The Counter-Colonial: The Agency of Architectural Rehabilitation as a form of Resistance in Hebron, Palestine

The old city of Hebron in Palestine presents an extreme condition of a colonized space where historic and religiously significant built heritage is overlapped by Israeli colonial infrastructure, including settlements, checkpoints, watchtowers, and barricades. Hebron’s built heritage has become the locus where counter-colonial tactics are deployed in response to the ongoing settler colonial project and where Hebron Rehabilitation Committee (HRC) has responded to the colonial structure through strategies of restoration, reclamation, and emancipatory architectural practice. This thesis proposes the notion of the counter-colonial as a conceptual and mobilizing framework for tactics of resistance against the ongoing settler colonial project. The counter-colonial establishes epistemological, methodological, and interpretive resistance tactics that recognize the setter-colonial project and mobilize within and beyond its limitations through multiple forms and transformations. These tactics are active, indigenous, bottom-up, and constant responses to and against a colonial project. They offer novel, innovative, and alternative processes that reclaim and reinforce Palestinians’ agency over their lands, actions, narratives, and existence. As a counter-colonial research project, this dissertation prioritizes epistemic reconsideration, slow learning, and intimate uncovering, promoting the methods of countering as investigative probing rather than problem-solving. Focusing on HRC’s rehabilitation and governance efforts, this thesis underscores three counter-colonial tactics: (1) counter-governance, where the HRC has taken a semi-governmental role to protect and serve the Hebronites, becoming stewards of the site; (2) counter-heritage, where the HRC has employed the UNESCO World Heritage Site designation as a tool to advocate for the Palestinian cause; and (3) counter-evidence, where the HRC’s documentation and archival work are presented in legal contexts as proof of Palestinian land ownership. Following an analysis of these tactics, the dissertation concludes that counter-colonial tactics are mobilized through four forms: spatial action, material force, representational process, and symbolic meaning.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Architecture

Grantor dc:publisher

Carleton University

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Abughannam, Rana

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright © 2024 the author(s). Theses may be used for non-commercial research, educational, or related academic purposes only. Such uses include personal study, distribution to students, research and scholarship. Theses may only be shared by linking to the Carleton University Institutional Repository and no part may be copied without proper attribution to the author; no part may be used for commercial purposes directly or indirectly via a for-profit platform; no adaptation or derivative works are permitted without consent from the copyright owner.

Language dc:language.iso

en

DOI

10.22215/etd/2024-15989

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:carleton.scholaris.ca:20.500.14718/41384