet, plans for construction continue while Congress debates the amount of border wall funding (will it be funded at $23 or $25 billion?) and tries to balance financial allotments with Democrats’ attempts to stabilise the legal status of DREAMERs.5 CONTROL THE HOLE: WALLS AND GAPS/​THE LACK OF WALLS Our acutely local focus does not suggest that walling is limited to South Texas or to the US Southwest. Walling, in fact, appears to be a global phenomenon. Since 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, over seventy-​five countries have erected border walls (Vallet 2014; Silberman et al. 2012). Many more are planning and/​ or reinforcing border security fortifications. States raise these ‘new walls’, to use Wendy Brown’s phrase (2014), as a prophylactic against so-​called non-​state actors, including undocumented migrants, smugglers and terrorists. As such, states deploy walls for a couple of reasons:  to bar specific types of non-​citizens from entrance; and to protect sovereignty in the face of the corrosive forces of globalisation (increased trade, migration, open borders more generally). In that context of the politics of exclusion then, what is the role of gaps? Walls seem to create gaps. Consider these headlines about border barriers globally: ‘Police find gap in Saudi-​Yemen border wall’ (United Press International 2005); ‘Gaps in Pakistan, Bangladesh borders to be plugged in 3–​5  years:  BSF’ (News 18 India 2018); ‘Last gap in Hungary-​ Croatia migrant border fence’ (Thorpe 2015); ‘Israel reinforces 10km gap in West Bank separation barrier’ (RT News 2017). In the United States, it seems normal to think of borders in terms of gaps. Consider the following headlines about the US-​Mexico border:  ‘Border Patrol to seal critical border wall gaps with gates’ (Morgan 2017); ‘Radar shows US border security gaps’ (Bennett 2013); ‘A gap-​filled Texas border fence reveals the challenges ahead for Trump’s wall’ (Herskovitz 2016). These headlines evidence

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how gaps now define our way of seeing the US-​Mexico border and remind us of the need for more security and surveillance. This ‘gap’ discourse is pervasive, even though most of the US-​Mexico border is not walled. Why, when in fact the border is more open space than fortification, do the media, politicians and citizens label the lack of walls gaps? We suggest that gaps are both spaces in need of filling to defend against projected exterior threats as well as signifiers of transformations in sovereign practices directed at just those people whom walls were designed to protect. In other words, gaps are the locus for imagining and implementing a politics of exclusion aimed globally at non-​citizens and at citizens within their very boundaries. In this security-​based imaginary, Latin America is seen as a source of poverty, violence, drugs and terrorism that are flowing from South to North, converging at the US-​Mexico border and passing freely through a gap-​filled border. The primarily Mexican-​descent population that lives in the border region, according to this narrative, is a conduit for this violence and corruption.6 Our history of the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge underscores the ways in which DHS transformed a practice as benign as wildlife preservation on the US-​Mexico border into malignant support for terrorism. We theorise border walls not only in terms of their physical manifestations but also in relation to their gaps and the border-​creating states’ desire to fill them. We, thus, frame the gaps—​and Trump’s desire to fill them through the prism of feminist philosophy inspired by Luce Irigaray (1985a)—​as the lack of wall, a lack which then necessitates more: in the case of the border wall and its concurrent gaps, it demands heightened spending on ‘tactical infrastructure’, military hardware and surveillance technology to control the hole. Irigaray (1985b) exposes the centrality of women’s exclusion from the (patriarchal) social contract and shifts the focus to rights.7 Sovereignty, through the prism of feminist theory, becomes controlling the whole through the holes. This essay theorises the way in which gaps intensify sovereign practices based on exclusion:  deterrence; rajando (splitting/​tearing); and states of exception that diminish citizens’ rights and create insecurity. Our concept of rajando derives from the radical feminist border thinking of Gloria Anzaldúa, a native of the RGV, who aligns wall making with rape, with a male state violently thrusting itself onto border bodies/​landscapes. With the case of Santa Ana, we argue, that hole-​closure is a brutal exercise of state power that, alongside its function of economic and demographic containment, builds from heterosexist assumptions to rail against democratic institutions and the voices and perspectives of women and people of colour. We conclude by underscoring the potential for change inherent in liminal spaces (Chavez 1991, 2013). Gaps can also be third spaces (of inclusion, sociality and transformation), and we analyse resistance, showing the ways in which local politicians and activists protest wall construction. Save Santa Ana activism manoeuvres beyond opposition to a wall; it confronts Trump’s politics of exclusion and asserts citizenship and rights.

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FROM DETERRENCE TO PROPULSION: GAPS AND PUSHING OUT THE BORDER The DHS map demonstrates how the 2008–​10 border wall followed the strategy of deterrence first initiated by law enforcement in 1994. This strategy sought to funnel migrants into more remote areas so that border patrol agents could more easily apprehend them, to make border crossing more difficult, and to prevent migrants from ‘blending’ into local communities. A dramatic increase in migrant deaths from dehydration and exposure, with over 300 migrants dying a year, is one result of this policy (see Missing Migrants n.d.).8 The gaps in the 2008–​10 border wall were, therefore, functional to this strategy of deterrence in that the wall formed the funnel that transformed the border crossing experience. As highlighted in their map, DHS designed border wall installation around major cities on the US-​ Mexico border, including sections near cities in the RGV. The gaps in the wall within the RGV were the initial targets for Trump’s wall. The drive to seal the entire border represents an escalation of DHS’s strategy, from Prevention through Deterrence—​funnelling migrants crossing into the United States—​to ‘pushing the border out’.9 This ‘pushing out’ represents DHS’s latest method for combatting immigration, smuggling and terrorism beyond the US-​ Mexico border into Mexico, Central America and Colombia. More specifically, the US DHS Regional Attaché for Central America, Edward Dolan drew attention to the necessity of pushing the US border out to the security threat posed by the Darién Gap in Central America. ‘Darién Jungle’ in southern Panama is seen as a major thoroughfare for migrants from Somalia, Eritrea, Syria, Pakistan, India, Congo, Iraq and Afghanistan. The jungle that Attaché Dolan references is the Darién Gap, a 60-​mile stretch of rainforest and swamp that straddles the Panama/​Columbia border. Both DHS and the media represent the Darién Gap as a zone of lawlessness through which migrants and smugglers pass through en route to the United States (Yamaguchi 2017). ‘Beware the Gap’, and other headlines, draw attention to the dangers of this ‘pristine’ jungle (Motlagh 2016). Attaché Dolan explained to Expo participants that ‘in Costa Rica we found an Al-​Shabaab member’, which explains the need for ‘pushing the border out and working with our counterparts and using BITMAP to identify bad individuals’. In fact, ‘last year we biometricised 7000 people down range’. Through the BITMAP Program, DHS works with the Mexican, Costa Rican and Panamanian governments, ‘our counterparts’ to collect biometric data on migrants (primarily fingerprints but also iris scans and facial recognition data are being gathered) to input into their databases. Currently, BITMAP shares fingerprints across fourteen countries (Department of Homeland Security n.d.). By 2020 or 2022, the Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology (HART) will be operational, and the forthcoming HART database targets the automated facial recognition rate at 95%. These efforts are meant to stop human movement through Central America and areas like the Darién Gap.

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For DHS, the Darién Gap is both an entry point into Central America and ultimately the United States as well as a major thoroughfare for migrants and terrorists from Somalia, Syria, Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan. Like DHS, major media news outlets also portray the Darién Gap as in a state of lawlessness in need of securitisation with eye-​popping titles such as, ‘Colombia: Beware the Gap’ and ‘The Darién Gap: A desperate journey’ (Motlagh 2016; Yamaguchi 2017). A corollary to this strategy of pushing out borders, partnering with other states and collecting biometric data on migrants is that border security also propels into the nation-​state that walls are meant to protect. As one panellist noted at the expo, border security is everywhere. The filling of gaps thus not only represents sealing the international boundary but also manifests the thrusting of border security into physical and cyberspace at a global level. DHS’s narrative of gaps seems to flatten reality. On closer inspection, you will learn that the Darién Gap encompasses a UNESCO World Heritage Site (the Darién National Park in Panama) and home places for the Kuna, Emberá and Wounaan tribes. These complexities are not registered by DHS. The filling of gaps thus not only represents the sealing of international boundaries but also manifests a thrusting of border security into physical and cyberspaces at a global level. Border security, in other words, is now in a state of propulsion, launching itself both within the nation-​state and outside of it (see Romero 2008, 76, 81).

RAJAR While the DHS map shows the border wall neatly traversing the international boundary, it does not. The Rio Grande does not flow in a straight line; in some places, it almost loops back on itself, and the border wall fails to follow these curves. In some places the border wall is 2 miles north of the international boundary, the Rio Grande, leaving swaths of US land south of the border wall. The border wall bisects wildlife refuges, a nature conservancy, private property, public property, urban areas, hiking trails in a world birding centre and even a golf course. We (Díaz-​Barriga and Dorsey in press) have termed these bisections as rajar (split, render or tear), a term that Gloria Anzaldúa (1987, 2) employs to capture how borders scar the landscape, divide communities, cleave cultures and violently split people: 1,950 mile-​long open wound    dividing a pueblo, a culture     running down the length of my body,       staking fence rods in my flesh,      splits me   splits  me      me raja 

 

  me raja (From Borderlands/​La Frontera: The New Mestiza.

Copyright © 1987, 1999, 2007, 2012 by Gloria Anzaldúa. Reprinted by permission of Aunt Lute Books. www.auntlute.com)

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Figure 8.2 A sign from Sabal Palm Sanctuary that reads: ‘Through the Fence, Over the Levee … No Passport Needed!’ Photograph by Scott Nicol, June 16, 2018.

Border residents who own land south of the border wall now gain access to their property through gates controlled by border patrol. Wildlife areas, such as Frontera Audubon, experienced a decline in the volume of visitors since people are unwilling to pass through the border wall. In an effort to reassure visitors, Frontera Audubon placed a sign near its entrance which states, ‘passports are not required’ to cross south of the wall. Figure 8.2 shows a sign from Sabal Palm Sanctuary that reads: ‘Through the Fence, Over the Levee … No Passport Needed!’ The border wall also cuts through the southern side of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley campus in Brownsville. An adjacent golf course, south of the wall, was closed because of a sharp decline in membership after DHS erected the wall (Nelsen 2015). The sealing of wall gaps in the RGV would increase the amount of land, including the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, stuck between the wall and the actual international boundary. This closure will block access to areas south of the wall thus representing an escalation in the politics of rajando. Areas south of the border wall are increasingly becoming a no-​mans-​land. At least this is what happened at the Hidalgo Pumphouse Museum and World Birding Center, which we discuss below. Gaps are therefore the locus for imagining and producing walls that rajan borders. STATES NORMALISING EXCEPTION The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben (2005) argues that sovereignty is exercised through the nation-​state’s ability to create states of exception through which the state acts outside of the normal operation of the law to maintain the law. Nation-​states increasingly rely on states of exception to strengthen executive power at times of crisis and to justify waiving laws.

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The US-​Mexico border wall is a product of such a state of exception. It is a reaction to unauthorised immigration and security concerns that intensified after 9/​11. Through the 2005 Real ID Act the US Congress granted the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) the power to waive any and all laws for the construction of barriers and roads between the USA and Mexico. The Act set standards for state-​issued driving licences, including features to prevent tampering, as well as changed visa limits for temporary workers and tightened procedures for asylum applications. The Act also granted DHS the right to waive any laws that interfered with its ability to construct the border wall. DHS exercised this right and waived thirty-​seven laws to erect the wall, including the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act. US citizens, environmental groups, Native American peoples and members of other organisations were not able to challenge border wall construction in court. In effect, DHS’s ability to waive laws stripped US citizens of their rights thus producing a legal state of exception (Dorsey and Díaz-​Barriga 2015). The REAL ID remains intact, and in January 2018 DHS pre-​emptively waived more than thirty environmental laws to facilitate speedy construction of Trump’s wall (Siciliano 2018). DHS deemed this practice as necessary for blocking legal challenges to the construction of the border wall through a national wildlife refuge. While the REAL ID Act allowed DHS to waive laws, constitutional rights, such as eminent domain, remained intact. Eminent domain provided a caesura for landowners to challenge DHS’s rights to their land, though these legal battles are narrowly centred on the price that DHS pays for the land. DHS only reimbursed landowners for the strip of land under the wall. Landowners who elected not to challenge DHS in court received vastly less compensation for their property (in some cases $25,000 less per acre) than those with the means to hire a legal team. The application of legal waivers (legally breaking the law to uphold it) and the intensification of eminent domain proceedings against landowners normalise states of exception (see US Government Accountability Office 2015). The Trump administration’s applications of the REAL ID Act to waive law, pre-​emptive suing of landowners and focus on building walls on wildlife refuges, renders states of exception as normal. The border wall, as it fills gaps, thus does much more than blockade the nation from threats posed by non-​citizens. The state, acting via DHS, continuously constitutes border residents as citizens with diminished rights. Gaps in the wall, and their attendant promise of more walls and border security infrastructure, fuel this process. As it has become the new anchor for these practices of state power as they manifest on the ground, the Santa Ana gap now channels border security. Because Santa Ana is on federal property, DHS can avoid a legal battle over private property compensation by building its first section (a 30-​foot high Trump wall) there. To this end, DHS now construes this gap as containing ‘brush’ that provides cover for violence and crime from Mexico to bleed into the USA.

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FROM WILDLIFE REFUGE TO HOLE CBP spokesperson Carlos Díaz (Bennett and Jarvie 2017) notes, in reply to questions about the border wall at Santa Ana, that the Refuge is a critical zone ‘lacking’ wall and full of gaps. In a separate interview, CBP Sector Chief Manuel Padilla explains that there is too much ‘brush’ in South Texas (Grieder 2016). The state did not always think of Santa Ana in this way. The creators of Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge named it after one of three tracts of land that they combined to comprise the Refuge, originally called the Santa Ana land grant.10 The Mexican Government granted 15 square miles of property to Beningo Leal on May 19, 1834. With the conquest and incorporation of the region into the United States in 1848, the Leal family began ‘to sell’ land to Anglo settlers (Morgan 2015). Between 1910 and 1930, as happened throughout South Texas, corporations acquired and stripped the land for farming. The Louisiana and Rio Grande Canal Company cleared and irrigated Santa Ana, and adjacent lands, to form the Alamo Tract, which was subdivided and sold to Anglo farmers. The transformation of the landscape from native habitat to farmland and urban spaces demolished over 95% of the subtropical Rio Grande Delta riparian forest. The southern tract of the Santa Ana land grant remained riverine forest and through the efforts of local bird watchers, the US Government acquired the forest to create the Santa Ana Wildlife National Refuge in 1943 (Morgan 2015). In 1967, the government designated Santa Ana as a Registered Natural Landmark ‘because of its exceptional value in illustrating the natural history of the United States of America’ (US Fish and Wildlife Service n.d.). Figure 8.3 shows the location of Santa Ana along the Rio Grande. In 1979, Santa Ana became part of a larger effort to establish a wildlife corridor along the Rio Grande. To do so, the US Fish and Wildlife Service obtained lands to constitute the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge (LRGVNWR) and partnered with organisations such as the Nature Conservancy and Sabal Palm Audubon. The LRGVNWR now consists of 90,908 acres that follow 275 miles along the Rio Grande. US Fish and Wildlife spent $70 million on land acquisition and an additional $20  million on reforestation. School children and thousands of volunteers planted native plants and trees in Santa Ana. Private landowners, through non-​profit organisations, also participated by restoring and protecting tracts that connected the LRGVNWR. Far from being a lack, Santa Ana was whole, part of a coordinated effort to foster biodiversity, preserve native flora and fauna and bring communities together. When DHS started planning the 2008–​10 border wall, US Fish and Wildlife and border residents publicly criticised DHS and spoke about the wall’s impact on the LRGVNWR. Fish and Wildlife officials developed a series of talking points about the border wall’s impacts on the LRGVNWR that emphasised the rare species of birds and endangered species (such as ocelot and jaguarundi) that rely on this riparian habitat. US Fish and Wildlife’s opposition to wall erection did little to hinder border wall building. The director of the LRGVNWR, Ken Merritt, has

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Drawn by Dhara Patel based on Google maps.

Figure 8.3  The location of the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge.

stated that challenging border wall construction translated into a ‘career-​ending decision’ (Schwartz 2017). Much of the land that forms LRGVNWR, including the Nature Conservancy’s Lennox Southmost Preserve and Sabal Palm Sanctuary, are now south of the border wall. DHS spared the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge in this first round of border wall construction. The wall and ‘enforcement zone’ proposed in 2017 that will extend 2.9 miles means that approximately 50 acres of old-​growth riparian forest, considered ‘the rarest habitat in the Rio Grande Valley’ will be destroyed. DHS now frames Santa Ana and other wildlife areas not as wholes but as gaps. For the state, these gaps must be closed even if this means fencing in democracy. Figure 8.4 shows current border wall construction in the region (marked in black), planned construction (in grey) and the area where DHS plans to erect the first segment of the Trump wall through Santa Ana (white). The map also shows CBP’s plan to place sections of the North American Butterfly Association’s National Butterfly Center south of the wall. In early 2017, reports circulated that DHS was holding secret meetings to plan wall construction in the region and that survey crews were active at both Santa Ana and the Butterfly Center (Davies

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newgenrtpdf

Redrawn by Dhara Patel, based on maps published by the US Government, available in the public domain at Wildlands Network.

Figure 8.4  US Customs and Border Patrol map showing where gaps in the wall are proposed to be filled, including at Santa Ana in white.

Miguel Díaz-Barriga and Margaret Dorsey

Figure 8.5 Our children running along the canopy trail at Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge. Photograph by Margaret Dorsey and Miguel Díaz-​Barriga, December 30, 2017.

2017). CBP finally communicated its plans to build the wall through Santa Ana, and other parts of the RGV during a closed-​door meeting with South Texas mayors on July 18, 2017 (USCBP 2017). US congressional representatives, surprised by the announcement, immediately issued a statement expressing their opposition to constructing a border wall at Santa Ana (Zazueta-​Castro 2017). Since then, DHS has neither held public meetings, consulted with border residents nor heeded the concerns of South Texas congressional representatives. DHS has simply moved forward by issuing a bid for constructing the wall and by spending $39 million that Congress allocated for wall construction and repair along other parts of the border for geo-​technical testing in and around the Santa Ana area. Such testing typically precedes new walling.11 While DHS views these nature preserves as a lack, others see them as an opportunity for families to learn and experience the native habitat of the region as well as observe flocks of migrating birds and flutters of butterflies. As a family, we regularly hike the trails at Santa Ana and the National Butterfly Center. Our eleven-​year-​old daughter loves to take photographs of plants, butterflies and birds. Our son enjoys climbing the observation towers at Santa Ana and both of our children enjoy playing Star Wars on the canopy skywalk (Figure 8.5). On a recent walk in the Butterfly Center’s grounds, we marvelled at the flutters of butterflies that were migrating through the region. While for some closing holes represents reinforcing sovereignty, for others it means speculating whether or not a species of rare butterfly will be able to fly over a 30-​foot wall. We wondered whether or not our children will stand among flutters of migrating butterflies in their native habitat again. The history of border wall construction at another nature preserve, the Hidalgo Pumphouse Museum and World Birding Center, is instructive here. The

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Museum, which houses steam pumps built in the 1920s to irrigate farmland, narrates the history of agriculture in the region. The adjoining World Birding Center, which formed part of the Wildlife Corridor, has hike and bike trails that lead to the Rio Grande. When we first visited the Pumphouse in 2008—​while the border wall was under construction—​one could still rent mountain bikes to ride on the trails. The mayor of the town of Hidalgo, which administers the Museum and Birding Center, told us in 2008 that he had negotiated with DHS to keep the trails open. It appears that the compromise did not endure. Instead, two years later DHS constructed a gate where there was once a gap opening to the hike and bike trails. In order to access the trails today, visitors must walk 2 miles to the next ‘gap’ in the wall (Figure 8.6). At that gap, a border patrol agent will greet you and ask why you are near the wall. The agent may or may not allow you to pass to the trails even though you are still in the United States. The hiking trails at the Hidalgo Pumphouse Museum and World Birding Center are now effectively closed to visitors, unless one wants to make the bonus 4-​mile hike around the wall (to its last gap) and back to access the bisected trail and talk to border patrol agents or national guardsmen who are often armed with assault rifles. On a January 2018, visit we talked to a museum guide. Noting that the Pumphouse had lost 80% of its land to the border wall, he told us how border patrol agents regularly stop and Figure 8.6 The end of the wall at the Hidalgo Pumphouse. Our friends George and Carolina pose by the border wall for a picture. It appears that George, standing on the south side of the wall is in Mexico and Carolina, on the north side is in the United States. That is a logical conclusion: there is the border wall that divides the USA from Mexico. Other viewers might assume that they are at the end of the border/​border wall in California or Texas. While George and Carolina smile at us as the wall separates them, they are neither at an international boundary nor are they at the end of the US-​Mexico border. They are in fact looking at us from a ‘gap’ in the border wall that is located about two miles north of the actual international boundary. Photograph by Margaret Dorsey and Miguel Díaz-​ Barriga, April 22, 2017.

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question him while he leads tours of school children through museum grounds adjacent to the border wall. He declared: ‘We no longer live in a democracy.’ INVERTING A POLITICS OF EXCLUSION President Donald Trump captured headlines during the 2016 presidential election when a media outlet released footage from 2005 with him commenting about women, ‘Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything’ (New York Times 2016). Trump remained a headline when he uttered a series of statements about the border wall, such as ‘We’re going to build a wall. We’re going to create a border. We’re going to build a wall, and it’s going to be impenetrable. I think a good 35 feet. It’s getting higher all the time’ (Nixon and Qiu 2018). To comments such as these Filemon Vela, the US Congressional Representative for Texas responded, ‘Mr. Trump, you’re a racist, and you can take your border wall and shove it up your ass’ (Livingston 2016). Does a focus on gaps provide a fruitful opportunity to discuss the meanings of a masculine heterosexist politics that equates the lack with an abyss, the non-​ modern and the other (Irigaray 1985a, 98)? Trump has made heterosexist politics a cornerstone of his campaign as he characterised Mexicans as rapists and murders, viewed migrants as barbarians and promised a big, beautiful, great wall (Schaffner et  al. 2018). Congressman’s Vela’s response to Trump lays bare the heterosexist logic that underlies Trump’s erection of walls. Part of the rhetorical appeal of the wall’s gap is that it serves as a reminder of the looming crisis at the gate and need for sovereignty to be reinforced. The state does not completely control holes, and we suggest that gaps also are a force of generation where locally based actors make new meanings, use democratic forums and contest the agenda of the state. The lack of wall as procreative aligns with Gloria Anzaldúa’s decolonial theorising, and more specifically her concept of ‘border thinking’. Borderlands, according to Anzaldúa (1987, 3), are spaces of rajando—​scarring, splitting and dividing: Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. (Emphases in original)

Anzaldúa’s New Mestiza, at the same time, experiences borderlands as generative spaces; and building from her work, Mignolo and Tlostanova interpret borderlands as a liminal space in which people ‘refuse to be geographically caged, subjectively humiliated and epistemically disregarded’ (2006, 208). Santa Ana is, in fact, a nexus where migrant rights activists, environmentalists, civil rights activists and anti-​war demonstrators gathered and challenged the militarisation of public spaces (Nixon and Qiu 2018). At Santa Ana on January 27, 2018, we engaged in participant observation at a protest rally where activists articulated ‘saving Santa Ana’ through border

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thinking:  they mapped the closing of gaps onto a wider history of colonialism and racism. At that event, Congressman Vela delivered a speech that made these connections explicit: Everyday I battle an administration, who from the very outset, has attacked people of color, has attacked our ally—​neighboring Mexico—​and attacked border communities. It really helps to know that I have the support of all of you here today […] How inhumane is it to pit our communities against each other and suggest that you will give DREAMERs a pathway to citizenship only if you spend twenty-​five billion dollars to construct a very very ill advised border wall?

Vela challenges those who render border residents and migrants as inferior and savage. For Trump, the border wall will keep the barbarians at the gate. For Vela, the barbarians are those who exchange the well-​being of people (DREAMERs) for the construction of an expensive wall that will rajar/​scar the landscape, court violence and divide communities. Women at the rally sought to invert the politics of exclusion by jettisoning the masculine discourses of gaps, a symbolic change (Irigaray in Whitford 1991, 183) that contributes to women’s inclusion. One protester held a handmade poster that read: ‘Women are the wall and Trump will pay’. The woman with the sign holds Trump accountable for his actions and inverts the metaphor of the wall into a symbol of women’s power to force that accountability (Figure 8.7). In other words, walls that cut marginalised communities become, in her hands, a dynamic force of accountability wielded by just those people, Latinas/​borderlanders/​the New Mestiza, whom Trump’s wall seeks to exclude. ‘Women are the wall and Trump will pay’ exemplifies a new politics of inclusion, a third space, where sexual dominance is not a marker of control. Other speakers at the rally articulated an alternative episteme, based on racial equality, environmental justice and respect for border communities, migrants and people of colour. A young Mexican-​American DREAMER exclaimed: The border wall pits immigrants against border communities … I am an undocumented immigrant whose voice is not heard loud enough. Act for the Dream Act and oppose the border wall!

In the full speech, the (unnamed) DREAMER takes on the role of outsider and insider, noting that she is undocumented, a productive member of society, owns a business and is a DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipient. Environmentalists focused on preserving Santa Ana, defending the wildlife corridor and supporting the rights of DREAMERs. Native American speakers referenced shared histories of imperialism and racism and metaphysical connections to the earth. The more than 600 attendees of the rally, the majority of whom were Mexican-​ origin, engaged border thinking while listening to speeches, visiting information booths and eating free tacos, elote (corn in a cup) and vegan tamales (Figure 8.8). Our family participated as volunteers stationed at the border wall information booth. We used massive maps that depicted the wall’s various locations in relation

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Figure 8.7 A protestor with sign that reads: ‘Women are the wall and Trump will pay’ at the Save Santa Ana rally. Photograph by Rocio Díaz, January 17, 2018.

to green spaces to talk with university students, families, including young children, filmmakers and professors from the East Coast of the United States about how a border wall would transform Santa Ana. We discussed the Pumphouse’s bisection with people from out of state, including naturalists who stopped by the rally after bird watching at Santa Ana. Figure 8.9 depicts Díaz-​Barriga surrounding by maps at the information booth. Meanwhile, in the main tent, musicians played border ballads, Native American groups danced and Latinx poets delivered. Throughout the day, DREAMERs, environmentalists, poets, middle-​school teachers, social scientists and a congressman spoke against environmental degradation, racism and walls. Within the ritual of the rally, there was not a privileging of expert knowledge but rather, as Mignolo and Tlostanova (2006) suggest about border thinking, a multiplicity of

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Figure 8.8 Protestors with an Ocelot costume at Santa Ana rally. Photograph by Margaret Dorsey and Miguel Díaz-​ Barriga, January 17, 2018.

Figure 8.9 Miguel Díaz-​Barriga surrounded by maps at the information booth. Photograph by Margaret Dorsey, January 17, 2018.

voices (testimonials, poetry, legal analysis, music, etc.) that transcended binaries of insider/​outsider, nature/​culture and citizen/​non-​citizen. Participants at the rally reaffirmed that the entrance to Santa Ana is not a marker of crisis, a barbarian space, an epistemic zero, a gap to be filled. It is a zone of potential, filled with life. CONCLUSION For DHS, gaps serve a purpose—​whether tunnels, holes, or ‘empty’ spaces. They also signify a crisis conduit—​for violence, crime and barbarism—​that is ready to infiltrate the nation-​state. We analyse the lack of wall as a space in which the state re-​enacts and reinforces sovereign practices based on militarisation and exclusion, as seen in our discussion of deterrence/​propulsion, rajar and states of exception/​norm exception. Gaps foster the intensification of sovereign practices

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associated with border walls, propelling border security strategies beyond deterrence to global interdictions; splitting and scarring the landscape, and making diminished rights the norm. State actors base their politics of exclusion on an exercise of power that builds from heterosexist constructs to excise the voices/​ perspectives of women and people of colour. Mexican-​American activists and politicians denounce these imaginaries by locating their struggle against the border wall in a wider politics of life for migrants, the environment, women and people of colour. Acts of protest and expressions of border thinking are increasingly necessary for, as we have seen, militarisation is in a state of propulsion. Walls proliferate at a global level, as the United States and European Union member states thrust border security measures beyond their borders into Central America and Africa. We live in a time when states are revolutionising border security measures, pushing them deeper inside and outside of their very own jurisdictional and constitutional boundaries, launching them into cities and towns, ranches and farms, backyards, jungles and wildlife refuges. For the state, gaps are everywhere. Conditions on the ground have changed since we drafted this chapter in 2017. In December 2017, DHS announced that it was planning to begin additional border wall construction at Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge. On March 23, 2018, President Trump signed into law the ‘Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018 (HR 1625)’, which allocated $1.6 billion for repair and upgrade of existing border fencing. President Trump had threated to veto the Act because the $1.6 billion fell far short of the $25 billion that he had requested to construct additional fencing along the entire US-​Mexico border. In addition, the Act specifically banned the use of these funds for border wall construction at Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge. Activists and politicians from South Texas viewed this ban as a victory while the Trump administration criticised the Act for failing to fund border wall construction in ‘the highest priority areas identified by border security professionals’ (Executive Office of the President 2018). Since the passage of this Act, the Trump administration has continued to plan border wall construction, including sending survey teams to South Texas. The struggle to protect nature preserves and parks on the US-​Mexico border continues with activists now organising protests to ban border wall construction through the National Butterfly Center, Bentsen State Park and other wildlife areas in South Texas. NOTES 1 2

3

We equally coauthored this chapter. The international boundary for the Texas portion is a river, the Rio Grande/​Rio Bravo. The wall is actually built north of the international boundary, and in our field site it has been built up to two miles north of the Rio Grande, creating a ‘no man’s land’ that runs from approximately 5 yards to 2 miles, depending on which segment of the wall you select to map. We have conducted ethnographic research on border wall construction for the last ten years from ‘deep South Texas’, an area also known as the Rio Grande Valley (RGV).

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4

Some believe that DHS builds the border wall north of the Rio Grande because such construction would violate an international treaty, the 1970 Boundary Treaty (Article IV) (see Treaty to Resolve Pending Boundary Differences) signed by the United States and Mexico. See, for instance, Hennessy-​Fiske (2017). 5 DREAMER is an acronym for The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act (s. 1291), a bipartisan bill introduced in 2001 to the Senate. 6 One place where this characterisation manifests is Generals McCaffrey and Scales’s report (2011). The Texas Department of Agriculture commissioned the widely circulated report, including US Congressional Hearings on border security. 7 Our interpretation of Irigaray on citizenship builds from Whitford’s (1991, 183–​5) analyses. 8 See De León (2015) for discussion of migrant deaths in the US Southwest. 9 Edward Dolan Regional Attaché, Central America, US Department of Homeland of Homeland Security speaking at the Plenary Panel titled, ‘Changing Flows of People Coming into the US’, San Antonio, Texas February 2018). Dorsey attended the conference and recorded Dolan’s speech. 10 See Handbook of Texas Online, William MacWhorter, ‘Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge’, viewed 21 February 2018, for this explanation. 11 Personal communication with Congressman Fil Vela, January 27, 2018.

REFERENCES Agamben, G 2005, State of Exception, trans. K Attell, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. Anzaldúa, G 1987, Borderlands/​La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Aunt Lute Books, San Francisco. Bennett, B 2013, ‘Radar shows US border security gaps’, Los Angeles Times, 3 April, available at . Bennett, B and Jarvie, J 2017, ‘This “crown jewel” of wildlife refuges is one of the world’s top bird destinations. Trump’s wall would end public access’, Los Angeles Times, 17 July, available at . Brown, W 2014, Walled States, Waning Sovereignty, Zone Books, New York. Chavez, L 1991, ‘Outside the imagined community: Undocumented settlers and experiences of incorporation’, American Ethnologist, vol. 18, no. 2, 257–​278. —​—​—​ 2013, Shadowed Lives: Undocumented Immigrants in American Society, Wadsworth, Belmont, CA. Collier, K 2017, ‘Construction-​first-​border-​wall-​segment-​begin-​november-​along-​rio-​grande’, Texas Tribune, 28 July, available at . Davies, DM 2017, ‘Alleged secret meeting casts shadow border wall Santa Ana National Refuge’, Texas Public Radio, BBC World Service, 1 August, available at . De León, J 2015, The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail, University of California Press, Berkeley. Department of Homeland Security n.d., Operations Analysis—​Biometric Identification Transnational Migration Alert Program (BITAMAP) Project, available at . Díaz-​Barriga, M and Dorsey, M in press, Fencing in Democracy: Necrocitizenship and the U.S.-​Mexico Border Wall, Duke University Press, Durham, NC.

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—​—​—​2015, ‘The Constitution free zone in the United States: Law and life in a state of carcelment’, PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, vol. 38, no. 2, 204–​225. Executive Office of the President, 2018, Statement of Administration Policy, HR 1625, Consolidated Appropriations Act, 22 March 2018, available at . Grieder, E 2016, ‘Can this man secure the border?’, The Texas Monthly, October, available at . Hennessy-​Fiske, M 2017, ‘You can build a wall—​except here a river runs through it’, Los Angeles Times, 30 January, available at . Herskovitz, J 2016, ‘A gap-​filled Texas border fence reveals the challenges ahead for Trump’s wall’, Reuters, 2 December, available at . Irigaray, L 1985a, The Sex Which Is Not One, trans. C Porter, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY. —​—​—​ 1985b, Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. GC Gill, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY. Livingston, A 2016, ‘Texas Congressman to Trump “Take your border and shove it up your ass” ’, The Texas Tribune, 6 June, available at . McCaffrey, BR and Scales, RH 2011, Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment, September, available at . Mignolo, W and Tlostanova, MV 2006, ‘Theorizing from the borders: Shifting to geo-​and body-​politics of knowledge’, European Journal of Social Theory, vol. 9, no. 2, 205–​221. Missing Migrants: Tracking Deaths Along Migratory Routes n.d. (website, ongoing), viewed 12 October 2018, . Morgan, MJ 2015, Border Sanctuary: The Conservation Legacy of the Santa Ana Land Grant, Texas A&M University Press, College State, TX. Morgan, O 2017, ‘Border Patrol to seal critical border wall gaps with gates’, American Broadcasting Company, KVUE (Austin, Texas), 1 July, available at . Motlagh, J 2016, ‘Colombia: Beware the Gap’, Pulitzer Center, 13 September, available at . National Wildlife Refuge Association 2017, viewed 15 February 2018, . Nelsen, A 2015, ‘Once-​popular golf course falls victim to controversial border wall, drug cartel battles’, San Antonio Express News, 13 December, available at . New York Times 2016, ‘Transcript: Donald Trump’s taped comments about women’, 8 October, available at . News18 India 2018, ‘Gaps in Pakistan, Bangladesh borders to be plugged in 3–​ 5 years: BSF’, 11 March, available at . Nixon, R and Qiu, L 2018, ‘Trump’s evolving words on the wall’, New York Times, 18 January, available at .

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Romero, F 2008, Hyper-​Border: The Contemporary U.S.-​Mexico Border and Its Future, Princeton Architectural Press, New York. RT News 2017, ‘Israel reinforces 10km gap in West Bank separation barrier’, 6 February, available at . Schaffner, B, Macwilliams, M and Nteta, T 2018, ‘Understanding White polarization in the 2016 vote for President: The sobering role of racism and sexism’, Political Science Quarterly, vol. 133, no. 1, 9–​34. Schwartz, J 2017, ‘Emails: US fish and wildlife officials still have concerns about border wall at Santa Ana refuge’, Statesman, 29 September, available at . Siciliano, J 2018, ‘DHS waives more than 30 environmental laws to speed Trump’s border wall’, Washington Examiner, 22 January, available at . Silberman, M, Till, KE and Ward J (eds.) 2012, Walls, Borders, Boundaries, Berghahn Books, New York and Oxford. Thorpe, N 2015, Last Gap in Hungry-​Crotia Migrant Border Fence, BBC NEWS, 2 October, online video, available at . Treaty to Resolve Pending Boundary Differences and Maintain the Rio Grande and Colorado River as the International Boundary, art. 4, 18 April 1972, United States and Mexico,  20–​23. United Press International 2005, ‘Police find gap in Saudi-​Yemen border wall’, 28 March, available at . US Customs and Border Protection (USCBP) 2017, Rio Grande Valley Sector Holds Mayoral Meeting Regarding Executive Order, United States of America, Dept. of Homeland Security, 20 July, available at . US Fish and Wildlife Service n.d. (ongoing), ‘Santa Ana’, available at . US Government Accountability Office 2015, Report to Congressional Requesters, Southwest Border: Issues Related to Private Property Damage, April, available at . Vallet, É 2014, Borders, Fences and Walls: State of Insecurity?, Ashgate/​Routledge, New York. Washington Post 2015, ‘Full text: Donald Trump announces a presidential bid’, 16 June, viewed 21 March 2019 . Whitford, M 1991, Luce Irigaray: Philosophy in the Feminine, Routledge, New York. Wildlands Network, available at . Yamaguchi, A 2017, ‘The Darién Gap: A desperate journey’, CBSN, 9 October, available at . Zazueta-​Castro, L 2017, ‘EXCLUSIVE: Monitor obtains map of proposed border wall in Hidalgo County’, The Monitor, 4 August (no longer available), .

