“Gaza does not propel people to cool contemplation; rather, she propels them to erupt and collide with the truth.”
— Mahmoud Darwish, Silence for Gaza (1973)
Recognizing the Stranger - On Palestine and Narrative, a slim volume of 80-odd pages brings together Isabella Hammad’s the Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture delivered at Columbia University nine…
"In times of dread, artists must never remain silent. This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That's how civilizations heal."
— Toni Morrison in No Place for Self-Pity,…
“Africa is shaped like a gun, and the Congo is its trigger.”
— Frantz Fanon
Over the year, I saw Johan Grimonprez's Soundtrack to a Coup d’État a few times. It is not an easy film to watch, and it always demands another viewing. Watching archival footage of Patrice Lumumba in the 150-minute long…
Book Review
"Democracy evolves where freedom is able to determine its own policy"
— John Dos Passos, The Ground We Stand On, 1941
Siddhartha Deb's Twilight Prisoners: The Rise of the Hindu Right and The Fall of India, published by Haymarket Books in 2024, is an urgent, incisive exploration of India's socio-political transformation under…
“Land art involves a relationship between art and nature that refuses to separate the two, asserting that art is as much a part of the land as the land itself is a part of art.”
- Lucy Lippard in Landscript 7: Land and Environmental Art, 2007
Christian Bernard Singer's work is a poetic testament…
“Democratic systems may hold elections, but those elections are largely
ceremonial, moments in which the public is invited to endorse decisions already
taken by small groups.”
— John Ralston Saul, Voltaire's Bastards, p. 52.
Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential election marked a seismic shift in American politics. Regardless of one's political alignment,…
"Justice is what love looks like in public”
- Cornel West in The Radical King, 2015
Gustavo Gutiérrez, the influential Peruvian priest and theologian widely recognised as the "father of liberation theology," passed away on October 22, 2024, at 96. His pioneering ideas, especially those expressed in his seminal 1971 book A Theology…
"We are called to be the architects of the future, not its victims."
— Daniel Berrigan, in various speeches and writings, on peace and social justice.
In 2013, Kshama Sawant, emerged as a beacon of change in American politics. In 2015 she was called the most dangerous woman in America. Born in Mumbai and…
14 October 2024
The ongoing extermination of the Palestinian people and the bombing of Lebanon should not be blamed on Israel alone. It is America that has been waging wars across the world since they dropped the atomic bombs in Japan, and the present crimes against humanity and genocide are American crimes through the…