Ethos review of The Make-Believe Space

The Make-Believe Space: Affective Geography in a Postwar Polity. Ya… 2012. xxi-270 pps. - Rubinov - 2013 - Ethos - Wiley Online Library 21/01/2014 18:16 Book Review You have full text access to this content The Make-Believe Space: Affective Geography in a Postwar Polity. Yael Navaro-Yashin. Durham: Duke University Press. 2012. xxi-270 pps. 1. Reviewed by: Igor Rubinov Article first published online: 6 DEC 2013 DOI: 10.1111/etho.12032 © 2013 by the American Anthropological Association. Issue Ethos Volume 41, Issue 4, (/doi/10.1111/etho.2013.41.issue-4/issuetoc) pages 1–3, December 2013 Additional Information How to Cite Rubinov, I. (2013), The Make-Believe Space: Affective Geography in a Postwar Polity. Yael Navaro-Yashin. Durham: Duke University Press. 2012. xxi-270 pps. Ethos, 41: 1–3. doi: 10.1111/etho.12032 Author Information PhD Candidate, Princeton University Publication History 1. Issue published online: 14 NOV 2013 2. Article first published online: 6 DEC 2013 Abstract (/doi/10.1111/etho.12032/abstract) Article Cited By (/doi/10.1111/etho.12032/citedby) Get PDF (45K) (/doi/10.1111/etho.12032/pdf) Camsfx (http://libsta28.lib.cam.ac.uk:2068/cambridge/az?url_ver=Z39.882004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.jtitle=Ethos&rft.stitle=Ethos&rft.atitle=The%20Make%E2%80%90Believe 12-01&rft.issn=0091-2131&rft.eissn=1548-1352&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fwiley.com%3AOnlineLibrary) Yael Navaro-Yashin's theoretically rich and empirically grounded monograph explores how various objects (such as bureaucratic documents, abandoned homes, decrepit barricades, etc.) reveal the reverberations of a long-standing conflict that had bifurcated the island of Cyprus. The product of a decade of ethnographic engagement amidst the homes, coffee shops and administrative offices of the “made-up state” (p. 6) of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus [TRNC], this book breaks important theoretical ground - particularly for scholars probing the intersection of subjectivity and society. Navaro-Yashin insists that the tensions between state and subject are not borne solely by the mind but are freighted by objects as well. Thus, elements of the non-human environment mediate political and historical processes because they allow their effects, such as violence and trauma, to be internalized. Using the exceptional status of the TRNC as a case study of governing writ large, Navaro-Yashin explores how maintaining mass belief requires not only collusion with the practices of the ‘make-believe,’ such as administration and bureaucracy, but an affective engagement with the ‘ephemeral objects’ that are generated (p. 116). Like the objects that she studies, the theoretical conclusions tend to posit a middle ground between divergent intellectual lineages. Presented with clarity throughout, Navaro-Yashin's conceptually innovative use of affect and space will offer lasting benefit to cultural and psychological inquiries into statecraft and the law. The book is organized into three sections: the interpenetration of sovereignty and space, the experiences of administration and several chapters on abject materials and http://libsta28.lib.cam.ac.uk:2065/doi/10.1111/etho.12032/full Page 1 of 3 The Make-Believe Space: Affective Geography in a Postwar Polity. Ya… 2012. xxi-270 pps. - Rubinov - 2013 - Ethos - Wiley Online Library 21/01/2014 18:16 uncanny dwellings. The introduction outlines the theoretical arc of the book, which seeks to not only interrogate the seeming paradox of how “the make-believe is real” (p. 10), but through what means, and, most importantly, how it is actualized in daily life. One important mode of instantiating the make-believe is through the creation of new maps, which are not only canvases for imaginative projection and rationalizing policies but are products of the “entanglement of (non-human) materialities and (human) subjectivities in the making of place” (p. 42). Maps are one example of how objects are infused with subjective intentions that, in turn, affect the individuals who are politically tied to them. Navaro-Yashin finds that subjectivity and affect ‘go in tandem’ because the objective world always haunts the space of the polity – leaving subjects to wrestle with objects along the “affect-subjectivity continuum” (p. 27). However, the ‘Turkey-fication’ (p. 45) of Cyprus was not achieved solely through maps, as new place names often disoriented long-time residents. The pseudo-state is supported by the militarization of space, the erection of public symbols, and the seeping of a new spatial order into everyday life. Such tactics of the aberrant state in northern Cyprus, “an entity that has been crafted and erected phantasmatically,” (p. 28) offer a cipher for the phantasmatic element inherent to all state practices. The heavily ethnographic second chapter focuses its attention on the fault-line between newly-arrived immigrants from Turkey and settled Turkish-Cypriots in the northern half of the island, rather than the more obvious Greek-Turk divide engendered by the border. Autochthonous Turks used their civil positions and local knowledge to gain higher status, while recent migrants leveraged their ties to the Turkish protector state (and its military). The section concludes with an analysis of the alienation and entrapment felt by citizens living under the constraints of a closed border and an imposing military presence. The resulting ‘political work,’ in the service of place making (p. 42), produces an exterior environment that impinges on the interiority of its inhabitants. The middle section of the book continues to explore the ambivalence Turkish-Cypriots hold toward the civil