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9: Confronting Koreas and the DMZ Ross King

For the most part borders are blurred as aspects of neighbouring states tend to bleed into each other. Border towns and cities are infused with elements of other realities. The Cold War in Europe presented exceptions though flows of information mostly persisted and the restrictions on movement were never complete (I crossed those borders many times, variously between Finland and Russia, from Czechoslovakia to West Germany, between the two Berlins, between Yugoslavia and both Italy and Greece, as examples); even its most impenetrable expression in the Berlin Wall remained transparent—​one could see over it and ideas flowed. The Korean Demilitarised Zone is different. Not so much a border as a ceasefire line in a never-​ending war, it divides what was for centuries a unified Korea into two implacably opposed nation-​states. Its effect is to enable processes of ever more exaggerated self-​definition, fed by residual global (mainly US) Cold War paranoia; it is the last, remnant border of the Cold War and essential to the survival of its fantasies. Walls, borders, protect ideologies. Rival imaginings of an ideal Korea are forced further apart as the DMZ becomes a global border. The real subject of this chapter is the production of the DMZ, then its effect in the production of ever-​increasingly alienating imaginaries at scales of the self, the nation and global realpolitik. The following account addresses three tasks. First is to trace the political and ideological construction of the two Koreas and of the DMZ as both its most dramatic expression and its inescapable enabling condition—​both producing (reproducing, reinforcing) the two Koreas and produced by them. Second is to observe the physical reality of the DMZ—​what do we see? This is not easily answered, for the DMZ’s power arguably resides in its opacity and invisibility. Its invisibility, however, lets the imagination run free; so, the third task turns to how it is imagined—​ how it enables imagination, fantasy and phantasmagoria, ensuring the constant becoming of opposing ideological universes and their representation in diverse media, including the medium of architecture. A note on method: the following is based on my observations as an outsider and occasional visitor to South Korea, also a critical consumer of projections and

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representations of the two Koreas in literature, cinema, popular culture, urban space and architecture. Although dialogue with Southerners has been abundant and revelatory, I cannot claim to understand the subjectivity of Northerners. Hence, I  have had to depend on the stories of defectors and expatriates, presented in mostly dissident literature with all its inevitable biases.1 THE DMZ IN THE REPRODUCTION OF DIFFERENCE A unified Korean peninsula had been subverted and occupied by Japan since 1895 then formally colonised—​more correctly, annexed—​from 1910 to 1945. When Japan surrendered in August 1945, two new armies of occupation moved in, the Soviets from the north, the Americans from the south. In the spirit of post-​Second World War distrust, duplicity and Cold War bargaining, the two militaries agreed on a boundary at the thirty-​eighth parallel, about half-​way along the peninsula. In 1948 that convenient demarcation line became the arbitrary border between the two militaries’ client states—​the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or simply North Korea) and the Republic of Korea (ROK or South Korea). After a colonial heritage of brutality, resistances and collaborations, Korean society was deeply divided, along ideological and political lines more than geographically—​ communist, nationalist, pro-​ capitalist, residually pro-​ Japanese, Buddhist, Christian in both North and South. Almost ubiquitous were calls for revenge against wartime collaborators. At Lavrentiy Beria’s suggestion, Stalin selected Presbyterian Christian and anti-​Japanese Communist guerrilla veteran Kim Il-​sung (1912–​94) to lead a puppet Communist government in the North. In the South, the Americans installed America-​oriented Syngman Rhee (1875–​1965), also Christian, as head of a provisional government, then as a candidate for election as president of the ROK. With American acquiescence Rhee notoriously reinstated collaborators. Each imposed dictatorship and brutal elimination of adversaries. Both North and South saw itself as the legitimate successor to a unified Korea, with the noble mission to restore a single Korea under the purity of its own hegemony. After escalating raids and gunfire across the border from both sides, on June 25, 1950 the DPRK invaded the South in force; the United Nations (for which read America) came to the aid of the South, with twenty-​one UN member states participating while China intervened for the North, also with Russian support. By mid-​1951 the frontline had returned to near the thirty-​eighth Parallel and the conflict descended into a war of attrition that continued for another two years. The fighting ended on July 27, 1953 when an armistice was signed, establishing the DMZ to separate North and South Korea. The DMZ is a strip of land crossing the peninsula, 250 kilometres long and approximately 4 kilometres wide. It is not an agreed border between nations but a ceasefire line in the reality of an ongoing war, separating two vast, ever-​poised armies (Figure 9.1). It is arguably the world’s most heavily militarised demarcation line; it is also hidden and opaque.

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Drawn by Dhara Patel with reference to Wikimedia commons, Atlas of South-​and North-​Korea.

Figure 9.1  The DMZ.

The North had emerged from the conflict the stronger of the two, with much of its infrastructure and some industrial capacity intact. In 1953 the population of the North was reportedly 9,360,000, that of the South 19,980,000. With stable leadership and generosity of its Soviet backers, by the 1960s the North enjoyed a relatively high standard of living, outperforming the South (Cumings 2005, 434). The South, on the other hand, was virtually destroyed—​Seoul had been effectively obliterated. The war hardened ideological lines, confirmed both the Kim Il-​sung and Syngman Rhee dictatorships and provoked the mass elimination of perceived dissidents and adversaries. Stalin had been the enabler of the Korean War with the Chinese, newly emerging from their civil war in 1949, providing the bulk of the North’s fighters. Although Stalin died in March 1953 before the end of the war, the Soviet Union remained the North’s prop and effectively its colonial master while, in the post-​ war recovery, Kim Il-​sung moved ever closer to Stalinist ideology and methods of control. Stalin’s rhetoric was Marxist, claiming that his version of Marxist orthodoxy was ‘creative’ rather than ‘dogmatic’ (Service 2004, 136). Robert Service sees Stalin’s few innovations in Marxism as ‘crude, dubious developments’ rather than any serious intellectual commitment (2004, 7–​9)—​indeed ‘creative’. Against that, however, Volkogonov (1991, 7) sees Stalin’s Marxism shaped by a ‘dogmatic turn of mind’ instilled in his early religious education for the priesthood. Modern assessments are that Stalin was not a nationalist; rather, nationalism would be blended with Marxism for the purpose at hand—​ whichever ethnic minority needed cleansing.

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Kim Il-​sung shared Stalin’s pragmatic (creative) Marxism and ‘dogmatic turn’; his official Juche ideology, first promulgated in 1955 after Stalin’s death, deviated from Stalin’s internationalism to promote nationalism, independence and self-​sufficiency (for which read isolationism). Juche is widely seen as a mechanism for sustaining the North’s totalitarian rule and Kim’s translation of Stalinism into a Korean context (Cha 2009). Kim rejected Nikita Khrushchev’s 1956 de-​ Stalinisation, instead progressively exaggerating the militarism and cult of personality characteristic of Stalinism. De-​Stalinisation paused during the Brezhnev era (1964–​82) and relations between North Korea and the Soviet Union warmed once more, although both economies increasingly stagnated. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991; North Korea thereby lost its economic proprietor and crypto-​coloniser, hastening its economic decline. Kim Il-​sung died in July 1994, to be succeeded by his son Kim Jong-​il as Supreme Leader, although the first Kim retained the presidency. Kim Jong-​il died in December 2011, succeeded in turn by his own son Kim Jong-​un, with Kim Il-​sung still holding the presidency under the title of Eternal President of the PDRK, and Kim Jong-​il taking the title of Eternal General Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK). North Korea presents as a Stalinist monarchy whose rulers appear as fused with their predecessors, effectively as the one person. Meanwhile, a coup in South Korea on May 16, 1961 had brought Park Chung-​hee (1917–​79) to power as military dictator. Whereas Kim Il-​sung’s background had been as an anti-​Japanese guerrilla in various resistance movements in Manchuria, Park’s early career had been with the Japanese Imperial Army, also in Manchuria in the puppet Manchukuo Imperial Army as an intelligence operative against Korean guerrillas. Park, a ‘quintessential example of colonial legacy’ (Ahn 2002, 9), had maintained close contact with Japan and his values were oriented accordingly (see Lee Chong-​sik 2012). The ‘Korean economic miracle’ occurred in his watch, in arguably the world’s most extraordinary national rise. IDEOLOGIES AND URBAN SPACE Park’s Yushin ideology was nationalist and anti-​communist—​Yushin means ‘renewal’ and ‘rejuvenation’, it also links linguistically with Meiji-​ishin or Japan’s Meiji Restoration. While the nationalistic rhetoric would always be anti-​Japanese (also anti-​American), the emulated models were overwhelmingly Japanese, and the motivating imaginary was American capitalism, though without the dream of market rationality. Where Kim’s Juche ideology proclaimed the virtues of ‘workers, peasants and soldiers’, Park’s rhetorical focus was on traditional virtues and ‘family values’. Despite the radical economic policies, the social vision was conservative, traditionalist and turning to an imagined age of family-​based goodness and virtue, all to be achieved if necessary through state violence (the suppression of labour, the elimination of communists and North-​leaners and the championing of the corporation over the citizen). It is difficult to determine the degree to which the populations bought into

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Figure 9.2 A Pyongyang parade—​ the theatre state at its zenith, Stalinism in both architecture and cult of the great leader. Source: ‘N Korea holds military parade’, ID 20151010001 186850341/​AP. Photo courtesy AAP Photo archive.

these ideologies at that time, since resistance would have been crushed. However, the ‘family focus’ persists to the present and, translating into modern Korean pop culture as its medium, accounts for South Korea’s global impact through ‘soft power’ (Kim Jeong-​Nam and Ni Lan 2011). It is a subversive but uncentred power, beyond the control of any South Korean government agencies and similarly beyond any blocking power of governments in the societies of its infiltration. While Korean entertainment companies are gatekeepers, their fragmentation and competition ensure that they, too, lack an ability to give direction to the subversion. Thus, both China and Japan become cultural colonies of (South) Korea (King 2018, 232–​4). Rival capitals were (re)built, after the disaster of the Korean War, to proclaim the competing ideologies and their respective virtues. This is clearest in the North. No state is more theatrical nor does any nation-​state stage parades and collective performances on the scale of North Korea (Figure 9.2). Kim Suk-​Young (2010) explores how sixty years of state-​directed propaganda performances—​ public spectacles, theatre, film, posters—​shape everyday practices in education, the mobilisation of labour, the gendering of social interactions and the organisation of the social space, tourism and human rights. Pyongyang is effectively a vast stage on which hundreds of thousands of loyal, citizens will be assembled to pay homage to the everlasting trinity of the Kims. Kim Suk-​Young terms the North Korean enterprise an ‘illusive utopia’. Nothing to Envy is the title of Barbara Demick’s (2010) interview-​ based book on ‘ordinary lives’ in North Korea. It describes one condition of possibility for North Korea’s success:  the utopia conveyed by the national media is one of national glory and wonderful leaders beyond which nothing could possibly be wished—​the summit of human aspirations—​‘We have nothing to envy in the world.’ It is this perfection that Pyongyang is designed to communicate.

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Figure 9.3 The Kumsusan Palace of the Sun—​erstwhile palace of the first Kim, now mausoleum of the dynasty. Late-​Stalinist style grandeur at its peak. Source: ‘North Korea, Kim Jong-​Il death anniversary’, ID 201212180006 13033887/​KCNA, EPA 03512515. Photo courtesy AAP Photo archive.

Pyongyang was allegedly planned by Kim Il-​sung after its destruction in the Korean War; on all accounts it is well laid out, wide, with green streets; it is uncluttered and it is blessed in its poverty and its economic sanctions as very few can afford cars. The city’s glory is in its monuments to the nation’s wondrous leaders and their ideology. There is the Juche Tower (1982) to celebrate the great thought of Kim Il-​sung; there is the Mansu Hill Grand Monument celebrating the achievements of the first two Kims; the Arch of Triumph, the second tallest in the world, to mark Kim Il-​sung’s victory over the Japanese; the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun (1976) was one-​time residence of the first Kim and now mausoleum of the Kim dynasty; there is Kim Il-​sung Square for the grandest displays; the Arch of Reunification celebrates Kim Jong-​Il; the Monument to Party Founding is self-​ explanatory; the Mansudae Assembly Hall, in a late-​Stalinist style, is the setting of the Supreme People’s Assembly; and the list could continue (Figure 9.3). Seoul, in contrast, lacks new monuments. There are really only two: to King Sejong (1397–​1450) and Admiral Yi Sun-​sin (1545–​98).2 Most dramatically, however, there are the reconstructions—​Seoul was the capital of the Chosun dynasty (1392–​1910) and since 1995 the national imaginary would be directed to the vision of Seoul’s continuity with something very ancient. Chosun remnants are restored; most dramatically, the immense Gyeongbokgung Palace complex, mostly obliterated by the Japanese, is being reconstructed in the South’s claim of Korean authenticity and the focal point of Seoul’s urban design (Figure 9.4). The Gyeongbokgung and other Chosun palaces would cast the Korean mind back to the great antiquity of the culture, the Kumsusan Palace would send it to something altogether more immediate and more spiritual—​Kim Il-​sung, the eternity of his presidency and the re-​making of Korean existence. Not restoration but new making. If the ideological architecture of the North is Stalinist, the South’s is that of a re-​imagined Chosun world. South Korea must be seen overwhelmingly as the creation of the dictator Park Chun-​hee and the expression of his genius, but he has no monuments. There are very infrequent plaques to people who were killed for opposing the dictatorship,

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Figure 9.4 Inside the reconstructed Gyeongbokgung Palace, Seoul. Photograph by Ross King.

but no monuments of glory. Seoul is a city of capitalism’s triumph, the ultimate expression of the hegemony and freedom of the corporation, beyond all control. But more, Seoul is also the city of the consumer’s (the dissident’s) break-​out from the world of the corporation. There are the grand avenues of corporate towers but also the backstreets of dissidence, creativity, the avant-​garde, new ideas—​out-​of-​ control and anathema to the purity of the North (Figure 9.5). There are precincts of technological creativity and innovation, of the visual arts and new cultures (and the subsequent global explosion as the Korean Wave, Hallyu, K-​pop), and there is also a diversity of religious expressions. No city is more effusive in its demonstrations and dissidence—​protests are ubiquitous, especially on the trains of the world’s largest and densest subway system, protesting against government, the Japanese, the Americans, international institutions, corporations or for one of many religions. Where Pyongyang is the most correct of cities after its Stalinist fashion, Seoul is the most modern, most innovative and most creative but also the most revealing of corporate capitalism’s possible endpoint. Each city is the dialectical opposite of the other. The North’s control of information renders the South invisible, while its domestic media and propaganda seek to inflame rage towards the South; the South, for its part, invokes the fear of an unpredictable, ever-​threatening North hovering at the DMZ. Especially reinforcing rival understandings of nation is shared military experience. Military service is compulsory in both Koreas and awareness of the DMZ is constantly reinforced and universal through that shared experience. Conscripted militaries confront each other virtually, never seeing each other; further, the

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Figure 9.5 Seemingly disordered Seoul space: [left] Gangnam, [right] Namdaemun. While Seoul presents no Stalinist space (though witness the National Assembly Building, King 2018, 99), likewise Pyongyang presents no disorder (Figs 9.2 and 9.3). Photograph by Ross King.

physical construction of the DMZ is such that it too is elusive. There is a conjured, landscaped visibility, leaving the apprehensive imagination to dwell on the reality of what remains invisible. DMZ AS A PLACE: LANDSCAPING THE VISIBLE DMZ The ‘core’ of the DMZ is the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) which marks the front when the armistice was signed; the zone then comprises the 2-​kilometre buffers either side of that line, yielding a zone width of 4 kilometres. Soldiers of both sides may patrol within the DMZ but not cross the MDL. The confronting militaries are then massed in the territory beyond the zone. There is a singular contact point between the two sides, the Joint Security Area (JSA), at the western end of the zone near the former North Korean village of Panmunjom; it is where the 1953 armistice was signed and the building of the signing, in traditional Chosun dynasty styling, still stands, about 1.2 kilometres north-​west of the JSA. (There is often reference to the ‘Panmunjom Peace Village’. The village has gone, however, with only the armistice building still standing, now presented as the North Korean Peace Museum, and Panmunjom is mostly a metaphor for the JSA.) There is a symbol of a dove above the door of the armistice building—​at the time of the signing a copy of Pablo Picasso’s The Dove was hanging inside the building, the Americans objected to it (Picasso was a communist) and it was covered up (Jager 2013, 284–​5). The JSA straddles the MDL and consists of an assemblage of blue buildings—​ a wonderful ambiguity, as blue is the adopted colour of the United Nations but also of South Korea (the Blue House is the official residence of the President of Korea). The MDL goes through the middle of the conference rooms and runs down the middle of the conference tables. All negotiations between the sides, whether fraught or theatrical, will occur here (Figure  9.6). The urban design of the JSA creates the stage set for the periodic theatre of the Koreas’ performance of détente. Although Panmunjom village has gone, there are two old villages permitted to remain within the DMZ under the terms of the armistice. Daeseong-​dong

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Figure 9.6

is in South Korea close by both the Bridge of No Return and the North Korean city of Kaesong; 2.22 kilometres away is Kijong-​dong in North Korea’s half of the DMZ and widely referred to as Propaganda Village. In North Korea Kijong-​dong is referred to as Peace Village, where it is claimed to have a collective farm run by 200 local families serviced by a childcare centre, kindergarten, primary school, secondary school and hospital. However, the South Korean account is that the town is uninhabited, established during the 1950s using propaganda skills to encourage pro-​North defection from people in South Korea as well as to house and provide for Korean People’s Army (KPA) troops manning the extensive network of artillery positions, fortifications and underground command-​ and-​control centres surrounding the zone. It features brightly painted multi-​storey and low-​rise concrete buildings, all apparently empty—​indeed, a stage set. The town’s central feature is its flagpole: in the 1980s the South Korean government built a 98.4-​metre flagpole in Daeseong-​dong; the North responded with a 160-​ metre pole in Kijong-​ dong, the ‘Panmunjom flagpole’. Massive loudspeakers mounted on the buildings would blast propaganda to the South, initially to extol the North’s virtues to woo defectors from the South. However, when that proved a miserable failure, the propaganda shifted to anti-​ Western diatribe, patriotic marching music and, in the early Stalinist manner, agitprop. Beyond the DMZ is the Civilian Control Line (CCL) designating an additional buffer zone to the DMZ, varying from 5 to 20 kilometres from the southern limit of the DMZ. It is here that the unseeing conscript soldiers will amass and the tourists will be bussed—​their photographs will mostly be of the CCL rather than the unseen DMZ. There have been two gaps in the impenetrability of the DMZ. The Kaesong Industrial Zone is in North Korea and adjoining the DMZ as a joint North–​South enterprise area to utilise the North’s cheap, educated labour and the technology and management skills of ROK enterprises. Announced in 2002, it began operations in 2004, suffered interruptions from the mood swings of the North’s politics, collapsed rancorously in 2013, reopened and again collapsed in

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The Joint Security Area (JSA). The huts in the foreground are the meeting/​negotiating places and are painted blue (colour of both the United Nations and South Korea); the more formalist building beyond expresses the PDRK’s assertion of entitled hegemony over the zone, whereby the huts are merely tolerated. Source: ‘South Korea North Korea Diplomacy’, ID 20180426001 343554114/​EPA. Photo courtesy AAP Photo archive.

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2016. The second anomaly is the Mount Kumgang Tourist Region, also in the North and adjoining the DMZ; it opened in 1998 to enable South Korean tourists to visit and the North to collect revenue; it closed in 2008 after the shooting of a tourist. On present evidence, distrust and political capriciousness inhibit inter-​ Korean cooperation. There are other ‘propaganda villages’ to the south of the DMZ. The most challenging of these is Heyri Art Village, also known as Heyri Art Valley in Paju district in the DMZ’s CCL zone. It is an assembly of artists, writers, painters and other creatives, allegedly Korea’s largest artistic community and a large-​scale display of avant-​garde architecture. There are numerous galleries, museums, exhibition halls, concert halls, small theatres, cafés, restaurants, bookshops, art shops and living spaces for artists. There has also been an attempt to acknowledge ecological reality. It is many things: at one level a commercially savvy marketing device for Korean artistic production; at another it draws on the ancient tradition of the Confucian artist’s retreat as escape from a world of urban political violence; at yet another level it is an immensely popular cultural theme park, in something of a dialectical relationship with the far more diffuse explosion of Hallyu and K-​pop. However, there is a far more mind-​numbing dialectic: Heyri Art Village is only 6 kilometres from the DMZ, within eye-​sight of it. The South’s extraordinary outburst of creativity is thrust at that barrier of the DMZ. Reference is due to a further aspect of the DMZ as place. This is an extensive trans-​peninsula corridor that has been undisturbed for close on seven decades; the forest has regenerated, the indigenous fauna returned, bio-​diversity enriched and we have a magical land of an ancient Korean natural splendour, albeit insidiously reinforced with networks of landmines. The landscape imaginaries suggested in Heyri Art Village, also in Paju Book City nearby (King 2018, 184–​9), might be seen as highlighting a dilemma—​whether to intervene to establish a restored (imagined) ‘original’ landscape, or to leave the (landmined) landscape alone, to its own processes as a landscape of modern division like at Gaza, Mexico, Golan … THE DMZ AS TERROR After the stalemate of the 1953 armistice, Kim Il-​sung’s Stalinism persisted but he also looked back to essentially Maoist lessons from his earlier experiences as an anti-​Japanese guerrilla in Manchuria. In the face of Korean War indeterminacy, the South would be infiltrated, undermined and subverted into the Kimilsungist fold, the ultimate purpose of the DPRK and the WPK and reason for their existence. There have been incidents, incursions and skirmishes involving both sides from the very beginning of the DMZ, escalating to become the Korean DMZ Conflict (1966–​ 69), often referred to as the Second Korean War. On the night of January 17, 1968, thirty-​one men of the North’s Unit 124 penetrated the DMZ, infiltrated Seoul and on January 20 mounted the Blue House Raid in an attempt to assassinate President Park. Also that month, North Korean patrol boats seized the USS Pueblo in international waters, coinciding with the Tet Offensive in South Vietnam and providing

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rich pickings for conspiracy theorists anticipating a more global conflict. When the USA began to negotiate with the North over the incident, President Park accused US President Johnson of appeasement. Park threatened to ‘go North’, until a slight calm was negotiated. By late 1968 it was clear that Kim Il-​sung’s (Maoist) strategy of unconventional warfare had failed to ignite the expected insurgency in the South, the US–​ ROK relationship was stronger than ever and Park had cemented his legitimacy. The WPK line, of course, was perfection itself and it was impossible to conceive that it would not appeal to the South, so the fault must have been in its implementation (Michishita 2010). Corrections were made: the North’s defence minister and top generals were duly executed in the Stalinist manner and a new strategy would focus on a vastly augmented conventional army, the new priority of the North’s economy, under the rubric ‘military first’. However, infiltration continued, since November 1974, South Korea has discovered four tunnels crossing the DMZ, believed to have been military invasion routes from the North. It is estimated that there may have been a total of seventeen tunnels. Today the tunnels are tourist attractions for visitors from the South. The power of the DMZ resides beyond its opacity, in the myths that accrete to it. The most intriguing of these myths is that of the Korean Wall. A shocked North Korea confronted the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the symbolism of a wall unjustly—​ultimately ineffectually—​dividing a people. The North began to propagate information about a Korean Wall similarly dividing the Korean people, claiming it had been constructed by the South between 1977 and 1979. It was alleged to stretch the 250 kilometres of the DMZ, to be 5–​8 metres high, with its south side packed with earthworks which enable access to the top but make it effectively invisible from the south. The North released photographs purporting to be of the Korean Wall;3 the South and the Americans, on the other hand, see its existence as being only in the North Korean constructed imagination. The purported Korean Wall is worthy of comparison with the Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall’s power resided in part in its brutal visibility, the Korean Wall’s in its fictional presence, that is in its command over the imagination. Every threat and horror can be projected even onto fictional objects as we shall see in the following. The Berlin Wall offered a disturbing omen: it presented an abiding power to divide, yet it was ultimately not a power that the Soviets and their client state could command. Minds could not be controlled and desires crossed the wall. The Korean Wall might disrupt desires, though this is uncertain; it cannot, however, control imaginations. For the North there is another disturbing comparison:  there is no Vietnam Wall. North Vietnam won its war with the Americans and their clients, North Korea arguably did not. DMZ AND THE IMAGINARY: CONFIGURING THE INVISIBLE DMZ The myth of the Korean Wall provides an entry to the place of the DMZ in the imagination. The DMZ exists differently in the imaginations of the South, though

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more in interpretation than as something constructed. Seoul is within artillery range of the North’s armies lining the zone; there are routine defence drills for its citizens, the visitor’s hotel room will contain survival equipment in the event of chemical or nuclear attack, the massive subway system is planned to serve as nuclear shelters (though its trains are also seen as potential carriers of infiltrators), the Han river presents the constant threat of a more maritime infiltration from North Korean frogmen and midget submarines. A problem is that rivers cross the DMZ showing no respect for geo-​politics. In October 1995 infiltrators were intercepted at the Imjin river, attempting to enter down the Han river. A recurring feature are the ‘water panics’, starting in 1996 when it was discovered that the North was building massive dams on the Imjin river giving them the opportunity to suddenly flood Seoul. In September 2009 floods were sent without warning towards Seoul. The underlying unease running through the imaginations of Seoulites is a rich field for reflection and aesthetic interpretation. The angst of the South Korean condition—​the heritage of colonialism, the shame of collaboration, war and obliteration, dictatorship, the DMZ and the threat from the North—​has especially been expressed in the vast outpourings of the ‘New Wave’ Korean cinema, beginning in the 1990s and identified with melodrama and auteurism (McHugh and Abelmann 2005).4 Typically in this genre is Bong Joon-​ho’s The Host of 2006 where family values (Korean values) are interwoven with the blockbuster-​monster-​special-​effects genre:  an unremarkable family is thrust into the extraordinary events of a human-​consuming monster in Seoul’s Han river. At one level the film becomes a commentary on the imagined threats of America’s presence in Korea and the complicity of the Korean political establishment—​the implication is that the monster is linked to American biological experimentation and the aftermath to Korean official disinformation, although Bong has rejected any charge of anti-​Americanism. Instead, he insists, it is a parable on the ambiguity of the Han river in the minds of Seoul people—​familiar and comfortable yet dark and threatening, defining the city yet also potentially the city’s path of impending destruction (Bong 2007). The mirage of anti-​Americanism won The Host the rare distinction, for a South Korean film, of official North Korean praise. The film is almost exclusively set along the banks of the Han river, the architecture is dark and futuristic, the river—​the always dreaded pathway of that other monster of threatened invasion—​is constantly menacing. Kim Kyung-​Hyun (2011, 190) suggests an explicitly architectural reading of The Host. In this and others of his films, Bong is seen as preoccupied with an evolving landscape ‘mauled by the hurried pace of industrialisation and modernisation’—​and landmines (190). These are films directed as much to the oppressions wrought in the name of the South’s ‘family values’ and the brutality of its capitalism as to the Stalinism and mindless terror of the North. There is another, even more savage depiction of Seoul that brings both North and South to an apotheosis. It emerges as one layer in Cloud Atlas, a multi-​layered, 2004 novel from English author David Mitchell, subsequently adapted into a 2012

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German-​American film (Mitchell 2004; and on its translation to cinema, Mitchell 2012). Nea So Kopras is an immense, economically powerful corporate nation centred on a unified Korea where Korean-​style neo-​capitalism has run amok, the world’s last bastion of civilisation, ambiguously defined. Its capital is Neo-​Seoul. Nea So Kopras is a corruption of ‘New East Asian (Sphere of) Co-​Prosperity’—​ the Imperial Japanese vision finally achieved, albeit with a Korean hegemony. It is a ruined world, virtually uninhabitable. Unification has long since been achieved and we witness the glorious culmination of both North and South—​a Stalinist, capitalist hell. It is the endpoint of the dialectic—​thesis, antithesis, synthesis. The myth of Neo-​Seoul might be read as an ironic metaphor on the debates of present Korean historiography: the colonial era returns but it is now Korea that exercises hegemony, there is a form of frenetic neo-​liberalism, also democracy but only corporations have the vote, Confucian hierarchy reigns—​the Kimilsungist ideology persists. A satirical projection of what might happen when the DMZ ends. OTHER EXPRESSIONS There has been another Korean cinema, this time from the North, where the great master has been the second person of the Kim confluence.5 In September 1967, twenty-​six-​year-​old film buff Kim Jong-​il was appointed Cultural Arts Director of North Korea’s Propaganda and Agitation Department. Hollywood was young Kim’s envied realm of dreams and it was Hollywood blockbusters that he would emulate as he took control of the cinema industry. His output was both prolific and trash, so Kim devised an audacious plan to achieve real quality: in 1978 his agents kidnapped renowned South Korean director Shin Sang-​ok and his one-​time wife, admired leading lady Choi Eun-​hee, who were subsequently ‘invited’ to collaborate with Kim on a series of ‘quality’ blockbusters. They made seven films together, mostly nationalist melodramas, also the widely praised social-​realist drama Salt (1985). Then there is Pulgasari (also 1985), a Godzilla (1954) rip-​off, but featuring a terrifying monster with noble socialist-​Stalinist sentiments, in some anticipation of the equally political The Host. Shin and Choi eventually escaped in 1986. Any juxtaposition of Pulgasari contra The Host presents a revealing dialectic. As noted above, a melodramatic thread had long run through Korean cinema; however, even as early as the iconic Arirang (1926), there was (anti-​Japanese) satire, undermining the sense of the melodramatic (Atkins 2010, 2). The great flowering of the melodramatic genre was in the 1960s, especially with the prolific output of the great Shin Sang-​ok, subsequent collaborator with the even greater though less talented Kim Jong-​il (Chung 2014). Peter Brooks (1976) argues that a melodramatic imagination is one that seeks hidden moral values in a world in which values are being destroyed—​‘primal secrets or essential nature has been suppressed and awaits liberation’ (Moon 2006, 48). In this melodramatic tradition, the 2000 film JSA of Park Chan-​wook, portrays the JSA as a place of mystery.6 It was much acclaimed and the highest-​grossing film in Korean history at that time, apparently touching the anxieties of its age.

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Against a melodramatic imagination is an ironic imagination and view of history. Irony builds on ambiguity of meaning—​rather than look for hidden meaning in history, irony would point to the uncertainty of history by showing that positive truth is not possible. Moon Jae-​cheol goes on to suggest that by 2006 there was an emerging post-​New Wave cinema in South Korea in which the melodramatic was being supplanted by the ironic. The Host was in 2006 and its seething irony palpable; in the North the melodramatic pursuit expressed in the output of Shin, Choi and Kim would seem to have continued. We are confronting here not only a barrier (the DMZ) across space and ideas, but also across the imagination—​a far more fundamental divide. As argued earlier, the North and the South can only imagine the other; however, if the very nature of imagination is divided—​what can be imagined, melodrama or irony, and what each such form of imagination both enables and prohibits—​then communication becomes even more impossible. Melodrama offers entertainment and certainty—​a melodramatic film of the Korean War was The Bridges at Toko-​Ri (1954), heroic, inspiring, celebrating the goodness of American values; by contrast, M*A*S*H, the film, from two decades later (1970) depicts the Korean War from a relatively benign ironic viewpoint—​American certainty has eroded (the Vietnam War). Irony becomes more ambivalent and more savage with Apocalypse Now (1979) on themes of the later Vietnam War—​there is only doubt. The belief in an ultimate truth (the North) confronts an imagination that dismisses any such possibility. Paul Fischer (2015) has recounted the improbable event of Shin, Choi and Kim, where Kim Jong-​il’s intoxication with American cinema culture is also well documented. It is based on Shin and Choi’s own accounts of the story, with Fischer explicitly dealing with the scepticism that has greeted these accounts—​were they kidnapped or did they defect? There is also Kim Jong-​il’s own reporting of his brilliant cinematic career (Kim Jong-​il 2001). Fischer’s decidedly over-​dramatised story of Shin, Choe and Kim fits into what is effectively a publishing industry, the great-​North-​Korea-​escape literary genre (reviewed in King 2018, 287 n. 48). There are many books in the genre, on all the evidence selling well. These, however, are not stories of the DMZ, since the DMZ is largely impenetrable overland. Instead, escape is occasionally by sea, very rarely by air (defecting air force pilots) but mostly across the northern border into China. There is also a literature on expat North Korean communities in Japan, seemingly fiercely loyal to both nation and regime, dreaming of return (Ryang 1997). THE DMZ: A CONCLUSION The architecture and built space expressing the worlds constantly re-​produced through the enabling violence of the DMZ run as threads through the space of the DMZ itself—​blockhouses, military emplacements, lookout towers, huts painted blue (the South) against the formalist (Stalinist) monument behind them (the North), bigger and better flagpoles and, of course, the wonderful imaginary or

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reality of the Korean Wall. That, however, is not the real story. In its seeming impenetrability, the DMZ not merely divides a realm of a shared, common culture in a state of conflicted ideologies, but also isolates the different discourses of those ideologies from each other. If each discourse, North and South, merely iterated in its own isolation, the result might have been an enriching, reflexive, self-​reconstructive re-​imagining of a dreamed Korea. However, the DMZ, as an emblem of a never-​to-​be-​ended civil war, ensures that each discourse will not unfold in isolation but in savage response to its perceived (imagined, dreaded) other on the other side of that distortion of the thirty-​eighth parallel. The DMZ is determinative of the two defining ideologies of the present age and of the urban spaces that they would enable—​it is definitional of an almost frenetic freedom (Seoul, the South, progress beyond control, apotheosis of capitalism, creativity unconstrained, Hallyu, soft diplomacy, globalisation), versus the control to right thinking (Pyongyang, the North, self-​containment, isolation in an uncontaminated realm of ideological virtue, obedience, the acceptance of great leadership):  capitalism versus Stalinism, each taken to extreme levels in the last geographic theatre of an obsolete Cold War. If these extremes could be brought into dialogue—​the interweaving of two logics—​the dreadful consequences of each might be contemplated. NOTES 1 2

3

4

5 6

Also facing this dilemma, see the extensive writings of (North) Korean-​American Sonia Ryang, for example Ryang (1997, 2012); also Kang Hyok (2005). There is the War Memorial of Korea, a 1994 establishment of the military dictatorship, though more museum and Confucian temple than a monument to the regime (Kal Hong 2011). While there are numerous other museums which would express the values of successive governments, they are scarcely to be seen as monuments to regime or ideology. On the purported Korean Wall, see ‘DMZ—​Demilitarized Zone’, viewed 3 October 2018, . Korea Konsult is the PDRK’s travel agency. Also, Erik Eckholm’s (1999) article in the New York Times, ‘Where most see ramparts, North Korea imagines a wall’. More extensive and contextualised accounts of Korean film history are to be found in: Lee Young-​il and Choe Young-​chol (1998); Lee Hyangjin (2001); Chung (2014); (King 2018, 207–​17). On a wider analysis of the translation of North Korean ideology into North Korean cinema, see Workman (2014). The film JSA, from 2000, directed by Park Chan-​wook was based on the novel DMZ by Park Sang-​yeon (1997), who also wrote the screenplay for the movie.

REFERENCES Ahn, B 2002, ‘The significance of settling the past in modern Korean history’, Korean Journal, vol. 42, no. 3, 7–​17. Apocalypse Now 2018, streaming DVD recording, Kanopy, Sydney (film originally released in 1979, directed and produced by Francis Ford Coppola).

