How should an anti-Zionist Jew respond to the genocide in Gaza and its ramifications? This was the subject of my book To See in the Dark: Palestine and Visual Activism Since October 7 (2025). It was published on January 20, … Continue reading “Undefeated Despair”
Archives: Periscope Articles
Periscope articles and content
Visual Activism C-Map
Center for Convivial Research and AutonomyIn March 2025, comrades from across the San Franciso Bay Area and beyond gathered across two facilitated convergence spaces to host Nick Mirzoeff and explore his concept of “seeing in the dark,” a provocation currently in circulation through his recently … Continue reading “Visual Activism C-Map”
Notes: To See in the Dark
MPA
The Clock Men
Priscilla WathingtonAll day, the talk is lint. Committees meet and look at their calendars. The carpet hardly moves. The lobby doesn’t even smell of corpses. It’s Monday here. There’s a salad bar here. In Rafah, a wall is blown off … Continue reading “The Clock Men”
Five Poems
Omar Zahzah“Do You Condemn Hamas?” Do you know the weight of 77 years’ worth of bones, villages, and homes? The sound of olive trees screaming through flames? Do you confuse prison break With apocalypse, Genocide with self-defense, Or do you know … Continue reading “Five Poems”
“All-over-the-placelessness”: I Read To See in the Dark from the Inside Out
Steve DickisonLook at the world that was blind to us before and how it sees us now. –Ibrahim Nasrallah, translated by Huda J. Fakhreddine, Palestinian: Four Poems Here are some notes from the two days of Nicholas Mirzoeff’s Bay Area … Continue reading ““All-over-the-placelessness”: I Read To See in the Dark from the Inside Out”
To Bond in the Dark
Jill H. CasidHow to do things with being undone? How to forge solidary bonds in the dark of the rubble of a world destroyed but also the dark of a collective unconscious, a night, a space for sounding otherwise? To open Nicholas … Continue reading “To Bond in the Dark”
A Vagabond in the Rubble, a Book in the Dark
Max HaivenI would like to take this opportunity to contextualize Nicholas Mirzoeff’s To See in the Dark as part of VAGABONDS, the series of short, pamphlet-like books I edit for Pluto Press. I founded VAGABONDS in 2020 based on three frustrations. … Continue reading “A Vagabond in the Rubble, a Book in the Dark”
Potentializing Palestine: Gaza Bursts Open the Imperial Shutter
Sherena RazekIn February 2024, I was invited by Lisa Stuckey and Alexander Damianisch to contribute a short entry to their publication Uncertain Curiosity in Artistic Research, Philosophy, Media and Cultural Studies: Transforming Understanding—Understanding Transformation about concepts developed by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay. … Continue reading “Potentializing Palestine: Gaza Bursts Open the Imperial Shutter”
Palestine Is a Feminist Struggle
Wafaa HasanMany of us are already aware of the fragmentation Palestinians have been experiencing topographically, geographically, familial-y over the past seventy-six years. Checkpoints and walls divide lovers and separate children from their parents. The arbitrary Bantustan system in the apartheid West … Continue reading “Palestine Is a Feminist Struggle”
Livestreaming and Deadstreaming: On the Optics, Politics, and Effects of Violent Imagery in Comparative Perspective
Wazhmah OsmanIn this important conversation and dossier about ways to enact transnational feminist solidarity with Palestinians from the perspective of women scholars from the Middle East and Asia, I share my insights on war and imperialism in Afghanistan. I comparatively explore … Continue reading “Livestreaming and Deadstreaming: On the Optics, Politics, and Effects of Violent Imagery in Comparative Perspective”
Intifada: From Palestine to Kashmir
Ather ZiaMy contribution to our emerging collective conversation against neocolonialism is through the vantage of Kashmir. Kashmir is often compared to Palestine and sometimes referred to as “another Palestine.” In this essay, I highlight, revisit, and expand on a few aspects … Continue reading “Intifada: From Palestine to Kashmir”
Iranian Feminist Solidarity with Palestine
Manijeh MoradianThe Palestinian liberation struggle has been a lightning rod for the Iranian left since at least the 1960s. In my book, This Flame Within: Iranian Revolutionaries in the United States (Duke University Press, 2022), I wrote about the regional and … Continue reading “Iranian Feminist Solidarity with Palestine”
Transnational Feminism from Iraq to Palestine
Zahra AliLet me start by saying a few words about where I am coming from, and why we at Critical Studies of Iraq initiated this conversation among feminists reflecting and organizing from the standpoints of Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Iran, and … Continue reading “Transnational Feminism from Iraq to Palestine”
Feminists for a Free Palestine: Voices from Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Iran, and Beyond
Zahra Ali, Wafaa Hasan, Manijeh Moradian, Wazhmah Osman and Ather ZiaIntroduction We feminists are bearing witness to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, a continuation of more than seventy-five years of Israeli settler-colonial violence against Palestinians. More than two decades into the “War on Terror,” we want to cut against the … Continue reading “Feminists for a Free Palestine: Voices from Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Iran, and Beyond”