Psychoanalysis under Occupation: Nonviolence and Dialogue Initiatives as a Psychic Extension of the Closure System

This article examines how ‘dialogue initiatives’ function as the psychic extension of Israel's Apartheid closure system and as an act of ‘extractive introjection.’ The article pays particular critical attention to the political and psychological fallacies offered by the theoretical concept (or phantasy) of ‘third space,’ which purportedly provides a possibility for ‘co-created’ space that extricates victim and victimized from their binary relationship. Rather, the author proposes that ‘third space’ facilitates Israelis’ theft of Palestinian individual and collective psychic life. In response, the author posits that sumud, or acts of refusal and ‘stalwartness,’ functions as a psychological means of defending against these assaults within the dehumanizing spatial, material, and social realities of Israel's closure system in the West Bank and Gaza.