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Abstract
This article deals with visitor books as a dynamic medium of communication, and explores how material aspects of such a book—including its physical affordances and the spatial and institutional environment in which it is located—affect its capacity to create and mediate social meaning. In line with recent studies that set out to rematerialize communication and its devices, and, more specifically, to examine writing as an embodied communicative practice, it is argued that material considerations, while frequently overlooked, constitute preconditions of communication, and are organic to semiotic processes and formative in shaping them. The data analyzed are entries in, and observations on, a visitor book located in a war commemoration museum in West Jerusalem, Israel. It is demonstrated that, within the context of a national commemoration site, the visitor book proves to be a fascinating medium of inscriptive communication which is manipulated to serve as a cultural site of nationalist participation, commitment, and performance. The article draws on sensibilities from material and technological literature in order to shed light on the ways in which individuals interact with written environments and technologies.
The author is indebted to Gonen Hacohen, Michal Hamo, Zohar Kampf, Ayelet Kohn, and Motti Neigerâ of the Jerusalem Discourse Forum for their constructive comments on earlier versions of this article. In addition, the dialogue with two anonymous reviewers and the editor of CSMC has significantly contributed to the final outcome.
The author is indebted to Gonen Hacohen, Michal Hamo, Zohar Kampf, Ayelet Kohn, and Motti Neigerâ of the Jerusalem Discourse Forum for their constructive comments on earlier versions of this article. In addition, the dialogue with two anonymous reviewers and the editor of CSMC has significantly contributed to the final outcome.
Notes
The author is indebted to Gonen Hacohen, Michal Hamo, Zohar Kampf, Ayelet Kohn, and Motti Neigerâ of the Jerusalem Discourse Forum for their constructive comments on earlier versions of this article. In addition, the dialogue with two anonymous reviewers and the editor of CSMC has significantly contributed to the final outcome.
1. Some of the groups that visit the museum do not reach the area where the visitor book is located. These are usually groups of soldiers, which are directed away from the exhibits commemorating the dead, such as the Golden Wall of Commemoration. Consequently, the number of potential users of the book is considerably smaller than the overall number of visitors.
2. Inscribing the acronyms bsd or bh at the top of a written page is a custom that emerged fairly recently among observant Jews. The former acronym stands for besahadei deshmaya or besai'ata deshmaya (“with God's help” in Aramaic), and the latter for be'ezrat hashem (“with God's help” in Hebrew).
3. The Wailing Wall, located in Jerusalem's old city, a twenty-minute walk from Ammunition Hill, is the holiest place of worship for Jews. Pilgrims often insert small notes into the cracks between the stones of the wall, on which requests, wishes, and expressions of gratitude are written.
4. The entry is written in English, except for the words Eretz Yisrael, which are in written in Hebrew. The layout presented here reflects that of the original entry.
5. Those familiar with the politics of ethnicity in Israeli society will probably acknowledge that Bitton is a recognizably Mizrahi name—that is, typical of Jews who immigrated from Muslim countries. Therefore, much like the well-known “Baruch Jamili” graffiti (which became famous in the 1948 War of Independence), the large “Bitton was here” entry can be viewed as a graffiti-like inscription, presencing and proclaiming Mizrahi identity in the heart of the Ashkenazi (Jews of European descent) militaristic Zionist establishment (see Katriel, Citation1997, pp. 104–110, 153, on representations of Mizrahi Jews in museums presenting the Zionist legacy).