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Arirang 1926 (lost), Korean silent film produced by Yodo Torajo and distributed by Choson Cinema Productions (film originally released in Seoul, Korea and directed by Na Woon-​gyu). Atkins, ET 2010, Primitive Selves: Koreana in the Japanese Colonial Gaze, 1910–​1945, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA. Bong, J-​H 2007, Exclusive: The Host’s Bong Joon-​ho (Interview with Bong JH), 6 March, viewed 14 June 2011, . Brooks, P 1976, The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama and Modes of Excess, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. Cloud Atlas 2013, DVD recording, Warner Bros. Entertainment, Neutral Bay, NSW (film originally released in 2012, North America, and directed by Lana Wachowski and Tom Tykwer and Andy Wachowski). Cha, V 2009, The Impossible State: North Korea Past and Future, Vintage Books, New York. Chung, S 2014, Split Screen Korea: Shin Sang-​ok and Postwar Cinema, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN. Cumings, B 2005, Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History, WW Norton and Co, New York. Demick, B 2010, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, Spiegel and Grau, New York. Eckholm, E 1999, ‘Where most see ramparts, North Korea imagines a wall’, New York Times, 8 December, viewed 3 October 2018, . Fischer, P 2015, A Kim Jong-​il Production, Penguin Vintage, London. Godzilla 2002, DVD recording, Sony Music Entertainment, Classic Media, New York (film originally released in Japan in 1954, directed by Ishirō Honda and then an American adaptation Godzilla, King of the Monsters was released in 1956 directed by Terry O Morse). Jager, SM 2013, Brothers at War: The Unending Conflict in Korea, Profile Books, London. JSA 2002, DVD recording, Modern Audio (International) Ltd, Tai Seng Video Marketing, San Francisco (film originally released in South Korea in 2000 and directed by Park Chan-​wook). Kal, H 2011, Aesthetic Constructions of Korean Nationalism: Spectacle, Politics and History, Routledge, London. Kang, H 2005, This Is Paradise: My North Korean Childhood, with P Grangereau, trans. S Whiteside, Little, Brown, London (originally Ici, C’est le Paradis: Une Enfance in Corée du Nord). Kim, J-​I 2001, On the Art of the Cinema, University Press of the Pacific, Honolulu. Kim, J-​N and Ni, L 2011, ‘The Nexus between Hallyu and Soft Power: Cultural Public Diplomacy in the Era of Sociological Globalism’, in DK Kim and M-​S Kim (eds.), Hallyu: Korean Popular Culture in Asia and Beyond, Seoul National University Press, Seoul, 131–​154. Kim, K-​H 2011, ‘The Blockbuster Auteur in the Age of Hallyu: Bong Joon-​ho’, in D-​K Kim and M-​S Kim (eds.), Hallyu: Korean Popular Culture in Asia and Beyond, Seoul National University Press, Seoul, 181–​206. Kim, S-​Y 2010, Illusive Utopia: Theatre, Film, and Everyday Performance in North Korea, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI. King, RJ 2018, Seoul: Memory, Reinvention, and the Korean Wave, University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu. Lee, C-​S 2012, Park Chung-​Hee: From Poverty to Power, KHU Press, Palos Verdes, CA. Lee, H 2001, Contemporary Korean Cinema: Identity, Culture, and Politics, Manchester University Press, Manchester.

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Lee, Y-​I and Choe Y-​C 1998, The History of Korean Cinema, Jimoondang, Seoul. M*A*S*H 2002, DVD videorecording, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Australia (original film released in 1970 and directed by Robert Altman). McHugh, K and Abelmann, N (eds.) 2005, South Korean Golden Age Melodrama: Gender, Genre and National Cinema, Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI. Michishita, N 2010, North Korea’s Military-​Diplomatic Campaigns, 1966–​2008, Routledge, London. Mitchell, D 2004, Cloud Atlas: A Novel, Random House, New York. —​—​—​2012, ‘Translating “Cloud Atlas” into the language of film’, The Wall Street Journal, 19 October, viewed 19 August 2015, . Moon, J-​C 2006, ‘The meaning of newness in Korean cinema: Korean New Wave and after’, Korea Journal, vol. 46, no. 1, 36–​59. Park, S-​Y 1997, DMZ, Mineumsa, Seoul, Korea. Pulgasari 2000, videorecording, Rubbersuit Pictures, United States (film originally released in 1985, North Korea and directed by Shin Sang-​ok). Ryang, S 1997, North Koreans in Japan: Language, Ideology, and Identity, Westview Press, Boulder, CO. —​—​—​ 2012, Reading North Korea: An Ethnological Inquiry, Harvard East Asian Monographs 341, Harvard University Asia Centre, Cambridge, MA. Salt 1985, Produced by Shin Film (film originally released at Moscow Film Festival, Soviet Union and directed by Shin Sang-​ok; further details are unavailable). Service, R 2004, Stalin: A Biography, Macmillan, London. The Bridges at Toko-​Ri 2014, DVD recording, Payless Entertainment, Ultimo, New South Wales (film originally released in 1954, North America, and directed by Mark Robonson). The Host 2007, DVD recording, Eastern Eye Asian Cinema, Madman Entertainment Australia (film originally released in South Korea in 2006 and directed by Bong Joon-​ho). Volkogonov, D 1991, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, trans. H Shukman, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London. Wikimedia commons 2019, Atlas of South-​and North-​Korea, viewed 18 January 2019, . Workman, T 2014, ‘The Partisan, the Worker, and the Hidden Hero: Popular Icons in North Korean Cinema’, in KH Kim and Y Choe (eds.), The Korean Popular Culture Reader, Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 145–​167.

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10: The remembered village between Europe and Asia-​Minor: Nea Magnisia at Bonegilla Anoma Pieris

Nea Magnisia, a village outside the Greek city of Thessaloniki, was one of several thousand refugee settlements created following the 1923 forced population exchange between Greece and Turkey, the disruptions of which shaped the modern history of Greece (Klapsis 2014). Resettled from Bursa, Muradiye and Hamidiye, in Anatolia, in Asia Minor (the Ottoman name for present-​day Turkey), residents adapted the rationalised grid of modular houses allotted by the Refugee Settlement Commission (Colonas 2003), transforming the bare land into a village. Few of these original buildings remain in the thriving rural town some 11 kilometres from the city. This chapter uncovers Nea Magnisia’s history through a group of architectural models built by Anastasios (Tasos) Kolokotronis and exhibited at the ‘Bonegilla Immigrant Experience’, a national heritage-​ listed, former border camp space marking the entry point of post-​war European immigrants to Australia.1 Having emigrated to Australia after the Second World War and fulfilled his migrant dreams, Tasos began to nostalgically replicate Nea Magnisia through miniatures. At Bonegilla they appear as anomalies, as a Greek-​Australian immigrant’s affective engagement with another nation’s displacement heritage. However, whereas Nea Magnisia outside Thessaloniki is transformed by development, the remembered village persists. What do the models of Nea Magnisia convey for their Australian setting and how might they accommodate displaced social memories? When does the story of an individual come to represent the wider group, transcending personal experiences and journeys? This chapter argues that history, memory and material reconstruction combined in nostalgic recovery adds new value and purpose to existing displacement heritage. Ethical approaches towards current refugee reception can be learned through diasporic stories. These stories in turn may determine decisions on what is saved, discarded or reinvented when heritage is institutionalised. BORDER CAMP HERITAGE Between the end of the Second World War and 1960, Australia’s population rose from around 7 to 10 million and by 1961, from among the top ten migrant

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categories, Europeans (at 37%) were comparable with those from the United Kingdom (at 40.4%) (Australian Government n.d.; Phillips et  al. 2010–​11, 27, table 7).2 Their arrival enriched and diversified Australian society, enabling ambitious programmes of industrialisation, including major hydro-​ electric schemes, increased steel manufacture and railway expansion. From among some 2 million immigrants who arrived between 1945 and 1965, many European refugees and ‘assisted’ migrants passed through temporary facilities distributed throughout Australia;3 many were former military camp sites built during the Second World War.4 The vernacular heritage of these camp sites, many of which had been dismantled, gained prominence as a form of social memory when government policy turned to multiculturalism during the 1970s (Koleth 2010). Following the efforts of former immigrants and later the Albury Museum (Pennay 2009, 44–​6), ‘The Bonegilla Migrant Experience’ (BME) came to be developed as the recognised commemorative camp space for these European arrivals within Australia’s post-​ war displacement histories (Figure 10.1). Bonegilla’s selection was partly due to the retention of some portions of the repurposed military training facility which had operated as a migrant camp from 1947 to 1971 (Pennay 2007, 2–​4). The original military complex could house up to 8000 persons and was supported by civic facilities and amenities. A Prisoner of War (POW) Control Centre for Italian POWs awaiting repatriation was included between 1944 and 1947 (11). The migrant camp was administered by the army until 1949 and later, during the 1960s, co-​located with army facilities (Pennay 2009, 46–​9), its military oversight a troubling feature of many post-​war refugee camps at the time.

Figure 10.1 Bonegilla Migrant Experience, 2015. Photograph by A. Pieris.

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Camps like these—​ unlined, timber-​ framed, modular, army huts, clad in unpainted, corrugated, galvanised-​iron sheets and modified for various functions—​ were poorly adapted for civilian occupants (Pennay 2007, 2; Dellios 2017, 15) and separation—​first by gender and later as family groups, once the men departed on two-​year work assignments—​meant that camp experiences were often negative. Programmes for assimilation refashioned immigrants as ‘new Australians’, ignorant of the systems and processes of Australia.5 New-​ness was also associated with lack of sophistication and manual labour. In the words of artist-​architect Alex Selenitsch (2012), who passed through Bonegilla as a child, the camp was ‘a machine for making Australians’, in reference to Le Corbusier’s (1986, 4) famous analogy of the house-​machine.6 However, Bonegilla was later feted as the birthplace of multiculturalism in Australia and a gathering point for popular non-​Anglophone memories (Dellios 2017, 8, 173). The distinctions made between British and other European immigrants was a legacy of the ‘White Australia Policy’ (Jupp 2002), a series of acts created since federation in 1901 that had restricted non-​European entry into Australia converting its population to largely Anglophone with an Indigenous minority. British immigrants arriving after the Second World War found relatively favourable conditions such as improved facilities or family hostels and were eligible for Housing Commission accommodation (Pennay 2009, 50). They entered an Anglophone society. For example, photographs of the Tudor monarchy were once displayed at Tudor Hall, one of the larger barracks at Bonegilla, ‘to help migrants identify with the British heritage of Australia’ (BME n.d., 1). Some twenty-​ three buildings of Block 19 preserved at Bonegilla earned a National heritage listing in 2007 and have evolved to incorporate migrant ephemera recalling daily routines and practices at the camp facility. These memory-​ fragments institutionalise popular memory at a clearly identified entry-​point into Australia. Place identities and histories eviscerated by assimilation are retraced through photographs and artefacts. At Tudor Hall we learn that around 15,000 assisted Greek rural workers arrived in Australia under the 500 Greek Farmers Project by July 1953; many worked as kitchen hands in the facility and on-​the-​job training helped them get employment elsewhere. ‘A Greek Family’, the Kaperonis family, is presented as typical, their story beginning with Bonegilla. Over 160,000 Greek immigrants came to Australia during the 1950s (Museum Victoria n.d.). The twenty-​five architectural models of Nea Magnisia appear unlike any other group of memorabilia at Tudor Hall, or the crude linear barracks that house them. The painted foam core miniatures of homes and institutions are embellished with human figures, farming implements, farm animals, vehicles and foliage. The brightly painted window frames and white-​washed walls evoke their Mediterranean origin. The models appear nostalgic; a migrant’s longing for home. But, the prefix ‘nea’ (new) to the name Magnisia (Manisa in present-​ day Turkey) conveys a history of newness and displacement originating in an early twentieth-​century border conflict, when former Ottoman period cultural affiliations divided along Greek or Turkish national lines. Nea Magnisia was a

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new village for refugee families displaced from Bursa, and from Muradiye and Hamidiye in Manisa, during the formation of the Turkish Republic in 1923. The end of the Ottoman Empire; the ensuing border conflicts and resultant forced population exchange between Greece and Turkey under the January 1923 Treaty of Lausanne saw formerly porous imperial borders retract around nation-​ states. Tasos’s ancestors who as fugitive relatives of the revolutionary, Theodore Kolokotronis (Kolokotronis 2010, 3) had fled Ottoman persecution to Muradiye in the nineteenth century (changing their family name to Karabetsoglou), were forced to return to Greece. Despite the dispersal of these and similar populations throughout Australia, the complex upheavals of twentieth-​century Europe that prompted their emigration rarely entered the nation’s history. Their culturally and linguistically diverse pasts were either deliberately forgotten or effaced by assimilation and post-​war nation building. Alexandra Dellios (2017, 34–​6) notes that ‘[u]‌nder an assimilationist rationale, the inter-​ethnic and political tensions that existed in migrant’s homelands were expected to be left behind upon migration’ (35), but, in fact, they often persisted in inter-​ethnic and political tensions within the camps. Other more distant border struggles and their extraterritorial memories accumulated to surface decades later as narrative threads within immigrant biographies. Persons displaced by the dissolution of social or cultural systems often embody their residual features as integral to their self-​knowledge. This embodied knowledge challenges the time-​space parameters naturalised by host nations, presumed upon shared histories and geographies. Displaced persons, upon entering a society, unsettle emplaced and essentialised subjectivities. Political counter-​ strategies of ethnic cleansing (or legalised cultural exclusions) seek to fortify sedimented values. Between the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the beginning of the Second World War, the national identities of Greece and of Australia were forged through such strategies. Immigrants and refugees use facets of nostalgia as passive resistance to assimilation, in tactics James Scott (1985) might identify as weapons of the weak. Distanced from natal ontological contexts, they may use simulation or representation to secure disengaged memories. These take different forms. Heritage sites, such as BME, conserved retrospectively, conceive of immigrant-​processing environments as ontological starting points; places where the diverse multi-​ethnic and multi-​lingual immigrants to Australia embarked on the path to Australian citizenship. Conversely, the tableau of Nea Magnisia stretches this history by attempting to recover a persistent but incongruent past that resonates only with one particular stream within the Greek-​Australian diaspora, those who share Asia-​Minor heritage. Autobiographical interjections modify the flow of the collective narrative and objects mediate specific cultural memories. The places attached to these memories are spectral backdrops; other sites and histories that are only hinted at. By pricking these thin veins of nostalgia, we draw Europe into Australia, as a broader physical context for its displacement stories.

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NOSTALGIA Nostalgia’s etymology from the Greek nostos (to return home) and algia (pain) suggests an intense longing for the native land, a desire for mythical return, or the loss of an enchanted world with clear borders and values notes Svetlana Boym (2001, 3, 8). She differentiates between restorative nostalgia evoking national past and future, as found in institutionalised memories, and reflective nostalgia based on individual and cultural memory (49). Michael Pickering and Emily Keightley (2006, 921)  argue that the two dimensions of nostalgia, of melancholic reactions or utopian longings, are in fact relational and co-​ constitutive:  nostalgia’s central concern is with loss (923). Many writers discuss social modernity as coeval with nostalgia (Boym 2001, xvi), but also how individual memories construct or negotiate their relations to collective identities (Pickering and Keightley 2006, 925). For example, when asked to donate objects for an exhibit of migrants’ suitcases, Tasos instead highlighted what he had left behind. The reconstructed objects that convey his story mediate a situated shared social memory. Miniatures play a complex role in this field of memory. As noted by Susan Stewart (1993, 69), they are linked to nostalgic versions of childhood and history, diminutive versions of experience preserved from contamination; capturing a reality which no longer exists (60). Conversely, architects use miniatures to visualise existing conditions or project possibilities. Tasos’s miniatures legitimise his nostalgia while documenting a planned refugee environment of the 1920s, among several thousand that received Asia-​Minor refugees. They also reveal how refugees modified these basic environments over time. Whereas nostalgia is often presented in tension with modernity, the models uncover a modernising process. Tasos’s model-​building skills, learned while studying farming technology at the American Farm School in Thessaloniki after the Second World War, inform the rudimentary implements and vehicles that are miniaturised. Two unpublished accounts: My Memories into Arts and Folklore (Kolokotronis 2008) and The Book of My Life (Kolokotronis 2010) covering sixteen periods, from Greece (periods A–​ E) to Australia (periods F–​P) supplement them. Tasos began building models of Nea Magnisia from memory during the 1990s, some years following retirement, in his garage/​workshop (Kolokotronis 2010, 266). As their numbers mounted, filling available space, he gifted them to the National Centre for Hellenic Studies at La Trobe University, where they were on display (2003–​08). Upon that centre’s closure, the models were relocated to Bonegilla (curated by the Albury Library Museum), where they remained in a room in Tudor Hall from 2011 to 2018. By November 2018, however, the lack of climate controls at the site caused BME staff to consider terminating the display. My attempts to delay this process through telephone conversations with them and with several curators in Melbourne, during December 2018, uncovered the fragility of extra-​national features within immigrant heritage. The models will be returned to Tasos, their uncertain future compounded by evident incongruities.

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Since Greta, the centre through which Tasos entered Australia, had been long dismantled, there is no host camp for his immigration story. Europe’s twentieth-​ century catastrophes enter Australia’s national narrative via the British experience of the two World Wars. Third-​generation migrants (the new audience for Bonegilla), educated in Australian history, may be unaware of their multi-​layered past and their focus on post-​ migration histories and opportunities diminishes their relative value. Immigrants’ memories are thus territorialised; their life histories are recommenced in recipient geographies and pasts that occurred outside the national border are rendered as nostalgic. Negative perceptions of nostalgia as sentimental or regressive (Pickering and Keightley 2006, 920), further silence and reduce these complex memories. Furthermore, Australia’s physical distance from the sending nations and insulation from global processes deepens general ignorance of the former life-​worlds of immigrants and refugees. The problem this poses for refugee histories becomes acute when border-​processing systems declare them stateless. THE ASIA MINOR CATASTROPHE Nea Magnisia was shaped by the disintegrating Ottoman Empire, the Balkan Wars of 1912–​13 and the creation of the Neohellenic state in 1912 (Hastaoglou-​ Martinidis 1997, 494) when the Greek nation stabilised its frontiers following the First World War (494). Encouraged by the 1920 Treaty of Sevres and egged on by the Allies (mainly Britain, France and the USA), Greece used its armies to further pursue the Megali Idea, an irredentist ambition aimed at reclaiming trans-​Aegean territories. Their failure and retreat, and the exodus of fearful Christians from the Asia-​Minor territories, escalated into ‘the Catastrophe’. Based on figures collected in the Ottoman census (around 1914), the Christian population of Asia Minor was estimated at between 1.2 and 1.4  million largely from Pontus, Capadocia and Eastern Thrace (Klapsis 2014, 622). Although violent acts were committed by both the retreating Greek Army and the retaliating Turkish forces, the expulsion had a greater impact on Greece. From September 1922 onwards consecutive waves of refugees, many of them women and children, made their way across the Aegean to Greek territory. Tasos describes the panic at Smyrna as recounted by elderly villagers (Kolokotronis 2010, 6) and later by fellow travellers en route to Australia. The burning of that city appears as a psychic wound in many immigrant stories. The Convention of Lausanne,7 for the forced compulsory exchange of Greek-​Turkish populations, retroactively legitimised and safeguarded their eviction, from May 1, 1924. Refugees could take all movable property but could not return without authorisation of their former governments. At the onset, displaced populations suffered high mortality rates due to dislocation and poor living conditions. The 400 families from Bursa and Manisa spent four years in tented accommodation in Thessaloniki’s army quarters. They had insufficient food, sanitation or clothing, and suffered bouts of Malaria and

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Meningitis (Kolokotronis 2010, 6). At the final count there were over 1 million refugees (Klapsis 2014, 632), the only exceptions being the Greek inhabitants of Constantinople and the Muslims of Thrace. Approximately 355,000 Muslims left Greece for Turkey (Hastaoglou-​Martinidis 1997, 498). The majority of refugees were settled in northern Greece: around 650,000 in the Macedonian region of Greece and Western Thrace with some 150,000 in urban areas and a further 117,000 refugees in Thessaloniki (Hastaoglou-​Martinidis 1997, 494, 498). The Convention legalised mutual ethnic cleansing so that each nation could achieve a culturally homogeneous polity, strengthening republican and communist politics in Greece and ridding the Turkish bureaucracy of its major critics (Gürsoy 2008, 96). This created the space for authoritarian government in both countries. The Greek population, which had increased from 2.6 to 4.7 million after the Balkan Wars, rose to 6.2 million following the Treaty of Lausanne (Kontogiorgi 2006, 50). Although of Greek Orthodox faith, the languages and cultures of the Asia-​Minor refugees were alien to their fellow-​Greeks. Similar feelings of estrangement were felt by Muslims arriving in Turkey. Border hostilities between Asia and Europe were embodied. THE NEW GREEK COLONIES The Greek government could not provide for this huge influx of Asia Minor populations. A  Resolution on July 5, 1923 saw the creation of a Refugee Settlement Commission (RSC) to monitor and administer the settlement process. The League of Nations administered funds and the Greek department of social welfare and several refugee relief organisations worked alongside (Hastaoglou-​ Martinidis 1997, 498; Colonas 2003, 168). Some 2.1 million acres were made available to the Commission for a group-​oriented resettlement project ‘moulded to the development needs of the country’ (Kontogiorgi 2006, 79). Article 119 of the reformed constitution of 1927 permitted the establishment of refugee colonies including land division, town planning and the building of dwelling units. Rural and urban classifications of the refugee population determined the terms of integration into Greek society (Kontogiorgi 2006, 95). However, as Elisabeth Kontogiorgi notes in her incisive study of rural resettlement, groups were further divided by place of origin and relative levels of impoverishment—​because those who fled before the Convention could not bring over their transportable property (95). As evident in Renée Hirschon’s (1998) pivotal study of Kokinnia in Piraeus, individual and kinship relations centred on families were renegotiated in restricted and shared refugee properties (Hirschon 1998, 134–​165). Hundreds of Greek villages and suburbs bore the names of lost homelands and many societies and foundations keep their memory alive through collective nostalgia for the hamenes patrides (lost homelands in Greek) (Millas 2003, 227; see also Historical Archive of Hellenic Refugees 1998). Conversely in Asia Minor due to smaller numbers affected in a smaller percentage of the population (3.8% compared to 20% of the population of Greece) and media censorship until the

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late 1950s, there was less Turkish interest in the exchange at that time (Millas 2003, 227–​8). The compulsory population exchange transformed Thessaloniki. The city, re-​ planned by French architect Ernest Hébrard in 1918 following a devastating fire, was undergoing reconstruction in 1922. The mainly Jewish refugees displaced at that time had been accommodated locally, in camps not yet disassembled. Following the Beaux Artes model of functional zoning, a new axial design introduced modern apartment blocks (Hastaoglou-​Martinidis 1997, 498–​7) in a homogenous property grid—​a form of individuation already apparent in Ottoman territories where rights over immovable property were granted irrespective of faith or ethnicity (Colonas 2003, 164). In Greece, a new law governing horizontal property redistributed ownership within individual apartment buildings from 1929. Although settlement policy retained and respected community identities, the displaced population’s sense of property was synonymous with modernity. As observed by Vilma Hastaoglou-​Martinidis (1997, 498), at first, whole families rented rooms in dwellings, and parànkes (timber shacks) and houses abandoned by departing Muslims accommodated the refugee influx. But, once the exchange was ratified, and settlement legislated, the surface area of housing created by the Ministry of Social Welfare in Thessaloniki (390 hectares) was more than the surface area of the intra-​muros city (330 hectares) (499). More significantly, in her view, by expanding the local workforce quite substantially ‘[t]‌he refugee inflow speeded up the transformation of Thessaloniki into an industrial regional metropolis’ (504). Some 509 new agrarian colonies were created for 180,000 people on 359,000 hectares; an ‘epic enterprise’ (498–​9) (Figure  10.2). Some seventy-​five of these were in Thessaloniki’s immediate vicinity, radically altering the marshy surrounding landscape and expediting Greece’s first experiment in modern social housing. More than fifty new colonies formed a mosaic of hastily developed housing districts encircling the planned city (499). They were built on the urban fringe, at least 1 kilometre away from built-​up areas, to preserve their social homogeneity (499). Despite some initial hostility, small land ownership proved to be ‘a vehicle for urban development’ and ‘a means for social integration’ (504) in Greece. The Macedonia Resettlement Directorate commissioned the Sommerfeld-​ Dehatege company (DHTG) to build 10,000 dwellings by May 1925, to be finished by the RSC, and a further 15,000 were built by local companies (Colonas 2003, 170). Fred Forbát, appointed technical director in late 1924 assumed oversight of the process (Athanassiou et al. 2017, 349). DHTG built the stone foundation, wooden frame and tiled roof, leaving adobe or masonry walls to be filled in by refugees. By 1930, the RSC added 52,000 dwellings, to the 64,000 abandoned by Muslims and 13,000, built initially by the Greek state (Colonas 2003, 173). Within months of settlement the uniform linear houses were differentiated by brightly painted windows, white-​washed drains, porches, benches and planting (176). In 1926, the refugees from Muradiye were allotted a settlement at Arapli, with offers of houses, farmland and compensation to married couples. This prompted hasty marriages among them. They moved into the RSC housing units

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Figure 10.2  Map showing the extent of refugee settlements in Greece 1923–​26. Collection of CHA—​Cartographic Heritage Archives, Donation: M. Myridis. Ref. E932: «Χαρτογραφώντας τη Μακεδονία 1870–​1930», Εθνική Χαρτοθήκη, Θεσσαλονίκη 2004. Inset: Thessaloniki and surrounds, showing Arapli in a shaded circle, adapted from above map by A. Pieris.

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and, despite marshy and mosquito infested ground, turned the barren land into a ‘paradise’ (Kolokotronis 2010, 8). The town was named Nea Magnisia, since the dominant population was from Manisa, while the settlers from Bursa occupied the north-​western section of the town grid. THE REMEMBERED VILLAGE Tasos’s models provide an auto-​ethnography of how the refugees transformed their village over time. His modelling materials include foam core, textured papers, paint, sand, small pebbles and simple tools such as tweezers, a box cutter, white glue and a box of paints. Tasos describes a childhood watching the village assume its form. He writes, Persistently, I would go to watch various projects that were taking place in the village, like: houses, stables, bread baking ovens, wells, water pumping machines, ploughs and other farming equipments. Even I would go to Thessaloniki to watch some craftsmen building all sort of horse carts, packsaddles, iron works, also I would stare at the mechanics doing repairs on cars which in those days garages were operating outdoors. (Kolokotronis 2008, 8–​9)

Period maps show the evolution of the organic town of Arapli, sometimes called Lachanokipos (vegetable garden), from a small cluster of homes of Slavic-​speaking Greeks and Romani people to a rationalised grid.8 The grid, as drawn by Tasos, identifying individual homeowners at that time (Figure 10.3), shows a diamond-​ shaped town plan of forty-​six blocks, on one side of the railway northward to Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Turkey. Many blocks were of similar proportions, with six properties of 1000 square metres each, their unfenced houses built against the boundary line (Kolokotronis 2010, 26). They came with no amenities, just the basic so-​called ‘German’-​plan housing frames. Block 29 was shared by the Kolokotronis, Hadji Eleftherio and Iani Iannidis families. Tasos’s models uncover the expansion from simple four-​ roomed houses to sizeable and multi-​ functional dwellings (Figure  10.4). At the front half of their house was his father’s coffee shop (1925–​67), a multicultural (and multi-​ dialect) gathering space where a band of musicians would perform on weekends (Kolokotronis 2008, 22; 2010, 10) (Figure 10.5). A kitchen, toilet and outdoor oven were added at the back. Tasos helped Vasilis Hedjieleftherioy (Big Basil) and Niko Hatzimarkos build home-​extensions for Athanasios and Anthi Hatzimarkos (1925–​ 2003) (2008, 65) in 1942, including an entry hall and four rooms: kitchen-​dining room, sitting-​bedroom and a black-​smith and cart-​making shop. Later additions were a cart port, fireplace and stable and a well with a hand pump, a chicken coop, outdoor toilet and pit. Manure accumulated in the front yard. The home of Mr A. Hadjimarkos, the village president, built in 1925 (2008, 25) (Figure 10.6), functioned as the community office and coffee house; his elevated status evident in a steel spiked fence around a concrete yard.

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Figure 10.3  The grid of Nea Magnisia, as drawn by A. Kolokotronis.

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Figure 10.4 Refugee dwelling, showing extension. a. Model built by A. Kolokotronis. [above]. Photograph by A. Pieris. b. Refugee house in Nea Magnisia in 2018. [below]. Photograph by A. Tsakonas.

New community buildings were added to accommodate the inflow of refugees through the reunification of dispersed families; the primary school, the council house, the communal well. The model of the mudbrick church of the Slavic Greeks, St Athanasios (2008, 23) (Figure 10.7), where Tasos was baptised, shows storks in the bell tower and names on the crosses in the graveyard. This soon gave way to a new church to Saint Panteleimona constructed inside the village on half the yard of Tasos’s primary school (1936–​mid-​1970s) (Figure 10.8). Several models show structures dating from the Ottoman period such as the stone water mill of Nea Magnisia and the landmark White Tower at Thessaloniki, a former

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Figure 10.5  Kolokotronis café neon in Nea Magnisia. a. Sketch by A. Kolokotronis [above]. b. Plan [below, left]. Drawn by A. Tsakonas. c. Model built by A. Kolokotronis [below, right]. Photograph by A. Pieris.

Byzantine fortification rebuilt as a garrison and prison. The home of his wife Christina’s grandparents in Porroia of Serres, in Greek-​Macedonia is modelled as a two-​storey residence (1890–​present) (58–​9), whereas a typical regional dwelling shows a cantilevered upper storey with animals beneath. Human figures of the knife sharpener, the boulgour (who crushes grain), the wood cutter, the free trader and the carts for various uses animate the buildings. They are included as an effort at educating school children in the mechanics of a previous era. A notable absence is of houses from Muradiye. Tasos learned of conditions at Muradiye, second hand, from fellow villagers who visited Turkey in 1994 (Kolokotronis 2010, 3–​4, 13). Its spectral presence,

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Figure 10.6 Neighbouring homes. a. Model of the Hatzimarkos family home, showing a corner of the yard with original house, built by A. Kolokotronis [above]. Photograph by A. Pieris. b. Model of the Hadjimarko home, showing yard and fence, built by A. Kolokotronis [below]. Photograph by A. Pieris.

insufficiently known to recreate in miniature, suggests a different kind of nostalgia, which Yael Navaro-​Yashin (2012) in her study of Northern Cyprus, describes as an ‘affective geography’. Her example, from the 1974 partition of the island suggests how we might theorise a post-​social landscape, by interpreting the fragments of the displaced occupants’ former homes and livelihoods. This third interpretation of ‘spectral’ nostalgia charts the underlying violence of eviction, uncovered in retrospective analyses, such Tolga Köker’s on Muradiye (2003). Köker bases her account on fourteen interviews conducted by Leylâ Keskiner in 1998. The Turkish government subsidised the Turkish Maritime Company to transport the refugees, and they were allocated abandoned properties in the Rum (Greek Orthodox in Ottoman Turkish) neighbourhoods (198). Inappropriate land allocations, unfamiliar environmental conditions and inadequate compensation

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Figure 10.7 The church of St Athanasios. a. Model of church building and graveyard, built by A. Kolokotronis [above]. Photograph by A. Pieris. b. The reconstructed church of St Athanasios as it is visible today beyond an abandoned portion of expressway [below]. Photograph by A. Tsakonas.

and assistance were among key complaints (201). Due to suffering caused by the retreating Greek army in 1922 when sections of Manisa and neighbouring towns were set on fire (Neyzi 2008, 115), Muslims arriving from Greece were greeted with hostility. For example, the local Muslim population of nearby Karaali village used the railroad line as a hostile border between themselves and the new comers (Köker 2003, 200), although as Köker notes (202) subsequent refugees from the Balkans in 1939 were treated with similar hostility, symptomatic perhaps of the instability of the still-​nascent Turkish national identity. There was a higher consensus on national identity in Greece by then, observes Millas (2003, 229). At Muradiye, the entire former Rum was populated by Muslim muhacirs (refugees in Ottoman Turkish) who settled in three mahalles (quarters) identified

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Figure 10.8 The school building. a. Tasos Kolokotronis at home in 2013 with models of the school and the mill [above]. Photograph by A. Pieris. b. The school today [below]. Photograph by A.Tsakonas.

by Turkish national heroes. Some 598 of 2833 residential buildings were unoccupied (Köker 2003, 194). Two mosques and twenty-​two tea houses were the key sites of socialisation, and the largest employers were the municipality and a soda-​ pop bottling factory. While some built new apartment buildings, noted Köker, the majority lived in the original houses assigned to them upon arrival (195) while mythologising their large, abandoned properties in Greece. The breakup of social

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units in land allocations, the division of families and arbitrary place-​assignments through a ‘poorly organised and ill-​planned resettlement programme’ (205) had impoverished them. THE VILLAGE AT WAR The successes or failures of irredentist nationalism were soon buried in a different catastrophe, once Italy declared war on Greece in October 1940. Tasos’s annotations record the buildings repurposed for mobilisation and defence. His father’s café became a recruitment point of soldiers for the Albanian front. It was used as an ammunitions clearing centre where children cleaned hundreds of boxes of cartridges and loaded them into magazines (Kolokotronis 2010, 16). The house next door was a wool storage centre where women knitted clothing for the troops. German occupation forces arrived in April 1941. Tasos recalls a sky darkened with planes heading to attack the allied forces in Crete. A young man walked 10 kilometres from Thessaloniki with a wardrobe on his back to exchange for bread and vegetables (22), and many city people, facing starvation under the occupation forces, came to barter for provisions. When his mother offered fruit to allied prisoners of war (23) [Australians, New Zealanders and British] she was reprimanded at gun-​point by a German soldier. A German tank shot a hole through their kitchen wall (51). The 6 kilometres between the village and Thessaloniki became a jungle of railways and ammunition stores—​the target of allied raids. Tasos has modelled a ‘Jewish cart’ meant for heavy haulage from factories, ports and railway stations, used by Jewish fruit and vegetable merchants who visited during the flowering season to buy fruit crops in advance. He notes that it had small wheels and no springs, and could make a spot turn (30). The German soldiers rounded up the Jews in Thessaloniki confining them to a barbed-​wire enclosure from where they were ‘repatriated’ by train to concentration camps (31). Tasos’s account of wartime Greece is no longer nostalgic. In fact, we sense the build up of circumstances that persuaded him to emigrate. En route to a new school in Thessaloniki, he witnessed a mass execution of civilians as a reprisal for an ambush on a German convoy and this experience ended his schooling (43). The final war years were spent with relatives at Veria, a partisan village fighting the Germans, where he helped supply food to resistance fighters, and witnessed many atrocities (44–​51). The liberation of Greece, the execution of collaborators and the looting and destruction of public properties are among his worst memories. The complex of factories, buildings, barracks and storage between the village and Thessaloniki were dismantled and looted ‘down to the last brick’ (53). Construction of Nea Magnisia’s Town Office, interrupted by war, resumed with the employment of three Italian prisoners of war (POWs) in 1945. It was torn down eventually in 1967 for a two-​storey office building. The destruction and spectral recovery of buildings, recorded in Tasos’s miniatures, unveil aspects of wartime violence, often suppressed in refugee stories.

