I belong to the question of the victim. –Mahmoud Darwish What follows is a thread of perfunctory reflections on a course I offered in January 2024 titled Decolonizing the Study of Palestine. A course is a complex, emergent human (and … Continue reading “Pedagogy and Epistemics of Witness: Teaching Palestine in a Time of Genocide”
The correlated hypothesis here is that all our present struggles with respect to race, class, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, struggles over the environment, global warming, severe climate change, the sharply unequal distribution of the earth resources (20 percent of the … Continue reading “Call for Papers: Sylvia Wynter, Culture, and Technics”
As a collective of scholars based at academic institutions in and around New York City, we stand in solidarity with students and faculty practicing peaceful protest at Columbia, Barnard, CUNY, NYU, Cornell, the New School, and all across the country. … Continue reading “Statement on Student Repression at Columbia University”
فَلَمْ تَقْتُلُوهُمْ وَلَـٰكِنَّ ٱللَّهَ قَتَلَهُمْ ۚ وَمَا رَمَيْتَ إِذْ رَمَيْتَ وَلَـٰكِنَّ ٱللَّهَ رَمَىٰ ۚ وَلِيُبْلِىَ ٱلْمُؤْمِنِينَ مِنْهُ بَلَآءً حَسَنًا ۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ سَمِيعٌ عَلِيمٌۭ And you do not kill them, but it was Allah who killed them. And you … Continue reading “On Responsibility: Critique and Colonization After October 7th”
Will Eizlini, an American artist of French Jewish descent, tells me that he has been crying every day. When not crying, he is making a series of paintings interpreting the massacres in Gaza—crimson landscapes of sea, sky, dunes, with piles … Continue reading “The Burden of Witnessing”
In December 2003, Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli prime minister, announced in a televised speech Israel’s plans to “disengage” from its control of Gaza through the complete withdrawal of Israeli soldiers and the removal of Israeli settlements from Gaza after … Continue reading “Trapped Between Spaces: Gaza’s Existential Struggle”
our decomposing bodies our flesh mixed with dirt our blood flour whatabout semantics pontificate our children at a podium reporters with a plea concerns statements letters Gaza City to Deir el Balah to Khan Younis to … Continue reading “untitled (discourse)”
testing
In Itamar Moses’s new play The Ally, the “trickiest question”—“whether the fight against anti-Semitism belongs as a coequal branch of the social justice movement”—is itself a kind of trick question. Articulated through Moses’s academic alter ego in the play, Asaf … Continue reading “Parsing the Jewish American Complex”
These words are meant to land in your ears as piercing sounds to accompany the wrenching horrors crowding our screens. Do not be fooled by the silence of print. This writing clamors to be screamed. Gaza is not some eerie … Continue reading “This is a scream and I dare you to publish it!”
I haven’t watched the livestream of US Senior Airman Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation in front of the Israeli consulate in Washington, DC, on February 25, 2024, but many of us are familiar with reports and transcripts telling of a police officer, … Continue reading “To Extinguish: On Aaron Bushnell and the Casualties of Nonviolence”
Zionism’s Political Unconscious by Nadia Abu El-Haj Verso Blog A Feminism That Embraces Humanity by Lila Abu-Lughod Critical Inquiry Seeing Genocide: Israel’s Weaponization of Images Since October 7 Obfuscates Its Genocidal Campaign against Palestinians by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay Boston Review … Continue reading “Amplifier”
Not a single day goes by now in North America or Europe without an academic being disciplined or fired outright for expressing views critical of Israel. In mid-March 2024, when the University of California Regents meet at UCLA, they will … Continue reading “Genocide and Campus Bans on Speech Critical of Israel: Then and Now”
If there is a direct historical antecedent to the attacks of October 7 and everything that has happened since, it is Israel’s sixteen-year blockade, which devastated Gaza and harmed a generation of Palestinians. I lived in Gaza City for six … Continue reading “Memories of Gaza”
Bisan Owda, under her Instagram handle @wizard_bisan1, posts stories and reels that document the realities of daily life—and death—in Gaza during the now 100+ days of military siege by Israel. While before October 7th Owda was a filmmaker and hakawatieh, … Continue reading “Bisan Owda Is Still Alive”
