Heterotopian Jerusalem

The final chapter evaluates the political efficacy of song during the turbulent period from the 1967 to 1977, when the Labor Zionist paradigm of cultural politics reached its end, through a discussion of musical representations of Jerusalem as a heterotopian site of cultural difference. In examining the chapter’s musical centerpiece, Dan Almagor’s musical My Jerusalem (1968), which was written in response to the outpouring of Jerusalem song after “Jerusalem of Gold,” the author argues in favor of the ethics of heterotopia while critiquing its conceptual relevance in a space marked by power asymmetries.