Dear world, This letter is a reclamation. It is a prayer to the universe. It is a plea for you to bear witness. Often, writing demands to be lyrical, poetic, and beautiful. Even when we write about our struggles, there … Continue reading “Gridlocks of Death, Oceans of Life”
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”
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”
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”
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”
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”
