Periscope articles and content
The Death Knell (René Vautier, France/Rhodesia/Algeria, 1964, 5 min.) is a stunning film. The poem read by the brilliant Djibril Mambety. The music, at once both dirge and waltz. The artwork offered in lieu of René Vautier’s original footage, which … Continue reading “The Uncanny of Martyrdom: Watching The Death Knell (Le Glas)”
On the morning of the 23rd of November in 2009, in the southern Philippine province of Maguindanao, fifty-eight people were gunned down by over a hundred armed men, their bodies and all their effects, including their vehicles, dumped and hastily … Continue reading “…In Reverse”
“No prosperity, no development, no humanitarian crisis.” A senior official in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government purportedly once confided to a UN official that this was Israel’s goal for Gaza. Supressing without starving the population has been a prevalent … Continue reading “Putting Palestinians on a Diet”
This edition of Periscope extends a conversation that took place on the occasion of the book launch held at New York University on April 30, 2016 to mark the publication of Allen Feldman’s Archives of the Insensible: Of War, Photopolitics … Continue reading “Introduction: Degrounding War and the State”
Archives of the Insensible is a book I will turn to again and again, for insight, inspiration, aspiration, a model of indefatiguable critique, and well, just to finish the damn thing. I’ve been reading Allen’s work for a long time … Continue reading “State of the Art of the State of the…Questions from the Real for Feldman’s Archives of the Insensible“
I want to begin by thanking Allen Feldman for asking me to participate in this event to discuss his important new book. Feldman offers us one of the most powerful critiques of violence through what he calls “micrological description.” From … Continue reading “Feldman’s Critique of Violence”
I am struck by the rich and provocative detail of this remarkable book and by the disturbing insights it offers into the performance of violence in our time and how its representations make it banal and acceptable. My observations arising … Continue reading “Remarks on Allen Feldman’s Archives of the Insensible“
Nota Bene: The following dangerous supplement can be read as a resynthesis of one of the core threads running through Archives of the Insensible: Of War, Photopolitics and Dead Memory (University of Chicago Press, 2015), which engages war as the … Continue reading “The Accidentalization of War”
In 2012, Social Text published a Periscope dossier on Palestine by a delegation of American Studies scholars to Palestine organized by USACBI. The following year, the first academic boycott resolutions were passed by the Association of Asian American Studies and … Continue reading “Solidarity and Radical Change”
2015 was the tenth anniversary of the official launching of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement by Palestinian civil society organizations, including over 170 political parties, activist organizations, trade unions, women’s groups, and other segments of the Palestinian national movement, … Continue reading “A Radical Vision of Freedom”
Because I am a Palestinian, born to a “goy mother,” I do not have the option of leaving the blockaded Gaza Strip where I live to attend a conference, or a give a talk at any international academic institution. Along … Continue reading “BDS: Decolonizing Palestine”
In 2005, indigenous Palestinians issued the most authoritative call for international solidarity to come out of Palestine in decades. A broad coalition of unions, popular organizations, and civil society institutions representing Palestinians within the 1967 occupied territories, Palestinian citizens inside … Continue reading “BDS and Third World Internationalism”
The summer of 2014 was a crucial historical conjuncture in which Palestinian-Black solidarity both deepened and became more complex, as Angela Davis’s latest book, Freedom is a Constant Struggle (2015) was absolutely right to identify. The killings of Eric Garner, … Continue reading “An Anti-Racist Movement”
Embedded within each of the three goals of the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS)–the right of return for refugees, full legal equality within Israel, and an end to occupation and colonization of Palestinian land—is an appeal to … Continue reading “Strengthening Anti-Racist Politics within BDS”
When the editors of this dossier asked me to contribute, they suggested I look toward the future of BDS and think about what might await, and what should await, the movement as it moves forward. Where might its activists most … Continue reading “BDS Beyond Palestine”
