Empire

Abstract

Frontiers on land and bodies are performative of imperial expansion and acceleration. This chapter argues that frontier sites are especially productive of imperial formations, as they expose inconsistencies and excesses that are met with a particular rage and discipline. As such, frontier sites are productive of iterations of imperial violence, which includes the construction of new infrastructures and technologies of violence, as well as the discursive justification for this violent apparatus. Palestine is a frontier of imperial formations that is productive of war technologies, but also a site where debates over the legitimization of the use of this violence takes place. Performances on the frontiers of empire such as Palestine are constitutive of subject and subjectivities on resistance and settler colonialism in global politics. The marking of Hamas as terrorists is central to the coding and interpretations of Palestine in public discourses. The democratic election of Hamas troubled the coding of the movement as an illegitimate terrorist Other, which was met with a performative anxiety and rage by the European Union. The EU had headed the election-monitoring mission in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and they had declared the elections transparent, free. and fair. Their response, however, was to diplomatically and financially sanction Hamas, which had profound consequences for Palestinian governance. Hamas and Gaza exposed fault lines in empire’s attempt to defend its use of violence. and as such they are also productive of new forms of enacting imperial violence. The chapter explores the performances of Tania El Khoury, whose work uses intimate scenes and audience interactivity to foreground the pain and oppression of imperial violence. Performance acts as a cultural frontier that negotiates and expresses subversive and resistant meanings of violence in global politics.