No one watching the proceedings in the International Court of Justice on January 11 and 12, 2024—when South Africa accused Israel of genocide in Gaza—could have missed the racialized geopolitical atmospherics of the moment. On the South African side stood … Continue reading “Palestine and the Contours of the Third World”
Two weeks after Israel began bombing Gaza, I was messaging with a close friend who now lives in New York. I had long known her to support Palestinian liberation, but now her tone was different. She expressed that too many … Continue reading “Justice Without Exception: Zionist Narrative and the Crisis of Liberalism”
Hot Dish Since under, I had spoken one word a day To a complement a meal, I would utter, ‘Breakfast,’ ‘Lunch,’ or ‘Dinner.’ To move from coming, I speak slighter Worded widely that the cheeks bled, Spinning trellises before … Continue reading “Three Poems”
On Easter day I went to visit my friend to celebrate together in a silly, agnostic fashion while overdosing on vegan chocolate eggs. We agreed to do it behind closed doors as we did not want to be associated publicly … Continue reading “Sacre du Council”
Nicholas Mirzoeff, To See in the Dark: The Nakba and the Landswept Way of Seeing Social Text 41.3, September 2023 Abstract: Seeing with Palestine was a constitutive possibility in the anticolonial way of seeing from the moment of the Nakba, … Continue reading “Palestine Scholarship at Social Text”
Techno plays from outdoor speakers at the beach restaurant in Tel Aviv. I scan faces, trying to place them— Poland? Russia? Tan, lipless men toting wives and kids, giving me dirty looks as I suck my shisha. The … Continue reading “Hellraiser”
A Wavering Wager “Modern India” has always been a gambit. Not because modernity in this part of the world remains hobbled by obdurate traditions, as some would have it, but because such a project has to navigate logistical as well … Continue reading “Introduction: National Life in the Wake of the Pandemic”
“How dare you?” These are almost the last words my friend Surekha said to me, in a text message. I had LOL’d. She said, “I’ll see you soon dude.” She had just moved to Bombay, from Delhi. That was on … Continue reading “How Dare You?”
When the coronavirus pandemic hit India around March 2020, it began a great urban unravelling. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in characteristic style, imposed a draconian nation-wide lockdown at four hours’ notice on the evening of March 24th. With the announcement, … Continue reading “The Coronavirus and the Great Indian Unravelling”
Signal and Noise, or the Balcony Scene 5 p.m. on March 22, 2020. The clamor starts near the end of a one-day “Janata Curfew” (People’s Curfew) declared across India by the central government a few days prior to what would … Continue reading “Superimposition: App-Based Contact Tracing in the Indian Pandemic and Its Unexpected Intimacies”
Let us hope that the coronavirus pandemic, as the plague in Ancient Greece before it, results in a paradigmatic historic event such that human conscience becomes attuned to life’s intelligence; such that the Aristotelian syllogism, “all men are mortals,” is … Continue reading “Re-encountering Mother Earth: The Urgent Task of Building Buen Vivir”
The ways we tell big stories of social change are born of the perspectives gained by hindsight, and this story exemplifies such hindsight. The Paradigm Shift that occurred during the twenty-first century emerged from relentless struggles for justice conjoined with … Continue reading “A Possible Decolonized, Indigenized Future”
The digital public humanities project A People’s Atlas of Nuclear Colorado, comprising scholarly essays, artistic contributions, and much more, maps the many ways the nuclear arsenal has shaped the state of Colorado. It is the first installment in an even more … Continue reading “Nuclear Knowledge Otherwise: A People’s Atlas of Nuclear Colorado“
Gabrielle Daniels’s new book Something Else Again: Poetry and Prose, 1975-2019, was recently published by Materials / Materialien in London and Munich and by Dogpark Collective in the US. Daniels’s essays, stories, and poems have appeared in the print and … Continue reading “An Interview with Gabrielle Daniels”
River by Joni Mitchell Happy holidays angel, from Chicago. Oh how I wish I had a river, that I could skate to you on. Here’s hoping the snow, never leaks through those boots of yours, to touch your feet, … Continue reading “Two Poems”
