Thank you for dying for our country : commemorative texts and performances in Jerusalem / Chaim Noy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Noy, Chaim, 1968- author.

Series:

Oxford studies in anthropology of language

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Heritage tourism--Social aspects--Jerusalem.

Heritage tourism.

War memorials--Social aspects--Jerusalem.

War memorials.

Guest books--Jerusalem.

Guest books.

Memorialization--Jerusalem.

Memorialization.

Museums--Social aspects--Jerusalem.

Museums.

Memory--Social aspects--Jerusalem.

Memory.

Collective memory--Israel.

Collective memory.

Jerusalem--Description and travel.

Jerusalem.

Givat ha-Tahmoshet (Jerusalem).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (297 pages).

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, [2015]

Summary:

"Combining ethnographic, semiotic, and performative approaches, this book examines texts and accompanying acts of writing of national commemoration. The commemorative visitor book is viewed as a mobilized stage, a communication medium, where visitors' public performances are presented, and where acts of participation are authored and composed. The study contextualizes the visitor book within the material and ideological environment where it is positioned and where it functions. The semiotics of commemoration are mirrored in the visitor book, which functions as a participatory platform that becomes an extension of the commemorative spaces in the museum. The study addresses tourists' and visitors' texts, i.e. the commemorative entries in the book, which are succinct dialogical utterances. Through these public performances, individuals and groups of visitors align and affiliate with a larger imagined national community. Reading the entries allows a unique perspective on communication practices and processes, and vividly illustrates such concepts as genre, voice, addressivity, indexicality, and the very acts of writing and reading. The book's many entries tell stories of affirming, but also resisting the narrative tenets of Zionist national identity, and they illustrate the politics of gender and ethnicity in Israel society. The book presents many ethnographic observations and interviews, which were done both with the management of the site (Ammunition Hill National Memorial Site), and with the visitors themselves. The observations shed light on processes and practices involved in writing and reading, and on how visitors decide on what to write and how they collaborate on drafting their entries. The interviews with the site's management also illuminate the commemoration projects, and how museums and exhibitions are staged and managed"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note:

Prologue

Itinerary

Part 1. SIGNING IN

1. Tourists' Traces

Performing tourism

Languaging tourism and heritage

The ethnography of texts

A medium's history

Visiting visitor books

2. The Ammunition Hill Museum: Authenticity, Bunkers and Language Ideology

In the museum

Generals' autographs and soldiers' love letters

Postscript I

Part 2. THANK YOU FOR DYING FOR OUR COUNTRY

3. The Ammunition Hill Visitor Book: Inside-Out and Outside-In

Commemorative affordances from within

Figures of the 2005-2006 visitor book

Commemoration community

Collective articulation

Aesthetic articulation

Material articulation

4. "I WAS HERE!!!": Indexicality and Voice

Commemoration literacies and writing and reading rituals

Signing

A matrix of signatures

Signers' identities, signers' anonymity

Open addressivity structures

5. Articulating Commemoration

Mediating commemoration

Contesting performances

Theological non-Zionist challenges

Hyper-Zionist ethnonational challenges

6. "Write I was impressed and not I enjoyed": Co-Writing Commemoration

Playful utterances

Words, drawings, and visual narratives

7. Gender and Familial Performances

"Fought like Lions": Institutional representations of men

"IDF Soldiers - I'm mad about you"

Families' commemoration performances

Contesting masculinities

Part 3. SIGNING OUT

8. "Like a magazine loaded with bullets": The VIP Visitor Book

Managing autographs: The pragmatics of signing

Autographs' capital and the reconstitution of hegemony

"For Kacha the untiring!": Elite networking

"The Temple Mount is in Our Hands"

International VIPs: Jews, Generals and three Jordanian Officers

9. Ethnography²

Undoing the ethnographic

Dasein or being (looked at) there

Collecting practices

The story toes tell: (Dis)embodied (re)presentation

Performance ethnography and the occurrence of the academic text

10. Conclusions

Postscript II

Transcription conventions

References.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-19-027321-6

OCLC:

922973334