As written by Esther Wolfe<\/p>\n
In his essay, \u201cThe Uncanny\u201d, Freud famously interprets a definition of the uncanny within an examination of the German \u201cHeimlich,\u201d or \u201chomely,\u201d vs. the \u201cunheimlich,\u201d or \u201cunhomely.\u201d \u00a0Using examples from the German language, Freud shows that the terms are used interchangeably to describe the uncanny\u2014what is uncanny is both \u201chomely\u201d and familiar, and \u201cunhomely\u201d or unfamiliar. Implicitly however, Freud\u2019s treatment of \u201cheimlich\u201d and \u201cunheimlich\u201d also provides a deeper, deconstructive orientation of the uncanny. The slippery exchange between the meaning of \u201cheimlich\u201d and \u201cunheimlich\u201d shows that what is uncanny is bound up in fundamental anxieties about the construction and instability of boundary itself. In this way, the anxiety of the uncanny is not only that it is both familiar and unfamiliar, but that it also exists in multiple dimensions, transgressing boundaries and destabilizing structures of signification.<\/p>\n
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Freud\u2019s definition automatically frames the uncanny in architectural terms, invoking spatialized references to construction and boundary, interiority vs. exteriority, private vs. public, and the concept of \u201cthe home.\u201d \u00a0Anthony Vidler, in his book The Architectural Uncanny<\/i>, refers to this intersection as the \u201ccorresponding spatiality\u201d of the uncanny (x).<\/p>\n
There are many examples that unpack the intersections of architecture and the uncanny. One of the most recent and politically charged can be found in the Palestinian refugee camps, particularly those within the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank. In his book Hollow Land: Israel\u2019s Architecture of Occupation<\/i>, architect Eyal Weizman references Palestinian refugee camps as uncanny spaces that \u201ceach side considers haunted\u201d (227). It has also become common within the global movement of humanitarian journalism to invoke a language of spectrality and refer to refugees as \u201cghosts\u201d and refugee camps as \u201cghostly,\u201d \u201chaunting,\u201d and \u201ceerie.\u201d The narrative framing of refugee camps, as well as the belief in their haunting, points to the spaces of Palestinian refugee camps as particular sources of uncanny anxiety. Invoking Freud\u2019s definition allows us to unpack this anxiety as the result of the uncanny architecture of the Palestinian refugee camp, both in terms of the \u201chomely and unhomely,\u201d as well as its deconstruction of political, legal, and territorial boundaries.<\/p>\n
The presence of Palestinian refugees is a deeply charged issue for Palestinians and Israelis, as well as for the neighboring Arab nations. Currently, the world contains an estimated 5 million Palestinian refugees, with around 1 million of this number living in Gaza and the West Bank. Politically, refugees occupy a threshold space of multiple legal dimensions. Although \u201crefugee\u201d is a legal status, it is also not the same as citizenship. The definition of the term \u201crefugee\u201d is also slippery within humanitarian jurisprudence\u2014a \u201crefugee\u201d is both legally the same as, and distinct from, \u201cdisplaced\u201d or \u201cinternally displaced\u201d persons. The term \u201cdisplaced\u201d is especially spectral and deconstructive\u2014to \u201cdisplace\u201d means both \u201cto move from its rightful place\u201d and \u201cto take over the position of.\u201d \u00a0In this way, the term \u201cdisplaced\u201d (and the doubly spectral status of \u201cinternally displaced\u201d) hints at the work of the uncanny within refugee status\u2014refugees are literally both homely and unhomely, deconstructing political and legal boundary, existing simultaneously inside and outside state power.<\/p>\n
One politically ghostly aspect of refugee status specific to Palestinian refugees is the \u201cright of return,\u201d which Palestinians claim in resistance to Israel\u2019s occupation. The \u201cright of return\u201d describes Palestinian claims to the homes and properties they were forced to leave after the construction of Israel. The \u201cright of return\u201d is a phrase that reverberates with the uncanny, evoking Freud\u2019s theories that what is \u201cunfamiliar\u201d about the uncanny is not that it is something wholly other than ourselves, but that it is a \u201creturn\u201d of the familiar that has been repressed within the unconscious. This definition maps onto Israel\u2019s denial of the Palestinian right of return. Although Israel often tries to characterize Palestine as \u201cwholly other\u201d than itself, it originated from the colonization of the Palestinian territories, making the denial of the Palestinian right of return function as a repression. For the Israeli nation-state, Palestinian refugees and camps function as a political repression of the familiar, their presence calling back the submerged memory of Israel\u2019s colonial occupation from within a historical unconscious.<\/p>\n
In addition to its political architecture, the territorial architecture of Palestinian refugee camps is also ghostly. The Palestinian territories are spatially divided by Israel, making them exist in fragmented dislocation. Israel, along with humanitarian law, closely monitors the mobility of refugees within the camps, as well as their ability to enter and exit the Palestinian territories. Here, the architecture of the camps is also spectral. Camp spaces, according to Weizman, become the work of controlling and managing the transgressive, destabilizing movement of refugee populations between \u201cporous\u201d national and territorial boundaries (140).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A final spectrality lies within the literal architecture of the camps themselves. The refugee camps, built by humanitarian organizations, are constructed as temporary structures. They are either new buildings built quickly and cheaply, or are reclaimed structures of occupation, often former Israeli settlements that have been abandoned. The \u201ctemporariness\u201d of the camps, as well as this possession of former living spaces, renders the camp space uncanny- both there and not there, private and public, homely and unhomely.<\/p>\n
Although any explanation should incorporate intersectionality, one possible reading of the haunting of Palestinian refugee camps points to anxieties surrounding the uncanny political and territorial architectures of refugee spaces. Tracing this uncanniness ultimately reveals an even deeper form of haunting. As refugees haunt our global peripheries, their destabilized existence forces us to contend with repressed histories of national and cultural trauma.<\/p>\n
Bibliography:<\/p>\n
Freud, Sigmund.\u00a0The Uncanny<\/i>. London: Penguin Classics, 2003. Print.<\/p>\n
\u201cPalestinian Refugees: An Overview.\u201d\u00a0Palestinian Refugee ResearchNet<\/i>. PRRN. Web. 23 Oct. 2013. Retrieved from http:\/\/prrn.mcgill.ca\/background\/<\/p>\n
\u201cPalestine Refugees.\u201d\u00a0UNRWA.<\/i>\u00a0Web. 23 Oct. 2013. Retrieved from www.unrwa.org<\/p>\n
Vidler, Anthony. The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely<\/i>. London: MIT, 1992. Print.<\/p>\n
Weizman, Eyal.\u00a0Hollow Land: Israel\u2019s Architecture of Occupation<\/i>. New York: Verso, 2007. Print.<\/p>\n
Weizman, Eyal.\u00a0The Least of All Possible Evils: Humanitarian Violence from Arendt to Gaza<\/i>. Ney York: Verso, 2011. Print.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As written by Esther Wolfe In his essay, \u201cThe Uncanny\u201d, Freud famously interprets a definition of the uncanny within an examination of the German \u201cHeimlich,\u201d or \u201chomely,\u201d vs. the \u201cunheimlich,\u201d or \u201cunhomely.\u201d \u00a0Using examples from the German language, Freud shows that the terms are used interchangeably to describe the uncanny\u2014what is uncanny is both \u201chomely\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[16,7,17],"class_list":["post-250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issue-1","tag-architecture","tag-bsudlr","tag-freud"],"yoast_head":"\n