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But in the case of Nea Magnisia, the greater casualties came later due to the northern expressway, which divided the village from its farmlands during the 1960s–​ 1970s. The 1980s unification of Europe increased land values in the area, and properties were subdivided and redeveloped by the residents. Tasos spent the civil war years (1946–​49) at the Farm School in Thessaloniki and later served in the army. Across many small encounters with public and private organisations, which uncovered levels of poverty and corruption, his decision to leave Greece solidified. An immigration official diverted his application from Canada to Australia promising him blondes, beaches and plenty of work (168). JOURNEY TO AUSTRALIA In December 1954, along with 600 ‘assisted passage singles’ (men), Tasos arrived on the refurbished merchant and hospital ship, Cyrenia (Kolokotronis 2010, 9) and was sent to Greta migrant centre in New South Wales. There he found many Eastern European and Baltic immigrants housed in two so-​called hutted ‘cities’: the brown-​ coloured oiled timber weatherboard ‘Chocolate City’ and corrugated iron Nissen hutted ‘Silver City’ (Keating 1997). It resembled, he says, a concentration camp. Greek migrants, who had difficulty learning the English script, were largely directed to manual jobs that did not recognise existing skills. After one month at Greta, with ‘scorching heat and millions of flies’ (Kolokotronis 2010, 180)  and the work prospect of laying irrigation pipes in Queensland, he and two friends abandoned the camp. Tasos’s disillusion with and intense dislike of his ‘start of life in Australia’ (197), was echoed by many of his compatriots. Nevertheless, he was disappointed to find Greta had been dismantled when he visited there with his spouse, Christina, in 2005. Tasos’s escape, his destitute wonderings in Sydney and journey to Melbourne mirror the plight of many in an unfamiliar country; dependent on the other immigrants for rental opportunities and employment. But his five-​year training in the Greek Royal and Mechanical Engineers (1948–​53) served him well. He was employed as a motor mechanic, first at Queens Bridge Motors, and later at the Commonwealth Aircraft Company and Ansett Airlines. His marriage to Christina Tzega, a Greek school teacher whom he met at his boarding house in Richmond, and the birth of his two daughters Angela and Anna, further shaped his life in Australia. The successes or failures of other immigrants from Greece, including from Nea Magnisia, are a recurring concern for Tasos, given the relative precarity of immigrant life. However, his natural abilities, and skills learned in Greece and later in Australia paved a comparatively smooth path. Christina and Tasos bought their first ‘solid brick’ house at 229 O’Heas Road in Pascoe Vale South in 1956 (339) for AUS£5000, sharing it with a Maltese, fellow-​factory worker and his wife. They incrementally acquired pieces of second-​ hand furniture—​ a kitchen table and equipment, chairs, couch and coffee table—​and eventually graduated from a mattress on the floor to a bed. Tasos’s first car, an American Ford Customline

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bought for AUS£600, joined a convoy of cars that set off on weekend picnics. He returned to Greece, for the first time, in 1967, to sell his assets and collect compensation for the loss of his farmlands to the expressway. His parents were by then deceased. In 1968 Tasos and Christina bought a larger house in Strathmore closer to his workplace (243). In 1972, a small beach-​side holiday unit at Rosebud completed their Australian dream. When, upon his retirement, Tasos recreated its buildings from memory, Nea Magnisia had been irrevocably transformed. A PLACE FOR NEA MAGNISIA? The story of Nea Magnisia crosses the numerous borders between Europe and Asia created at the twilight of empires by emergent nation-​states. At Bonegilla, in contrast, a federation intent on population expansion partially relaxed its border controls. Between these two actions was the interregnum of the Second World War. Consequently, the identities at Nea Magnisia take into account Ottoman, Turkish, Greek and Greek-​ Macedonian histories and practices, whereas entry through Australia’s migrant reception centres was narrowly inscribed. However, at both Nea Magnisia and Bonegilla, refugees learned the limits of sovereignty, they renounced their former nationalities, buried their pasts and were taught the dominant language. The basic refugee environments in which they made these transitions were without embellishments. As Dellios (2014) argues for Bonegilla, their multivocal memories and vernacular exchanges have enriched public memory outside official frameworks and broadened its representations and meanings. Rather than defining the ‘beginning place’ of life in Australia, the name of the memorial built at Bonegilla, the models suggest the depth and intensity of lives left behind. Not divested of the harsher realities of expulsion and war, they are efforts at conserving aspects of that history. The elasticity of such migrant memories stays the forces of assimilation, refusing to present blank cultural canvases to recipient countries. In the summer of 2018, encouraged by Tasos, my partner Athanasios and I visited Nea Magnisia, where we attended the festival of St Pantaleimon, walked in a procession around the town and shared a community feast alongside his relatives. On his behalf, we accepted an award for having preserved their local history. The original refugee village was undifferentiable from the neighbouring village of Diavata and from similar suburbs in the city. Some three to four-​storey apartment blocks had replaced the small cottages recollected by Tasos of which we found approximately thirteen (Figs 10.9 and 10.10). The church of St Athanasios, the school and the council house had assumed elaborate forms. The townspeople, struggling in a shrinking economy, found Tasos’s nostalgia gratifying. However, it was more than nostalgia. This was a period when refugee accommodation was debated quite heatedly across the European public sphere, particularly in Greece, designated a transit country. On a bus ride from Diavata to Magnisia, we encountered many recent refugees. Diavata’s former Anagnostopoulou military camp, repurposed as a ‘Hospitality Centre’ run by the Ministry of National

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Figure 10.9  Nea Magnisia today, highlighting refugee houses. The Anagnostopoulou camp at Diavata is the triangle in the inset. Drawn by A. Tsakonas based on Google maps.

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Figure 10.10 The street where Tasos lived, showing the café that has replaced their family home and café on the right. Photograph by A. Tsakonas.

Defence and Arbiter-​Samariter-​Bund Deutschland, housed some 2000 Syrian and Palestinian refugees (Urban Literary Graffiti 2018). The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR 2018) enumerated 60,000 refugees and migrants in Greece as of May 2018, considerably less than the 1923 influx. DISPLACEMENT HERITAGE Despite the pressing political realities of forced or voluntary displacement, refugee heritage in Australia seems dwarfed by histories of multicultural immigrant endeavour and success. There are few historical references for these more precarious ontologies. While exceptional individuals—​like the famous refugee architect, Harry Seidler (Wilton 1986) are recognised, others without pedigree go unnoticed. In contrast, Tasos’s models illustrate Greece’s integration of linguistically different Asia-​ Minor refugees through community identities and permanent dwellings. Identities thus solidified, sometimes against hostility, are later celebrated for their distinct cultural heritage. Such examples hold lessons on how modern systems of individuation may be adapted for collective identities, and how the stories of displaced persons may cross barriers of time, space and sovereignty. They need not reduce difficult pasts, fashioning ontologies through ephemera, but could construct nostalgic artefacts as enlightening and ongoing archives. Arguably precedents for similar forms of resuscitation are evident in Australia’s convict heritage. The miniatures of Nea Magnisia cannot convey immigrant fortitude in past migrant-​ processing facilities. They offer back stories to contemporary detention environments, as the darkest chapter in migrant accommodation histories.

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While tales of escape may provide sketchy backdrops to individual displacement narratives, refugee histories in Australia begin at the nation’s boundary. This opacity works in both directions. Ignorance of the Australian system produces functional gaps in new arrivals increasing dependencies and negating their cultural capabilities. Refugees are recast as economic and social burdens in the public eye. These attitudes build on post-​war practices of notionally achieving social integration by suppressing immigrant back stories. Tasos’s identity is far more fluid, accumulating several cross-​border spatial experiences as valid forms of cultural knowledge. Much can be gained from those transnational memories that refugees and immigrants want to share. Such stories are valid bases for internationalising Australia; a means of overcoming historical insularity. NOTES 1

2

3

4

5 6 7 8

My grateful thanks to Tasos Kolokotronis for his generous supply of information, images and contacts. I interviewed Tasos initially in 2013, and again several times in 2018 and 2019. Although population data for this period are unstable, the 1954 Census measuring the top ten migrant categories shows an overseas-​born population of 47.9% from the United Kingdom and 27% Europeans. In 1961 southern Europeans from Italy, Greece and Yugoslavia accounted for 20%. Greek migrants increased from 1.7% in 1947 to 2% in 1954 to 4.3% in 1961 and 6.2% in 1971. Camps included Bonegilla, Benalla, Rushworth in Victoria, Somers Greta and Kapooka in New South Wales, Stuart and Wacol in Queensland and Northam Holden, Graylands and Cunderdin in Western Australia. Aside from those who received individual sponsorship, around 170,000 refugees were processed by the International Refugee Organisation and many thousands more arrived through assisted passage arrangements where Australia paid for the passage of migrants through country to country arrangements overseen by the Intergovernment Committee for European Migration (ICEM). New Australians was a magazine produced by the Department of Immigration and distributed among arrivals. Le Corbusier (1923) in his book Vers une architecture declared that the house was a machine for living in. Lausanne Peace Treaty IV. Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations Signed at Lausanne, January 30, 1923. Cartographic Heritage Archives, Thessaloniki, 4384, 4389, Private Collection S. Demertzis.

REFERENCES Athanassiou, E, Dima, V and Karali, K 2017, ‘Modern Architectural Encounters and Greek Antiquity in the Thirties’, in G Belli, F Capano and MI Pascariello (eds.), La citta, il viaggio, il tourismo: Percezione, produzione e transformazione [The City, the Travel, the Tourism: Perception, Production and Processing], Conference proceedings of the VIII Congress Addociazione Italiana di Storia Urbana, Naples, 347–​354. Australian Government n.d., Fact Sheet—​More than 65 years of post-​war migration, Australia Dept. of Home Affairs, viewed 7 January 2018, .

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Bonegilla Migrant Experience (BIM) n.d., Site Guide, viewed 7 January 2018, . Boym, S 2001, The Future of Nostalgia, Basic Books, New York. CHA—​Cartographic Heritage Archives, available at . Colonas, V 2003, ‘Housing and the Architectural Expression of Asia Minor Greeks Before and After 1923’, in R Hirschon (ed.), Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey, Berghahn Books, New York, 163–​178. Dellios, A 2014, ‘Constructing public history, framing collective memories: Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre’, PhD thesis, University of Melbourne. —​—​—​ 2017, Histories of Controversy: Bonegilla Migrant Centre, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, VIC. Gürsoy, Y 2008, ‘The effects of the population exchange on the Greek and Turkish political regimes in the 1930s’, East European Quarterly, vol. 42, no. 2, 95–​122. Hastaoglou-​Martinidis, V 1997, ‘A Mediterranean city in transition: Thessaloniki between the two World Wars’, Architecture and Civil Engineering, vol. 1, no. 4, 493–​507. Hirschon, R 1998, Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe: The Social Life of Asia Minor Refugees in Piraeus, Berghahn Books, New York. Historical Archive of Hellenic Refugees, 1998, Kalamaria between the Wars, 1920–​ 1940: The New Homelands [H Kαλαμαριά στο Μεσοπόλεμο (1920–​1940): Πρόσφυγες. Δημιουργώντας τη Νεα Πατριδα], University Studio Press, Thessaloniki. Jupp, J 2002, From White Australia to Woomera: The Story of Australian Immigration, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. Keating, C 1997, A History of the Army Camp and Migrant Camp at Greta, New South Wales, 1939–​1960, Uri Windt, Sydney. Klapsis, A 2014, ‘Violent uprooting and forced migration: A demographic analysis of the Greek populations of Asia Minor, Pontus and Eastern Thrace’, Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 50, no. 4, 622–​639. Köker, T (in collaboration with Keskiner, L) 2003, ‘Lessons in Refugeehood: The Experience of Forced Migrants in Turkey’, in R Hirschon (ed.), Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey, Berghahn Books, New York, 192–​208. Koleth, E 2010, Multiculturalism: A Review of Australian Policy Statements and Recent Debates in Australia and Overseas, Parliament of Australia, Social Policy Section, Research Paper no. 6 2010-​11, viewed 7 January 2018, . Kolokotronis, A (unpublished) 2008, My Memories into Arts and Folklore. —​—​—​ (unpublished) 2010, The Book of My Life, Anastasios Kolokotronis. Kontogiorgi, E 2006, Population Exchange in Greek Macedonia: The Rural Settlement of Refugees, 1922–​1930, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. Le Corbusier 1986, Towards a New Architecture, Dover Publications, New York (origin. Fr. pub. Vers une architecture, 1923). Millas, H. 2003, ‘The Exchange of Populations in Turkish Literature: The Undertone of the Texts’, in R. Hirschon (ed.), Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey, Berghahn Books, New York, 221–​233. Museum Victoria n.d., History of Immigration from Greece, viewed 7 January 2018, . Navaro-​Yashin, Y 2012, The Make-​Believe Space: Affective Geography in a Postwar Polity, Duke University Press, Durham, NC and London.

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Neyzi, L 2008, ‘Remembering Smyrna/​Izmir: Shared history, shared trauma’, History and Memory, vol. 20, no. 2, 106–​127. Pennay, B 2007, The Army at Bonegilla, 1940–​71, Parklands, Albury and Wodonga, VIC. —​—​—​2009, ‘Remembering Bonegilla: The construction of a public memory place at Block 19’, Public History Review, no. 16, 43–​63. Phillips, J, Klapdor, M and Simon-​Davies, J 2010–​11, Migration to Australia since Federation: A Guide to Statistics, Parliamentary Library, Canberra, viewed 7 January 2018, . Pickering, M and Keightley, E 2006, ‘The modalities of nostalgia’, Current Sociology, vol. 54, no. 6, 919–​941. Scott, JC 1985, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday forms of Peasant Resistance, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. Selenitsch, A 2012, flotsamandjetsam (exhibition), Place Gallery, Melbourne, viewed 7 January 2018, . Stewart, S 1993, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection, Duke University Press, Durham, NC and London. UNHCR (United Nations Refugee Agency) 2018, Greece, UNCHCR, 22 June, viewed 10 October 2018, . Urban Literary Grafitti 2018, Diavata Refugee Camp, ULG, May 12, viewed 7 January 2018, . Wilton, J (ed.) 1986, Internment: The Diaries of Harry Seidler, May 1940–​October 1941, Allen and Unwin, Sydney.

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11: Postcolonial urbanisms and the cultural politics of redeveloping Kowloon East, Hong Kong Daniel P.S. Goh

BORDER CONTESTATIONS OF POSTCOLONIAL TIME AND SPACE As formerly colonised spaces, postcolonial cities are distinct from cities where power has resided with the same cultural group for centuries. They are sites for identity contestations arising from the politics of asymmetrical intercultural encounters and the memorialisation of history as heritage or otherwise (Yeoh 2001). These contestations and politics are mapped onto urban space, be it through architecture and urban forms (Kusno 2010) or urban planning and development (Legg and McFarlane 2008). Postcolonial cities in East Asia are additionally confronted with another dimension of change—​speed, related to the disappearance of familiar and stable forms of social and cultural identity associated with the built context under conditions of accelerated globalisation and urban redevelopment (Abbas 1997). In Jini Kim Watson’s (2011) study of Seoul, Taipei and Singapore, she shows how a new Asian city emerges in the dominant spaces of hyper-​growth—​highways, high-​ rise residences, industrial zones, shopping centres—​and the textual and cinematic fictions seeking to domesticate these urban spaces with meanings. In this chapter, I  discuss the old Kai Tak Airport site in Hong Kong as an internal borderland space, contestations over which have come to define the postcolonial city’s competing urbanisms. Kai Tak Airport ceased operations in 1998, just after Britain handed over Hong Kong back to China in 1997 (Figure 11.1). The airport proffered a doubled border condition. It was a transitory space situated at the periphery of the city that also acted as the primary border connecting the city to the world. Then, when the airport ceased operation, Kai Tak became a site for competing visions of urban redevelopment. The adjacent industrial-​era urban settlements that grew around the airport were also treated as decaying estates to be remade for a post-​industrial age, inviting resistance and engagements from local communities and civil activists. Two decades from the closing of the airport, the larger Kai Tak area, formerly described as the South-​East Kowloon planning area, is now named Kowloon East, envisioned as Hong Kong’s second Central Business District. The Energising

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Figure 11.1 Runway of Kai Tak Airport. Photograph by Judy Ching Kwan Wong, May 20, 2018.

Kowloon East office was set up in 2012 to spearhead redevelopment. It is planned for Kowloon East to be connected to the Guangdong hinterland in mainland China by rail through extensions running from the East Rail Line, formerly known as the Kowloon-​Canton Railway, and to the world through cruise terminals. Kowloon East has become one of the new boundaries in Hong Kong’s ‘transborder’ cultural politics of a colonial city reintegrating into a rising Chinese nation, which entails a new politics of reappearance of psycho-​cultural boundaries between Hong Kong, China and the world in urban spaces and everyday life, rather than the politics of disappearance in the 1990s (Ma 2012). In this chapter, I  focus specifically on the cultural methodologies deployed by state agencies and innovated by citizen activists that inform Hong Kong’s competing urbanisms. These cultural methodologies take shape in the contestations over the postcolonial identity of Hong Kong and its urban spaces vis-​à-​vis its incorporation into the Chinese nation after the Handover—​the transfer of sovereignty from the United Kingdom to China in 1997. I discuss three cases of planning to redevelop the cleared Kai Tak site and the adjacent Kwun Tong Town Centre and To Kwa Wan neighbourhood. The state’s renewal plans amount to a new form of participatory utopian urbanism that seek to co-​opt democratic processes to foster local communities living in harmony with the disruptive forces of capitalism and nationalism. Citizens have responded in diverse ways to the plans, bringing affections, symbolisms and narratives, old and new, to do what Ip (2017,170) has described as ‘making boundaries between Hong Kong and China’. I discuss what I found to be the most interesting type of response in each of the sites: utopian counter-​planning at Kai Tak; dystopian memorialisation at Kwun Tong; and apocalyptic mobilisation at To Kwa Wan.

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In the past two decades since the Handover, Hong Kong has been seeking to position itself as a ‘Chinese global city’, in which political tensions arise from the government and society adapting colonial institutional legacies, cosmopolitan openness to world and the entrepôt city to the new realities of Chinese nationalism and capitalism (Chiu and Lui 2009). In the process, the urban heritage was transformed from old neighbourhoods needing redevelopment into resources and sites for the emerging contestations over globalisation, democracy and postcolonial border politics. While the governing authorities seek to carve out a democratic relationship with society that would preserve urban planning prerogatives, awakened citizens have used different tactics to reclaim public spaces and urban heritage, remake them as places and create counter-​discourses of resistance against the new political order (Ku 2012; Chen and Szeto 2017). But not all counter-​discourses are created equal. This chapter argues that in relation to the utopian urbanism of the state, the apocalyptic mobilisation of cultural heritage to forge grassroots urbanism holds the most promise. THE POSTCOLONIAL MEANINGS OF OLD KAI TAK Kai Tak Airport was located in the south-​east corner of the Kowloon Peninsula, a long finger of a runway jutting out into Kowloon Bay at the eastern end of Victoria Harbour. The name, ‘Kai Tak’, was blended from the name of two Chinese businessmen who started a suburban ‘garden city’ project involving land reclamation to build homes for refugees fleeing political turmoil in China after the Republican Revolution. The project never took off, and the colonial government stepped in, and completed the reclamation to build the Kai Tak Airport in the 1930s. The airport was expanded many times and became the Hong Kong International Airport in 1954. The airport continued to expand with economic boom in the 1960s and 1970s. By the 1980s, however, it became evident that Kai Tak had reached its limit to growth, hemmed in landside by the city that grew around and enveloped the airport. This was celebrated in films, photography and writings, often with the opening shot of a jetliner taking off or landing at Kai Tak in a spectacular steep incline to a background of apartment blocks. Just after the Tiananmen massacre in 1989, the government announced that a new airport in Chep Lap Kok, out in the western waters of Hong Kong, would replace Kai Tak, which made for more prosaic and safer landings away from the city rather than in the middle of it. Work commenced in 1991 and the move from Kai Tak to Chep Lap Kok was completed just after the Handover in July 1998. In its heyday, during Hong Kong’s boom time, Kai Tak derived its situated meaning as the dangerous but exciting and rewarding descent into the heart of the hyper-​modern city, where all things seem to be compressed in space and time into a super-​density of chance and opportunities. But the manner of its closing impressed a peculiar postcoloniality onto the soon-​to-​be-​erased space. Kai Tak came to symbolise the constant renewal of the city, in which openness to the world knows no limits—​a cosmopolitan Hong Kong of endless possibilities.

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The colonial government exercised top–​down planning on the space, outlining in 1989 the Metroplan strategy, which was then superimposed on South-​East Kowloon in the development statement of 1992. A private consultancy firm was hired to do a detailed study and a draft master development plan was produced for approval. A last-​minute consultation with the Kowloon City District Board was held, just as the plan was approved in late 1998, rendering any semblance of public participation farcical (Wan and Chiu 2008, 263). The plan called for the reclamation of land to double the cleared airport site, filling in Kowloon Bay, to create a new ‘City within a City’ for over 300,000 people with a central park at its core surrounded by public and private housing flats and luxury housing along the waterfront. Opposition mounted. The grand reclamation and urbanisation plans became the focus of a new political consciousness that had built up over the years leading to the Handover, with young people calling for more participation in urban planning (Ng 1993, 307–​8). In 1997, the Legislative Council enacted the Protection of the Harbour Ordinance to stop further reclamation and preserve the Harbour as a natural heritage belonging to the people of Hong Kong. The Ordinance was a private member’s bill drafted by the Society for the Protection of the Harbour, a civil group set up to fight reclamation on Hong Kong Island. This galvanised the activists. If the Kai Tak redevelopment was the government’s symbol for the hyper-​ modern urbanism to be realised post-​Handover, then the Harbour became the counter-​symbol for activists representing the edge of difference separating Hong Kong from China; the boundary of democracy distinguishing the city from the rapid urbanisation of the hinterland. Both were transitory spaces for travellers and goods that became sites acquiring new meanings in the postcolonial contestation over Hong Kong’s place in the world. The 1998 Kai Tak redevelopment plan attracted severe criticisms. Community groups of the neighbouring urban districts formed a ‘Green Harbour Kai Tak City Alliance’ to support economic revitalisation and the preservation of cultural heritage. The Kwun Tong District Council was concerned about the lack of connectivity between the new city and the surrounding districts. Green groups opposed reclamation and high-​density urbanisation, with the Kowloon City District Council opposing the plan on account of the serious pollution of the Kai Tak Approach Channel. Aviation enthusiasts formed a vocal ‘Save Kai Tak Campaign’ to preserve the runways, while political parties swooped in to ride the public sentiment. Planning and building professionals joined in to showcase their expertise through alternative ideas and called for participatory planning, while developers opposed the plan for fear that the flood of new homes would bring down the housing market. In response, the government more than halved the size of reclamation and revised the plan in 2002. However, the plan was completely shelved in 2004 after the Court of Final Appeal ruled, in a case involving reclamation in Central brought about by the Society for the Protection of the Harbour, that the presumption against reclamation could only be removed by establishing an overriding public need for reclamation. The massive pro-​democracy protest on July 1, 2003 also loomed large in public consciousness and the Kai Tak redevelopment risked becoming a magnet

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for the rising activism. A participatory planning process was thus set up to accommodate the democratic rising and draw up new no-​reclamation plans. The politics of the Kai Tak Review have been well documented (Ng 2008; Lee et al. 2013, 39–​53). It should be noted that the civil activists campaigning against reclamation and redevelopment were mainly focused on the Central and Wanchai sites. While the community-​based, professional and interest groups at South-​East Kowloon benefitted from the protests of the civil activists on Hong Kong Island, they were not the drivers of democratic change. The politics of place-​making at Kai Tak were fundamentally conservative. The interests articulated by the various groups were ultimately framed by and incorporated into the three-​stage participatory planning process of the Kai Tak Review. The three stages took place between late 2004 and mid-​2006, beginning with discussion of the community’s visions for Kai Tak, then the dissection of the Outline Concept Plans, and finally deliberation on the Preliminary Outline Development Plan. The first stage of the participatory planning process brought out competing visions for Kai Tak from the different groups, which were then distilled into three concept plans for discussion in the second stage. ‘City in the Park’, the first concept plan, was a scaled-​down version of the original ‘City in a City’ plan for high-​density residential development, with new emphases on greenery and connectivity, featuring pedestrian promenades and park networks ‘from To Kwa Wan to Kwun Tong along the harbourfront and also throughout the study area’ (Planning Department 2005, 12). ‘Kai Tak Glamour’, the second plan, leveraged the ‘aviation history of Kai Tak’ as ‘precious collective memory’ and ‘significance to the economic growth’ of Hong Kong (Planning Department 2005, 16), so as to achieve economic regeneration through the development of commercial, office and tourism hubs, including a cruise terminal and a runway park with aviation facilities. The third plan, ‘Sports by the Harbour’, focused on recreation and leisure, with a stadium anchoring the area with sites for different types of sports, recreational activities and environmental education, all connected by a network of cycle tracks. By ‘utopian’, I mean a mode of urban planning and activism that evokes the spirit of Thomas More’s Utopia (Logan and Adams 1989) in the search for social, political and religious customs of an ideal republic on an optimally populated island marked by democracy and equality. We see this in the Kai Tak Review as the public consultation broke down the competing visions into specific elements such as greenery, connectivity, collective memory, economic regeneration and recreation. The second stage did not just offer three concept plans with different emphases, but also identified ‘concepts we share’ in the three plans such as the runway promenade, sports city, commercial developments, park and pedestrian networks, and the Metro Park (Planning Department 2005, 28). Once these common customs were established, public deliberations at the third stage were guided towards consensus in the Preliminary Outline Development Plan, which balanced the different demands of the community and interest groups. Figure  11.2 (right) shows the articulated parts of the revised plan. High-​ density commercial and residential developments were concentrated in the Kai Tak

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Map of Hong Kong Airport adapted by Dhara Patel from Civil Engineering and Development Department, Hong Kong, ‘Decommissioning of the former Kai Tak Airport other than the north apron’ (2006, appendix p.14).

Figure 11.2  Map of Hong Kong Airport [left]. Sub-​areas of Kai Tak, November 2007 [right]. Source: Planning Department, Government of Hong Kong 2007, Executive Summary, 18–​19.

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City Centre and envisioned to connect Kai Tak to Kowloon City and San Po Kong for mutual economic growth. Mixed commercial and institutional developments in the South Apron Corner created a transitional corridor connecting the City Centre to Kwun Tong for social and economic regeneration. At the other end, the recreational developments concentrated in the Sports Hub were envisioned to rejuvenate the To Kwa Wan area. The Metro Park would form the transitional corridor connecting the Sports Hub to the high-​end residential and hotel Runway Precinct. A cruise terminal was situated at the tip, which was to be the Tourism and Leisure Hub that would anchor Kai Tak to Victoria Harbour. The vision read, ‘A Distinguished, Vibrant, Attractive and People-​Oriented Kai Tak by Victoria Harbour’ (Planning Department 2007, 16) (Figure 11.3). The plan resembled a cross along two axes—​from the cultural regeneration of To Kwa Wan in the west to Kwun Tong in the east—​from the economic revitalisation of Kai Tak City Centre in the north to the cruise terminal in the south reconnecting Kai Tak to the world of commerce and tourism. The peculiar utopianism of the revised plan was not just about the ideal republic of a harmoniously balanced city-​state but invoked the deep narrative of redemption. This narrative hoped for economic resurrection in the aftermath of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, and also dreamt of a new postcolonial beginning, as captured in the tagline for the three-​stage participatory process, ‘New Urbanism by Victoria Harbour’ (Planning Department 2004, 3). The democratic energies of Victoria Harbour were to be harnessed and channelled through the proposed participatory urbanism; through the articulated parts northwards, and to the west to To Kwa Wan and the east to Kwun Tong, to renew old urban communities and thus create Hong Kong’s vibrant future.

Figure 11.3 Development site under construction in 2015. Photograph by Maurice Kwan-​Chung  Yip.

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KWUN TONG TOWN CENTRE: DYSTOPIAN REMEMBRANCES Kwun Tong became the next target after the Kai Tak Review. Armed with the new plan for participatory urbanism, the Urban Renewal Authority (URA) pursued its largest redevelopment project to date, seeking to resettle 5000 people and transform Kwun Tong Town Centre into the nucleus for urban rejuvenation of the larger town of over 600,000 people. The University of Hong Kong was commissioned in 2005 to conduct studies to determine local views on redevelopment. The redevelopment plans, again combined from three design concepts after a major public consultation exercise like at Kai Tak, were submitted to the government for approval in 2007. Through the participatory urbanism approach, the URA claimed the moral role of redeveloping decayed buildings built in the 1960s now occupied by the urban poor and those providing illicit services such as prostitutes, whose redemption was the URA’s responsibility. The URA touted its redevelopment plans as the ‘People’s Choice’, which though of ‘modernistic design’, was infused with ‘comprehensive community and commercial services as well as community-​friendly features such as street and bazaar in traditional ‘kaifong-​style’ (URA 2007). The plans were purportedly democratic not only in their participatory planning, but also in their orientation towards the revival of community life and convivial streets. The Kwun Tong redevelopment was not free from controversy, but it was significant that the participatory planning method developed in the Kai Tak review to domesticate the democratic rising pre-​empted civil activism in Kwun Tong. Hui and Au (2016, 234–​5) described the redevelopment tussles at Kwun Tong as ‘post-​ politics’, involving the moral erasures of differences through techniques such as public consultations on professionally rendered design concepts. It was more than the semblance of democracy, however. The process involved a carefully coordinated discursive exercise to define Kwun Tong Town Centre as a decayed industrial centre that had outlived its use value and become a slum for transients and squatters. Thus, in response, local resistance largely consisted of denizens of the place seeking to establish their status as resident or business operator, to prove their value and worth, so as to be recognised as stakeholders for the purpose of compensation. The discursive exercise continued even after the government approved the plans. Some twenty-​one Kwun Tong Bulletins in Chinese, filled with photographs and stories of the community life of worthy residents that would be enhanced in redevelopment, were published between 2006 and 2015, when construction works began in earnest. The Kwun Tong project was a central feature in the URA’s Urban Renewal Exploration Centre in Sheung Wan, Hong Kong Island, which was set up in 2009 with the aim to educate the public about urban decay and the need for renewal. Other resistance to the redevelopment project came from artists who have been residing and practising in Kwun Tong. The town traces its history to the 1950s, when the post-​war colonial government built Kwun Tong as its first industrial new town and as a model for other new towns in the New Territories.

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Deindustrialisation of the economy in the 1990s led to the economic dislocation of the population in Kwun Tong. Many artists moved into the area where they rented inexpensive spaces in underutilised industrial buildings and formed organic creative communities (Tsang and Siu 2016). One artist and academic, Anson Mak, who studied these artist communes herself (Mak 2015), had been at the forefront of resistance of the Kwun Tong redevelopment. In 2009, Mak founded A Map of Our Own: Kwun Tong Culture and Histories (www.kwuntongculture.hk), an interactive website maintained by a team of contributors linked to different activist groups. A Map of Our Own featured site-​ specific posts about places in Kwun Tong Town Centre located on a map interface with a timeline. Posts comprised sound clips of bustling markets, bus stations and green spaces, photographs of intricate details and local landmarks, write-​ups of place memories and video clips of festivals and other cultural activities. The vernacular sensory overload enriched otherwise emptied and lifeless spaces shown on the satellite and aerial maps used by urban planners. Fleeting street-​life was captured and ported online to challenge the designations of urban decay imposed on the Kwun Tong landscape. The posts ended in February 2012, once redevelopment became a looming certainty, though the website remained online, now transformed into an archive of sensory memories. In her own artistic works, Mak has been weaving visual and aural portraits of urbanscapes with intimate memories to create critical reflections on notions of Hong Kong history and heritage. Her film, One-​Way Street on a Turntable, has the motif of ‘Moving through Alleys of History, the Cityscape Mirrors …’, as expressed in the subtitle. It was released in 2007, just as the redevelopment of Kwun Tong Town Centre was being finalised. One-​Way Street invokes Walter Benjamin’s (1979) homonymous essay on the urban dreamscapes of Weimar Germany and the motif of moving through the mirroring cityscape recalls the flâneur as witness to history. But the Chinese titles imply something more. ‘唱盘上的单航道’, meaning ‘the turntable’s one-​way channel’, reverses the emphasis in the title and suggests the needle going round a record on the turntable. ‘游走于历史的小巷—​扎根／移动’, meaning ‘wandering through the alleys of history—​taking root/​movement’, actually emphasises the ‘tarrying between moving and rootedness’, as expressed by the back-​cover notes. Coupled with the black-​and-​white image of the lone actress walking on a pathway fringed by long grasses and transit infrastructure in a peri-​ urban landscape, the overall tone of the cover of the disc seeks a melancholic engagement with the cycles of settling down and migration experienced in the borderlands of Hong Kong. The key chapter of the film, Chapter 11, ‘This Space for Rent’, was described in the inside cover: The juxtaposition of two stories on ‘first home’—​director’s story (as a local-​ born Hong Konger) in Kwun Tong and the actress’ story (a new immigrant from China to Hong Kong in the 80’s) in Mei Foo Sun Chuen, may re-​inscribe Hong Kong history and Hong Kongers’ changing identities in a more interesting

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way than what the grand narrative history offers, be it the British colonial government, or the seemingly self-​governed Hong Kong government under People’s Republic of China.

The chapter alternates between streetscape images of pedestrians walking, with fast-​moving traffic and architectural features, and key landmark features in Kwun Tong such as the government buildings, community buildings and the monstrous APM shopping mall as backdrop. The narration alternates between Mak’s biographical musings in Cantonese and the actress Yvonne Leung’s recollections in Mandarin. Towards the end of the chapter, Leung appears fleetingly, captured by the director’s eye, and returns the gaze. The streets of Kwun Tong at the eve of their closure for redevelopment are turned into the postcolonial space of possibilities where Mak the Hong Konger and Leung the Mainland migrant meet to produce a new and yet unnamed identity. In the film, Leung, the actress, reminisces after her fleeting appearance, My long period of residence here does not warrant a sense of home. Home, is elsewhere inside other people’s windows. Before, Mei Foo overlooked the vast sea, it had taken up a lot of my troubles as a teen. And then, the sea was no longer there. It became a desert, then vast grassland; and now it is a peak with hills, waters, bridges, trees and flowers—​all in miniature.

One scene lingers on the bleak landscape on the cover photograph of the disc, suggesting that it was the edge of reclaimed land at Kwun Tong waterfront. This is a dystopian memorialisation of an urban Hong Kong that is at base a city of transitory identities, of roots, migrations and mobilities built on the shifting sands of reclamation and redevelopment. It is dystopian in the sense of being derivative and thus critically subversive of the state’s utopian urbanism. It is a resistance that rejects heritage conservation as equally utopian—​home is elsewhere inside other people’s window—​since the continuous movement of people seeking roots is what shapes the street and the city as ever-​changing. But it is also a resistance that gives up hope of ever stopping the bulldozers and turns instead to cultural criticisms deeply embedded in the desolate spatial memories of wandering citizens. Thus, One-​Way Street on a Turntable elides the existing boundary between Hong Kong and China, with the figures of Mak and Leung fusing in the narrative, the Hong Konger handed over to China, the Chinese becoming a Hong Konger, both caught up in urban transformations that threaten to erase their shared memories. In doing so, Mak shifts the boundary from the city and the nation to the line separating disempowered citizens and the state agencies seeking to turn South-​ East Kowloon into Kowloon East. TO KWA WAN: WAITING FOR THE METRO On the other side of Kai Tak is the smaller urban neighbourhood of To Kwa Wan, part of the Kowloon City District. While Kwun Tong was planned as a model

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industrial new town, To Kwa Wan was a neglected corner that was urbanised in an ad hoc manner to relieve overcrowding on Kowloon. It was home to many Mainland refugees and migrants fleeing the social upheaval after the establishment of the Chinese communist state. Public housing estates were built there in the 1970s, and light industries developed along the two main roads cutting through the neighbourhood. Tucked in the corner of the city and unconnected to the metro network, hemmed in by Quarry Hill to the west, highway arteries to the airport to the north and the airport and Kowloon Bay to the east, To Kwa Wan evolved at its own pace. Its main connection to the larger city was through the regular ferries sailing between Kowloon City Pier and North Point on Hong Kong Island. The closure of the airport and impending redevelopment of Kai Tak changed everything. The previously quiet neighbourhood became increasingly viewed as an urban slum of dilapidated buildings needing renewal. As the URA was focusing its resources on the redevelopment of Kwun Tong Town Centre as a showcase project, state-​led gentrification of the area was to be achieved by other means. As a beachhead of sorts, the large slaughterhouse situated in the north-​east of To Kwa Wan was renovated by the government into the Cattle Depot Artist Village in 2001 to house some twenty art groups. The Shatin to Central Link metro line, which would run through To Kwa Wan and finally connect the area to the metro network in 2019, was mooted and planned. In the Kai Tak Review, To Kwa Wan became one axial end of the cross-​shaped utopian urbanism. One of the main roads, To Kwa Wan Road, which served only the neighbourhood, was repurposed as ‘the major entry point to Kai Tak near the Stadium Complex’ (Planning Department 2006, 17). Cultural regeneration beckoned. To Kwa Wan was no longer seen as a quaint corner of the city, but part of the larger Kai Tak and Kowloon City cultural heritage complex holding ‘valuable assets of the Hong Kong community’ (Planning Department 2006, 31). Soon after, the newly established Development Bureau, which oversaw the Planning Department, began studying and looking into the conservation and development of the Cattle Depot Artist Village to revitalise the surrounding old quarters of To Kwa Wan. In early 2010, a five-​storey building that was over fifty years old in the neighbourhood collapsed, killing four people. Under public pressure, the URA began to look into a comprehensive redevelopment programme for the area. But it was only in the middle of 2016 that the URA proposed plans to knock down dilapidated buildings in three sites to build over 1300 flats by the year 2025 (South China Morning Post 2016). Community response to the impending redevelopments was largely muted. Having experienced half-​hearted public discussions concerning resettlement and compensation before that did not materialise, many of the ageing residents did not believe the government was serious about redevelopment. Others were supportive of redevelopment because of the worsening living conditions, but wanted the preservation of their community life as well as cultural regeneration of the area (South China Morning Post 2012). For nearly two decades after the closure of Kai

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Tak Airport, and despite all the talk and planning for redevelopment, To Kwa Wan remained untouched, except for the underground metro construction. There was an impasse, for neither the government agencies nor the To Kwa Wan grassroots took the initiative to spearhead cultural regeneration. Everyone was waiting for the metro to open up To Kwa Wan to change. In 2014, a group of seasoned activists moved into To Kwa Wan. Tucked between auto-​repair shops, the To Kwa Wan House of Stories was set up in a former poultry shop. I visited it just months after it was opened. There were many interesting posters and exhibits, evidence of what the House was doing to mobilise the community and equip them with urban cultural consciousness as well as the language and conceptual tools to engage the impending redevelopment. There was the social memory map, community photo wall, documentation of a heritage art project, urban nature project and the community library and resource shelf. The House was essentially a grassroots community centre. I spoke at length with the centre manager, a social worker employed by the St James Settlement Society, which was collaborating with Community Cultural Concern to run the House. While we were talking, several locals dropped by the House to borrow materials from the resource shelf. A couple of kids came by and hung around to play with the toys. A year later, I met up with the activists who founded the House. They started their activism at the Blue House in Wanchai, just east of the Central district on Hong Kong Island. Wanchai was the scene of a grassroots uprising against a massive redevelopment project at Li Tong Street that inspired a generation of activists who combined urban heritage advocacy with the democracy movement. The activists went further by seeking to tie together grassroots mobilisation, cultural revitalisation and livelihood autonomy in place-​making activities. The Blue House was one of the few tenement blocks built in the early twentieth century left in Hong Kong and has been preserved and revitalised by the government as a historic building. But instead of being turned into an up-​market commercial or dining establishment, as with the adaptive reuse of many heritage buildings, urban activists have managed to keep the original use of the Blue House as a residence and the existing residents have been allowed to stay in the preserved building. The activists founded the Hong Kong House of Stories on the ground floor of the Blue House, using it as a living museum and a base for place-​making activities in Wanchai. The activists were very excited about the To Kwa Wan House of Stories. They had learned from the Blue House that moving in earlier to mobilise and organise the community to engage urban redevelopment in their own terms was more effective than reacting to the aftermath as in Wanchai. The successful story-​telling events at the Blue House also inspired them to use stories as a main platform for action in To Kwa Wan. The only difference was that the Blue House stories were marked by a sense of loss and nostalgia, but in To Kwa Wan the stories were real and immediate, marked by a sense of the need to collect, preserve and protect while waiting for the metro to arrive. I re-​visited the House a few days later. It was hosting a presentation of the cultural mapping exercise conducted by activists in collaboration with local residents.

