ABSTRACT
This chapter will look at a particular instance of ‘walling in’ – which will be termed ‘encystation’ – in terms of its genealogy and its effects on both the wallers and those enclosed. I contend that the structure of this particular practice, while in some ways very much shaped by the specific historical, cultural and political setting of Israel/Palestine, can be seen in many other instances worldwide where, to borrow a term from Giorgio Agamben, societies produce ‘states of exception’ and enclose their internal others within prisons, ghettoes, camps or analogous cells.
