The Israeli block: Matan Flum, The Israeli Shikun: Spatial Logic of Militarised ‘Whiteness’, PhD dissertation, University College London, 2025 | settler colonial studies blog

The Israeli block: Matan Flum, The Israeli Shikun: Spatial Logic of Militarised ‘Whiteness’, PhD dissertation, University College London, 2025

15Oct25

Abstract: This thesis critically analyses the discourse of the Israeli housing block (“shikun”) through the lens of “whiteness”, employing the Cultural Approach to Critical Discourse Analysis. Drawing on cultural representations of the shikun during two national housing projects, the “Sharon Plan” (1951-1961), and the “Evacuation-Construction” Plan (1998-2022), it examines how do the cultural representations of the shikun make and unmake Mizrahi Jews “white”-Israelis? By using “whiteness” as an analytical framework, this thesis challenges the dominant postcolonial ethno-nationalist approach within Mizrahi scholarship to comprehend the spatial oppression of Mizrahi Jews. It argues that the discourse of the shikun reflects and reproduces the de-Arabisation of Israel as a project of “whiteness”, wherein Arab-Jewish identity is erased and replaced by a normalised, universalised Europeanness. The findings reveal the shikun as a geopolitical tool in constructing the spatial logic of “militarised whiteness”, namely a specific form of racialisation as “white” that advances violent conflict. This logic mirrors Israel’s political and cultural self-perception as a superior, modern, and “Western” society in the Middle East. Importantly, it enables us to understand how the local racialisation of Mizrahi Jews both emerges from and reinforces global hierarchies of “white” settler-colonialism. This thesis provides an empirical contribution by identifying and explaining the key linguistic, cultural and spatial patterns that shape the discourse of the shikun in policy, media, and academic discussions. It also advances the fields of Mizrahi Studies and Critical Whiteness Studies by centering the Mizrahi urban scholarship within critical discussions on both settler-colonialism and Israeli urban development, while disrupting the Eurocentric application of “whiteness” which often disregards its effect on regional violence and militarisation. Finally, this thesis offers a methodological contribution to Critical Discourse Studies by illuminating how political culture can serve as a novel methodological lens for explaining the reciprocal relationship between discourse and the built environment.

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