Abbreviations  

Glossary  

Note on Transliteration  

Preface  

Introduction: The Foundation Stone of Our National Existence, without Exaggeration  

Part I. Stone  

1. A Hieroglyph Designed by God  

Part II. Tile  

2. An Unmistakable Sign  

3. You are Blind to the Meaning of the Dome of the Rock  

4. Cataclysm and Pogrom: An Exergue on the Naming of Violence  

Part III. Paper  

5. Sir Alfred Monds After-Dinner Eloquence  

6. Designs on Our Holy Places  

Part IV. Celluloid  

Conclusion: A Terrible Caricature  

Notes  

Bibliography  

Index  

"Bertrand Monk takes an unorthodox look into the history of the 'sacred' architecture in the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis."—Middle East Journal

“In Israel and the Occupied Territories, even the stones are invested with meaning, and ‘sacred’ architecture can take on a devastating political significance for both sides in the conflict.”—Columbia College Today

"The author unearths the history of the political immediacy of ‘sacred’ architecture in the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, examining in particular the Mandate era. While examining the relation between monuments and mass violence in this context, he documents Palestinian, Zionist, and British attempts to advance competing arguments concerning architecture’s utility to politics."—Shofar

"[H]old[s] an array of fascinating facts and historical tidbits. . . . Monk certainly provides an innovative paradigm to approach the modern tensions centering on the two holy sites in Jerusalem. . . An Aesthetic Occupation should be of interest to Palestinian scholars for its exemplary historical rigor and to those concerned with the cultural relationship between architecture and political violence."—Lynne Rogers, Al Jadid

"[An] ambitious excavation of ‘the career of architecture’ in the prehistory of the Palestine conflict. . . ."
—Gabriel Piterberg, New Left Review

"[T]he data gleaned from the archives is brilliantly subjected to a theoretical powerhouse combining postmodern insights into history, architecture, philosophy, postcolonial studies, and art critique. The result is an intellectual feast. . . . The main strength of Monk's essay [is] its rigorous commitment to presenting new data with theoretical sophistication. . . ."—Dan Rabinowitz, Journal of Palestine Studies

"Bertrand Monk takes an unorthodox look into the history of the 'sacred' architecture in the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis."—Middle East Journal

“In Israel and the Occupied Territories, even the stones are invested with meaning, and ‘sacred’ architecture can take on a devastating political significance for both sides in the conflict.”—Columbia College Today

"The author unearths the history of the political immediacy of ‘sacred’ architecture in the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, examining in particular the Mandate era. While examining the relation between monuments and mass violence in this context, he documents Palestinian, Zionist, and British attempts to advance competing arguments concerning architecture’s utility to politics."—Shofar

"[H]old[s] an array of fascinating facts and historical tidbits. . . . Monk certainly provides an innovative paradigm to approach the modern tensions centering on the two holy sites in Jerusalem. . . An Aesthetic Occupation should be of interest to Palestinian scholars for its exemplary historical rigor and to those concerned with the cultural relationship between architecture and political violence."—Lynne Rogers, Al Jadid

"[An] ambitious excavation of ‘the career of architecture’ in the prehistory of the Palestine conflict. . . ."
—Gabriel Piterberg, New Left Review

"[T]he data gleaned from the archives is brilliantly subjected to a theoretical powerhouse combining postmodern insights into history, architecture, philosophy, postcolonial studies, and art critique. The result is an intellectual feast. . . . The main strength of Monk's essay [is] its rigorous commitment to presenting new data with theoretical sophistication. . . ."—Dan Rabinowitz, Journal of Palestine Studies

“A revelatory history of the architectural construction of the Israel/Palestine conflict that is also a stunningly original contribution to critical theory in the tradition of Adorno and Benjamin. Monk shows how both sides—thanks in part to the British—became trapped in a deadly quicksand of sacralized geographies and imagined histories.”—Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz

“Why is the question of Israel/Palestine so intractable? Why, in this supposedly enlightened, secular age, does there seem to be no exit from a conflict that has focussed obsessively on the material features of this tiny country for millennia? How is it that the very stones, monuments, and landscape have become so invested with conflicting values that they seem to have ‘lives of their own’ that are not simply shaped by historical events, but themselves play the role of causal agents in those events? Daniel Monk’s brilliant and profound meditation on these questions eschews all the easy alternatives: it avoids the temptation both of one-sided polemics (on the one hand) and Olympian neutrality (on the other); it refuses to pass over the fetishizing of monuments and places as a mere symptom that could be dispelled by critique; above all, it insists on looking steadily at the objects themselves in all their paradoxical, conflicted formulations, their positioning in events, memories of events, and fantasies of a final event to come. This is an essential book for anyone who wants to think about the Holy Land, or about the way objects make and are made by history.”—W. J. T. Mitchell, University of Chicago, Editor, Critical Inquiry

Permission to Photocopy (coursepacks)

If you are requesting permission to photocopy material for classroom use, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at copyright.com;

If the Copyright Clearance Center cannot grant permission, you may request permission from our Copyrights & Permissions Manager (use Contact Information listed below).

Permission to Reprint

If you are requesting permission to reprint DUP material (journal or book selection) in another book or in any other format, contact our Copyrights & Permissions Manager (use Contact Information listed below).

Images/Art

Many images/art used in material copyrighted by Duke University Press are controlled, not by the Press, but by the owner of the image. Please check the credit line adjacent to the illustration, as well as the front and back matter of the book for a list of credits. You must obtain permission directly from the owner of the image. Occasionally, Duke University Press controls the rights to maps or other drawings. Please direct permission requests for these images to permissions@dukeupress.edu.
For book covers to accompany reviews, please contact the publicity department.

Subsidiary Rights/Foreign Translations

If you're interested in a Duke University Press book for subsidiary rights/translations, please contact permissions@dukeupress.edu. Include the book title/author, rights sought, and estimated print run.

Disability Requests

Instructions for requesting an electronic text on behalf of a student with disabilities are available here.

Rights & Permissions Contact Information

Email: permissions@dukeupress.edu

Email contact for coursepacks: asstpermissions@dukeupress.edu

Fax: 919-688-4574

Mail:
Duke University Press
Rights and Permissions
905 W. Main Street
Suite 18B
Durham, NC 27701

For all requests please include:

1. Author's name. If book has an editor that is different from the article author, include editor's name also.

2. Title of the journal article or book chapter and title of journal or title of book

3. Page numbers (if excerpting, provide specifics)

For coursepacks, please also note: The number of copies requested, the school and professor requesting

For reprints and subsidiary rights, please also note: Your volume title, publication date, publisher, print run, page count, rights sought