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On the sleeve binding four booklets in different colours, it was said the project collected over thirty ‘街坊故事’, which meant more than prosaic ‘neighbourhood stories’. The choice of ‘街坊’ among other words that could mean neighbourhood was significant, as it combines the word for street and the word for a city square. It evoked an urban imaginary of democratic streetscapes. It was also said that together the stories presented a ‘拼凑多样的生活地图’, which meant a map of the bricolage of everyday life. The use of the word for map, ‘地图’, was somewhat redundant, because the books were far more textual and narratival than cartographic or geographical, and ‘the bricolage of everyday life’ would have sufficed. But the word was important because ‘地图’ connected to ‘街坊’ through the Chinese radical for soil, ‘土’, which is the first character in the Chinese name of To Kwa Wan, ‘土瓜湾’. The Chinese name of the House of Stories is ‘土家故事馆’. The first two characters refer to To Kwa Wan as home, but could also mean indigeneity and one’s rootedness in the land. The stories cultivated a consciousness of the land and access to the city in an urban regime where land rights and access are alienated through legal expropriation, central planning and tight policing by the state and ownership by private developers. Post-​Handover, the regime was being softened by the new participatory urbanism that mobilised communities as stakeholders, which also implies the exclusion of those not defined as part of a community. The ‘土家’ activists sought a different kind of community mobilisation and participation, one that was inclusionary in principle and practice. One of the organisers recognised me at the presentation, which was attended by more than fifty people packed into the House, some of whom were visiting international artists. I  was asked to read one of the bilingual stories, in English, that of a Togo refugee who had stayed in To Kwa Wan for over a decade: Ibrahim, of Ma Tau Kok 13 Streets and the Cattle Depot area. It was a heartfelt story of a family living, socialising, playing, marketing, cooking, facing prejudices, being shown kindness, experiencing discrimination and expressing aspirations to settle in Hong Kong, all woven with intimate streetscapes and intricate relationships with locals. It reminded me of Mak’s One-​Way Street, the tarrying between a migrant and a Hong Konger, between taking root and moving through the mirroring cityscapes to produce lived spaces bleeding with inclusive memories. But this was no dystopian memorialisation to mourn the urban desolation of redevelopment. The ‘土家’ activists were actively preparing, not just waiting, for the metro, equipping and training communities for the apocalypse so that they could become agents, and not just stakeholders to be consulted, of the redevelopment. BORDER THINKING AND APOCALYPTIC AGENCY The old Kai Tak Airport had long existed somewhere at the imaginary borderlands of space and place for Hong Kong citizens. It was this liminal existence that allowed Kai Tak, in a key moment of historical transition, to become a site for the production and contestation of meanings and identities, as people seek to make sense of

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the dislocation and locate themselves again in their imagined worlds. The closure of Kai Tak became the symbolic marker for the end of an era and the clearing of the site triggered the world of possibilities for postcolonial Hong Kong to reinvent itself. Meanings collided and produced a new participatory urbanism that was utopian in itself, in its seeking to harmonise the contradictory customs and ideals of presumably equal citizens in the exercise of optimal economies and democratic politics. This, as Tang (2015) argues, happened in Wanchai too, where the utopian ideals and practices of the Blue House had been co-​opted into the participatory urbanism of the postcolonial state seeking to resolve the democratic rising against redevelopment in that quarter. Knowing this, the story-​ telling activists moved across Victoria Harbour to recover their agency. Wanchai had become a storied place, and a utopian space of the urban regime. To Kwa Wan was the new battleground where new meanings could be excavated and reworked to make for new forms of community mobilisation. To Kwa Wan was where the activists could link up with local community to think through the postcolonial Hong Kong that they would desire, aspire and fight for. Unlike Kwun Tong, which was for Anson Mak the dystopia of desolated urban memories that laid bare the promises of utopia, To Kwa Wan invited border thinking for the Blue House activists in both space and time. While awaiting the coming of the space of redevelopment, the activists became place makers who sharpened their apocalyptic agency to seize the future moment. This activism neither preserves the past to build monumental futures nor commemorates the past to refuse the inevitable future, but involves cultural doing—​mapping, collecting, story-​telling, practising—​of the past to secure the coming community. The developmental state treats all places as alienable resources with the potential for redevelopment to renew the capitalist production of value and to turn Hong Kong into a Chinese global city. In the cultural doing of place-​making activism, apocalyptic mobilisation holds the strongest promise for citizens to obtain a semblance of spatial justice against the planning juggernaut of the developmental state. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to Anoma Pieris, Audrey Yue and, especially, the two reviewers of an earlier version of this chapter for their constructive criticisms, which enabled me to let go of a conceptual baggage and focus the article more incisively on postcolonialism. REFERENCES Abbas, A 1997, Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN. Benjamin, W 1979, One-​Way Street, and Other Writings, trans. E Jephcott and K Shorter, NLB, London. Chen, Y-​C and Szeto, MM 2017, ‘Reclaiming Public Space Movement in Hong Kong: From Occupy Queen’s Pier to the Umbrella Movement’, in J Hou and S Knierbein (eds.), City

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Unsilenced: Urban Resistance and Public Space in the Age of Shrinking Democracy, Routledge, New York, 69–​82. Chiu, S and Lui, T-​L 2009, Hong Kong: Becoming a Chinese Global City, Routledge, London. Civil Engineering and Development Department, Hong Kong 2006, Decommissioning of the Former Kai Tak Airport Other Than the North Apron, available at www.epd.gov.hk/​ eia/​register/​profile/​latest/​esb160.pdf. Hui, LHD and Au, CYR 2016, ‘Spatial governance and the rise of post-​politics in Hong Kong’, Journal of Asian Public Policy, vol. 9, no. 3, 227–​242. Ip, I-​C 2017, ‘Becoming a Revanchist City: Reflections on Hong Kong Nativist Affects’, in C-​M Wang and DPS Goh (eds.), Precarious Belongings: Affect and Nationalism in Asia, Rowman and Littlefield, London, 169–​184. Kusno, A 2010, The Appearances of Memory: Mnemonic Practices of Architecture and Urban Form in Indonesia, Duke University Press, Durham, NC. Ku, A 2012, ‘Remaking places and fashioning an opposition discourse: Struggle over the Star Ferry Pier and the Queen’s Pier in Hong Kong’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, vol. 30, no. 1, 5–​22. Lee, EWY, Chan, EYM, Chan, JCW, Cheung, PTY, Lam, WF and Lam, W-​M 2013, Public Policymaking in Hong Kong: Civic Engagement and State–​Society Relations in a Semi-​ Democracy, Routledge, London. Legg, S and McFarlane, C 2008, ‘Ordinary urban spaces: Between postcolonialism and development’, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, vol. 40, no. 1, 6–​14. Logan, GM and Adams, RM (eds.) 1989, Thomas More: Utopia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Ma, EK-​W 2012, Desiring Hong Kong, Consuming South China: Transborder Cultural Politics, 1970–​2010, Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong. Mak, AHS 2015, ‘Artists studios and their practices in Kwun Tong industrial buildings: A hyper-​video ethnography study’, Visual Ethnography, vol. 4, no. 2. Ng, MK 1993, ‘Strategic planning in Hong Kong: Lessons from TDS (Territorial Development Strategy) and PADS (Port and Airport Development Strategy)’, The Town Planning Review, vol. 64, no. 3, 287–​311. —​—​—​2008, ‘From government to governance? Politics of planning in the first decade of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’, Planning Theory and Practice, vol. 9, no. 2, 165–​185. One-​Way Street on a Turntable 2007, DVD recording, sponsored by Hong Kong Arts Development Council, distributed by Ying E Chi, Hong Kong (film originally released in 2007 at the thirty-​first International Hong Kong Film Festival and directed by Anson Mak). Planning Department 2004, Kai Tak Planning Review, Consultation Digest (1), Working Together to Shape a New Kai Tak, The Department, Hong Kong. —​—​—​ 2005, Kai Tak Planning Review, Stage 2 Public Participation: Outline Concept Plans, Public Consultation Digest (2), The Department, Hong Kong. —​—​—​ 2006, Kai Tak Planning Review, Revised Preliminary Outline Development Plan, The Department, Hong Kong. —​—​—​ 2007, Kai Tak Planning Review, Executive Summary, The Department, Hong Kong. South China Morning Post 2012, ‘To Kwa Wan: Rundown but in high spirits’, 10 August, available at . —​—​—​2016, ‘Hong Kong’s URA announces ambitious HK$10 billion renewal plan for To Kwa Wan’, 3 June, available at < www.scmp.com/​news/​hong-​kong/​education-​ community/​article/​1963785/​hong-​kongs-​ura-​announces-​ambitious-​hk10-​billion>. Tang, W-​S 2015, ‘Creative industries, public engagement and urban redevelopment in Hong Kong: Cultural regeneration as another dose of isotopia?’, Cities, vol. 56, 156–​164.

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Tsang, KKM and Siu, KWM 2016, ‘The 3Cs model of sustainable cultural and creative cluster: The case of Hong Kong’, City, Culture and Society, vol. 7, no. 4, 209–​219. Urban Renewal Authority (URA) 2007, Kwun Tong Town Centre Project, viewed 12 August 2017, . Wan, YKM and Chiu, LHRC 2008, ‘Transforming the governance of plan-​making in Hong Kong’, Journal of Place Management and Development, vol. 1, no. 3, 256–​271. Watson, JK 2011, The New Asian City: Three-​Dimensional Fictions of Space and Urban Form, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN. Yeoh, BSA 2001, ‘Postcolonial cities’, Progress in Human Geography, vol. 25, no. 3, 456–​468.

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12: Pushing boundaries: Heritage resilience of minority communities in post-​war Sri Lanka Melathi Saldin

The Sri Lankan civil war ended in May 2009 following nearly three decades (1983–​ 2009) of violent conflict between Sri Lankan Government armed forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a separatist faction claiming to represent the island’s largest ethnic minority, the Tamils. The LTTE fought for a separatist homeland—​Eelam—​which constituted the largely Tamil-​speaking regions of the north, north-​east and north-​western littorals of Sri Lanka (Figure 12.1). Historical claims to Eelam encompassed the geo-​political region of the independent Tamil Arya-​Chakravarti Kingdom in northern Sri Lanka—​which collapsed in CE 1628, when the Portuguese gained control of large tracts of the Maritime Provinces, including Jaffna (Nagarajan 1988). Following the defeat of the LTTE that ended the war, the Sri Lankan Government appointed the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) (2011), as a peace-​building effort, but the achievement of reconciliation and justice has been marred by increasing political and social turbulence, including the rising violence against other minorities, mainly the Muslims. The country continues to struggle with its post-​war recovery process and sustained political and social turmoil. This chapter is based on my ongoing PhD research which resulted from my disquiet as a Sri Lankan national, an archaeologist in a State University Department and a member of a non-​Sinhala minority working in a field with significant disparities in terms of ethnic diversity.1 My broader research explores how hegemony is institutionalised in heritage organisations such as the Department of Archaeology and the Central Cultural Fund (CCF) (the local liaising body for the UNESCO), and how this informs and shapes national heritage narratives. It also traces the ways through which minority communities write against these narratives by creating their own often precarious spaces for cultural expression, engendering resilience in the face of adversity. Using the civil society initiative, the Welcome to Our Mosque programme (which has parallels in countries such as the UK, Australia, Singapore and Thailand) as an example, this chapter will explore how a section of Lankan Muslims utilises heritage spaces such as mosques for resilience building, when their identity, belonging and legitimacy to the state are challenged.

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Figure 12.1 Conjectured map of Tamil Eelam [shaded in dark grey]. Drawn by Afrah Saldin.

Adapted by Afrah Saldin 2018, from Wikimedia image, Sri Lanka Districts (2016) from Wikimedia Commons.

My analysis begins with the observation of a Sinhalese (woman) visitor to the Meera Makam Mosque, Kandy, a space opened to non-​Muslims under the Welcome to Our Mosque programme in September 2017. The nineteenth-​century mosque was built on land gifted by King Kirthi Sri Rajasingha of Kandy (the last Sinhala kingdom until its fall to the British in 1815) to a loyal Muslim courtier—​evidence of a symbiotic relationship between the two communities (Dewaraja 1994, 115), which has nonetheless become submerged with the passing of time. The woman, a middle-​ aged lady, attired in traditional osari,2 her head uncovered, was visiting a mosque for the first time, despite having lived in its vicinity most of her life. She observed: I pass by this place every morning and evening on my way to and back from work and always regarded the mosque as a place which was strange or different. I only understood what the mosque means to the Muslim community after my visit today. I then realised that the tenets of what they preach in the mosque and what they preach in the [Buddhist] temple is the same—​the importance of co-​ existence—​to live peacefully with all people … Forgive me for saying this, but a

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lot of people say that when Muslims congregate for Friday prayers they are in fact plotting against other [non-​Muslim] communities … This has been my perception and I only understood what really happens in a mosque after my visit today! If I had not visited today, I would have just believed what everyone else was saying about the Muslim community and their mosques. We need to visit each other’s places of worship more often and increase our understanding about each other. We are all Sri Lankans and we all need to live in peace with each other. (Daily Ceylon 2017)

The Welcome to Our Mosque programme, an outreach initiative conducted by the Centre for Islamic Studies (CIS 2018) Sri Lanka, a Muslim welfare organisation states its aim to utilise the mosque ‘as a platform to bring communities of various faiths together and promote mutual understanding’. This programme was initiated within the context of growing anti-​Muslim rhetoric and punctuated violence occurring in different parts of Sri Lanka in the post-​war era during which minority Muslims have become the primary target of increasing triumphalism and populism. This was evident, for example, in targeted violence against the Muslim town of Aluthgama located on the southern coastal belt in 2014 (Haniffa 2016) and further incidents of violence, in 2017 and 2018, targeting mosques at Panadura, Sedawatte, Nawalapitiya, Digana, Ampara, along with other individual acts of arson against Muslim villages, refugee settlements, homes and businesses (Haniffa 2016; Holt 2016; DeVotta 2017). Given the weak and often uninspiring state reconciliation infrastructure, the Muslim community has come to rely on grassroots initiatives to empower them in times of adversity. As one such initiative, the Welcome to Our Mosque programme focuses on enhancing intercultural understanding between the Muslim community and other groups, using the mosque as a point of convergence. Although not directly involved in the hostilities between government forces and Tamil separatist groups, increasing post-​war violence against the Muslim community and their diverse responses to this violence raises questions about boundaries. These include the boundaries between minority and majority communal identities, underpinned by religious and cultural affiliations, made increasingly precarious in the aftermath of war. Joel Migdal’s (2004, 6)  conceptualisation of boundaries is useful here; as sites where ‘things are done differently [or as places which indicate] the limits to where things are done in one way’. As such, boundaries are relatively porous social constructions, which constitute both social and symbolic dimensions (Migdal 2004, 5–​6). Also important is Michèle Lamont and Virág Molnár’s illustration of the boundary as socially omnivorous, as ‘conditions not only for separation and exclusion but also for communication, exchange, bridging and inclusion’ (2002, 181). Jonathan Goodhand et al. (2009, 679) note, ‘boundaries have always been central to the dynamics of armed conflict’. As with conflicts elsewhere, in Sri Lanka, ‘boundaries … may be imagined and constructed but … have “real” consequences’ (Goodhand et al. 2009, 681). Jonathan Spencer et al.’s (2015) research on boundary work of minority religious organisations during the civil war is particularly important here. They argue

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that religious agents (and spaces) sometimes act as potentates reinforcing boundaries and at other times act as travellers with the ability to transcend these boundaries (Spencer et al. 2015, 683). They illustrate how religious spaces and agents in the ethnically and religiously diverse Eastern Province have hybrid, often paradoxical roles, in times of conflict. These spaces and agents are imbued with the potential to reconfigure and reorient public perception on what is socially and politically desirable or possible (Spencer et al. 2015, 19). Whilst cautioning against the dangers of taking the unifying force of religious institutions at face value, their example of Mosque Federations operating across the Eastern Province during the civil war indicates how these religious organisations helped the Muslim minority navigate complex and often violent ethno-​political boundaries to broker their well-​ being during times of upheaval (Spencer et al. 2015, 103–​5; also see: Goodhand et al. 2009, 691; Klem 2011, 742; Hasbullah and Korf 2009, 252).3 The Mosque Federation acted as a mediatory body for the local Muslim community and other parties, such as the LTTE or government forces, during times of rising ethnic tensions, as well as during the devastating 2004 tsunami, by working to resolve land issues and safeguarding the political rights of that community (Spencer et al. 2015, 103). Whilst boundaries are often activated by fear and violence, the above observation of a Sinhala visitor’s first encounter with a previously insulated religious space calls attention to the ways by which such boundaries could be transcended and dissolved. This is particularly apparent with the case of the Welcome to Our Mosque initiative, especially given that mosques have been notably reticent to the idea of opening their spaces to non-​Muslims and to an extent to women (Muslim or otherwise). Set against this context, the opening of mosques to others through the initiative merits further exploration of the significance of opening up a hitherto opaque religious space in an emotionally and politically sensitive post-​war landscape. Where boundaries of identity and belonging are firmly demarcated within shared socio-​physical environments, questions arise regarding the heritage patrimony of spaces and their inherent communal practices. In post-​conflict environments, where violence is directed towards bounded or seemingly opaque minority physical spaces, what might be gained by opening up distinct heritage spaces, in this instance the mosque, to those of other cultures, faiths and even genders? Within the broader shifts occurring in the ‘Muslim World’ today, what does it mean to allow outsiders into a space which has previously discouraged the entry of the Kafir?4 Moreover, what potentials do opening and sharing these spaces (even for the short duration of the open mosque programme) have for fostering inter-​community relations in the present volatile and uncertain post-​war context, not only with Muslims and the Sinhala majority, but also with other minorities? MUSLIM IDENTITY IN THE WAR’S AFTERMATH Sri Lankan Muslim identity includes different categories of Islamic adherents referred to by their cultural and ethnic affiliations during the colonial and well into

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the postcolonial period (after political Independence in 1948), a practice which largely continues to the present day. For example, there were the Moors, further subdivided into Coast and Ceylon Moors (claiming Arab descent and Indo-​Muslim descent respectively) (Dewaraja 1994, 48; McGilvray 1998, 434; Spencer et  al. 2015, 3); the Malays,5 the Bohras, Memons and Khojas.6 As a religious collective, the Sri Lankan Muslims at 9.7% of Sri Lanka’s 21.4 million strong population are the second largest ethno-​religious minority following the Hindu Tamils. The Moors constitute 9.3% of that number and are typically identified as ‘Sri Lanka Muslim’ although the term should include other ethnically distinct adherents of Islam (at 0.4%) (Department of Census and Statistics 2012). These inter-​community ethnic and cultural boundaries are recognised quite clearly among Lankan Muslims although the term ‘Moor’ has slipped out of usage among most members of that community (McGilvray 1998; Ismail 2009). Qadri Ismail (2009, 62–​4) argues that Sri Lankan (Moor) Muslim identity is discursively and politically constructed across shifting and often conflicting identitarian categories to become an exclusively religious identity in the present day. The growing anti-​Muslim rhetoric and violence impacts Muslims in Sri Lanka regardless of these distinctions, owing to shared places of worship, (Islamic) names, dress as well as other common religious markers. Despite being particularly virulent in the post-​war period, anti-​Muslim rhetoric and violence is not a new occurrence in Sri Lanka, rather it has been rendered less visible due to the protracted civil war. Some scholars argue that the current trend of violence targeting Muslims is largely a result of the long-​term effect of war (Imtiyaz and Mohamed-​Saleem 2015; DeVotta 2017). Conversely, Michael Roberts argues that anti-​Muslim sentiment has deeper historical roots, such as the 1915 Sinhala-​Muslim riots, where the colonial period Police Ordinance of 1865 produced ethnic tensions, particularly when the path of a Buddhist perahera (religious procession) was rerouted to avoid mosques (Roberts 1994b, 1994a). These protective measures, implemented by the police and requested by several Muslim-​ Moor communities, cast them as a favoured minority in the eyes of Buddhist agitators, influenced by increasingly militant pro-​Buddhist political lobbies (Roberts 1994b, 160). Roberts notes fourteen such confrontations prior to the more major 1915 pogrom in Kandy, the first such example of violence against a minority in (then) Ceylon. In his view, the imposition of statutory regulations for maintaining the peace, against which Buddhists (and Hindus) struggled, became the provocation for religious disputes; echoed in the violence against this community in the present day. British colonial ‘divide and rule’ policies, including the strict demarcation of religious spaces created disproportionate advantages to minority groups, such as greater employment opportunities for native Christian converts and minority Tamils, whilst also allowing the Muslims to prosper through trade ventures and other government appointments, heightening the sense of dissatisfaction amongst the Sinhala majority (DeVotta 2005, 173). These patterns of Sinhala-​Muslim violence, which can be traced back to the colonial period, have resurfaced from time to time, nearly a century later, both during and after the civil war, suggesting that

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boundaries around physical spaces once protected by colonial laws can potentially be reactivated in subsequent animosities, partly owing to their erosion by protections for Buddhism incorporated in Sri Lanka’s 1972 constitution. As the island’s second largest ethno-​religious minority, Muslims have complicated (and also been implicated in) civil war hostilities. Whilst mainly posited as a conflict between competing notions of homeland between the Sinhalese and Tamils, other groups outside this binary were also creating their own boundaries. As Jack Eller (1999, 96) argues, Sri Lanka’s cultural map goes far beyond power struggles between the Sinhalese and Tamils, resulting in the situation on the ground being ‘much more complicated than a mere bi-​ethnic face-​off’. Throughout the civil war, the contestation for Tamil Eelam, which engulfed much of the Island’s north and east (areas with significant Muslim settlements), placed Lankan Muslims in an extremely precarious position between the primarily Sinhala-​dominated state and the Tiger rebels (McGilvray 1998, 435; Bandarage 2009, 121). As Tamil speakers, the Moor-​Muslim community who lived in the Northern and Eastern Province were co-​opted to fight for a common Tamil-​speaking cause by the LTTE during the initial stages of the conflict. This offer was later rejected by Muslim political leaders who feared their distinct identity and political aspirations would be subsumed by the numerically larger Tamil community (McGilvray 1998; Ismail et  al. 2005). This development, together with the support pledged by Muslim leaders to the government, paved the way for the LTTE’s attacks on the Muslims in the north and east. In August 1990 for example, 103 Muslim worshippers were massacred by the Tiger rebels whilst they were engaged in evening prayer at the Meera Grand (Jummah) Mosque (Figure 12.2) and Hussainiya Mosque at Kattankudy, a predominantly Muslim town located in Sri Lanka’s east (McGilvray 1998, 474). This was followed by the expulsion of the entire Muslim population from Jaffna, Mullaitivu, Kilinochchi and Mannar districts by the LTTE in October 1990, a strategy of ethnic cleansing between minority groups analysed by numerous scholars (Hasbullah 2004; Imtiyaz and Iqbal 2011; Law and Society Trust 2012). The expulsion of Muslims from the north created a large number of Muslim Internally Displaced Persons, some of whom are yet to be resettled nearly a decade after the end of the civil war (Law and Society Trust 2012). Frequent eruptions of violence and deep suspicion between different communities in Sri Lanka have served to harden and reaffirm ethnic and religious boundaries even despite their cultural and economic interconnectedness (Goodhand et al. 2009, 685). For some Muslims, the hardening of religious boundaries has provided a means of coping with violence on two fronts—​on one hand from the Tamils and on the other, from the Sinhalese. Indeed, as Spencer et al. (2015, 6) argue, in Sri Lanka, religion ‘is not only a problem … but also a force [that can] make life a little more bearable in otherwise terrible circumstances’. Similarly, Anoma Pieris (2018, pers. comm) observes that gaps created by the lack of state reconciliation infrastructure, including psycho-​social support networks to cope with trauma, insecurities associated with protracted conflict and a weak transitional justice system have been increasingly filled by religious infrastructure. These productive religious spaces and networks are also paralleled by the rise of fundamental religio-​political

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Figure 12.2 Bullet-​ridden interior of Meera Jummah Mosque, Kattankudy (damaged wall preserved in situ). Photograph by Melathi Saldin, 2018.

entities such as the Buddhist—​ Bodu Bala Sena (Buddhist Power Force—​ BBS) and reformist Muslim groups such as the Tableeg Jamaat and Towheed Jamaat movement (McGilvray 2016). However, religious boundaries are paradoxical as they not only help strengthen intra-​community ties during times of adversity but can also become sites where inter-​community alliances are negotiated (Goodhand et al. 2009, 680; Klem 2011, 743). The current unease of Lankan Muslims is compounded by the increasing adoption of puritan Islam by sections of the community, heightened by global Islamic developments. Roberts (1994b, 154–​5), for example, traces the rise of fundamentalist Islamic movements in Sri Lanka, such as Salafism and Wahabism, to the early 1980s. He argues that the rise of puritan Islam created barriers for moderate Islam and discouraged culturally accommodative indigenous Islamic practices, influenced by Tamil (Hindu) as well as Sinhala (Buddhist) culture, further isolating the Muslims from other communities. In the post-​war context, this relative social isolation of Muslims has made it easier for Sinhala populist groups to question Muslim identity, belonging and legitimacy, targeting Muslims in place of Tamils for anti-​minority activities following the defeat of the LTTE. Imtiyaz and Saleem (2015, 186)  argue that the post-​war Sinhala Buddhist mobilisation against the Muslim minority stems from the complex relationship between the state (dominated by the majority Sinhalese) and ‘second-​order minorities’ during the civil war, resulting in the manipulation of ethnic identities for the benefit of the state and other political aspirants. Other developments such as the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in different parts of the world including the increasing spectre of ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) in Southeast Asia, as well as regional developments such as the

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ethnic cleansing of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims and simmering Hindu-​Muslim tensions in India further complicate these issues. These shifts have increasingly posited Lankan Muslims as a non-​integrative and politically dissident minority, resulting in retributive acts of violence against the community. The practice of making and maintaining heritage spaces is also integral to state or community efforts at policing religious boundaries. For the majority Sinhala Buddhist community this has been a vital exercise, especially following the targeted destruction of religious heritage sites, particularly the bombing of the Dalada Maligawa (Temple of the Tooth),7 a sacred Buddhist site and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, by the LTTE in 1998. Whilst garnering international attention owing to the targeted destruction of a heritage site of universal value, for the Sinhalese who consider the tooth relic to be one of the foremost sacred objects of the Buddha, this remains an incident of the highest transgression and violation of a religious space (Wijesuriya 2005). In the post-​war context, tensions over religious or heritage sites, even those on the periphery of an ethnic or religious imaginary, have become a symbolic force for actors intent on advancing nationalist agendas (Spencer et al. 2015, 77). This is also evident with the drive to reclaim Buddhist religious heritage sites and landscapes in the (according to the government) ‘liberated’ north and east, a process historian Nirmal Dewasiri (2013, 7) refers to as the creation of a Sinhalese Buddhist ‘super space’ in the north. In his thought-​ provoking paper on ‘Islam, politics and violence in Eastern Sri Lanka’, Bart Klem (2011, 741)  illustrates how the expansionist aims (based on ethnic or religious claims) of the Sinhalese and a larger minority such as the Tamils has prompted reactionary responses from the Muslims of the east. One such example is the manner in which a forgotten religious site—​the Ambalattaru mosque—​located on the Sinhala-​Muslim border of the Akkaraipattu village, was politicised in the face of increasing inter-​ethnic land politics (Klem 2011, 742). For many Muslim leaders in eastern Sri Lanka, maintaining religious/​heritage boundaries becomes paramount, since they believe they ‘have to cling on to their history … [as] they are under threat from Sinhala and Tamil nationalists who argue that Muslims are not from this soil’ (Klem 2011, 742). As the above accounts indicate, claims to religious/​ heritage sites and landscapes have been used to inspire or bolster conflict between opposing groups. Spencer (1990, 3), for example, notes that the Sri Lankan civil war was paralleled by rhetorical wars over archaeological sites and place names. In the post-​war period, those contesting Muslim identity and belonging to the state have often used evidence of historical and material continuity (or the lack thereof), such as the ‘lack’ of visible, particularly monumental, forms of Muslim heritage as leverage when compared with the majority Sinhalese as well as other minorities such as the Tamils. Sri Lanka’s colonial legacy of privileging classical and monumental traditions of archaeological inquiry over others has subsumed and oftentimes led historians and archaeologists to overlook the diverse spectrum of heritage, resulting in the decreased visibility of minority cultures. This is especially exemplified in the UNESCO–​ Sri Lanka Central Cultural Fund’s (CCF) emphasis on classical and

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aesthetic objects, sites and landscapes (Seneviratne 2008). As one of the early signatories of the 1972 Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, UNESCO’s early preference for monumental masterpieces (prior to changes such as the adoption of the Nara document on authenticity and the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage) aligned well with the nationalist interests of the Sri Lankan Government’s CCF project during the early 1980s. Many scholars have been critical of the CCF’s focus on monumental Buddhist sites (Logan 2002; Peebles 2006; Seneviratne 2008, 187–​ 190). William Logan notes that other than the Galle Fort, all sites are essentially Buddhist in nature, with the Fort’s preservation being distinct from the national mainstream (2002, xvi). Conversely, Patrick Peebles (2006, 115)  argues that the restoration of ancient citadels under the CCF Project was carried out based on their religious significance and not their archaeological value. This bias of state heritage institutions, in terms of their research focus on Buddhist heritage sites, marginalising other forms of heritage, has been conveniently co-​opted by nationalist elements in Sri Lanka. Diverse interest groups have found that archaeology ‘provides a greater time depth than written records and so can be appealed to in claims to territory and/​or sovereignty’ (Arnold 2014, 2443). As with the reclaiming of Buddhist heritage in the north by state-​sanctioned archaeology projects, archaeological knowledge, practice and legislature is also increasingly used to contest the land ownership and belonging of the Muslims (Sri Lanka Secretariat for Muslims (SFM) 2015, vols 1 and 2; Spencer et al. 2015). This is evident with the contestation of the Sufi Muslim site of Jailani (as it is known to the Muslims) or Kuragala (as it is known to the Sinhalese) by the BBS in April 2013 (Farook 2013). The BBS campaign alleged that Jailani or Kuragala was an exclusively Buddhist site and that the CE twelfth-​century Sufi Shrine and mosque of Daftar Jailani were built upon a second-​century BCE Buddhist cave monastery (SFM 2015, vol. 1; Medhananda Thero 2013). Excavations carried out at this site by the Department of Archaeology concluded that it had been occupied since the prehistoric period, and also provided evidence of a Buddhist monastery spanning from the third century BC to the first century CE (Nathaniel 2015), whilst the Islamic cultural layers of the site date from the the twelfth century CE (McGilvray 2004). Preference was given to the prior Buddhist claim. Although the mosque was not removed in this instance, all other ancillary buildings were dismantled as unauthorised structures, an example of the ways by which attention to religious spaces can easily activate simmering tensions in the post-​war period. PUSHING BOUNDARIES As a consequence of these socio-​political developments, much of the dominant discourse on post-​war Sri Lanka is replete with themes of conflict and contestation. This also includes the growing scholarly and popular discourse around threats to the well-​being of the Muslim community, particularly in relation to the conflict of heritage sites and landscapes between Sinhala and Muslim communities (SFM 2015, vols 1 and 2). The rise in anti-​Muslim rhetoric, as well as the strategic politics

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of victimhood adopted by sections of the Muslim community, have increasingly posited Muslims as ‘victims’ of the civil war and continued ethnic tensions in its aftermath. Indeed, a large part of the scholarly and popular discourse on minority, indigenous and other historically, socially or economically disadvantaged communities are underpinned by narratives of victimhood. Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s (1999) work—​Decolonizing Methodologies—​demonstrates how notions of victimhood and trauma are perpetuated in the literature on indigenous communities, even by subaltern scholars who claim to write against established Western ontologies. She contends that the uncritical use of material on colonial encounters with indigenous people, together with the embedded colonial/​Eurocentric ways of reading, writing and learning about indigenous culture has resulted in self-​ imposed othering and the perpetuation of colonial myths about them (Smith 1999, 36). Similarly, Dominick LaCapra’s (2001, x–​xi) work on depictions of the Holocaust suggests that trauma has become a scholarly obsession, resulting in notions that contemporary culture and history are fundamentally traumatic, even despite the existence of processes which counter or mitigate trauma (x). Whilst debates on victimisation and victimhood in Sri Lanka (and similar places) bring greater visibility to the diverse and ongoing social issues resulting from the war, it must be conceded that this also renders less visible the ways by which the Muslim community transcends boundaries to garner empowerment, identity affirmation and cultural survival. How then have challenges to the identity, belonging and legitimacy of Muslims in Sri Lanka inspired them to reshape boundaries which govern their daily life? My own research is interested in the role of everyday forms of heritage, particularly those pivoting on religious belief and cultural practice for resilience building. I argue that these not only help to engender belonging and identity affirmation within the Muslim community, but also play a crucial role in enhancing dialogue with other communities. The Welcome to Our Mosque programme is an example of how grassroots movements can help the Muslim community positively respond to post-​war cultural politics. The programme encourages those of different cultural or religious backgrounds to gain an immersive experience of Sri Lankan Muslim heritage by opening up the mosque—​a core location of Muslim religious and community activity (Hussein 2017, interview).8 Starting in 2014, the CIS has conducted ten Welcome to Our Mosque programmes in mosques in different parts of Sri Lanka (Hussein 2017, interview). The first open mosque programmes commenced in Colombo at the Wekanda Mosque (Figure 12.3) and Akbar Mosque, followed by the one held at the Kandy Meera Makam Mosque. Following the success of these programmes the CIS has received invitations to conduct mosque tours in places such as Kandy, Gampola, Anuradhapura, Pottuvil and Puttalam. Whilst many of the programmes are open to the general public, the CIS also conducts these for specific audiences (i.e. the Colombo Law Faculty). The Welcome to Our Mosque programme utilises all features of the mosque to explain and engage their non-​Muslim audience with various aspects of Islamic religious knowledge and ritual. During the programme, the foyer area of the

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Figure 12.3 Wekanda Jummah Mosque, Slave Island, Colombo. Photograph by Afrah Saldin 2018.

mosque is the starting point, where visitors are given a history of the mosque and an explanation of its architecture, which would be unfamiliar to many. As Robert Hillenbrand (1994) posits, this architecture has responded to the climate of Arabia and of the Fertile Crescent; the courtyard of the mosque is an intentional evocation of the wide expanse of desert, whilst the ablution pond or fountain is reminiscent of a watering hole in an oasis. Soothing colours and lattice-​work windows in the mosque help to mitigate the glare of the sun, and flooring such as tiles, stone flags or carpet are soothing to bare feet whilst the absence of furniture helps air circulate freely (Hillenbrand 1994, 23–​4). Unlike Hindu or Buddhist temples, walls both inside and outside mosques are devoid of human figures, but many utilise geometric shapes and floral patterns as decorative elements. Mosques, particularly those in Asia, have also developed within indigenous building traditions with architectural elements, such as hipped, tiled roofs, making them distinct from their Middle Eastern counterparts (bin Tajudeen 2013). Key architectural features shared with mosques the world over (for example see the floor plan of the Wekanda Jummah Mosque, Slave Island, Colombo—​Figure 12.4) are possibly new to visitors on the Welcome to Our Mosque programme. The visitors are given a tour of the mosque premises, including demonstrations of the wudu or ablution undertaken prior to performing the prayer at the wudu pond or fountain (Figure 12.5). This is followed by a demonstration of prayer: the mihrab or prayer niche deeply recessed in the wall signifies the direction of prayer—​the Kaaba in Mecca (Figs 12.6 and 12.7). The Imam or leader of the congregation typically leads the prayers from this niche, its concave shape helping his voice echo through to worshippers (Hillenbrand 1994, 45); the minbar, which is on

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Figure 12.4  Floor plan of Wekanda Jummah Mosque, Slave Island, Colombo. Drawn by Afrah Saldin 2018.

