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Enzo Traverso
Is the destruction of Gaza a consequence of the October 7, 2023 attack, or is it also the outcome of a long process of dispossession and eradication? Enzo Traverso goes to the root of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict by calling history into question and offers a critical interpretation that overturns the dominant one-sided perspective. Israel is usually described as a democratic island in the middle of an obscurantist ocean, and Hamas as a movement inspired by bloodthirsty fanaticism. Gaza today recalls the golden age of colonialism, when the West perpetrated genocides in Asia and Africa in the name of its civilizing mission. Its essential assumptions remain the same: civilization versus barbarism, progress versus intolerance. But if a genocidal war is unleashed in the name of fighting anti-Semitism, it is our own ethical values and political norms that are tarnished: the assumptions of our moral conscience—the distinction between oppressor and oppressed, perpetrators and victims—risk being turned upside down. In his urgent essay, Traverso untangles the knotted skeins of history and memory that dominate the intellectual and political debate since October 7. |
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Hierarchies of Solidarity How does solidarity emerge? When are political alliances formed across differences, and why do certain political movements receive more solidarity than others? What makes up solidarity work and what fault lines, interests and strategies shape it? In their new volume Hierarchies of Solidarity, சிந்துஜன் வரதராஜா (Sinthujan Varatharajah) and مشترى هلال (Moshtari Hilal) jointly reflect on a practice that, as an act against oppression, expresses itself in both seemingly small everyday gestures and global political contexts. The result is a revealing conversation that, underpinned by lived experience, traces the racist structures of the discourse landscape and offers alternative ways of understanding solidarity. |