Rooting diaspora, reviving nation: Zionist landscapes of Palestine–Israel

This paper explores the politics of landscape and nature within the process of nation-building. In it I examine how landscapes can operate in multiple, intersecting ways in the service of an ideological discourse and how the politics of nature, specifically trees, can contribute to the shaping of a new national space and subjectivity. Focusing on the multiple renditions of Palestine promulgated by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) , I discuss how landscapes can entangle diaspora and homeland, aesthetics and embodiment, antiquity and modernity, with both conceptual and material consequences. Drawing on histories of the JNF and on a selection of historic newspaper articles and children's literature, I explore the circulation of aesthetic renderings of Palestine and the performance of embodied landscapes during the children's tree-planting holiday, Tu B'Shvat. I argue that the centrality of trees to the JNF, and the imagery of roots, renewal, family and innocence that they conjure, legitimised Zionist colonisation and naturalised the Israeli nation state and body politic. I also demonstrate how JNF landscapes and afforestation work assisted in the demarcation of Israeli nation-space and therefore in the material dispossession of the Palestinians.     

黔中屯堡人祖籍“南京应天府石灰巷”考辨——兼与云南“南京柳树湾高石坎”比较

黔中屯堡人多指认自己的祖籍是“南京应天府石灰巷”,家谱族谱中可看到各省都出现“石灰巷”的地名。在对南京自明代以来地名考察后发现,这是清代以后才出现的地名,兼与云南移民指认家乡为“南京柳树湾高石坎”相比较,我们认为屯堡后裔通过对祖先“调北征南”光荣使命的颂扬,下意识地将调北填南、充军放逐等“次等来源”进行改造,“征南将士”被看成这一族群的“共同血统”,这种身份意识强化了屯堡人的祖宗崇拜。帝辇之下的“南京应天府石灰巷”,就成为屯堡人的“共同家乡”,它更象是一个由话语构建的“精神故乡”。