Mural Sovereignty: From the Twin Towers to the Twin Walls

Abstract

After the demolition of the Berlin Wall (1989), the construction of the Palestinian Wall from 2002 and the passing of The Secure Fence Act of 2006 (governing the US–Mexico border) enact a return to mural forms of sovereignty: walls are both without and within law, ‘old solutions’ to problems newly-made. While the Berlin Wall is considered a Cold War monument, both the Palestinian Wall and the ‘Secure Fence’ concretize the paradoxical reappearance of ancient territorializing strategies in a post-Cold War New World Order. These paradoxes are related to the coincidence of intensive and extensive forms of contemporary sovereignty: the contraction of a narrowed sovereign border accompanied by the projection of an extended sovereign power. These mural structures are considered in the context of the renovation of Ground Zero, Franz Kafka’s story ‘The Great Wall of China’, and Dan Perjovschi’s mural ‘What Happened to US?’ (Museum of Modern Art 2007).