3 research outputs found
Kafka at the West Bank checkpoint: de-normalizing the Palestinian encounter before the law
The checkpoint has emerged as a quintessential trope within the contemporary Palestinian imagination, to such an extent that âcheckpoint narrativesâ have arguably come to assume a dangerously ânormalizedâ status as everyday, even iconic features of Palestinian existence. Turning to the films Route 181 by Michel Khleifi and Eyal Sivan, and like twenty impossibles by Annemarie Jacir, this article explores how alternative representations (and theorizations) of checkpoint encounter might serve to âde-normalizeâ the checkpoint in a way that invites us to interrogate the very nature of the checkpoint apparatus in itself, including the nature of the âlawâ that it represents. Mobilizing the critical paradigms of the âstate of exceptionâ and âhomo sacerâ drawn from the theoretical work of Giorgio Agamben and the literary work of Franz Kafka, the article argues that apprehension of the enduring oddity and abnormality of the checkpoint serves as a vital mode of critical resistance to the policies of âspatio-cideâ, âsecuritizationâ and colonialism exercised at the hands of the State of Israel through the checkpoint mechanism