Nadia Abu El Haj and ‘bulldozer archaeology’
The ongoing and very detailed critique of Nadia Abu El Haj’s Facts on the Ground at Sam Hardy’s ‘human rights archaeology’ blog continues with the publication of a post on ‘bulldozer archaeology’. It’s an illuminating piece of analysis, balanced and judicious, and everyone interested in the controversy around Nadia Abu El Haj and her work should read it carefully.
There are only two points on which I would want to add further comments of my own (which do not amount to disagreement with what Sam Hardy has written).
First, there is a distinct difference in tone between Nadia Abu El Haj’s 1998 article (‘Translating truths: nationalism, the practice of archaeology, and the remaking of past and present in contemporary Jerusalem’, American Ethnologist, vol. 25, no. 2 (May 1998), pp. 166-88) in which her claims of ‘bulldozer archaeology’ first surface, and the way in which she treats the same claims in Facts on the Ground (2001). The book is much more polemical than the article on this as on other issues, and I would argue that the 2001 text cannot be treated simply as a continuation or restatement of the 1998 text.
Second, it is my view that Nadia Abu El Haj’s characterization of ‘bulldozer archaeology’ cannot be properly understood outside the context of the significance of the bulldozer image in the Israel/Palestinian conflict more generally. The bulldozer has come to be seen as an epitome of Israeli brutality and destructiveness, and I believe Nadia Abu El Haj is consciously drawing upon that significance in laying such emphasis on the destructive ‘bulldozer archaeology’ supposedly practiced by Israeli archaeologists. This is essentially the point I make in my ‘bulldozer archaeology’ essay, which Sam Hardy cites in his posting.
More generally, there is no substitute for reading Facts on the Ground entire and complete. The sense of the book’s overall tone cannot be fully appreciated in any other way. Jim Davila, in his review of Facts on the Ground, describes the book as being characterized by ‘an extreme perception of Israel as a colonial state’, and that position of hostility to Israel colours the entire text. The impression one comes away with of the Jezreel ‘bulldozer archaeology’ account when it has been read in the context of what comes before and after it in the book, and under the influence of this generalized and pervasive ideological slant, is quite different to what one might think after reading that section alone, or as one among a number of isolated passages.
[Click here for earlier Nadia Abu El Haj postings.]
October 23rd, 2007 at 12:09 am
“Tthere is no substitute for reading Facts on the Ground entire and complete.” Amen to that.
I wish everyone would sit down and read the whole book before posting on a blog or writing an op-ed.
There are books that can be epitomized in a break-out quote. Not this one. Almost any quote taken from this book will mislead.
October 23rd, 2007 at 01:25 am
Pace Sam Hardy’s aspersions, William Dever has read every tedious, tendentious, politicized, convoluted, jargon-laden, disorganized page of Facts on the Ground.
October 24th, 2007 at 04:12 pm
You’re absolutely right on both points. I still haven’t worked out how to treat the difference between the two texts - normally one’s work becomes more nuanced with time and space, not less - and in an earlier draft, I had included your discussion of the rhetorical use of “bulldozers”, but forgot to tell people to come here to read it when I cut that bit out. I’ll correct it soon.
As for my alleged aspersions, I said that ‘[it was] unclear both whether Dever had read the book or just his interviewer’s excerpts and whether he would have reacted similarly had he known that Birkner’s statements were incorrect’. (David Ussishkin only saw extracts; I didn’t know whether that was true of Bill Dever.) Pray tell, how is a declaration of one’s own ignorance of something casting aspersions on someone else?