Appropriating Division: Exploring ontologically how material artefacts command spatial differentiation in Israel-Palestine and Apartheid South Africa.

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We understand ourselves on the basis of who we are not.Within the frame of an unequal, yet integrated worldincreasingly entrenched with social division, thisdifferential ontology is becoming more apparent.Difference is woven into the social fabric of landscapes.Emerging through hard borders: walls and fences and softermaterialities: cultural artefacts and banal symbols ofeveryday life, political space is starkly separated, asmaterial objects work over the contours of physicalgeography, creating and maintaining divided landscapes.Yet these vibrant materialities have been neglected inborder studies. This project seeks to bring light to this andexplore how material artefacts command difference overlandscapes and borderscapes (Rajaram and Grundy-Warr,2007), (re)producing our relationships to them. Territoryand ethnicity are the specific spatial differences comparedin this work, in the locales of contemporary Israel-Palestineand Apartheid-era South Africa. Both offer landscapesdivided on lines beyond those drawn on a map, whilstoffering comparative variables for their occurrence.Ultimately, the project looks at how human interaction withobjects reflects the imaginations they (re)produce. Namely,if hegemonically powerful, an actor can have autonomyover producing an object that inscribes into space a specificdiscursive view. Conversely, those whose spatial anchorsare uprooted by the object, can appropriate it as a weaponto mitigate the spatial effects.