Author
Bentley, ElizabethIssue Date
2021Advisor
Medovoi, LeeromLicona, Adela C.
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The University of Arizona.Rights
Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction, presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author.Embargo
Release after 08/15/2024Abstract
My dissertation, Israel/Palestine: Speculative Ecologies, probes the relationship between contemporary visual culture and the enduring legacies of environmental colonialism in Israel/Palestine. As one of the most internationally famous geopolitical conflicts, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is also one of the most visually documented. Scholars of visual culture, particularly those who are invested in Palestinian solidarity, are increasingly critical of the spectacular visual rhetoric that characterizes the most widely circulated photojournalistic images of Palestinians under siege (Toukan, Atshan, Said). Attention-grabbing images of human suffering often risk dehumanizing their subjects as spectacles for visual consumption (Hesford). They are also less effective at conveying the effects of slow and pernicious processes such as environmental colonialism (Nixon). Subsequently, there is a scholarly and political exigency for visual rhetorical strategies that can expand international audiences’ awareness of settler-colonialism’s long-term effects on Palestinian life and land (Toukan, Hochberg). Across three case studies, I analyze contemporary visual cultural productions that depict environmental colonialism. Here I am referring to the colonial processes and practices that affect Israel/Palestine’s natural environment with a disproportionately detrimental impact on Palestinians. I argue that these productions enact what I call “speculative image science.” I deploy a mixed-methods approach, contextualizing my visual rhetorical analysis with multi-sited ethnography, ethnographic interviews, and archival research conducted in several languages. Substantially reworking W.J.T. Mitchell’s term “image science,” I approach speculative image science as both an artistic practice and a scholarly method. Instead of documenting singular events, these mixed-media productions blur disciplinary boundaries between “art” and “science” and temporal boundaries between “past” and “present.” In so doing, they highlight how scientific expertise and ownership of Israel/Palestine’s natural environment have been categorized, produced, and distributed over time and to what ends. They demonstrate how the violent legacies of 19th and early 20th century imperial science and conquest in late Ottoman and British Mandate Palestine inform the settler-colonial present. By drawing attention to how transnational forces have historically shaped Israel/Palestine, these visuals challenge the presumptions of audiences who might otherwise understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as isolated and exceptional.Type
textElectronic Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.Degree Level
doctoralDegree Program
Graduate CollegeEnglish