Journal - Week 9

       I have read the article “Siam Mapped; Chapter Two, The coming of a new geography”. According to King Mongkut’s interest toward Geography, he tried to modernize the idea of geography to become what we called ‘Modern geography’ through Western science way which has the successful accomplishment where he can prove that our globe is spherical instead of flat shaped and he got devoted to become the Father of Thai Science. Afterward, the way we understand map not only indicated where we are located on the globe but it also defined the term nation and boundary line as it stated in the article; ‘A nation can be imagined without a word or other symbol or color on the map, but this is impossible if boundary lines, the symbol which forms the entity of a map of a nation, are excluded. Boundary lines are indispensable for a map of a nation to exist or to put it in another way; a map of a nation presupposes the existence of boundary lines.’ Which can be related to the film ‘Avenge But One of My Two Eyes’ by Mograbi.

            This is my analysis from article with the film. The film was about the separation between two nations; Palestine and Israel. It also showed how the full armed Israel treat Palestinians unfairly which lead to the conflict among them even worst. Basically, the conflict caused from nationalism; the word nationalism can be defined in many terms but in this case, it refers to the attitude that the members of a nation have when they care about their identity as members of that nation. Both of nations; Palestine and Israel, feel secure under their own territory because of socio-cultural like common culture, network of relations with people in society; family or friends or etc., and the feel of sense of belonging. If either one of the people from each side across each other boundary line in this case is where the gate was located in the movie, they will not feel that they belong there as the example Massada which is the scene where teacher told the group of students to closed their eyes and asked if they were surrounded by the Romans what would they do either surrender, fight, pray or kill themselves. Majority of them said that they will fight and for those who said that they will commit suicide with pride to represented that they royal to Israel than the others. Additionally, if they surrender and live on enemies land, they would not feel that they belong there because the network of relation are not existed. Furthermore, Identity and nationality also part of nationalism, it cannot only classified through only paper document but a person will created their own identity from the place where they create the most of emotional attachment with certain society/nation. According to the article, King Mongkut also represented the proud identity of being Siam is not inferior from any other Western nation.