service and the administrative documents produced by states. Navaro-Yashin's main contention regarding bureaucracy is that rather than a cool, sterile rationality, “administration evokes a complex spectrum of affect” (p. 82) such as irony, cynicism and critique. While civil service is viewed as an enviable career, its attendant idleness and complicity with looting are a cause for derision - a product of the vassal-like status of the TRNC relative to the Turkish state. The result of this subordination is that TRNC residents approach bureaucratic practices with nonchalance and indifference, as opposed to Turkish-Cypriot informants in London who are extremely nervous about documents that may secure asylum or legal residency abroad. NavaroYashin construes international law as a chimera in which the boundaries of the legal and illegal undergo parallax shifts depending on which official documents they are seen through. The anomaly of the TRNC only “magnifies the strangeness in ‘legal’ states and in the international system itself” (p. 110). While Navaro-Yashin is right in highlighting the paradoxes at the heart of all state legitimacy, there is a question left unanswered in the final sentence of the section, wherein Navaro-Yashin asserts that documents “take the shape of or transform into affect and become part of their handlers in that way” (p. 126). There is sufficient evidence to assert that documents and bureaucracies generate multiple, often ambivalent, affects, shaping the way governance is enacted and received. However, it is unclear why some documents are ‘transformed’ into affect while others, such as passports (surprisingly), are left outside of this transmutation. The final section in some way addresses this concern by honing in on ruins and abject spaces. The delimiting of abjection and leaving to ruin serve political purposes precisely because they hold psychological resonance. Chapter 6 focuses on ganimet (looting) as a semantic means to channel anger at the state, responsible for the illicit reallocation of seized homes, while also situating looted objects outside the new normal. Because the “abject represents violence” (p. 158), its troubled histories can be cordoned off to its most derelict objects and locations – allowing the rest of society to proceed on in the newer suburbs outside the bifurcated city. As such, ruination defines not only the “material remains or artifacts of destruction and violation, but also, subjectivities and residual affects that linger, like a hangover, in the aftermath of violence” (p. 162). Taking aim at Actor Network Theory, the concept of the ruin enables the author to add an extra dimension to the equalizing of all objects: the qualification of difference is mediated by symbols and language. The resulting melancholy and irritability harbored in the objects themselves “refers neither to affect nor subjectivity; it refers to both” (p. 174). The final chapters of the book consider the most prominent remnants of the island's war, the homes abandoned by refugees who fled across the border. Turning to Freud (to instantiate a reconciliation with psychoanalytic theory forsaken by object-centered thinkers), the author finds in the homes of her informants a profound sense of the uncanny. Living in homes appropriated in the aftermath of violence cannot absolve guilt but only forces an ambivalent acceptance of its rewards. Illegitimate state seizure becomes part of the ‘legal uncanny’ (p. 199), wherein residents’ collusion is entangled in the very documents that secure their property. The feeling of the uncanny, or the slightly awry, drives the book to its most provocative questions. How do people come to terms with the incriminating past, the irritating bureaucratic present and the uncertain (il)legal future? The success of the book, evidence of its great promise in future study of ‘the state’, ‘the law’, and the role of the material environment therein, is that its fundamental conclusions are not undermined by the reopening of borders into Greek-held Cyprus in 2003. The main theoretical contributions of the text are, in this sense, ahistorical and post-political. To wit, they demand close attenuation to history and politics in recognizing that the practices and artifacts of a ‘make-believe’ state utilize objects burdened with affect in order to mediate sovereignty. Consequently, the book provides a valuable contribution to the burgeoning, multi-disciplinary concern with affect studies and object-centered philosophies by ably bringing these domains into productive conversation. The panoply of concepts Navaro-Yashin generates as a result should provide valuable grist for many graduate seminar mills and help bridge disparate strains of social theory. Get PDF (45K) (/doi/10.1111/etho.12032/pdf) Camsfx (http://libsta28.lib.cam.ac.uk:2068/cambridge/az?url_ver=Z39.882004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.jtitle=Ethos&rft.stitle=Ethos&rft.atitle=The%20Make%E2%80%90Believe 12-01&rft.issn=0091-2131&rft.eissn=1548-1352&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fwiley.com%3AOnlineLibrary) More content like this Find more content: like this article (/advanced/search/results?articleDoi=10.1111/etho.12032&scope=allContent&start=1&resultsPerPage=20) Find more content written by: Igor Rubinov (/advanced/search/results?searchRowCriteria[0].queryString="Igor Rubinov"&searchRowCriteria[0].fieldName=author&start=1&resultsPerPage=20) http://libsta28.lib.cam.ac.uk:2065/doi/10.1111/etho.12032/full Page 2 of 3 The Make-Believe Space: Affective Geography in a Postwar Polity. Ya… 2012. xxi-270 pps. - Rubinov - 2013 - Ethos - Wiley Online Library http://libsta28.lib.cam.ac.uk:2065/doi/10.1111/etho.12032/full 21/01/2014 18:16 Page 3 of 3