The Politics of the Trail: Reflexive Mountain Biking along the Frontier of Jerusalem

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The Politics of the Trail Each day, as Oded Löwenheim rides his mountain bike along dirt trails and wadis in the hills of Jerusalem to the Mt. Scopus campus of the Hebrew University , he feels a strong emotional connection to his surroundings. But for him this connection also generates,paradoxically,feelings and emotions of confusion and estrangement. Löwenheim confronts this tension by focusing on his encounters with three places along the trail that represent the present, past, and possible future of this land: the separation fence between Israel and the Palestinians; the ruins of the Palestinian village of Qalunya, demolished in 1948; and the trail connecting the largest 9/11 memorial site outside the United States with a top-­ secret nuclear-­ proof bunker for the Israeli cabinet.He shares the stories of these places and the people he meets along the way and considers how his own subjectivity is shaped by the landscape and culture of conflict. Moreover, he deconstructs, challenges, and resists the concepts and institutions that constitute such a culture and invites dialogue about the idea of conflict as a culture. The Politics of the Trail asks: Can one emancipate oneself from the grip of a culture of conflict and violence, and at what social and emotional cost? Through his daily, close, and physical interaction with the terrain and landscape of conflict, Löwenheim grapples with this question and ponders as well about the concept of authenticity. This autoethnographic study thus shows how the personal is intimately intertwined with the political. By bringing in the personal experience of himself as an IR academic who is literally in the field, Löwenheim leaves behind him the detached narrative of academia and develops, instead, an account that reminds readers the humanity of both the producers and the subjects of political research. Oded Löwenheim is Senior Lecturer in the Department of International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The Politics of theTrail Reflexive Mountain Biking along the Frontier of Jerusalem Oded Löwenheim The University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2014 All rights reserved This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publisher. Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid-­ free paper 2017 2016 2015 2014  4 3 2 1 A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-­ in-­ Publication Data Löwenheim, Oded, 1970–­ The politics of the trail : reflexive mountain biking along the frontier of Jerusalem / Oded Löwenheim. pages  cm Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-­0-­472-­07212-­5 (hardback) —­ isbn 978-­0-­472-­05212-­7 (paperback) —­ isbn 978-­0-­472-­12028-­4 (e-­book) 1. Mountain biking—­ Jerusalem. 2. Mountain biking—­ Political aspects—­ Jerusalem. 3. Arab-­ Israeli conflict. 4. Löwenheim, Oded, 1970–­  5. Jerusalem—­ Description and travel. I. Title. gv1046.j47l68  2014 796.630956.94’42—­dc23 2013050785 All photographs in this book are by Idit Wagner; used by permission. The frontispiece map was created by Yael Wasyng-Fuchs and Yonatan Fialkoff. ...