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Figure 12.5 Wudu/​ablution area, Wekanda Jummah Mosque, Slave Island, Colombo. Photograph by Afrah Saldin 2018.

a slightly raised elevation, acts as a lectern and is often used to deliver sermons and in ancient times was used to dispense justice and promulgate law. Such features are not found in Buddhism, for example, where sermons are typically given in colonnaded pavilions. The tour concludes with a poster exhibition consisting of information panels on various teachings of Islam such as tolerance, coexistence and women’s rights. Visitors are presented with calligraphy souvenirs and popular Lankan Muslim food, while female visitors can get henna hand adornments as part of a local Muslim cultural experience (Figure 12.8). To revisit the vignette of the Sinhala lady visitor to the mosque, this space, especially the special congregation on Fridays (Jummah prayer), and its focus on only the male members of Muslim society has created suspicions among some members of the non-​Muslim community. This visitor, for example, believed that Muslim males gathered in the mosque to plot violence against other communities. This situation is possibly also complicated by the fact that the sermon (kuthba), which follows Friday prayers is usually conducted in Tamil, a language spoken by

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Figure 12.6 Demonstration of prayer—​ Welcome to Our Mosque programme, Pottuvil Jummah Mosque, Pottuvil. Source: Centre for Islamic Studies, Sri Lanka, 2017.

Figure 12.7 Minbar/​prayer niche on left and mihrab/​lectern on right, Wekanda Jummah Mosque, Slave Island, Colombo. Photograph by Afrah Saldin 2018.

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Figure 12.8 Henna design corner, Welcome to Our Mosque programme, Kahatapitiya Jummah Mosque, Gampola. Source: Centre for Islamic Studies , Sri Lanka, 2018.

most of the Muslim community but alien to the Sinhala majority. Further barriers to accommodation are created by the relative reticence of opening up the mosque to those of other faiths, owing to self-​constructed notions of purity, which are largely unfounded according to the rules of Islamic theology. Moreover, following Prophetic teaching (Sunnah), many Muslim women are encouraged to perform their prayers in the privacy of their homes with special allowances given during the month of Ramadan when Muslim men and women alike are encouraged to visit the mosque for special (Taraweeh) prayers and during the special Eid (festival) prayers. Segregation of genders is strictly followed in all these instances and temporary barriers or curtains are often erected to ensure this is maintained. As evident in a growing number of Muslim countries around the world, the increasing mobility of Muslim women in Sri Lanka has resulted in an increasing number of mosques catering to female worshippers by constructing a special ‘Ladies prayer hall’ (see Figure 12.4). Despite these more recent accommodations, there is still a stark contrast between the organisation of the mosque space and religious spaces of other communities in Sri Lanka. Buddhist temples, Hindu Kovils and Christian or Catholic churches allow the public free entry and movement within their spaces regardless of their faith or gender. Of course, whilst certain ritualistic spaces may be confined to the priesthood, in comparison to mosques, there is a large allowance of freedom of movement for worshippers and visitors. Against this context, the Welcome to Our Mosque initiative has done important work towards brokering boundaries. Indeed, as Migdal (2004, 5) observes,

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boundaries signify the point at which something becomes something else, at which the way things are done changes, at which ‘we’ end and ‘they’ begin, at which certain rules for behaviour no longer obtain and others take hold.

Opening the mosque to others has helped highlight the potentials and possibilities of pushing beyond normative boundaries of ‘custom or tradition’, which is an important step given the Muslim community is often perceived as being exclusionary and insular. This has also helped challenge entrenched notions of purity and sanctity. This programme is also doing formative work in dissolving barriers to gender, critical in a space that is traditionally male oriented. Of course, Muslim women entering the mosque are required to be covered in loose fitting clothing over the head and entire body. However, within the duration of the Welcome to Our Mosque programme, non-​Muslim women are allowed to enter the mosque with their heads uncovered, although some use a head covering as a form of cultural respect. Gender barriers (at least for non-​Muslim women), often strictly enforced in the mosque, are suspended for the visitors. Such intercultural engagement also has the potential to positively impact majority–​minority relations as it provides a window into spaces and practices hitherto confined to the Muslim community. To use the term of Charles Tilly (2013, 21), within the duration of this programme the mosque becomes a site of ‘brokerage’ which ‘connects factions on each side of an us–​them boundary’. CONCLUSION Although inaugurated in 2014, the Welcome to Our Mosque programme has only been in operation with consistency since mid-​2016. It is yet unclear what long-​term impacts it will have for brokering boundaries between different ethnic groups in Sri Lanka. However, the initial responses from visitors do appear to indicate its potentials and possibilities as a welcome and much needed start of relationship building in a nation fractured by war. Moreover, this programme has the potential to help the community to accrue significant cultural capital in the context of increasing post-​war rhetoric which highlights the ‘lack of culture’ among Muslims. Muslim community programmes, such as this one, create ways for Muslims to regain some control over the narrative of reconciliation by redeploying it in ways that are better aligned with their community, social, cultural and political aspirations. This is particularly important as Sri Lanka’s post-​war reconciliation infrastructure is primarily top–​down and state driven, largely crafted in a way that sits comfortably within the majority Sinhalese conscience whilst marginalising the needs of minorities (Thaheer et al. 2013, 12). This programme also highlights the diverse avenues through which Sri Lankan Muslims could achieve a more global or transnational identity by appealing to notions of Umma or universal Islamic brotherhood, evident in the complex funding and training resources made available to the Welcome to Our Mosque programme through international Islamic agencies and institutions (Hussein 2017, interview). This programme has similar

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parallels in other countries such as the UK, Australia and the USA, where rising radical Islam and Islamic terror groups have created complex challenges to the well-​being of Muslim communities. The key difference between such programmes and the one in Sri Lanka, however, is the position of Muslims as a national minority vis-​à-​vis a migrant minority. Muslims in Sri Lanka as a national (or ethnic) minority have a different relationship with the majority community and other minority communities, given their complex histories and deeper often contested relations to the land. Thus, their social relations are shaped somewhat differently to those Muslim communities who are considered as migrant minorities. Despite these potentials, however, it is important to acknowledge the elements of fragility and precarity within which these contrived spaces operate. Indeed, Hasbullah and Korf’s (2009) and Goodhand et  al.’s (2009) work on the Eastern Province’s Mosque Federations illustrate that despite being initially successful in uniting the Muslim community in a time of crisis, the work and impact of these organisations could be impeded by competing humanitarian agencies and destructive political influence and interference. Indeed, the crucial challenge for Muslim minorities in Sri Lanka in the present volatile and uncertain context would be the formulation of strategies which ensure long-​term resilience, empowerment and well-​being. The Welcome to Our Mosque initiative is but one strategy. Indeed, for Muslims in Sri Lanka and increasingly other parts of the world where they are part of national or migrant minorities, the achievement of well-​being and cultural survival would largely rest on their ability to maintain intercultural dialogues with other groups and successfully position their community as part of the whole.

NOTES 1

2 3

4 5

6 7

The core empirical data for my research stems from informal discussions, semi-​ structured and in-​depth interviews with thirty-​five professionals from heritage and related areas in Sri Lanka. However, as ethnic minority communities are relatively underrepresented in state heritage institutions—​the Department of Archaeology for example, had only one Muslim Development Officer in its service and he was based at the Heritage Museum in Kattankudy—​I had to expand my interview cohort to include the limited number of civil society and non-​governmental organisations whose interests intersect with the sphere of heritage and culture. A garment similar to the saree, favoured by Sinhala women of the central highlands, where this mosque is situated. A network of mosques formally registered to unify the Muslim community and create a space for collective decisions, located in the Muslim-​dominated towns of Kattankudy and Akkaraipattu, Eastern Province (Spencer et al. 2015, 103–​5). Arabic for unbeliever. Descendants of political exiles, soldiers, criminals and others brought to Sri Lanka from the Indonesian Archipelago and the Malayan Peninsula during Portuguese, Dutch and British rule (Hussainmiya 2008). Groups of Bombay and Gujarati traders who arrived in Sri Lanka from the late nineteenth century onward (McGilvray 1998). The Dalada Maligawa, Kandy is located in the royal palace complex of the Kandyan Kingdom. The temple houses the sacred tooth relic of Lord Buddha. It is an important

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8

place of worship for Sri Lankan Buddhists and more significantly a symbol of sovereignty over Sri Lanka. Interview with Asiff Hussein (Vice-​President Outreach—​Centre for Islamic Studies, Sri Lanka), August 4, 2017.

REFERENCES Arnold, B 2014, ‘Erasure of the Past’, in C Smith (ed.), Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer-​Verlag, New York, 2441–​2448. Bandarage, A 2009, The Separatist Conflict in Sri Lanka: Terrorism, Ethnicity, Political Economy, iUniverse, Inc., New York. bin Tajudeen, I 2013, ‘Java’s Architectural Enigma’, in V Rujivacharakul, HH Hahn, KT Oshima and P Christensen (eds.), Architecturalized Asia: Mapping a Continent through History, University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu, 121–​138. Centre for Islamic Studies, 2018, Visit My Mosque, viewed 14 November (no longer available), . Daily Ceylon, 2017, ‘Visit My Mosque—​Kandy Meera Makam Jummah Mosque’, Kandy, 20 September, viewed 17 January 2019, . Department of Census and Statistics, Government of Sri Lanka 2012, Census of Population and Housing 2012, Colombo. DeVotta, N 2005, ‘Civil society and non-​governmental organizations in Sri Lanka: Peacemakers or parasites?’, Civil Wars, vol. 7, no. 2, 171–​182. —​—​—​2017, ‘Anti-​Muslim extremism and violence in Sri Lanka’, IAPS Dialogue: The online magazine of the Institute of Asia and Pacific Studies, viewed 17 January 2018, . Dewaraja, LS 1994, The Muslims of Sri Lanka: One Thousand Years of Ethnic Harmony, 900–​1915, Lanka Islamic Foundation, Colombo. Dewasiri, NR 2013, ‘ “History” after the war: Historical consciousness in the collective Sinhala-​Buddhist psyche in post-​war Sri Lanka’, ICES Research Papers, vol. 9, July, 1–​22. Eller, JD 1999, From Culture to Ethnicity to Conflict: An Anthropological Perspective on International Ethnic Conflict, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI. Farook, L 2013, ‘On BBS claim: Get ready to celebrate Vesak at Kuragala’, Colombo Telegraph, 11 April, viewed 7 January 2016, . Goodhand, J, Klem, B and Korf, B 2009, ‘Religion, conflict and boundary politics in Sri Lanka’, European Journal of Development Research, vol. 21, no. 5, 679–​698. Haniffa, F 2016, ‘Stories in the Aftermath of Aluthgama’, in JC Holt (ed.), Buddhist Extremists and Muslim Minorities: Religious Conflict in Contemporary Sri Lanka, Oxford University Press, New York, 164–​193. Hasbullah, S 2004, ‘Justice for the Dispossessed’, in S Hasbullah and B Morrison, Sri Lankan Society in an Era of Globalization: Struggling to Create a New Social Order, SAGE Publications, New Delhi, 221–​240. Hasbullah, S and Korf, B 2009, ‘Muslim geographies and the politics of purification in Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami’, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, vol. 30, no. 2, 248–​264. Hillenbrand, R 1994, Islamic Architecture: Form, Function and Meaning, Columbia University Press, New York. Holt, JC 2016, ‘Introduction’, in JC Holt (ed.), Buddhist Extremists and Muslim Minorities: Religious Conflict in Contemporary Sri Lanka, Oxford University Press, New York,  1–​17.

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Hussainmiya, BA 2008, Orang Regimen: The Malays of the Ceylon Rifle Regiment, AJ Prints, Dehiwela. Imtiyaz, ARM and Iqbal, MM 2011, ‘The displaced northern Muslims of Sri Lanka: Special problems and the future’, Journal of Asian and African Studies, vol. 46, no. 4, 375–​389. Imtiyaz, ARM and Mohamed-​Saleem, A 2015, ‘Muslims in post-​war Sri Lanka: Understanding Sinhala-​Buddhist mobilization against them’, Asian Ethnicity, vol. 16, no. 2, 186–​202. Ismail, M, Abdullah, R and Fazil, MM 2005, ‘The Other Side of the Muslim Nation’, in G Frerks and B Klem (eds.), Dealing with Diversity Sri Lankan Discourses on Peace and Conflict, The Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael’, The Hague, 191–​200. Ismail, Q 2009, ‘Unmooring Identity: The Antimonies of the Elite Muslim Self-​ Representation in Modern Sri Lanka’, in P Jeganathan and Q Ismail (eds.), Unmaking the Nation, South Focus Press, New York, 62–​107. Klem, B 2011, ‘Islam, politics and violence in Eastern Sri Lanka’, Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 70, no. 3, 730–​753. LaCapra, D 2001, Writing History, Writing Trauma, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD and London. Lamont, M and Molnár, V 2002, ‘The study of boundaries across the social sciences’, Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 28, 167–​195. Law and Society Trust 2012, The Quest for Redemption: The Story of the Northern Muslims, LST, Colombo. Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission 2011, Commission of Inquiry on Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation, Government of Sri Lanka, Colombo. Logan, WS 2002, ‘Introduction: Globalization, Cultural Identity, and Heritage’, in WS Logan (ed.), The Disappearing ‘Asian’ City Protecting Asia’s Urban Heritage in a Globalizing world, Oxford University Press, New York, xii –​xxi. McGilvray, DB 1998, ‘Arabs, Moors and Muslims: Sri Lankan Muslim ethnicity in regional perspective’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, vol. 32, no. 2, 433–​483. —​—​—​2004, ‘Jailani: A Sufi Shrine in Sri Lanka’, in I Ahmad and H Reifeld (eds.), Lived Islam in South Asia: Adaptation, Accommodation, and Conflict, Berghahn Books, New York, 273–​290. —​—​—​2016, ‘Rethinking Muslim Identity in Sri Lanka’, in JC Holt (ed.), Buddhist Extremists and Muslim Minorities: Religious Conflict in Contemporary Sri Lanka, Oxford University Press, New York, 54–​77. Medhananda Thero, E 2013, Kuragala/​Jailani history, 8 April, viewed 17 January 2019, . Migdal, JS 2004, Boundaries and Belonging: States and Societies in the Struggle to Shape Identities and Local Practices, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Nagarajan, S 1988, ‘Territorial identity of Tamil Eelam: Tamil and Sinhalese perspectives’, Journal of Eelam Studies, vol. 1, Spring, viewed 17 January 2019, . Nathaniel, C 2015, ‘Kuragala controversy deepens’, The Sunday Leader, 31 May, available at . Peebles, P 2006, The History of Sri Lanka, Greenwood Publishing Group, Westport, CT. Roberts, M 1994a, ‘Mentalities: Ideologues, Assailants, Historians and the Pogrom against the Moors in 1915’, in M Roberts (ed.), Exploring Confrontation. Sri Lanka: Politics, Culture and History, Harwood Academic Publishers, Chur, Switzerland, 183–​212. —​—​—​1994b, ‘The Imperialism of Silence under the British Raj: Arresting the Drum’, in M Roberts (ed.), Exploring Confrontation. Sri Lanka: Politics, Culture and History, Harwood Academic Publishers, Chur, Switzerland, 149–​181.

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Seneviratne, S 2008, ‘Situating World Heritage Sites in a Multicultural Society: The Ideology of Presentation at the Sacred City of Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka’, in M Liebmann and UZ Rizvi (eds.), Archaeology and the Postcolonial Critique, Altamira Press, Lanham, MD, 177–​195. Smith, LT 1999, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, Zed Books, London and New York. Spencer, J 1990, ‘Introduction: The power of the past’, in J Spencer (ed.), Sri Lanka: History and the Roots of Conflict, Routledge, London, 1–​16. Spencer, J, Goodhand, J, Hasbullah, SH, Klem, B, Korf, B and Silva, KT 2015, Checkpoint, Temple, Church and Mosque: A Collaborative Ethnography of War and Peace, Pluto Press, London. Sri Lanka Districts 2016, Rarelibra Wikimedia Commons, available at . Sri Lanka Secretariat for Muslims (SFM) 2015, Of Sacred Sites and Profane Politics: Tensions over Religious Sites and Ethnic Relations Vols 1 and 2, Sri Lanka Secretariat for Muslims, Colombo. Thaheer, M, Peiris, P and Pathiraja, K 2013, Reconciliation in Sri Lanka: Voices from Former War Zones, International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo. Tilly, C 2013, The Politics of Collective Violence, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. Wijesuriya, G 2005, ‘The Restoration of the Temple of the Tooth Relic in Sri Lanka: A Post-​ Conflict Cultural Response to Loss of Identity’, in N Stanley-​Price (ed.), Cultural Heritage in Postwar Recovery, ICCROM, Rome, 87–​97.

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13: Where do we draw a line? Heritage, identity and place in global heritage Natsuko Akagawa

Moving beyond the materiality of physical architecture, to the perspective of heritage studies, this chapter explores the intangible structures of heritage meaning to investigate their role in debates on sovereignty and its real and evident impact on the spatial imagination of border thinking. One of its aims is to demonstrate how while the notion of ‘border’ remains integral to internal processes of heritage-​making in multiple ways the global operations of the UNESCO heritage conventions contribute to the politics of national boundary making. The chapter examines how heritage boundary-​making mechanisms intersect with and impact on official geo-​political and imagined socio-​or ethno-​cultural borders while also introducing new dimensions of boundary through the formulation of global concepts of heritage. Citing examples of heritage-​making related to architectural, landscape and intangible elements, the chapter argues that such mechanisms, specifically as administered through the conventions of UNESCO, have contributed to and have sometimes initiated processes that have both significantly reinforced and overridden existing geo-​ political boundaries. In so doing they have both contributed to the formation of trans-​boundary, or shared cultural territories, as well as accentuated divisions that geo-​political boundaries are designed to mask. The chapter further examines how the changing conception of heritage, as embodied in two UNESCO conventions, the 1972 World Heritage Convention and the 2003 Intangible Heritage Convention, have increasingly shifted an emphasis from the conservation of monumental architecture to give prominence to the definition of the intangible boundaries of cultural meaning. In consequence, these different boundary-​making effects of heritage have ensured that heritage now occupies a key element in intra-​and inter-​nation, and global relations. At the same time, this recognition of the non-​physical, intangible nature of heritage and the increasing emphasis on seeing all heritage as being concerned with ‘meaning’, has often introduced greater ambiguity and contestation where national ownership of heritage is disputed. By examining the boundaries that processes of heritage identification at a global level produce, this chapter points to ways these can add to, consolidate and modify existing national and transnational border tensions.

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UNESCO AND HERITAGE-​RELATED BORDERS With the founding of UNESCO in November 1945, heritage became the subject of global management. Its first major convention governing the identification and conservation of heritage ‘of outstanding universal value’, was the 1972 World Heritage Convention. This enabled member countries, defined as member States Parties, to nominate items of national heritage considered as being of ‘universal significance for mankind’. While this objective pointed towards universalism and away from boundary marking by implying that heritage was not the preserve of any one country, in fact UNESCO listings have worked to strengthen unique national identity claims. Several structural reasons contribute to this. In the first case, because nomination to and listing under UNESCO heritage conventions can only be made by States Parties, nominated heritage elements are required to be located within a national boundary, or if a joint nomination, to be submitted by more than one States Party separately as existing within multiple national boundaries. Furthermore, the process of inscription is undertaken by national representatives who constitute the World Heritage Committee. This committee presides over the entire process and as national interests are explicitly involved, ‘the decision-​making of the Committee [has] become increasingly political’, often despite ‘the judgement of the advisory bodies that these sites had not met the requirements for inscription’ (Willems 2014, 116). Thus, the UNESCO Convention mechanisms ensure that heritage listing contributes to reinforcing national boundaries in both a territorial and cultural sense. There is another sense in which heritage-​making under the World Heritage Convention involves boundary marking. Under the prescribed procedures related to the nomination and listing of monuments, to protect a listed site, a nomination needs to articulate a ‘buffer zone’ or ‘conservation zone’. This requires drawing a specific spatial boundary to protect such sites (see Foster and Linge 2002). Given the physical nature of the boundaries of tangible heritage, any disjunction between national territorial and tangible heritage borders can give rise to international disagreements. Although normally tensions are averted through diplomacy between the States Parties concerned, such situations are not entirely immune from furious diplomatic and even military confrontation. The case of Preah Vihear temple on the borders of Thailand and Cambodia, for example, demonstrates how this type of situation can lead to serious diplomatic and military confrontation. TANGIBLE AND INTANGIBLE HERITAGE More recently, the adoption of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICHC) in 2003 that entered into force in 2006, has significantly broadened the concept of heritage and its management. This has also, therefore, impacted upon the question of how boundaries are regarded and managed within global heritage practice.

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By contrast to the notion of tangible heritage central to the World Heritage Convention which primarily involved monuments, structures, ruins and landscapes of historic significance, integral to the concept of intangible heritage are the metaphysical boundaries of meaning. Intangible heritage ceases to exist as an element to be defined in physical material form; instead, it is seen as a characteristic embodied, as it were, in a creator or performer, in the cultural behaviours of people and the meanings ascribed by spectators, users, or enactors to performances, behaviours or objects. The boundary of such an element of intangible cultural heritage, in this sense, is marked by the extent to which ‘meaning’ is shared (Akagawa 2015, 2016). The 2003 ICHC mandated that States Parties demonstrate the involvement of community representation in the identification and preparation of ICHC nomination documents. It was intended that this would enable formal recognition of sub-​ national, community-​valued practices and traditions as heritage. Understandably, this has opened up an extensive discourse on how the boundaries of performative or momentary heritage enactments can be identified and how and by whom it might be defined and protected and, ultimately, where the boundaries are marked. At least in theory, the new conception of heritage widened the definition of what constituted heritage and broadened the scope of who could initiate heritage identification and the boundaries that delineated it. In practice, however, community agency in heritage identification often remains a token (Chirikure et  al. 2010). As Waterton and Smith (2010) point out, dominant national political and economic interests typically remain primarily involved within nations in identifying and approving sub-​national (ethnic or minority community) elements of intangible cultural heritage. Such ICHC elements then also take on a similar function in contributing to national identity and the consolidation of national geo-​politically defined territorial boundaries. However, as community-​based and/​or traditional cultural practices often transcend cultural boundaries and may not align with contemporary national boundaries, they do not necessarily conform to a line on the map. Thus, attempts to claim exclusive ownership of pre-​existing cultural heritage antecedent to modern borders provide ample scope for international tension, or conversely, for cooperation. Such situations arise where certain practices or traditional skills or creative practices and performances are shared by communities on either side of a political border. The case of batik, the traditional technique of dying cloth as a second example, indicates how multiple nations’ claims to ownership of intangible heritage can give rise to serious international conflict. By contrast, there are several instructive cases where trans-​border intangible heritage forms the basis of multi-​State Party joint nominations to UNESCO under the 2003 ICHC. In a sense, linking the concepts of tangible and intangible heritage is the designation of cultural landscapes. Landscape, while essentially a physical phenomenon with definable physical contours, depends for its heritage designation as ‘cultural landscape’ on the ascription of the cultural significances attributed to it.1

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AUTHORISED HERITAGE DISCOURSE (AHD) Contrary to predictions that globalisation would contribute to international cooperation, today, despite or because of greater mobility, uniformity and commodification of heritage, the desire for the demarcation of identity has, if anything, become stronger (Newman 2006; cf. Shields 2014). Particularly in regions where national, postcolonial borders were only confirmed in the second half of the twentieth century, such as in Southeast Asia, boundaries remain fragile, porous and often in dispute, contested both by international as well as intra-​national parties (Wain 2012). In such circumstances there is a strong motive for governments to further define, project and have internationally recognised national identity markers for which heritage claims serve an obvious role. In this context, as suggested above, the identification and national and international projection of heritage by listing under UNESCO’s heritage conventions has become of increasing national significance and the object of international diplomatic activity. This has ensured that, despite more recent understandings of heritage that appear to authorise sub-​national agency, mainstream political and above all purported national interests continue to govern heritage. Within heritage studies, most notably Smith (2006) has drawn attention to this continued overriding factor, referring to it as the continued dominance of Authorised Heritage Discourse (AHD) in the definition and projection of both tangible and intangible heritage (see also Akagawa 2019; Waterton and Smith 2010). This entails for Smith (2006) that the boundaries of what constitutes heritage continually deny and discriminate against cultural identity markers of less powerful, marginal or immigrant or transnational social elements. In this way ‘authorised heritage’ continues to closely align with the traditional identity markers which underpin the geo-​political boundaries of nationhood. As others have also noted, increasingly economic interests play an important role in such ‘authorised’ determinations of heritage status as World Heritage listing confers a significant ‘brand’ value which in turn relates to increased tourism and the associated economic benefits (see Wuepper and Patry 2017). Intangible heritage has become a major attraction for foreign and domestic tourism and this provides a significant incentive for dominant national and economic interests to control it. HERITAGE AND THE CREATION OF BORDERLANDS: THE TEMPLE OF PREAH VIHEAR AND THE QUESTION OF NATIONAL BOUNDARIES Given the highly politicised nature of heritage resulting from its close association with questions of national identity and national boundaries, dispute and conflict can arise where the symbolic or physical boundaries of heritage do not coincide with geo-​political boundaries. Such disputed physical and symbolic spaces ‘where competing discourses and regimes of power overlap’ can be referred to as ‘borderlands’ (Van Wolputte 2013, cited in Hauser-​Schäublin and Missling 2014, 80). The existence of such borderlands can impact upon the power relationships between countries (Hauser-​ Schäublin and Missling 2014, 79). This problem is

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Figure 13.1 Gopura 3, Preah Vihear. Photograph by Lawrence Chua.

Figure 13.2 West gallery, Gopura 1, Preah Vihear. Photograph by Lawrence Chua.

magnified in cases where UNESCO heritage inscription, based on international conventions, directly relates to an element of heritage located in such disputed or overlapping symbolic or territorial spaces. The relatively recent resurrection of a case where the physical contours of an element of heritage bisect international borders creating a major international dispute is that relating to the Temple of Preah Vihear (Figs 13.1 and 13.2), nominated

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for the World Heritage inscription by the Cambodian Government. This case has its origins in a series of indeterminate border settlement negotiations between France, the colonial power in Cambodia, and Thailand (then Siam) dating back to 1907 (Oliver 1962; Cuasay 2001; Chachavalpongpun 2012). The temple straddled a section of the unresolved boundary in an area abutting the Thai-​Cambodian border affected by border changes during and after the Second World War. After the war, the border remained in dispute which further escalated with Cambodian independence (1953) and the favourable judgement it achieved when the dispute was brought to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 1959 (Grabowsky n.d., 4–​5, Thornberry 1963; Chesterman 2014). For Thailand, the 1962 ICJ judgment represented a further ‘national humiliation’ at the hands of international interests. The Preah Vihear temple was to remain as an ongoing symbol ‘synonymous with the loss of territories’; its possible restitution, a symbol of ‘restoration’ of national dignity (Strate 2013, 44). International events, namely the America-​Vietnam war (1955–​75) and the era of Pol Pot (1975–​79), delayed further attempts to resolve issues related to the border region relevant to the Preah Vihear temple but also lent support for Thai ‘occupation’ of the Preah Vihear site (Grabowsky n.d., 6). Following the protracted period of political turmoil in the country and the subsequent establishment of the UN-​supported Transitional Authority in 1990, a new Cambodian Government was keen to project its return to stability and work towards national reconsolidation by celebrating its Khmer heritage. Supported by France, the former colonial power, in 1992 it first proposed Angkor for world heritage nomination as ‘symbolic of Cambodia’s glorious historical heritage’ (Silverman 2011, 5). In 2002, a beginning was made to plan the nomination of the Temple of Preah Vihear. Initially this involved discussions, ultimately unsuccessful, about a possible joint Thai-​Cambodian nomination. While this argued for a joint nomination as recognised in the original nomination, as the time of inscription drew near, a change of government in Thailand led to the rejection of such a solution. The original agreement between the two countries had become the basis for both popular and political Thai reaction against the nomination. This escalated with the UNESCO decision pending:  street protests broke out in Bangkok and Thai and Cambodian troops gathered at the site and began to exchange fire (Figure 13.3). Cambodia demanded Thailand withdraw entirely from the vicinity of the Preah Vihear site while Thailand claimed Cambodian temple management plans submitted subsequently to UNESCO included disputed Thai territory (Silverman 2011,7). When the nomination document was submitted in 2007 by Cambodia, the World Heritage Committee noted that the States Parties of the two nations concurred on the Outstanding Universal Value of the site and agreed that it must be proposed for formal inscription by Cambodia at the thirty-​second session of the World Heritage Committee in 2008 with the active support of Thailand (UNESCO 2007a, 153). Its statement of Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) recognised the

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Figure 13.3 Cambodian soldiers guarding the Preah Vihear temple, near Thai border in Preah Vihear province. Source EPA 01519562. Photograph by Mak Remissa. Photo courtesy AAP Photo archive.

exceptional natural environment and architecture. A  key feature noted was a ninth-​century hermitage later developed into a royal temple, with a long series of sanctuaries linked by over 800 metres of staircases and pavements. The quality of its carved stone ornamentation was also acknowledged (UNESCO 2007b, 16). This statement of OUV was supported by three criteria, (i), (ii) and (iv), as below: Criterion i: Preah Vihear is an outstanding masterpiece of Khmer architecture. It is very ‘pure’ both in plan and in the detail of its decoration; Criterion ii: Preah Vihear demonstrates an important interchange in human values and developments in art, architecture, planning and landscape design; Criterion iv: The architectural ensemble is exceptional in its representation of Buddhist geometry. The position of the Temple on a cliff edge site is particularly impressive. Stairs and historical access surviving for over a thousand years show a sophisticated technological understanding. The whole historic structure demonstrates the highpoint of a significant stage in human history. (UNESCO 2007b, 16)

However, in its final decision adopted in 2008, the World Heritage Committee set aside the heritage significance of Preah Vihear’s broader cultural and natural landscape qualities and limited the inscription to Criterion (i), that ‘Preah Vihear is an outstanding masterpiece of Khmer architecture’ (UNESCO 2008a, 221). This meant that the inscription has been reduced to ‘only the Temple of Preah Vihear and now excluded the wider promontory with its cliffs and caves’ (UNESCO 2008a, 221). Nevertheless, the Committee encouraged the Cambodian State Party ‘to collaborate with Thailand for safeguarding the value of the property, in view of

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the fact that peoples of the surrounding region have long treasured the Temple of Preah Vihear’ (UNESCO 2008a, 221) and, in the future to reflect its full values and landscape setting [could be recognised] through a possible additional inscription to the World Heritage List that could capture criteria (iii) and (iv), which had been recognized by the Committee in its Decision 31 COM 8B.24. (UNESCO 2008a, 221)

To come to this conclusion, the World Heritage Committee had reflected in part the recommendations made by International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) which considered that, whereas the promontory on which the temple sits was included in the original nomination, the revised core area was far smaller, enclosing only the main linear monument, what they described as the ‘kernel of the site’ excluding its setting (UNESCO 2008b, 8–​9) Moreover (to paraphrase), ICOMOS considered the decision to reduce the core zone to the temple and its immediate surroundings as impacting on the way the boundaries encompass the attributes that reflect Outstanding Universal Value, and thereby the value of the property. Despite these above objections, ICOMOS did not specifically recommend that the place be inscribed only under ‘Criterion (i) Preah Vihear is an outstanding masterpiece of Khmer architecture’ (UNESCO 2008a, 221). Even though the original document stated that it has been ‘agreed that Cambodia and Thailand agree that Cambodia will propose the site’ (UNESCO 2007b, 16), the outcome of this nomination re-​ignited the conflict at both a popular and military level. Over 1500 troops from both nations gathered on each side of the border at the site, one report claiming twenty-​eight lives lost in 2011 (Traviss 2012, 327). By 2011, upwards of 27,000 people were displaced by the fighting (Shadbolt 2013). This led to intervention by the UN Security Council and the ICJ leading to the withdrawal of troops, the creation of a temporary demilitarised zone (Figure 13.4) and a Cambodian request to the ICJ to review the Court’s 1962 border decision (Sothirak 2013). When the ICJ decision was finally handed down in 2013, it confirmed Cambodian sovereignty over the temple’s territorial boundaries (Sok n.d., 16). Although officially the Thai government declared it would abide by the decision, it sparked further political and popular protest in Bangkok and claims that the Thai Government was ‘selling the nation to foreigners’ (Shadbolt 2013; Chesterman 2014). During the author’s visit to Thailand, Thai researchers and local residents described the chaos experienced by neighbouring communities and how this conflict had divided families living near the boundaries. The Khmer heritage site of Preah Vitear has acted as a lightning rod for much of the century-​long Thai-​Cambodian border dispute. Because of the political and nationalist overlays linked to its border position, it is easily overlooked that the significance of this heritage site lies, not only in the materiality of its structure, or its geographical footprint. Equally significant are its intangible qualities: the religious, cultural, ethnic and social meanings it symbolises, as well as the aesthetic qualities of its structure and condition (Chapman 2013). Together this creates

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Adapted and redrawn by Dhara Patel from the sketch map created on July 18, 2011, for the International Court of Justice unofficial press release (2018).

Figure 13.4  Provisional demilitarised zone.

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a comprehensive cultural landscape. Moreover, beyond the meanings and geographical perimeters pertaining to the structure itself and the bounded space that marks its immediate approaches is the territory marked out by the communities on either side of the political border. While, objectively, a solution to resolve the specific question of ‘heritage ownership’ that most immediately suggests itself is the creation of a ‘borderless zone’ (Silverman 2011, 15) or ‘zone of peace’ (Sok n.d., 17), strong nationalist emotions on both sides could make this difficult. In discussing another case of contested heritage claims that related to the tangible legacy of the ancient Koguryo/​Gaogouli kingdom (37 BC—​668 AD) ownership of which is claimed by both China and North Korea, Ahn (2006) points to the need for complex mutual cultural and political interrelationships to be recognised (Ahn 2006, 14). Unlike the Preah Vihear temple which sits atop the Thai-​Cambodia frontier, the historic Koguryo/​Gaogouli ruins lie scattered across both national territories: in the north-​east of what it is now the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and a large part of the Korean peninsula of what is now North and South Korea. In this case, UNESCO was confronted by what has been described as ‘one of the most sensitive and highly politicised processes the organisation confronted’ (Ahn 2006, 6). To take account of these political realities, the issue was resolved by developing separate nomination documents by two States Parties as a spatially separated entity with a different focus. These were, ‘Capital Cities and Tombs of the Ancient Koguryo Kingdom’ in PRC (China) in 2004, and ‘Complex of Koguryo Tombs’ under Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea). Nevertheless, this separate inscription has failed to placate cross-​ border tensions over heritage ownership. As with the unsettled case of the Preah Vihear temple, the official boundary-​setting implications of UNESCO listing appear to have aggravated rather than resolved tensions arising from cross-​border heritage claims representing projections of national identity. Indeed, Allan Galis (2009) concludes, the impact of the UNESCO listings ‘have significantly shifted political relationships in a volatile region’ (2009, 223) (Figure 13.5). There are, however, also examples where UNESCO inscription of heritage can, or is intended to, facilitate the creation of a borderland as a mechanism for cooperative heritage conservation or even for resolving international border disputes. The 1998 UNESCO listing of the ‘Golden Mountains of Altai’, located in the Altai Republic, also involves three adjoining countries—​China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan—​in the inscription of ‘an important and original centre of biodiversity of montane plant and animal species in northern Asia. A number of these are rare and endemic’ such as ‘Ukok Quiet Zone’ and Mt Belukha. Such places have particular cultural and religious values for local people (Russian Federation 1998, 1). However, clearly underlying these considerations is the fact that this pristine and sensitive conservation zone had been implicated in an economically significant plan to construct an international pipeline and transport infrastructure. The joint proposal for the creation of a ‘Trans-​Boundary Biosphere Reserve’ in 1998, then, was seen as ‘a mechanism for reconciling development and conservation issues’

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Figure 13.5 UN ponders intervention in Thai-​Cambodian temple dispute. Source EPA01422228. Photograph by Mak Remissa, 2008. Photo courtesy AAP Photo archive.

