2020 MESA Annual Meeting

Panel: Between the Imagined and the Real: Spaces of Tensions in Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine

SUMMARY:

This panel explores the tensions between the imagined and the real and the repercussions of these tensions on the production of space in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine. The presenters examine the dissonance between political ideology, both local and foreign, or grassroot and top-down, and its repercussions on different communities and environments. The selected papers approach this central question from two standpoints; while some use the urban and architectural reality as an entry point to question the imagined ideas, others explore the space of the imagined itself to better understand the tensions with its physical application.

The first paper considers a Palestinian-led project imagined in response to the threat of Zionist colonial expansion yet repurposed as an alternative to conceptions of ‘displacement’ and ‘resettlement’. The second paper is a rhetorical exploration of the ideology of a party, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the frameworks and spaces it produced. This paper contrasts those to the concrete political actions and the revolutionary movements that served as its inspiration. The third paper sets side by side a proletariat identity assumed and shared by a marginalized group of native and displaced laborers with the perceived identity imagined by aid agencies and the public opinion, and the struggle for urban space that is therefore produced. The fourth paper, set in Baghdad, articulates the disconnect between U.S. neoconservative ideologies about democracy and state-building and the actual neighborhood power structures that were created after 2003 by studying the roles of U.S.-created neighborhood councils in mediating state-society relations within the city. Finally, the fifth paper explores spatially the discourse on childhood in mid-century Baghdad, itself a lens through which visions of both the past and the future were explored.

MEMBERS:

Alissa Walter

(Seattle Pacific University)

Panel Participating Role(s): Presenter;

Andrew Alger

(Graduate Center - CUNY)

Panel Participating Role(s): Presenter;

Diala Lteif

(University of Toronto)

Panel Participating Role(s): Organizer; Presenter;

Nadi Abusaada

(University of Cambridge)PhD candidate in architecture at the University of Cambridge.

Panel Participating Role(s): Presenter;

Faiq Mari

(ETH Zürich)

Panel Participating Role(s): Organizer; Presenter;