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Paper short abstract

This ethnography examines how failure under hegemonic pressures polarizes radical offshoots in Israel/Palestine, catalyzing moral crises, prefigurative practices, and abolitionist visions that redefine belonging, identity, and collective hope.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines how failure operates as a polarising principle, shaping belonging, identity, and collective action among radical offshoot groups in Israel/Palestine. Drawing on five years of ethnographic fieldwork, I study two opposing mobilizations – radical left-wing anti-occupation groups and radical hilltop settler groups – that emerged from the collapse of their parent movements’ ideals. On both sides, the failure of these movements and the Israeli state to uphold their core principles has sparked moral crises, spiritual disorientation, and collective doubt, revealing the limitations, exclusions, and contradictions of dominant political and societal orders.

Failure is relational and hegemonic: by casting out those deemed obsolete or morally compromised, it generates axes of inclusion and exclusion that structure social and political belonging. Each side interprets its movement’s failure as caused by the other, producing simultaneous radicalisation in opposite directions. Failure thus functions as both a tool of polarisation and a catalyst for prefigurative practices, enabling groups to imagine and enact radical alternatives to state institutions and mainstream society.

Despite divergent ideologies, both sides converge on abolitionist imaginaries, seeking to replace rather than reform the state, orienting collective hope toward morally coherent futures. By tracing how failure is experienced, operationalised, and contested ethnographically, this study illuminates the relational, affective, and political dynamics of polarisation, showing how moral collapse under hegemonic pressures can generate radical visions, prefigurative strategies, and new possibilities for reconfiguring societal norms and belonging.