(Badenkov 2011, 390). A joint nomination for UNESCO listing has not materialised thus far. INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE AND INDONESIAN BATIK Elements of intangible heritage, because of their often deeply held emotional significance and political value in the context of nationalism, can become a trigger for tense diplomatic relations between nations. This is particularly accentuated within the UNESCO framework where ownership (listing) of a cultural element that crosses political boundaries is claimed by one State Party. The example of the successful nomination by Indonesia in claiming batik as an exclusive national heritage, strongly contested by neighbouring Malaysia, is a prime example (Figure  13.6). This case, which escalated between 2009 and 2011, involved contestation over the spatial boundaries of a cultural practice, and highlights the tensions that can arise from disparities between cultural and geo-​political boundaries, and the centrality of heritage to national identity formation. Playing an important role in this dispute once again is the legacy of European imperial ambitions that had divided an ethnic community that had traditionally shared the cultural attributes around which the ‘fight over batik’ has centred. This was exacerbated by the history of postcolonial national identity formation in the process of national consolidation (see also Akagawa 2019). Prior to the adoption of the 2003 UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention, Indonesia had benefitted from recognition under its World Cultural Heritage Convention of the monumental legacy of its Hindu, Buddhist and Islamic past, in particular, of the Buddhist monument of Borobudur, as national heritage of outstanding universal value. Long a central focus of national identity in both Indonesia’s anti-​colonial struggle and post-​independence process of

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Figure 13.6 Family-​run batik-​making workshop in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Photograph by Natsuko Akagawa.

national unification, the Borobudur temple symbolised the historical significance of the nation, giving tangible legitimacy to its territorial boundaries. Indonesia adopted the ICHC in 2007 and began the process of identifying elements of intangible heritage to complement its arsenal of nationally significant cultural symbols. Batik cloth, that had already been recognised as an important cultural manifestation since the early nineteenth century by Dutch ethnographic scholarship, was one of a number of elements nominated for listing by UNESCO (Akagawa 2019). In preparation for having batik inscribed as a globally recognised element of national heritage of world significance, Indonesian authorities launched a range of activities between 2006 and 2009 to stimulate public consciousness of the national importance of batik. This ranged from the establishment of batik museums (in Pekalongan, Surakarta, Yogyakarta and Imogiri), the establishment of an Indonesian Batik Foundation in Jakarta, several ‘batik lovers associations’ and an Office for Research and Development of Batik and Handicrafts (Republic of Indonesia 2013). While traditionally, batik was associated with the island and culture of Java, in its UNESCO nomination Indonesia claimed batik as an essential element in national traditional daily dress in over half of its thirty-​three provinces, in seven of which batik was an established element of it culture (UNESCO 2009). With UNESCO’s announcement of its adoption of the Indonesian nomination in 2009, implying global recognition of Indonesia’s ownership, the government instituted October 2, the anniversary of the formal declaration, as National Batik Wearing Day. As anecdotal evidence collected during recent fieldwork confirmed, this recognition of batik as national intangible cultural heritage activated a ‘love

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of batik’ throughout Indonesia and, in the face of recent tensions within its multi-​ religious and ethnic community, it serves as another example of how heritage can be politically exploited to promote cultural and political unity. Internationally, however, this cultural boundary-​setting decision by UNESCO unleashed an extraordinary war of words between Malaysia and Indonesia at both official and popular level. Malaysian authorities rejected the Indonesian claim to ‘ownership’ of batik and set out to prove its own batik tradition. Press reports in Indonesia, already engaging with existing popular resentment of Malaysian treatment of Indonesian migrant workers, claimed Malaysia was attempting to ‘once again’ rob Indonesia. This ‘war’ against ‘Malangsia’ (an invented term linking the word for ‘thief’ with ‘Malaysia’ to insinuate that its neighbour was a thief) reached ominous proportions with the mobilisation of volunteers to join a democratic people’s front, Benteng Demokrasi Rakyat (or Bendera) to protect Indonesian interests and pride (Chong 2012, 3–​4). Expressing the government’s determination to defend national interests, the Indonesian Minister of Culture and Tourism headlined his government’s determination to ‘keep fighting for our heritage one tradition at a time’ (Maulia 2009). This was followed by plans to ensure ‘the registration of every form of Indonesian heritage as products of its culture’ (Karana and Prameshwari 2009 cited in Chong 2012, 29) while new legislation was enacted for the protection of this more broadly defined concept of ‘heritage’ (Antons cited in Chong 2012, 29). Another important area of cultural boundary marking employing the mechanism of UNESCO’s ICHC relates to culinary heritage. This has also come to involve both strongly nationalistic, boundary-​defining discourse, as well as providing examples of the potential for creating cooperative, trans-​border domains of recognised shared cultural practice. In 2013, Mediterranean Diet was jointly nominated by seven States Parties (Cyprus, Croatia, Spain, Greece, Italy, Morocco and Portugal 2013) which defined the heritage element as the set of skills, knowledge, rituals, symbols, and traditions, which in the Mediterranean basin concerns the crops, harvesting, picking, fishing, animal husbandry, conservation, processing, cooking and particularly sharing the cuisine.

The boundaries of this socio-​cultural landscape are further described as the cultural spaces and events [which] become the receptacle of gestures of mutual recognition and respect, of hospitality, neighbourliness, conviviality, inter-​ generational transmission and intercultural dialogue.

Although, as with any intangible heritage element, it might be argued that these boundaries’ markers are broad and vague, particularly so when given a trans-​ border character, the fact that the mechanisms of UNESCO necessitates that this element is located within the physical boundaries of each of the seven nominating States Parties, and that they are given ‘meaning’ by specific communities within these territories, provides a certain robustness to its intangible boundaries.

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A  similarly successful joint nomination is ‘flatbread making and sharing culture’ nominated by Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kryrgyzstan and Turkey (2016). By contrast, there are other examples of culinary heritage practices and meanings that transcend political boundaries where, similar to the batik case, because exclusive ownership is claimed, significant international disputation has resulted. One example is the case of kimchi, an item of culinary heritage of significance to both the Democratic People’s Republic of (North) Korea and the Republic of (South) Korea. In 2013, South Korea nominated for UNESCO listing as ‘Kimjang, making and sharing kimchi in the Republic of Korea’ (Republic of Korea 2013). This appeared to constitute an attempt to shore up its global authority over the ‘skill boundaries’ of this cultural practice after kimchi had become increasingly popular internationally, particularly in China and Japan. Later in 2015, North Korea nominated to UNESCO its own ‘Tradition of kimchi-​making in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’ (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea 2015). More characteristic in the field of culinary heritage are the French nomination of the ‘French gastronomic meal’ and the Mexican nomination of the ‘Traditional Mexican Cuisine’, which both gained UNESCO intangible cultural heritage listing in 2010. Both represent claims to identify unique national practices that characterise their national communities. In the French case most obviously, the breadth of the characteristics that are claimed to constitute ‘the French gastronomic meal’ indicates its aim to reconfirm ‘Frenchness’ and what it is to be French, including ‘French people’ living overseas. The nomination document (France 2010, 2), referred to ‘the French’ as the entire French nation people. The community is large, diverse and unified. Its collective experience has been built over several centuries. The product of social and cultural mixes, regional plurality and contributions by immigrants, the community is united by shared practices like the gastronomic meal. Important moments in the lives of individuals and groups are celebrated in a ritualistic way through this festive meal.

The geographic borders where this heritage meaning is located were defined as taking place, on the entire territory of the States Party concerned. It is also enjoyed by French people living abroad. It has spread to many countries through geographic proximity (e.g. in regions along the borders), the activities of associations, migration and population movements. (France 2010, 2)

As such, culinary heritage inscriptions gain political significance in contributing further symbolic meaning to national borders and identity in the face of increasing ethno-​religious differences within the nation. The stated aims of China’s ‘One Belt One Road’ project represents another example of an attempt to establish a zone of shared tangible and intangible cultural heritage across modern geo-​political boundaries. Although not free of

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supra-​national pretentions, Tim Winter (2016, 4)  has described the project as based on ‘complex trans-​boundary cultural history […] reduced to a series of heritage narratives that directly align with foreign policy and trade ambitions of governments today’. The mutual economic and diplomatic benefits to the countries involved, Winter suggests, will enable ‘countries across Eurasia and beyond […] to appropriate [it] for their own ends’ (4). If this project was ever realised, this example might come to constitute a scenario where trans-​border cultural projection simultaneously enhances the multiple heritage-​based identity claims of participating nations rather than inducing national contestation and international discord. On the other hand, it could also become a vehicle for reconfirming the hierarchy of regional or indeed global power relationships. CONCLUSION Heritage involves the ascription of meaning within a narrative of nationalism and national identity (Tunbridge and Ashworth 1996, 6). As such, designation of heritage within a national and international context involves the ascription of symbolic meaning to the boundaries and the identities within which it is situated. Although traditionally in the context of the so-​ called Western nation-​ states, heritage meaning has typically been ascribed to physical and tangible sites, including notably those related to architectural monuments, this association has now changed in favour of a more complex understanding of the apparently ephemeral nature of ‘imagined’ heritage. Contrary to the declared aims of the UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention in 1972 that sought to promote a universal engagement in safeguarding tangible heritage sites of ‘outstanding universal value for humanity’, in practice, heritage listing has always been central to nation-​building processes often defining the boundaries of national identity. Moreover, since its operations have traditionally been predicated on the assumption of national sovereignty, as the international adjudicator of heritage claims, UNESCO increasingly finds itself implicated in complex political, diplomatic and more violent challenges to attempts to impose borders. The examples of the Preah Vihear temple and Indonesian batik reveal most strikingly how the physical boundary marking, or ‘placing’ (Lähdesmäki 2016) of heritage remains of significant political and increasingly also of economic consequence. At the same time, where heritage nomination was once the sole prerogative of national authorities, increasingly sub-​, supra-​and transnational entities are claiming the right to own and nominate heritage meaning. In many cases such claims challenge the dominant national narratives of Authorised Heritage Discourse (AHD) (Smith 2006). As the significance of the concept of intangible heritage has increasingly come to be recognised, new complexities and ambiguities have emerged in relation to the question of borders. While contributing to restoring identity and providing a measure of political agency to previously silenced sub-​national or trans-​boundary communities, these claims can unsettle established boundaries. Despite this, it

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remains possible that recognition of heritage elements that challenge national or cross geo-​political boundaries may contribute to cooperative efforts to safeguard human and natural elements of universal significance and advance national cohesion and international peace and understanding. NOTE 1

At the time of writing, there were thirty-​seven trans-​boundary sites designated as world heritage. The first of these, listed in 1979, was Białowieża Forest (Poland and Belarus) as a natural site and in 1980 the ‘Historic Centre of Rome, the Properties of the Holy See in that City Enjoying Extraterritorial Rights and San Paolo Fuori le Mura’ was listed as a cultural site (Italy, Province of Roma, Lazio region (IT)/​Vatican City State 1980).

REFERENCES Ahn, Y 2006, ‘Competing nationalisms: The mobilisation of history and archaeology in the Korea-​China wars over Koguryo/​Gaogouli’, The Asian-​Pacific Journal, vol. 4, no. 2,  1–​16. Akagawa, N 2015, Heritage Conservation and Japan’s Cultural Diplomacy: Heritage, National Identity and National Interest, Routledge, London. —​—​—​2016, ‘Rethinking the global heritage discourse—​overcoming “East” and “West?” ’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, vol. 22, no. 1, 14–​25. —​—​—​2019, ‘Batik as a Creative Industry: Political, Social and Economic Use of Intangible Heritage’, in N Akagawa and L Smith (eds.), Safeguarding Intangible Heritage: Practices and Politics, Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 135–​154. Azerbaijan, Iran (Islamic Republic of), Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkey 2016, Nomination file No. 01181/​Flatbread making and sharing culture, Lavash, Katyrma, Jupka, Yufka (Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkey), UNESCO, Paris, available at . Badenkov, Y 2011, ‘Transboundary issues in the Altai’, Mountain Research and Development, vol. 31, no. 4, 390–​391. Chachavalpongpun, P 2012, ‘Embedding embittered history: Unending conflict in Thai-​ Cambodian relations’, Asian Affairs, vol. 43, no. 1, 81–​102. Chapman, W 2013, A Heritage of Ruins: The Ancient Sites of Southeast Asia and Their Conservation, University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu. Chesterman, S 2014, ‘The International Court of Justice in Asia: Interpreting the Temple of Preah Vihear case’, Asian Journal of International Law, vol. 5, no. 1, 1–​6. Chirikure, S, Manyanga, M, Ndoro, W and Pwiti, G 2010, ‘Unfulfilled promises? Heritage management and community participation at some of Africa’s cultural heritage sites’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, vol. 16, nos 1–​2, 30–​44. Chong, JW 2012, ‘ “Mine, yours or ours?”: The Indonesia-​Malaysia disputes over shared cultural heritage’, Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, vol. 27, no. 1,  1–​53. Cuasay, P 2001, ‘Borders on the fantastic: Mimesis, violence, and landscape at the Temple of Preah Vihear’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 32, no. 4, 849–​890. Cyprus, Croatia, Spain, Greece, Italy, Morocco and Portugal 2013, Nomination file No.00884/​Mediterranean diet (Cyprus, Croatia, Spain, Greece, Italy, Morocco and Portugal), UNESCO, Paris, available at .

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Democratic People’s Republic of Korea 2015, Nomination file No. 01063/​Tradition of kimchi-​making in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), UNESCO, Paris, available at . Foster, S and Linge, L 2002, ‘World Heritage Site buffer zones: Statements of fact or aspiration?’, Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites, vol. 5, no. 3, 141–​150. France 2010, Nomination file No. 00437/​The gastronomic meal of the French (France), UNESCO, Paris, available at . Galis, A 2009, ‘UNESCO documents and procedure: The need to account for political conflict when designating World Heritage Sites note’, Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law, vol. 38, 205–​236. Grabowsky, V n.d., ‘Online paper 3. Heritage and nationalism in the Preah Vihear dispute’, Integration in Southeast Asia: Trajectories of Inclusion, Dynamics of Exclusion (SEATIDE), 1–​13, available at . Hauser-​Schäublin, B and Missling, S 2014, ‘The enduring agency of borderland regimes: The aftermath of serial regulations with different scopes and temporal scales at Preah Vihear, Cambodia’, The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law, vol. 46, no. 1,  79–​98. Italy, Province of Roma, Lazio region (IT)/​Vatican City State 1980, Historic Centre of Rome, the Properties of the Holy See in that City Enjoying Extraterritorial Rights and San Paolo Fuori le Mura, UNESCO, Paris. International Court of Justice 2018, available 18 July at [available in the public domain under a creative commons licence at ]. Lähdesmäki, T 2016, ‘Politics of tangibility, intangibility, and place in the making of a European cultural heritage in EU heritage policy’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, vol. 22, no. 10, 766–​780. Maulia, E 2009, ‘Batik selected for UNESCO cultural heritage list’, The Jakarta Post, 8 September, available at . Newman, D 2006, ‘The lines that continue to separate us: Borders in our “borderless” world’, Progress in Human Geography, vol. 30, no. 2, 143–​161. Oliver, C 1962, ‘Case concerning the Temple of Preah Vihear (Cambodia v. Thailand)’, The American Journal of International Law, vol. 56, no. 4, 1033–​1053. Republic of Indonesia 2013, Periodic report No. 00924/​Indonesia, UNESCO, Paris. Republic of Korea 2013, Nomination file No. 00881/​Kimjang, making and sharing kimchi in the Republic of Korea, UNESCO, Paris, available at . Russian Federation (Government of) 1998, Nomination file No. 768rev/​Golden Mountains of Altai, UNESCO, Paris, available at . Shadbolt, P 2013, ‘Thai villagers return after verdict on disputed Preah Vihear temple’, CNN, 12 November, viewed 15 June 2017, . Shields, P 2014, ‘Borders as information flows and transnational networks’, Global Media and Communication, vol. 10, no. 1, 3–​33. Silverman, H 2011, ‘Border wars: The ongoing temple dispute between Thailand and Cambodia and UNESCO’s World Heritage List’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, vol. 17, no. 1, 1–​21. Smith, L 2006, Uses of Heritage, Routledge, London.

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Sok, DU n.d., ‘Voices from Cambodia: Discourses on the Preah Vihear Conflict’ [response], in V Grabowsky, ‘Heritage and Nationalism in the Preah Vihear Dispute’, Integration in Southeast Asia: Trajectories of Inclusion, Dynamics of Exclusion (SEATIDE) (1–​13), 14–​17, available at . Sothirak, P 2013, ‘Cambodia’s border conflict with Thailand’, Southeast Asian Affairs, 87–​100. Strate, S 2013, ‘A pile of stones? Preah Vihear as a Thai symbol of national humiliation’, South East Asia Research, vol. 21, no. 1, 41–​68. Thornberry, C 1963, ‘The Temple of Preah Vihear (Cambodia v. Thailand)’, The Modern Law Review, vol. 26, no. 4, 448–​451. Traviss, AC 2012, ‘Temple of Preah Vihear: Lessons on provisional measures’, Chicago Journal of International Law, vol. 13, no. 1, 317–​344. Tunbridge, JE and Ashworth, GJ 1996, Dissonant Heritage: The Management of the Past as a Resource in Conflict, J Wiley, Chichester and New York. UNESCO 2007a, WHC-​07/​31.COM/​2, Decisions adopted at the 31st session of the World Heritage Committee, Christchurch, New Zealand 2007, Decision 31 COM 8B.24, UNESCO, Paris. —​—​—​ 2007b, WHC-​07/​31.COM/​8B, Item 8B of the Provisional Agenda: Nominations to the World Heritage List, UNESCO, Paris. —​—​—​ 2008a, WHC-​08/​32.COM/​24Rev. Decisions adopted at the 32nd session of the World Heritage Committee, Quebec City, 2008, UNESCO, Paris. —​—​—​ 2008b, WHC-​08/​32.COM/​8B1ADD2e, Preah Vihear (Cambodia) No 1224, UNESCO, Paris. —​—​—​ 2009, ITH/​09/​4.COM/​CONF.209/​13 Rev.2, Item 13 of the Provisional Agenda: Evaluation of the nominations for inscription on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, Fourth session Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates 28 September to 2 October 2009, UNESCO, Paris. Van Wolputte, S (ed.) 2013, Borderlands and Frontiers in Africa, Lit Verlag, Zurich. Wain, B 2012, ‘Latent danger: Boundary disputes and border issues in Southeast Asia’, Southeast Asian Affairs,  38–​60. Waterton, E and Smith, L 2010, ‘The recognition and misrecognition of community heritage’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, vol. 16, nos 1–​2, 4–​15. Willems, WJH 2014, ‘The future of World Heritage and the emergence of transnational heritage regimes’, Heritage and Society, vol. 7, no. 2, 105–​120. Winter, T 2016, ‘One belt, one road, one heritage: Cultural diplomacy and the Silk Road’, The Diplomat, 29 March, viewed 15 October 2017, . Wuepper, D and Patry, M 2017, ‘The World Heritage List: Which sites promote the brand? A big data spatial econometrics approach’, Journal of Cultural Economics, vol. 41, no. 1,  1–​21.

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Index

Abu Bakr, Caliph 16 Abu Dis 91, 92 activism 4, 7–9, 104, 117, 143, 160, 225, 228, 232, 234 adobe 23, 204 Ahsan 20, 21, 31, 33 aesthetic 4, 8, 46, 48, 95, 141, 146, 152, 193, 245, 264; aestheticized 4 abandoned 4, 53, 71, 122–123, 133, 142, 144, 204, 210, 211, 212, 214 absence 1, 59, 66, 67, 105, 106, 108–110, 114, 209, 247 Afghanistan 3, 62, 132, 161, 162; Afghan 124–125, 131 Agamben, G. 5, 10, 38, 54, 121, 136, 163, 175 agency 10, 18, 30–31, 38–39, 72, 125, 130, 138, 192, 217, 220, 233, 234, 259, 260, 271, 273 ‘aggressive humanism’ 104, 117; ‘aggressive-humanitarian’ 111 agriculture 55, 143, 169, 175–176; agrarian 23, 204 Akkaraipattu 244, 253 Alexander the Great 16, 32, 34 alien 28, 38, 54, 56, 175, 203, 251 al-Muqaddasi 20–21, 23, 25, 31, 33 al-Narshaki 21, 25, 31 al-Tabari 18, 19, 20–21, 25, 31, 35 Amman 78 Amu Darya 6, 15–16, 17, 18, 19–20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27–29, 30, 31, 33, 35 ancestry 6, 36, 37, 38–40, 48, 51, 53, 56 anonymity 41 Anzaldúa, G. 2–3, 10, 160, 162, 170, 175 apartheid 97–99

Arab 6, 16, 17, 18, 20–23, 24, 27–28, 30, 31–35, 85, 94, 131, 146, 241, 255, 274; Arabia; 16, 34, 247; Arabian 16, 32 Aral Sea 23, 25 Arapli 204, 205, 206 archaeology 27, 31, 33–34, 237, 245, 253–254, 256, 272 archipelago 77, 79–80, 93, 95, 103, 122, 253; ‘archipelago-enclave’ 7, 80 architect 4, 6, 8, 29, 41, 55–57, 59, 65, 67, 125, 133, 134, 141, 145–146, 147, 148, 150, 151, 152, 155–156, 199, 201, 204, 217; architects 2, 4, 6, 8, 41, 55, 57, 59, 65, 125, 141, 145, 147, 148, 150, 151, 152, 155–156, 201 architecture 1, 2, 4, 9–11, 27, 34, 38, 54, 57, 60–62, 65–77, 99, 103–104, 108–109, 117, 125, 134, 137–139, 146, 148–150, 156, 178–179, 182, 183, 187, 189, 191, 218–219, 235, 247, 254, 257, 263–264 ARH journal 145, 148, 154, 156 army 31, 36, 49, 55, 70, 77–78, 92–93, 181, 186, 188, 198, 199, 202, 211, 214, 219–220 art: artist 7–8, 57, 72, 103–106, 115, 117, 142, 146, 148, 155–156, 187, 199–220, 228, 229, 231, 233, 235; artworks 8, 105; artistic 71, 111, 115–116, 141, 187; artwork 73, 104–105, 110–111, 116, 153 Asia Minor 197, 200–203, 217, 219 assimilation 38, 47, 199–200, 215 asylum 59–60, 62, 66, 69, 72, 74, 76, 117, 119, 124, 127, 135–136, 164;

275

Index

asylum seeker 5, 57, 59, 61–62, 63, 64–76, 103, 127, 136; see refugee Australia 2, 7, 9, 56, 59–60, 62–67, 69–70, 72, 74–76, 94, 155, 194, 197–202, 214–215, 217–220, 237, 253; Australian 54, 59–60, 61, 62–65, 63, 67–70, 71, 72, 74–76, 197–200, 202, 213, 215, 218–219 Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) 59, 61, 69–72, 74, 76 Authorised Heritage Discourse (AHD) 260, 271 autoethnography 206; see biography axis 53, 85, 93; Axis 39 Bangkok 262, 264 barracks 40–41, 46, 49, 199, 213 barrier 8, 16, 21, 28, 78, 85, 92, 159, 177, 187, 191; barriers 2, 43, 52, 78–80, 82, 86, 89, 92, 95, 157, 159, 164, 176, 217, 243, 251, 252 Baščaršija precinct 139, 149 Bassin, J. 150, 156 batik 9, 259, 267–273, 268 battle 171; battles 53, 164, 176; battle-ground 234 Beller, J. 133 Benjamin, W. 109, 117, 229, 234 Berlin 10–11, 103–106, 108, 111–112, 114–115, 117, 178; Berlin Wall 2, 6–7, 103, 105–106, 108–109, 111, 115, 159, 178, 181, 188; see wall Bethlehem 77–78, 92–93 biography 194 biopolitical 77, 97, 135 BITMAP Program 161, 175 blockade 78, 139, 164 Blue House: Korea 185, 187; Hong Kong 232, 234 boat 45, 57, 60, 62, 65, 72–73, 76; boats 18, 58, 67, 187 body 11, 72–73, 81, 111, 162, 176, 237, 240, 252; bodies 27, 69, 70, 71, 73–74, 80–81, 104, 109, 111–112, 114, 160, 258 Bonegilla 197–199, 201–202, 215, 218–220 Bonegilla Migrant Experience (BME) 9, 198, 198, 219; Bonegilla Immigrant Experience 197 border: border camps 5, 7, 9, 36, 45, 119, 121–4, 127, 131, 134–5; border crossing 7, 24, 77–8, 109, 115, 122, 161; border heritage 2, 6, 9, 266; borderlands 2–4, 6, 10, 137, 159, 162, 170, 175, 229, 233, 260,

274; borderless 1–2, 28, 62, 103–4, 108, 117, 266, 273; borderline 1–3; border-machine 77–8; border politics 1, 4, 109, 111, 115, 116, 121, 223; Border Protection 59, 69, 74, 157, 159, 177; border security 1–2, 57, 159, 162, 164, 174–6; border studies 2, 11, 138; border thinking 3–4, 8, 10–11, 160, 170–72, 174, 233–4, 257; border wall 1, 4, 8, 11, 157, 159–66, 168–77; border zone 6, 36, 78, 103–4, 106, 121, 139 border patrol 157, 158, 159, 161, 163, 167, 169, 176 Bosnia and Hercegovina 4, 8, 139, 141, 145, 147, 148, 151, 156 Bouchart, N. 126 boundary 2–3, 6–7, 11, 16, 28–29, 31, 48, 101, 115, 157, 162–163, 169, 170, 174–175, 177, 179, 206, 218, 224, 230, 239, 252, 254, 257–259, 262, 266, 269, 271, 274; transboundary 271–272 Boym, S. 68, 74, 201, 219 Brezhnev era 181 British Columbia; Security Commission (BCSC) 36, 45, 47, 54 Brown, W. 159, 175 B’Tselem 85–86, 89, 98 Buddhism 242, 249; Buddhist 47, 49, 179, 238, 241, 243–245, 247, 251, 255, 263, 267 buffer 16, 28–29, 185–186, 258, 273 building 1, 6, 22–23, 44, 45, 48, 52–53, 65, 67, 79, 104, 112–115, 113, 130, 135, 150, 159, 164–165, 170, 185, 185, 189, 200–201, 203, 206, 211–212, 213, 224, 231–232, 237, 246–247, 252; buildings 4, 36, 43, 49, 53, 70, 96, 106, 112, 124–125, 139, 142, 145–146, 148–150, 152, 154, 155, 185–186, 197, 199, 204, 208–209, 213, 215, 228–232, 235, 245 Bukhara 16, 17, 18, 19, 20–21, 30, 31, 33–34 burial 15, 73, 104, 112, 117; buried 105, 111–112, 213, 215 Bursa 197, 200, 202, 206 bypass 7, 82–83, 86, 88, 89, 91–94, 91, 96; bypassing 7, 82, 95; bypassed 82; bypasses 92, 94; Bypass Road 88, 92–93 Byzantine 16, 209 Calais 8, 119, 120, 121–127, 126, 128, 130–131, 134–138

276

Index

Cambodia 9, 258, 262–264, 263, 266, 267, 272–274 camp 5, 7–10, 38, 40–41, 43, 44, 45– 49, 51–56, 75, 79–80, 96, 109, 119, 121–127, 128, 130–132, 131–132, 130–138, 150, 197, 199, 202, 214–215, 219–220; camps 2, 5–7, 10, 36, 37, 38–41, 43, 45–47, 49, 51–53, 57, 67, 80, 97, 103, 112, 119, 120, 121–127, 130–138, 199–200, 204, 213, 218; concentration camp 6, 37, 38, 55, 79, 112, 150, 213, 214; encampment 15–16, 18, 22, 31, 62, 126, 198; camping 20; encamped 27 Canada 36, 37, 38–40, 52, 54–55 CAP container camp 126, 127, 128, 130, 134 capitalism 8, 81, 181, 194, 189–190, 192, 222–223 Capsular Civilization, The 80, 99 care 56, 119, 127, 135, 138, 146 carceral 38, 46, 62, 70, 123, 136 Carême, D. 130 Caspian Sea 23 Castells, M. 79–81, 97–99 catalogue 141, 145–146, 147, 148, 149, 153, 155, 156 catastrophe 152, 202, 213, 219 ceasefire 178, 179 Centre for Political Beauty 7, 103, 109–110, 113–114 Central Asia 15–16, 18–20, 22–23, 27–29, 31, 33–35 Central Cultural Fund, Sri Lanka 237, 244 Centre for Islamic Studies (CIS), Sri Lanka 239, 250–251, 254, 272 Chardzou 17, 18, 23 checkpoint 7, 78–79, 86, 89, 91, 92–93, 97–98, 103, 256 children 1, 36, 39, 43, 46, 49, 50, 51–52, 55–56, 62, 64, 69–71, 74, 126–127, 130, 148, 157, 165, 168, 168, 170, 172, 202, 209, 213 China 1, 9, 33, 179, 182, 191, 221–224, 229–231, 235, 266, 270, 272 Chosun dynasty 183, 185 Christian 110, 179, 202, 241, 251 church 47, 51, 125, 125, 143–149, 208, 211, 215, 251, 256, 274 cinema 179, 189–194; see film citizen 6–10, 36, 40, 45, 48–49, 53–54, 56, 60, 68–69, 78, 103–104, 112–115, 139, 142–144, 148–149,

155, 159–160, 164, 171, 173, 181–182, 189–200, 222–223, 230, 233–234; citizenship 2, 38–39, 54, 68, 77, 80, 117, 123, 137–138, 175 civil war 180, 192, 214, 239–244, 246, 254 civilian 36, 38, 41, 54, 65, 85, 143–144, 186, 213 Civilian Control Line (CCL) 186 class 39, 48–49, 77, 80, 94–96, 99, 150, 193, 203, 244 Cloud Atlas 189, 193–194 coffins 111, 114 Cold War 1, 3, 8–9, 104, 106, 110, 115–116, 178–179, 192 Colombo 246–247, 247–250, 254, 255–256 colonial 11, 34, 93, 99, 179, 180–181, 190, 193, 222–224, 228, 230, 240–242, 244, 262, 267; colonialism 54–56, 171, 189; colonisation 5, 32, 86; colonist 78, 89, 92; neo-colonial 5; postcolonial 9, 64, 221–224, 227, 230, 234–236, 241, 156, 260, 267; decolonisation 3, 53 community 9, 36, 38–39, 41, 45–47, 51, 53, 60, 74, 76, 79, 149, 175, 187, 204, 206, 208, 215, 217, 224–225, 228, 230, 231–235, 238–246, 249, 251–253, 259, 267, 269–270, 272, 274; gated communities 80, 96 Communist 28, 103, 179, 181, 185, 203, 231 ‘complex personhood’ 38 conflict 1, 3, 6, 9–11, 16, 27, 29, 31, 34, 39, 53, 62, 67–68, 104, 121, 135, 137, 139, 154, 180, 187–188, 192, 199–200, 237, 239, 240–242, 244–245, 254–256, 259, 264, 272–274 containers 70–71, 126–127 contest 111, 121, 136, 170, 245; contestations 2, 10, 27, 221–224, 233, 242, 245, 257, 267, 271; contested 6, 108, 111, 253, 260, 266–267; contesting 103, 244 control 7–8, 16, 28, 36, 38, 54–55, 61, 77–78, 80–86, 89, 93–99, 119, 121–123, 136–137, 131, 135–136, 144, 159–160, 163, 170–171, 180, 182, 184, 186, 188, 190, 192, 198, 201, 215, 237, 252, 260 Convention, Treaty of Lausanne 200, 202–203, 218 ‘counter-monument’ 105, 108–110, 112, 116–117

277

Index

Crenshaw, K 38, 54 crisis 3, 8, 29, 34, 57, 59, 61–67, 70, 72, 74–75, 77, 80, 82, 104, 117, 119, 122, 163, 170, 173, 227, 253 crosses 9, 77, 106, 108–110, 108, 109, 110, 114–115, 208, 215, 267 cultural politics; see patrimony 9, 221, 246 Customs and Border Protection (United States) 157, 159, 177 cyberspace 80, 98, 162 Dalada Maligawa 244, 253 Dar al-Harb 28 Dar al-Islam 22, 28 Darién Gap 161–162, 177 data 57, 59, 60–71, 61, 73–75, 94, 97–98, 121, 134, 136, 146, 158, 161–162, 218, 253; big data 75–76, 274 death 16, 59, 73, 106, 110, 115, 142, 181, 183; deaths 73, 111–113, 115, 161, 175–176; deceased 215 defectors 179, 186 Deleuze, G. 81, 99 Dellios, A. 199, 200, 215, 219 demilitarised zone 7–8, 178, 264, 265; DMZ 8, 178–179, 180, 184–182, 194 democracy 38, 56, 170, 175, 190, 223–225, 228, 232, 235; democratic 2, 9, 81, 97, 110, 160, 170, 176, 179, 222–223, 225, 227–228, 233–234, 266, 270, 273 Department of Archaeology, Sri Lanka 237, 245, 253–254 Department of Homeland Security (United States) 157, 161, 164, 175 desert 15–16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 25, 27, 29, 32–33, 40, 67, 230, 247 design 2, 4–8, 10–11, 29, 33, 36, 41, 53, 55, 57, 59–60, 65–67, 75–76, 86, 96, 103, 105, 109, 112–113, 116, 123, 130, 133–134, 145, 148, 150, 152, 153–154, 156, 159–161, 165, 182–183, 185–186, 204, 215, 228–229, 251, 257, 259, 263, 271–273 detention 5, 7, 36, 38, 57, 59–76, 61, 63, 71, 80, 103, 116, 124, 217 dialectic 8, 187, 190; dialectical 184, 187; images 109, 113; dictator 181, 183; dictatorship 179–180, 183, 189, 192 diplomacy 186, 192–193, 158, 272, 274 dissident 179–180, 184, 244

divided 6, 11, 22–23, 28, 39, 41, 103, 133, 154–155, 165, 179, 191, 199, 203, 214, 241, 264, 267; division 33, 39, 43, 49, 55, 82, 96, 105, 111, 115–116, 136, 141–142, 145, 187, 203, 213, 257 Doršner, Z. 150, 151 digital 7, 57, 58, 59–60, 62, 64, 66–68, 70, 73, 74, 76, 79, 81, 97–98, 157, 159 disconnection 80, 82; disconnections 7, 82 displaced 1, 5, 10, 59, 67–69, 74, 197, 200, 202, 204, 210; displacement; persons 2, 200, 217, 242, 255, 264 domestic 5, 45, 46, 154, 184, 260; domesticate 45, 221, 228 domination 97; dominations 46 Dolan, E. 161, 175 drawing 7, 69, 113, 141, 148, 150, 258; drawings 5, 70, 71, 72, 74, 155 DREAMERS 159, 171–172 Dublin III Regulations 127, 134–135 Dunkirk 8, 121, 123–124, 130, 135, 138 Eastern Province, Sri Lanka 240, 242, 253 edge 3, 15–16, 27, 57, 115, 117, 138, 170, 224, 230 elderly 36, 39, 47, 49, 202 eminent domain 164 Emmaüs Solidarité 130, 132, 134 erasure 2, 69, 73, 228, 254 ethical 2–3, 64, 197 ethnic 28, 51, 83, 137, 139, 146, 148, 180, 200, 203–204, 241–244, 246, 252–254, 256, 259, 264, 267, 269; ethnicity 54, 204, 254–255; ethnoarchitecture 1, 10; bi-ethnic 242; inter-ethnic 200, 244; multi-ethic 95, 141, 149, 200 Eurasia 15, 20, 27–31, 35, 271; Eurasian 15–16, 25, 51 Europe 1–3, 9, 34, 57, 58, 59, 62, 65, 67, 75, 103, 108–109, 111–112, 115–117, 119, 121–122, 124, 131, 136–138, 152–153, 153, 177–178, 197, 200, 202–203, 214–215; European 1–3, 7, 9, 11, 34, 39, 62–63, 75, 93, 103–104, 106, 113, 117, 119, 126, 130, 137, 139, 141, 148, 155, 174, 176, 197–199, 214–215, 218–219, 254, 267, 273 European Union (EU) 7, 103, 113, 139, 141, 174

