Reflections from a "third space":"politics is what happens between bodies"

Priscyll Avoine suggests that, “[p]olitics is what happens between bodies” (2022, 7). With this in mind, this paper reflects on what happens when women of faith from the Israel-Palestine region, situated within the ongoing political conflict, encounter one another in a “third space” through their involvement in peacebuilding. I examine the affective impact of the material textures of these encounters, which range from organized institutional events to intimate interpersonal conversations. I argue that the (contested) processes of curation, facilitation and transformation within this space of bodily encounter be specifically attentive to “hierarchical markers” which, left un-named or un-explored, emerge as performative frictions between participants. The texture (scratchiness, softness) of the relationships (generated, enabled, hampered, disabled) within this “third space” exposes the complications of the “situated” body – from a site of (relentless) conflict to a site of (relative) peace, from a state of separation to a state of encounter, from a weariness of permanence to a transient moment in time. Each of these shifts in meanings of embodiment impact explicitly and implicitly on the material presence in a space where the borders of bodily otherness are disrupted, and potentially transform these bodies, the relationships between them, and the spaces they inhabit.