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The Israeli-Palestinian Separation Wall and the Assemblage Theory: The Case of the Weekly Rosary at the Icon of Our Lady of the Wall Cover

The Israeli-Palestinian Separation Wall and the Assemblage Theory: The Case of the Weekly Rosary at the Icon of Our Lady of the Wall

By: Elisa Farinacci  
Open Access
|Jul 2017

Abstract

In this work I analyse the ethnographic case study of the icon of Our Lady of the Wall as establishing a unique ritual landscape among the cement slabs of the Israeli-Palestinian Wall separating Jerusalem from Bethlehem. Although the Wall has been widely described as a technology of occupation on one side and as a device to ensure security on the other, through Latour’s concept of assemblages I unearth its agency in developing a Christian shrine. Through a decade of weekly recitations of the Rosary along the Wall near Checkpoint 300, the Elizabethan nuns of the Caritas Baby Hospital have been invoking Mary’s help to dismantle the Wall. This weekly ritual represents both political dissent against the bordering action enacted by the Wall, as well as giving visibility to the plea of the Palestinian Christian right to live in this territory in the face of their status as an ethnoreligious minority.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/jef-2017-0006 | Journal eISSN: 2228-0987 | Journal ISSN: 1736-6518
Language: English
Page range: 83 - 110
Published on: Jul 13, 2017
Published by: University of Tartu, Estonian National Museum, Estonian Literary Museum
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 2 issues per year

© 2017 Elisa Farinacci, published by University of Tartu, Estonian National Museum, Estonian Literary Museum
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.