Resilient Bodies, Residual Effects: Artistic Articulations of Borders and Collectivity from Lebanon and Palestine

What does it take to cross a border, and what does it take to belong? Sandra Noeth examines the entangled experiences of borders and of collectivity through the perspective of bodies. By dramaturgical analyses of contemporary artistic work from Lebanon and Palestine, Noeth shows how borders and collectivity are constructed and negotiated through performative, corporeal, movement-based, and sensory strategies and processes. This interdisciplinary study is made urgent by social and political transformations across the Middle East and beyond from 2010 onwards. It puts to the fore the residual, body-bound structural effects of borders and of collectivity and proceeds to develop notions of agency and responsibility that are immanently bound to bodies in relation.

Frontmatter 1 Table of Contents 5 Table of Figures 9 Acknowledgments 11 Chapter 1. What does it take to cross a border? And what does it take to belong? Introduction 17 Chapter 2. Negotiating Engagement: the Empirical Part of the Study 37 Chapter 3. Artistic Case Study Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme: Contingency (2010 87 Chapter 4. Artistic Case Study Farah Saleh: Free Advice (2015) 115 Chapter 5. Artistic Case Study Dictaphone Group: Nothing to Declare (2013) 145 Chapter 6. Becoming Border, Becoming Collective: Comparative Cross-Case Analyses, and Theoretical Discussion of the Findings 177 Chapter 7. Resilient Bodies, Residual Effects: Closing Remarks and Perspectives for Further Research 259 Chapter 8. Primary Sources and References 269