Landscaping otherness and challenging frames of ‘nothingness’ in contemporary Palestine

Abstract

Discerning modes of syncretic attitudes in the narratives of US anti-war advocates in Palestine allow us to consider ways in which temporalities of Self and Other are constructed and importantly, altered. By drawing on the diary account of activist Rachel Corrie and presentation of American ultra-marathoners in Palestine who are placed in a ‘rescue’ typeset I will consider the way meanings of self are interplayed with perceptions of otherness and how empathetic responses find their way into challenging existing states. We consider the ways that the activists sought to open up global spaces to develop ‘a sense of there being an elsewhere'. It is within this ‘elsewhere’ that actors identify sites of meaning and importance to their ‘others’. I propose in this essay that the sites used for the planting of olive trees and sites of meaning in their run act as intersection points between the American activists and Palestinians that syncretise spaces and identities. Codes of familiarity in landscapes together with participatory actions provide a medium for attachment ‘at the human level’ and can challenge pre-existing attitudes of otherness.