Imaginative geographies, archaeological practice and national construction in Israel/Palestine

Abstract

The Christian “Holy Land” and the “Promised Land” of Judaism, and then the more secular Jewish “homeland” of Zionism, they all constitute constructions of the geographical imagination about Israel/Palestine, enabling a certain manner of conceiving of a particular territory and affecting as well the ways in which societies relate to such territory and create their past, their present and their future. In this paper, the author analyzes the Western enactment of these imaginative geographies and the role of archaeology in the nation-building process carried out by the State of Israel since 1948, which marginalized Palestinian population and its relationship to the territory, producing both a material and a symbolical disposession. The deconstruction of such imaginative geographies and the analysis of their historicities allow for us a critical consideration about the processes of nation-building in Israel/Palestine.