278

Index

exclusion 6–7, 36, 37, 38, 39, 48, 51, 53, 80, 83, 94, 97, 103, 105, 108, 116, 121, 137, 159–160, 170–171, 173–174, 200, 233, 239, 273–274; exclusionary 121; exclusive 78, 86, 88, 95–97, 177, 189, 193, 245, 267, 270 Executive Order 36, 177 EXIT 68, 75 exhibition 5, 36, 54, 57, 58, 59, 69, 72–73, 73, 141, 145–146, 148–150, 153, 155–156, 220, 249; exhibitions 4, 59, 73, 150, 154–156 FAMA 143, 156 family values 181, 189 fantastic 272; fantasy 178 Farm Security Administration (FSA) 39, 41, 46, 55 farm 37, 39, 40, 55, 174, 186, 199, 201, 214; farmed 46; farming 165, 199, 201, 206; farmers 165, 199; farmland 165, 169, 204, 214–215; see also agriculture; rural fences 40, 60, 70, 81, 103, 106, 110–111, 134, 177 film 68, 74, 99, 148, 152, 182, 189–194, 223, 229–230, 235; filmmakers 66, 172; filming 66 fire: artillery 139, 142, 152, 186, 189; canon 142; sniper 142–143, 145; submachine guns 142 Fischer, P. 191, 193 flow 21, 38, 80, 94–95, 160, 162, 200; flows 64, 77, 79–83, 85–86, 94–95, 97, 99, 108, 119, 121–122, 137, 175, 178, 273; space of 7; inflow 204, 208 Forbát, F. 204 Forensic Architecture 4 fortress 18, 65, 80, 103, 115 Foucault, M. 31, 33, 81, 96, 99, 109, 111, 117 France 7, 96, 99, 119, 120, 121–122, 124–125, 130–131, 134–138, 202, 262, 170, 273 freedom 5, 43, 52, 56, 66, 79–81, 93, 97, 103, 108, 115, 123, 150, 164, 184, 192, 251; freedoms 7, 38, 49, 108 frontier 2, 6, 13, 20–21, 27–28, 34, 38, 59, 121, 266; frontiers 29, 33–34, 55, 108–109, 142, 202, 274 frontline 8, 142, 179 garden 41, 46–49, 51, 53–56, 95, 152, 206, 223

gender 39, 49, 51, 111, 156, 182, 194, 199, 240, 251–252; gender-segregated 67 genocide 4, 104, 148 geo-political 1–3, 5–6, 60, 85–86, 98, 103–104, 111–112, 121, 237, 257, 259–260, 267, 270, 272 German 7, 53, 66, 103–105, 108, 110, 112–114, 113, 117, 146, 190, 206, 213; Germany 62–63, 105, 110–112, 115, 117, 178, 229; Democratic Republic of 110 global 1, 2, 8, 11, 16, 53, 59, 62, 64, 67, 71, 75, 79–80, 99, 117, 124, 137, 141, 143, 145, 148, 154, 159–160, 162, 174, 178, 182, 184, 188, 193, 202, 243, 252, 254, 257–258, 268, 270–273; globalisation 2, 8, 76, 79, 99, 159, 192, 221, 223, 254–255, 260; globalised 67; Global South 2, 4, 27, 64; city 79, 80, 223, 234–235; refugee crisis 7, 57, 59, 64–66, 70, 72, 74; warming 69 Golden mountains of Altai 266, 273 Goodhand, J. 239–240, 242–243, 253 government 7, 9, 39, 51, 53, 55, 57, 59–60, 61, 63–65, 69, 72, 77, 81, 94, 97, 104, 106, 111–114, 116–117, 123, 126, 146, 164–165, 167, 177, 179, 182, 184, 186, 198, 203, 210, 218–219, 223–224, 226, 228, 230–232, 235, 237, 239–245, 254–255, 262, 264, 268–269, 271, 273; governmentality 8; governance 6, 55, 121, 124, 127, 135, 235–236; governments 6, 8, 36, 38–39, 60, 62, 67, 161, 182, 192, 202, 260; governmental 66, 106, 110, 112, 113, 115, 124, 135, 253–254 Grande-Synthe 120, 123, 130–131, 131, 134, 138 grave 11, 113–115, 117, 175; graveyard 112, 132, 208, 211; see burial Greece 9, 57, 58, 62, 108, 111, 178, 197, 200–204, 205, 211–215, 217–220, 269, 272 Greek-Australian 197, 200 Greek-Turkish 202 Greta 202, 214, 218–219 grid 40–41, 46, 86, 96, 98, 12, 126, 197, 204, 206, 207; gridded 71; grids 82 guards 169; guardsmen 106

279

Index

guerrilla 179, 181, 187 Gyeongbokgung Palace 183, 184 Hamidiye 197, 200 Han River 189 Hastaoglou-Martinidis, V. 202–204, 219 Hawaii 39 Hébrard, E. 204 Hebron 91–92 heritage 6, 8–10, 103–105, 115–116, 139, 145–146, 148–149, 154–155, 162, 179, 189, 197–202, 217–219, 221, 223–224, 229–232, 237, 244–246, 252, 255–258, 274; culinary heritage 269–270; dissonant heritage 6, 11, 274; intangible cultural heritage 257–258, 260–264, 266–269; minority 9; politics 6; tourism 8; World 6, 9, 162, 244, 256–264, 271–274; see border heritage heterosexist 160, 170, 174 Heyri Art Village 187 Hidalgo, A. 131–133, 159, 163, 168–169, 169, 177 Hidalgo Pump House Museum and World Birding Center 163, 168, 169, 169 highway 7, 83, 85–86, 93–96, 98–99, 126, 130, 221, 231; Trans–Israel 93, 94; Transurban 95; City Link 95, 99; freeway 94–95; superhighways 82 Hirschon, R. 203, 219 Holocaust 5–6, 104–106, 112, 117, 148, 246 homes 4, 11, 27, 47, 49, 51–2, 66–9, 74, 79, 81, 94, 125, 127, 145, 162, 194, 199, 201, 206, 209–10, 210, 212, 217, 219, 223–4, 229–31, 233, 239, 251; homelands 23, 25, 157, 161, 164, 175, 177, 200, 203, 219, 237, 242; homeless 51, 56, 137; homeowners 206 homeland 237, 242; homelands 23, 25, 200, 203, 219 Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology (HART) 161 Hong Kong 9, 221–225, 226, 227, 228–236 hospital 49, 51, 60, 79, 111, 134–136, 186, 214–215, 269; see sanatorium Host, The 189–191, 193–194 houses 43, 46, 47, 64–5, 67, 85, 95, 130, 169, 186, 197–9, 204, 206, 208, 208, 209, 210, 212, 213–15, 216, 217–18, 253; housed 18;

housing 5, 39–41, 43, 60, 67, 112, 126, 136, 143, 199, 204, 206, 219, 224, 231, 254; slaughter house 231; bungalow 46; dwellings 31, 66, 72, 150, 203–4, 206, 208, 209, 217; ranch 43, 44, 47, 54, 55 human 121–122, 127, 130, 135, 143–144, 154, 161, 182, 189, 199, 209, 236, 247, 263, 272–3; humanism 104, 117; humanitarian 110–111, 119, 121, 123, 126–127, 131, 133–134, 138, 253; humanitarianism 104; humanity 138, 155, 271, 274; rights 103–105, 108, 113, 115, 136, 182; inhumane 110, 171 hut 44, 130, 186, 191, 199; hutted 214 hybrid 27, 48, 240 hydrological 25 identity 3, 8, 10–11, 38–39, 48–49, 53–54, 62, 69, 95, 97, 99, 117, 145, 149, 155, 193–194, 211, 218, 221–222, 230, 237, 240–244, 246, 252, 255–260, 266–267, 270–272 ideology 82, 95, 180–181, 183, 190, 192, 194, 256; ideological 3, 104, 141, 155, 178–180, 183, 192 illegal 36, 65, 67, 69, 72, 79, 114, 122–123, 130, 137 image 4–5, 54, 56–57, 58, 59–62, 64–68, 70–75, 71, 73, 80, 84, 87, 90, 105, 109, 111, 113, 117, 138, 152–153, 155, 218–219, 229–230, 238 imagination 5, 55, 64, 71, 110, 155, 178, 185, 188–191, 193, 257 immigrant 1, 9, 39–40, 48, 67, 80, 103–104, 108–113, 113, 115, 134, 171, 175, 197, 198–202, 214, 217–218, 229, 260, 270; migrant 3, 5, 8, 9, 23, 49, 58, 72, 74–76, 117, 119, 121–127, 130–138, 159, 161–162, 170–171, 174–177, 197–202, 214–215, 217–219, 217, 230–231, 233, 253, 269 imperialism 53, 171, 255 incarceration 36, 38, 48–49, 51, 53–55, 62 inclusion 80, 104, 137, 160, 171, 239, 273–274 India 1, 159, 161, 176, 244; Hindustan 16

280

Index

Indonesia 9, 235, 267–269, 268, 272–273; Indonesian 253, 267–269, 271 informal 4, 8, 83, 94–96, 99, 121–124, 126–127, 131, 134–135, 142, 253 infrastructure 2, 5, 29, 60, 79, 82–83, 85–86, 96, 99, 123–124, 126, 137, 157, 160, 180, 229, 239, 242, 252, 266 institutional 7, 69, 73, 119, 121–124, 126–127, 131, 135–136, 197, 199, 201, 223, 227, 237; institutions 3, 8, 51, 74, 81, 123, 145, 155, 160, 184, 199, 240, 245, 252–253 intangible 6, 8, 79–81, 83, 125, 245, 257–260, 264, 267–272, 274 Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention (ICHC) 245, 257– 259, 267–269 International 8, 10, 18, 38, 53, 57, 59, 64, 66, 72, 75, 99, 103–104, 109, 116, 123, 135, 139, 141, 146, 149, 157, 159, 162–163, 169, 174–175, 177, 181, 184, 193, 218, 223, 233, 235, 244, 252, 254–256, 258–262, 264, 265, 266, 269–274 International Court of Justice (ICJ) 262, 264, 265, 272–273 Intersectional Theory 38, 48, 55 Intifada 86, 88–89 invisibility 65, 67, 178 Iran 18, 31–35, 270, 272 Irigaray, L. 160, 170–171, 175–171 Iron Curtain 106 island 7, 36, 41, 49, 57, 58, 59–60, 62, 63, 64–70, 71, 72, 74–75, 79–80, 82, 93, 95–96, 115, 132, 150, 210, 224–225, 228, 231–232, 237, 242, 247, 247–250, 268 Islam 20, 21–22, 28, 31, 33–34, 62, 241, 243–244, 249, 253, 255; Islamic 6, 16, 18, 20–22, 32–34, 32, 111, 239–241, 243, 245–246, 250, 251–254, 267, 272 Israel 7, 77, 85–86, 88, 92–94, 96–99, 138, 159, 177; Israeli 77–78, 83, 85–86, 88–89, 91–93, 91, 97–98, 137 Jaffna 237, 242 Jailani/Kuragala 245, 255 Jakarta 94–96, 99, 268, 273 Japan 6, 39–40, 52, 54, 179, 181–182, 191, 193–194, 270, 272; Japanese 6, 36, 37, 38–41, 45, 46–49, 48, 51, 53, 55–56, 77,

179, 181, 183–184, 187, 190, 193; Japanese Imperial Army 282 Japanese American 39, 49, 53–56 Japanese Canadian 36, 39, 43, 46, 48, 51–56 Jayhun 16, 18 Jerusalem 34, 77, 85–86, 92–93, 98 Jews 105, 112, 213; Jewish 85, 94, 105, 112, 149, 204, 213 Joint Security Area (JSA) 185, 186; JSA (film) 190, 192–193; Jordan 7, 77–79, 85; Jordanian 77–79, 98 Juche 181–183 Jules Ferry migrant centre 126 Jungle camp 8, 119, 122–127, 126, 128, 130–131, 131, 134–138, 213 Kai Tak 9, 221–225, 226, 227–228, 230–231, 233, 234–235 Kaldor, M. 116–117 Kattankudy 242, 243, 253 Kedumim 89, 93 Kennedy, J. 5, 10 Khmer 262–264 Khorasan 6, 16, 27; Khorasanite 28 kimchi 270, 273 Kim Il-sung 179–181, 183, 187–188 Kim Jong-il 181, 183, 183, 190–191, 193 Kim Jong-un 181 Kiriat Arba 89, 93 Koguryo-Gaogouli Kingdom 266, 272; ruins Kolokotronis, A. 197, 200–203, 206, 207–212, 209, 213–214, 218–219 Köker, T. 210–212, 219 Kootenays 38, 40 Korea 1, 8, 181–182, 182, 183–194, 266, 270, 272–273; Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) 179, 180, 183, 266, 270, 273; Republic of Korea (South Korea) 179, 270, 273 Korean 8, 178–194, 266 Korean economic miracle 181 Korean People’s Army (KPA) 186 Korean Wall 188, 192 Korean Wave 184, 193 Khrushchev, N. 181 Kumsusan Palace of the Sun 183, 183 Kwun Tong 222, 224–225, 227–231, 234–236 labour 2, 11, 39, 41, 45–46, 55, 108, 181–182, 186, 199 La Bulle 133

281

Index

landscape 6, 15–16, 18, 20–21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 30–31, 40–41, 48, 53, 55, 68, 70, 123, 141, 149, 154, 160, 162, 165, 171, 174, 185, 187, 189, 204, 210, 229–230, 240, 245, 257, 259, 263–264, 266, 269, 272 Lefebvre, H. 116–117, 141– 142, 155–156 legislation 39, 66, 269 Lesbos 57, 58, 59, 62 liberal 1, 38, 65, 97, 104, 123; liberalisation 3; neo-liberal 2, 3, 5, 8, 27; liberalism 97; neo-liberalism 1, 190 Linière camp 130–131, 131, 134 Los Angeles 41, 46, 49, 54–55, 94–95, 138, 156, 175–176 LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) 237, 240, 242–244 machine 77–78, 80, 150, 199, 206, 218 makeshift 7, 119–124, 120, 126–127, 130–132, 132, 134–136 Malay 241, 255 Malaysia 9, 253, 267, 269, 272 Manchuria 181, 187 Manila 94–96, 99 Manus Island 7, 59, 62, 63–64, 65–66, 70, 71, 74–75 Manzanar 7, 37, 38, 40–41, 42–43, 45–46, 47, 49, 50, 53–56; War Relocation Center; 38, 41, 42–43, 47, 56; Children’s Village 49, 50, 55 Maoist 187–188 map 5, 15, 19, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 31, 37, 41, 61, 67, 83, 97–99, 122, 138, 140, 142–143, 157, 158, 161–162, 166, 166–167, 171–174, 177, 205, 206, 216, 226, 229, 232–233, 238, 242, 259; mapping 15, 18, 25, 69, 90, 107, 138–139, 145–146, 148, 171, 234, 254, 265 margin 2, 6, 8, 195; marginal 1, 80, 82, 134, 260; margins 134, 135; marginalised 4, 116, 171; marginality 1; marginalising 245, 252; demarginalizing 54 Marxism 180–181; Marxist 155, 180 Massey, D. 25, 34, 144, 154, 156 matrix of control 7, 83, 84, 93, 99 Mawarannahr 16, 18, 21, 23 media 7–8, 40, 57, 59–62, 61, 64–71, 75–76, 79, 104, 109–110, 112, 114, 119, 121, 137, 139, 142–143, 155, 160–162, 170, 177–178, 180, 182, 184, 193, 203, 273

medieval 6, 18, 20, 23, 25, 29, 31, 33–34 Medina 16 Meera Makam Mosque, Kandy 238, 246, 254 Melilla 104, 106, 108–109, 115 Mediterranean 59, 111, 132, 137, 199, 219; diet 269, 272 Melbourne 74–75, 94–95, 99, 155, 201, 214, 219–220 melodrama 189–191, 193–194; melodramatic 190–191, 193 Memorial to the Unknown Immigrants 112, 113 memory 10, 56, 73, 103, 105, 109, 111, 115–117, 193, 197–199, 201, 203, 215, 220, 225, 232, 235 Merv 16, 17, 18, 19, 20–21, 32 Mesopotamia 16, 33–34 Metro la Chapelle camp 132 Mexican American 171, 174 Mexico 1–2, 4, 8, 11, 157, 159–161, 164, 169, 171, 175, 177, 187; Mexican Government 165 Middle East 1–3, 32, 99, 104, 130, 219, 247 Migdal, J. 239, 251, 255 Mignolo, W. 3, 11, 170, 172, 176 migrants 3, 5, 23, 49, 58, 72, 74–75, 117, 119, 121, 122–127, 130–138, 159, 161; migration 1, 7, 10, 27, 39, 60, 68–69, 71–72, 76, 103, 105, 112, 116, 119, 121–122, 127, 136–137, 159, 175, 200, 202, 218–220, 229–230, 270; migrant workers 269; migrant groups 3, 131; migrant 3, 8–9, 23, 75, 119, 121–122, 126, 130, 132, 135, 137–138; see immigrants Migreurop 122, 138 millennium 98–99 military 5–6, 10, 22, 28, 31, 34, 36, 37, 38–41, 45, 49, 51, 62, 75, 78, 85–86, 88–89, 92, 97–98, 141–144, 149, 160, 176, 181, 182, 184–185, 188, 191–192, 194, 198, 258, 264; militarisation 65, 170, 173, 174 miniatures 9, 197, 199, 201, 213, 217 minority 8–9, 40, 48, 53, 180, 199, 237, 239–244, 246, 252, 253, 259 misr 16, 31, 34, 274 mobility 1, 4, 27, 39, 48, 76, 82, 89, 99, 109, 122–123, 127, 137, 142, 251, 260; mobilities 2, 20, 28, 31, 99, 121, 136, 138, 230 model 5, 7, 23, 44, 45, 80–82, 94, 150, 181, 197, 199, 201, 204, 206,

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208, 208–212, 215, 217–218, 230, 236; modelled 40, 49, 209, 213 Mohammad, Prophet 16 MoMA, Museum of Modern Art 5, 57, 58, 59, 73, 73, 74, 137, 153 monumental 21, 29, 116–117, 234, 244–245, 257, 267; countermonumental 105, 109, 116 Moor 241, 255; Moor-Muslim/MuslimMoor 241, 242 morphologies 23 mosque 9, 23, 30, 139, 149, 212, 237–242, 243, 244–247, 247–251, 249, 251–254, 256; tours 246 movement 5, 7, 17, 20–21, 27–28, 43, 45, 64, 68–69, 79–81, 83, 89, 97–98, 103, 112, 115, 121–122, 127, 131–132, 135–136, 142, 144, 161, 178, 181, 229–230, 232, 234, 243, 246, 251, 270 multicultural 8, 139, 141, 149, 155, 198, 206, 217, 256; multiculturalism 198, 219 municipal 7, 43, 119, 130–135, 212 Muradiye 197, 200, 204, 209–211 Muschamp, H. 150, 152, 156 museum 5, 44–45, 50, 52, 56–57, 58, 59, 73, 73, 143, 153, 163, 168–170, 185, 187, 192, 198–199, 201, 219, 232, 253, 268 Muslim 9, 28, 33–34, 211, 238–246, 249, 251–255; Muslims 28, 203–204, 211, 237–246, 252–256 Nablus 91–93 narrative 1, 20, 27, 69, 105, 110–111, 154, 160, 162, 200, 202, 218, 220, 222, 227, 230, 237 nation-state 1–3, 6, 10, 15, 53, 83, 98, 121, 139, 141, 162–163, 173, 178, 182, 215, 271; nation-building 1, 271; nationhood 68, 78 national 1, 3, 5–9, 11, 35–6, 38, 40, 42, 44–5, 49, 52, 53, 56, 63, 65, 66, 75, 77, 83, 93, 113, 117, 122, 124, 135, 139, 144, 150, 157, 160, 163–6, 168, 169, 174–6, 181–3, 193–4, 197, 199, 200–202, 211–12, 215, 237, 245, 253, 257–8, 259–60, 262, 266–72; nationals 38; National Assembly 139, 185; nationalism 5, 68, 180–81, 193, 213, 222–3, 235, 267, 271, 273–4; nationalist 149, 179, 180–81, 190, 244–5, 264, 266, 271; nationality 7, 33, 40, 78, 99, 124, 139, 215, 272; denationalised 2; postnational 2;

sub-national 259–60; supra-national 271; transnational 27, 48, 53, 72, 79, 121, 123–4, 175, 218, 252, 257, 260, 273–4; national heritage listing 199 Native American 39–40, 159, 164, 171–172 Nauru 7, 59, 62–66, 70, 72, 74–75 navy 36 Nea Magnisia 9, 197, 199–202, 206, 207–209, 208–209, 213–215, 216, 217 neo-liberal 2, 3, 5, 8, 27; neo-liberalism 1, 190 neo-Nazi 112 network 7, 15, 19, 22, 24, 25, 31, 33–34, 64, 68, 73, 79–83, 85–86, 93–96, 99, 104, 119, 121–124, 127, 131, 134–135, 137, 144, 167, 177, 186–187, 225, 231, 242, 253, 273; Networked Society, The 80, 99 New Denver 7, 37, 38, 40–41, 43–47, 44–45, 48, 51–56, 52 New York 1, 3, 10, 11, 33–35, 54–56, 58, 72, 73, 74, 76, 99, 137, 150, 153, 156, 170, 175–177, 192–194, 219, 235, 254–256, 272, 274; New York City 57, 150 Nisei 39–40, 49 Nishapur 20 nomadic 15–16, 22, 28–29, 32–33, 32 non-place 6, 27 nostalgia 200–203, 210, 215, 219–220, 232 Occupied Territories 7, 77, 80, 82–83, 86, 93–94, 98 offshore 57, 59–67, 70, 72, 74–75 One Belt One Road 270, 274 opacity 1, 7–8, 178, 188, 218 oppression 3, 48, 62, 103, 109, 115, 189 orphans 51 Orthodox 125, 125, 149, 203, 210 Ottoman 146, 149, 197, 199–200, 202, 204, 208, 210–211, 215 Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) 258, 262, 264, 267, 271 Oxus 6, 15–16, 18, 20–21, 23, 27–32, 30; see Amu Darya Palestine 7, 77, 83, 86, 93, 97; Palestinian 7, 77–79, 83, 85–86, 88–89, 91–94, 91, 96–98, 137, 217 palimpsest 15, 27, 29–31, 34 Panmunjom 185–186; Peace Village 185–186

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parades 182 paradise 16, 193, 206 Paris 8, 69, 75, 120–121, 123–124, 131–133, 132–133, 134–138, 272–274 Park Chung-hee 181, 193 Parliament 60, 65, 76, 104, 114, 117, 137, 219–220 participatory planning 224–225, 228 pathologies 2, 51; pathologized 7 patrimony 6, 9, 240 patriots 49 peace process 86 Pearl Harbor 36, 39 periphery 1–2, 5, 16, 28, 73, 39, 109, 112, 115–116, 221, 244 Persia 16, 31, 33–34; Persian 6, 16, 20–21, 23, 33–34 Picado de Sarajevo 143 Picasso, P. 185 Pink, S. 141–143, 156 place-making 225, 232, 234 police 36, 41, 45, 78–79, 83, 94, 106, 110, 119, 130, 134, 159, 177, 241 political art 110–111 polity 10, 28, 33, 117, 203, 220 popular culture 179, 193–194 population 5, 8–10, 16, 18, 20–21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 36, 38, 40–41, 43, 45–47, 49, 51–53, 66–67, 82, 86, 89, 94–96, 99, 124, 149, 160, 180–181, 197, 199–200, 202–204, 206, 211, 215, 218–220, 229, 241, 254, 270 postcolonialism; see colonial post-industrial 27, 221 Preah Vihear temple 9, 258, 260–264, 261, 263, 266, 271–274 precarity 3, 5, 214, 253 prefabricated 44, 70–71, 123, 130, 133 private 81–82, 94–96, 104, 142, 151, 156, 162, 164–165, 177, 218, 224, 233 propaganda 152–153, 182, 184, 190; village 186–187 propulsion (of border security) 161–162, 173–174 psychological 1, 5, 148 public 5, 10, 45, 55–57, 59–60, 62, 64–69, 71–72, 81–83, 86, 89, 94–96, 98–99, 104–106, 108–116, 123–124, 132, 134, 139, 144, 155, 162, 165, 167, 168, 170, 175, 182, 193, 213–215, 218–220, 223–225,

228, 231, 234–235, 240, 246, 251, 268, 273 Pyongyang 182–185, 182, 192 rabad 23 race 39, 48, 51, 54; racist 38–40, 46, 54, 98, 170 railway 130, 132–133, 206, 213, 222 rajando/rajar 160, 162–163, 170–171, 173 rally 170–173, 172, 173 Ramić, A. 142, 156 REAL ID Act 164 reconciliation 27, 29, 237, 239, 242, 252, 255–256 refugee 2–3, 5, 7, 9–10, 57, 58, 59–76, 63, 71, 103–105, 108, 110–119, 114, 124, 127, 130–132, 135–138, 197–198, 200–204, 205, 206, 208, 208, 210–211, 213, 215–220, 216, 223, 231, 233, 239 Refugee Settlement Commission (RSC) 197, 203, 204 regime 8, 45, 78, 81, 83, 86, 87, 89, 93, 97–99, 104–105, 109–110, 112–113, 115–117, 119, 121–122, 131, 191–192, 219, 233–234, 255, 260, 273–274 region 6, 15–16, 17, 21, 25, 28–29, 33, 38, 40, 43, 160, 165–166, 168–169, 187, 203, 235, 237, 260, 262, 264, 266, 270, 272–273; regional 20–21, 60, 62, 70, 85, 99, 144, 161, 175, 204, 209, 243, 255, 270–271 religion 49, 184, 242, 254; religious 9, 30, 46, 51, 80, 139, 146, 148–149, 164, 180, 184, 225, 239, 240–246, 251, 254–256, 266, 268, 270 Relocation Center 36, 38, 41, 42–43, 47, 56 repatriation 52, 65, 198 republic 62, 139, 203, 225, 227 resilience 38, 48, 119, 142, 237, 246, 253 resistance 2, 8–9, 116, 119, 121, 127, 131, 136, 143, 154, 160, 179, 181–182, 200, 213, 220–221, 223, 228–229, 235 Rhee, S. 179–180 ribat 18 Riddah 16, 34 rights 5, 9, 38, 62, 64, 66–67, 70, 72–75, 77, 80, 89, 103–105, 108, 113, 115, 127, 136, 159–160, 164,

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170, 171, 174, 182, 204, 233, 240, 249, 272–273; see human rights Rio Grande Valley 157, 163, 165, 174, 177 river 6, 15–16, 17, 18, 20–21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27–29, 30–31, 37, 40, 53, 106, 143, 159, 174, 176–177, 189; riverine 6, 16, 18, 20–21, 25, 27–29, 31, 165; riverine crossing 20, 25 road 18, 40–41, 51, 53, 78, 82–83, 85–86, 87–88, 88–89, 91–99, 91, 134, 164, 214, 231, 270, 274; see route Roberts, M. 241, 243, 255 route 16, 18, 79, 85, 89, 91–92, 95, 98, 117, 119, 121–123, 132, 134, 137, 142, 161, 176, 188, 202, 213 Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) 36, 52 rural 38, 135, 197, 199, 203, 219 Russia 29, 33, 35, 178, 266; Russian 28, 52, 179, 266, 273 Sabal Palm Sanctuary 163, 163, 166 Salt 190, 194 Samarqand 18, 20–21 Sanatorium 44, 48, 51–52, 52, 55; see hospital Santa Ana 33, 157, 159, 160, 164–166, 167, 168, 170–172, 172, 173, 173, 176–177; National Wildlife Refuge 8, 157, 160, 163, 165, 166, 168, 174–177 Sarajevo 4, 8, 139, 140, 141, 143–146, 148–150, 151, 152–6, 153–154, 155; Survival Guide, 8, 139, 143–144, 146, 154, 156 Second World War 6, 9, 56, 67, 103–105, 115–116, 179, 197–201, 215, 262 secular 139 security 1, 7, 10, 36, 38–39, 43, 45, 55, 57, 63, 70, 78, 81, 85–86, 89, 93, 95–99, 103, 106, 108, 116, 159, 160, 162, 164, 174–176; securitisation 1–4, 96, 162; security state 8; Homeland Security 157, 175, 177; insecurity 2–3, 11, 96, 160, 176; see Joint Security Area Seidler, H. 217, 220 Seoul 180, 183–184, 184–185, 187, 189, 192–194, 221; Neo-Seoul 189 separatist 237, 239, 254 settlements 5, 10, 16, 18, 21–23, 25, 31, 33, 38, 40, 45, 53, 56, 63,

83, 85–86, 94–95, 98, 124, 197, 203–204, 205, 219, 221, 232, 239, 242, 262; resettlement 54, 59, 61, 64, 75, 203–204, 213, 231 sexual 8, 39, 49, 70, 171 shelters 59, 67, 71, 123, 125, 130, 131, 133, 142, 189 Shin Sang-ok 190, 193 siege 1, 3, 8, 10, 23, 139, 140, 141, 143–5, 150; besieged 7–8, 141, 142–143, 154–155; see blockade Silk Road 6, 274 Sinhala-Muslim riots/violence 241 Smyrna 202, 220 sniper 142–143, 145 social: housing 204; justice 104 Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia 139; see Yugoslavia soft power 182, 193 Soja, E. 141–142, 156 soldiers 18, 34, 78, 89, 92–93, 141, 181, 185–186, 213, 253, 263 Sommerfeld-Dehatege company (DHTG) 204 Southeast Asia 243, 260, 272–274 South Texas 157, 158, 159, 165, 168, 174, 174n sovereignty 1, 3, 5–7, 10, 38, 40, 48, 53, 78, 96, 108, 157, 159–160, 163, 168, 170, 175, 215, 222, 245, 254, 257, 264, 271; sovereignties 36 Soviets 179, 188 spectacle 4, 114, 122, 134, 137, 139, 182, 193 spectral 68, 200, 209, 213 Sri Lanka 9, 76, 237, 238, 239, 241–246, 250–251, 251, 252–256, 253–254n; Sri Lankan Muslims 240–41, 246, 252 Stalinist 8, 180–181, 183–184, 183–184, 186, 188, 190–191; De-Stalinisation 181 ‘state of exception’ 38, 121, 164, 175 statelessness 3, 5, 53 States Parties 6, 258–259, 262–263, 266, 269 steppe 15–16, 21, 25, 27, 29 Storefront for Art and Architecture 150, 152, 156 suburbs 96, 130, 142, 203, 215; suburban 23, 34, 46, 223; suburbia 18, 23 surveillance 3, 38, 81, 83, 86, 94–95, 97, 103, 106, 134, 159–160 Tamil 237, 239, 241–244, 249, 255 tamsir 16, 20–22, 31

285

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Tarikh 20–21, 31 technology 5, 10, 25, 34, 65, 96, 99, 137, 150, 160–61, 186, 201 television 104, 109 temple 9, 46–47, 192, 238, 244, 247, 251, 253, 256, 258, 260–262, 263, 264, 266, 267, 268, 271–274 temporary 2, 7, 9, 41, 44–45, 63, 67, 86, 89, 103, 105–106, 114–116, 122, 125–126, 130, 134–135, 138, 164, 198, 251, 264; hyper-temporary 7, 119 tents 44, 67, 70, 123–124, 132–133 territory 3, 5, 6, 10, 20, 27, 29, 62, 63, 66, 69, 72, 78, 81–83, 85, 89, 93–95, 97, 98n, 99, 138, 185, 202, 245, 262, 266, 270 Texas 8, 157, 159, 163, 169, 170, 174–175n, 175–176; Texas-Mexico border 159; see South Texas Thailand 237, 258, 262–264, 273–274 theatre 46, 78, 106, 115, 182, 185, 187, 192–3; of war 40; state 182; amphitheatre 106 Thessaloniki 9, 197, 201–204, 205, 206, 208, 213–214, 218–219 thirty-eighth parallel 179, 192 Tlostanova, M. 3, 11, 170, 172, 176 To Kwa Wan 222, 225, 227, 230–35 Toronto 34, 54–6, 94–5 town 21, 32n, 34, 40–41, 43, 46, 53, 66, 76, 89, 94–96, 104, 106, 130, 148–149, 152, 156, 159, 169, 174, 178, 186, 197, 203, 206, 211, 213, 215, 222, 228, 229, 231, 235, 239, 242, 253 tower 15, 20, 43, 45, 53, 97, 149, 157, 168, 183–4, 191, 208 transnational 27, 48, 53, 72, 79, 121, 123–124, 175, 218, 252, 257, 260, 271, 273–274; see national transportation (transport) 7, 67, 78, 80, 89, 94–96, 111, 115, 133, 139, 144, 203, 210, 266 Trio 8, 145, 152–153, 153–154 troops 38, 40, 41, 186, 213, 262, 264 Trump, D. 1, 8, 157, 159–161, 164, 166, 170–171, 172, 174–177 Tudor Hall 199, 201 Turkey 9, 58, 197, 199, 200, 203, 206, 209, 219, 270, 272 Turkmenistan 15, 18, 24, 29, 30, 32, 34 twentieth century 1, 5, 55, 57, 64, 194, 199–200, 232, 260

United Nations (UN) 72, 75, 179, 185–6; UNESCO 69, 162, 237, 244–245, 257–259, 261–264, 266–274, 267; UNHCR 59, 217, 220; Security Council 264 United Kingdom (UK) 119, 198, 218n, 222 United States of America (USA, US) 1, 36, 37, 38–40, 42, 43, 49, 52, 54n, 55–6, 76, 155n, 164, 169, 188, 202, 253 urban 4–5, 8–9, 15–16, 18, 21–23, 27, 33–34, 45, 65, 67, 75, 79–80, 82, 85, 94–96, 99, 103–104, 115–116, 119, 121, 125, 132, 134–5, 137, 142, 144, 146, 148, 150, 162, 165, 179, 181, 183, 185, 187, 192, 203–204, 217, 220–223, 225, 227, 229–236, 255; urbanism 9, 10, 27, 34, 81–82, 99, 156, 221–223, 227–228, 230–231, 233–234; urban development 85, 145, 204, 221, 232, 235; urban renewal 9, 228, 236; splintering urbanism 82, 99 urbicide 4, 122, 137, 145–146, 148–150, 155n, 156 Urgench 17, 18, 23 US Fish and Wildlife 165, 177 US-Mexico border 2, 4, 8, 11, 157, 159–160, 164, 169, 174 utopia 64, 75, 80, 130, 134–135, 138, 182, 193, 225, 234–235; utopian 9, 64, 201, 222–223, 225, 230–231, 234; utopianism 227 Uzbekistan 15, 18, 20, 24, 29, 30 Vancouver 36, 56 Vela, F. 170–171, 175n vernacular 4, 198, 215, 229 victimhood 246 villages 9, 36, 38, 43, 49, 50, 51–52, 54–56, 78, 82–83, 85–86, 88, 93–95, 122, 185–187, 197, 200, 203, 206, 208, 211, 213–215, 231, 239, 244, 273; villagers 202, 209 violence 1, 4–6, 8, 10, 38–39, 56, 59, 65, 68–69, 71, 103, 109, 112, 115, 117, 149, 160, 164, 171, 173, 181, 187, 191, 210, 213, 237, 239–242, 244, 249, 254–256, 272; violent 115, 123, 126–127, 131, 160, 162, 202, 219, 237, 240, 271 Virilio, P. 69, 122, 138 wall 7, 8, 22–23, 40–41, 59, 73, 91, 93–94, 96, 103, 106, 108, 117, 149, 150, 152, 155, 157–166, 167, 168–169, 169, 170–172,

286

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174, 174n–175n, 175–177, 178, 188, 192n, 193, 199, 204, 213, 232, 243, 247; see also Berlin Wall; Korean Wall Wanchai 225, 232, 234 war 3–4, 6, 10–11, 21, 28, 51–53, 54–56, 69, 76, 85, 116–117, 139, 141, 141, 142–146, 148–149, 150–156, 170, 178–180, 187–189, 190–193, 192n, 202–203, 213– 214, 219, 237, 239–244, 246, 252, 254–256, 262, 269, 272–273; warfare 53, 188; wartime 7, 36, 38–39, 44, 48, 54–55, 57, 150, 179; warriors 28; post-war 9, 52–53, 180, 193, 197–198, 200, 218–219, 220, 228, 237, 239–241, 243–246, 252, 254–256; pre-war 47, 143; Prisoner of War 40; Star Wars 168; War Relocation Center 41, 42–43, 47, 49; see civil war; Cold War; Second World War War Relocation Authority (WRA) 36, 39, 41, 45, 51, 56 Warchitecture 4, 8, 141, 145–146, 147, 148, 152, 154–156, 155n

Wartime Civilian Control Administration (WCCA) 36, 45 waterway 6, 15–16, 21 Welcome to Our Mosque programme 9, 237–240, 246–247, 250–251, 251–253 West Bank 83, 85–86, 89, 93, 94, 98, 98n, 159, 177 White Australia Policy 199 White Crosses 106, 108, 108–10 women 39, 43, 46, 49, 51, 56, 62, 64, 69, 126, 133, 160, 170–171, 172, 174, 176, 202, 213, 240, 249, 251–253 World Heritage Convention (WHC) 257–259, 271, 273–274 Young, J. 105, 109, 116–117 Yugoslavia 143, 178, 206, 218n Yushin 181 zone 6–8, 16, 18, 20, 25, 28–29, 36, 37, 40, 60, 67, 92, 98, 127, 134, 142, 161, 165–166, 173, 176, 185–187, 186, 221, 256, 258, 264, 265, 266, 270, 273; see border zone; demilitarised zone

287