An autoethnography against categories: Borderland subjectivities in Israel-Palestine

• In Event: Embodied Jewish gender histories: Feminist, reflexive, creative encounters in the archives and in the field

Abstract

This autoethnographic performance explores the complex relationship between the feminist anthropologist and the Israeli women encountered during fieldwork in the Israeli-Palestinian context. Tracing unexpected moments in this fieldwork landscape, I confront preconceived notions about Israeli women, subjectivity (mine and theirs), and politics. Building on current theorizing in anthropology, I challenge assumptions that people's opinions, actions and feelings will line up consistently. By critically examining the belief that their views and emotions must necessarily fit into stable boxes and categories, I enrich interdisciplinary feminist dialogue. This contribution to the session provides a contemporary ethnographic counterpoint to the historical perspectives conveyed in the other performances on this panel.

My borderland autoethnography delves into the experiences of Israeli women navigating material, political, and ideological boundaries, prompting reflection on their nature and implications. I examine the roles of these boundaries, questioning who authorizes and maintains them, and their impact on those subjected to them as well as their affective impact on myself as a researcher. Moreover, I explore how nonhuman entities, such as geographic and political borders, along with ideological categories, shape my own experiences and those of my research subjects, offering insight into their affective worlds.

Drawing from a decade of fieldwork in Israel-Palestine, the vignettes in this performance center on my role as both subject and analyst within the borderlands. Unlike previous work focusing on singular cultural or socio-religious phenomena, these vignettes highlight moments where conventional scholarly frameworks proved inadequate. This approach blends feminist reflexive methodologies, and theories of affect to evoke a sense of plurality and emergence.

Through this performance, I invite the audience to engage with the nuanced emotional, embodied, and psychological dimensions of the Israeli-Palestinian landscape. By challenging traditional boundaries and embracing reflexivity, this autoethnography offers a fresh perspective on subjectivity and politics in a conflicted region, contributing to a deeper understanding of women’s un-categorizable lived experiences amidst complex socio-political borders.

Author

• Hannah Mayne, University of Toronto