The Cultural Legend of Al-Quds/Jerusalem: A Topological Analysis of Mental Maps

• In Event: 3184 - Section on Sociology of Culture Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 08. Mental Processes

Abstract

The present research examines the cultural classification of the contested Jerusalemic place, as perceived from local points of view. The cultural definitions of ”Al-Quds”/“Jerusalem” are traced through the unsettling process of mental mapping. The graphic sketch-maps and verbal descriptions of Palestinian and Israeli Jerusalemites illuminate the phenomenological boundary-work, which is deeply embedded in Jerusalemic everyday life experience and Israeli and Palestinian identity formation. The topological analysis of Jerusalemic mental maps underlines both visible and invisible boundaries between “here” and “there”, “inside” and “outside”, and “ours” and “theirs”. These social distinctions reflect cultural classificatory schemes, according to which “places” are realized and identified. Simultaneously, these metaphorical and practical boundaries undermine hegemonic, official, municipal, and geographical definitions of space. In this view, a phenomenological search for the cultural legend of mental maps of “Jerusalem”/”Al-Quds” critically uncovers the socio-cognitive construction of spatial knowledge.
The mental maps of “Al-Quds” and “Jerusalem” are informed by opposing and mutually exclusive ethno-national perspectives. Under this polarized cultural classification of space, social relations of difference between groups are expressed, ordered, and maintained. Nevertheless, the analysis of inner socio-spatial structures also reveals a topological equivalence between the contested social spaces. Both “Al-Quds” and “Jerusalem” cognitively collapse, facing inherent structural disconnectedness and discontinuity. From east to west, and alongside a profound and violent cultural struggle, Palestinians and Israelis alike share in the experience of phenomenological ruins of their city. This constructed disorder is sharpened under the within-subject comparison to mental maps of other spaces (envisioned by the same informants), and explored as a paradoxical connection between content and form in social reality.

Author

• Hamutal (Tali) Jaffe-Dax, Rutgers University