A guerra que tem rosto de mulher: a rotinização da violência a partir das infraestruturas na Cisjordânia Palestina.

Abstract

This dissertation analyses the routinization of violence in the lives of Palestinian women in face of the Israeli occupation of 1967. The objective is to understand how violence is no longer perceived as anomic and becomes part of everyday life, unraveling the way in which urban infrastructures, mainly for water supply and mobility in the territory, are transformed into instruments of war. Based on the perspectives of the anthropology of infrastructures, which understand the relationship between the material and the social implications it produces, together with the debate on violence rotinization, it is possible to perceive that the conflict dissolves its exception in infrastructures. I argue that the relationship between routinized violence and infrastructure could only be seen as something central in the Palestinian issue from the point of view of women. This is because this form of violence has its invisibility as a principle, it is hidden, interspersed in pipes, sewage networks, electricity, highways and checkpoints. For the most part, this violence is part of the domestic environment, is not spectacular, does not attract media attention and is often perceived as a problem related to poverty and not necessarily war. In this sense, from a gendered perspective of infrastructure, it is possible to observe violence that is built not to be seen and to demobilize an entire social group. Thus, I employ the dialogue with three Palestinian women who were interviewed during videoconferences or messaging apps during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their perceptions of violence lead us to the debates on violence, infrastructure and mobilities that constitute the chapters of this work, and that help us to observe the way in which the Israeli occupation is based on the construction of control infrastructures at different levels, which embody a slow and invisible violence. Thus, there is an attempt to perpetuate the war through infrastructural violence, which dilutes the state of exception in everyday life and annexes the women’s body in its process that simultaneously reproduces life and incorporates violence.