Jerusalem,rescripted: Retheorizing embodiment in the production of place

Abstract

This paper examines Palestinians’ production of place in Jerusalem through participatory mapping and narrative analysis, based on survey data collected between 2019 and 2020. It draws on the voices of Palestinians from Gaza, the occupied Palestinian territories, within 1948 borders, and Jerusalem itself. Together, these accounts show how narrative place-making sustains place under siege, displacement, and occupation. Although Gazans were initially excluded from the research due to their inability to access the city, their unexpected engagement reshaped the project's trajectory and helped reveal a broader pattern of place-making across Palestine. Through this process, the survey became a means of symbolically and narratively re-emplacing Palestinians in Jerusalem and reconstructing it in their image. The paper makes two key contributions. First, it demonstrates how participation in research can itself become an act of representational place-making and resistance. Second, it uncovers the strategic logic of collective place-making by integrating a diversity of affects produced under Israel's settler-colonial regime. Taken together, the narratives illustrate how seemingly spontaneous actions generated a unified, temporally and spatially contiguous place, amounting to a profoundly unique and embodied form of resistance.