Soliciting Slaps – Notes from the Margins of Academia
Just as “Der Optimismus ist Pflicht” (optimism is a duty) – as Popper is frequently (though perhaps apocryphally) credited with […] The post Soliciting Slaps – Notes from…
Tag: authoritarianism
Colonizing Palestine: The Zionist Left and the Making of the Palestinian Nakba
Areej Sabbagh-Khoury. 2024. Colonizing Palestine: The Zionist Left and the Making of the Palestinian Nakba. Redwood City: Stanford University Press. […] The post Colonizing Palestine: The Zionis…
In times like these
Last year, I submitted an abstract for a conference about the future of authoritarianism with the title ‘knowledge production and […] The post In times like these appeared…
Lessons from Tahrir for activists and their allies
Reflections on Rusha Latif’s Tahrir’s Youth: Leaders of a Leaderless Revolution (American University in Cairo Press, 2022). After more than […] The post Lessons from Tahrir for activists…
Revolution and Democracy in Tunisia: A Century of Protestscapes – review
In Revolution and Democracy in Tunisia, Larbi Sadiki and Layla Saleh present an interdisciplinary analysis of Tunisia’s rich history of protest, arguing that popular resistance has long shaped t…
The Incarcerations: BK-16 and the Search for Democracy in India – review
In The Incarcerations, Alpa Shah unpacks the plight of the Bhima Koregaon-16, a group of human rights defenders who were imprisoned without trial for an alleged plot against…
Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt: On the importance of ambiguity in an authoritarian state
In 1931, an American newspaper competition asked its readers to submit the best use of the word denial in a sentence. The winner was “Denial ain’t (just) a…
Afterlives of revolution: Alice Wilson’s response
I first visited the Dhufar region of southern Oman in 2013. I was soon to learn that some residents were discussing the future of the exiled former opposition…
A world upside down
In the wake of October 7th, I was asked by a fellow anthropologist if my Syrian friends and interlocutors – who participated in the 2011 revolution and are…
The folly of little kings
On Monday, May 25th, 2020, Cuba’s new president, Miguel Diaz-Canél, involuntarily found himself in the spotlight. Diaz-Canél had become the Cuban head of state two years before, and…
Milei, Crowds, and Concrete Waves in Argentina
I am home, reading Stefan Helmreich’s new book, A Book of Waves (2023). The news on TV then catches my attention: I see images from the inauguration of…
Our History is Our Mandate
An edited talk delivered at the London School of Economics and Social Sciences on Nov 7th 2023 I spend a great deal of time researching and teaching about…
Birzeit University Union: Palestinian Resistance is a Way of Being
2023 will be recorded historically as the year that Palestinians stood boldly in the face of colonial fascism and screamed in defense of their homes, humanity, and lives.…
Antonio De Lauri: The Courage of Historical Truths
With the destruction of Gaza by Israel under way and the humanitarian situation in the occupied Palestinian territories worsening day by day, a recurrent question is raised in…
The Courage of Historical Truths
With the destruction of Gaza by Israel under way and the humanitarian situation in the occupied Palestinian territories worsening day by day, a recurrent question is raised in…
No peace without decolonization
In the central Gaza Strip, the colonial state of Israel bombed the Al Ahli Baptist Hospital and a UN-run school on Tuesday, October 17, killing over 500 civilians.…
Now is Our Moment to Act
As anthropologists, scholars, and teachers, now is our moment to act. It has always been our responsibility, as academics and citizens, to defend and promote the spaces for…
Framing Gaza: Call for contributions
The culture of fear instilled by the increasingly right-leaning structures of power that govern public spaces and our universities in the Global North have led to the silencing…
Containment and Expropriation: Lockdowns, Public Health, and the Scrap Iron Industry in Trinidad & Tobago
Beginning in July of 2022 a series of articles here and on Disaster X have been examining and questioning what it means to declare crime a “public health…
Submission to Canada’s Public Order Emergency Commission
As a non-partisan, volunteer activist group, Fearless Canada was present at the beginning and on several other occasions during the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa. As such, many…
Counterinsurgency in Istanbul
“Police, Provocation, Politics” by Deniz Yonucu is an ambitious text that documents the long and complicated history of dissident populations and spaces in urban Turkey in the context…
Why did the Left Fail the Covid Test So Badly?
Note: Contrary to this site’s policy of not republishing work from other sites, which has been in effect for several years, this exception is a must. It is…
Nuremberg, Covid, and Anthropology: Never Again
Today, August 20, 2022, marks the 75th anniversary of the end of the trials of medical professionals at Nuremberg. Central principles and fundamental rights were enshrined as a…
Declaring Crime to be a Public Health Emergency: Trinidad & Tobago Out Front
When it should be that the declaration of a public health emergency is itself the crime. “There are efforts being made to ensure that countries respond in the…