Palestine Now
Edited by Maya Mikdashi, Jasbir Puar, Helga Tawil-Souri
Palestine Now editors invite contributions reflecting upon current and historical conditions in and of Palestine and Israel. As we collectively confront the “ethical indifference with which racial violence is met” (Denise Ferreira da Silva) while also standing in awe at the global mass mobilization of the call for Palestinian freedom, we welcome work that will breakdown, pervert, and scramble these split screens. While the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza unfolds daily in the metric of crisis, the ongoing violence in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and in the 48 territories accelerates incrementally. As such, we seek work that thinks both with the temporality of crisis but also through those temporalities that undo the privilege of crisis as bookmarked events. Palestine Now is open for rolling submissions to impel an archive of unfolding thought. It is our hope that Palestine Now will highlight and generate multiple temporalities of listening, writing, thinking, acting, and speaking. A space for scholarship to breathe, together. In proposing this space, we are also probing the question of what knowledge production looks like and what it can do during a genocide.
We are soliciting pieces around 1000-3000 words in length, to be reviewed and published on an accelerated timeline. We invite transnational, intersectional, and decolonial work that transits the world—its calamities and possibilities—through Gaza, and through Palestine and Israel more broadly. We refuse the idea that Palestine is “too complicated” to speak about and invite interdisciplinary writers from all fields to hold decolonial and social justice frames to account. Multiple genres will be considered, in recognition that words often fail to capture the scale of violence, upheaval, grief, and rage we are living through and witnessing. Teach-in presentations, statements, letters of resignation, and other materials already composed for public intervention are welcome.
Mainstream media outlets continue to refuse covering the protests calling for Palestinian liberation and the work of writers, activists, scholars, and artists is monitored, policed, and dropped, often leading to doxxing, harassment, and job terminations. Palestine Now is committed to centering these voices. Social Text will strive to hold open this platform against the forces that seek to surveil, censor, repress, and silence us. We aspire to make visible the escalating radicalization of thought, action, and politics that is happening across students, faculty, and staff on campus in the US and internationally.
Please email an inquiry to PalestineNow23 [at] gmail.com and cc managingeditor.socialtext [at] gmail.com.
