After Savagery: Gaza, Genocide, and the Illusion of Western Civilization

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Written during a genocide, After Savagery reveals the ethical bankruptcy of “Western philosophy” and how it undergirds the erasure of the colonized. The death toll in Gaza continue s to rise―a cold, lifeless number representing entire communities crushed under the weight of settler colonialism.What remains of the theories we use to understand our world? With lyrical and lucid fury, Hamid Dabashi exposes the racist roots of Western philosophy, demanding that readers overcome its pernicious phantom of relevance. Rather than perceiving “the West” as giving carte blanche to Israel, Dabashi insists that Israel must be understood as its quintessence.If Israel is the West and the West is Israel, then Palestine is the world and the world is Palestine. Holding to glimmers from revolutionary works of literature and film, Dabashi argues, in grief and love, that the wretched of the earth need poetry after barbarism—and that Palestine is the site of a liberated imagination. What People Are Saying "[A] searing condemnation of the status quo and a poignant intellectual reckoning with an unfolding tragedy." Publisher's Weekly"Dabashi’s profound reflections are intertwined with updates from Israel’s genocide in Gaza, spelling both urgency in ending the obliteration of Palestinians, and the necessity of understanding what Israel and Zionism mean, what they reflect and embody, which is the entire Western spectrum of colonial brutality." Middle East Monitor"This is a book of witness and a book of strategy disguised as philosophy. It will be shelved under Middle East Studies; it belongs on your desk, annotated, next to your news feed. Dabashi does not ask you to admire his argument. He asks you to risk something for it." Middle East Eye"No book written in the middle of a catastrophe can close the case. After Savagery does something else. It recovers the conditions under which moral speech remains possible. It asks the reader to face a simple verdict. If a system calls itself civilisation while treating a people as disposable, then the name has rotted from within. A new moral grammar must be composed, patiently and truthfully, among those who have refused to disappear. Dabashi does not claim to possess that grammar. He sits with its first terms. He attends to the witnesses. He records the names. He keeps the fire." The New Arab"After Savagery is a fountain of arguments and evidence that goes beyond and gives full meaning to the critiques of ‘the West and the rest’, and of supporters of Israel’s settler colonial erasure against the Palestinian people. Palestine is a revealer—Dabashi exposes the irredeemable racism behind the posture of universalism adopted by the Global Minority (the so-called ‘West’), but he also shows the path toward collective liberation from apartheid and its genocidal consequences. The genocide in Palestine has pushed us toward a critical juncture. Suspended between abyss and hope, we have the choice to preserve what remains of humanity and rebuild Gaza and the rest of Palestine from the ashes of this monstrosity." Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories"In his After Savagery: Gaza, Genocide, and the Illusion of Western Civilization, the renowned Iranian scholar and a lifelong supporter of Palestinian liberation struggle, Columbia University Professor Hamid Dabash demolished rather brilliantly “the West”, from its very ideological foundations rooted in the European Enlightenment philosophy, but built on the millions of corpses, and the countless enslaved labourers and stolen or “colonized” continents and sub-continents. Dabashi urges those who identify with categorically anti-colonialist thought to read Western philosophy – and anything that bears the label “Western” – anthropologically, rather than the universally valid truth claims." FORSEA"Hamid Dabashi is one of the most brilliant and courageous truth-tellers in our grim and dim times. His powerful analysis and poignant words should inspire all who see the flagrant hypocrisy of the West and seek justice for the wretched of the earth." Dr. Cornel West "After Savagery illuminates why the Gaza genocide exposes the definitional barbarity of the project of European modernity, of which Zionism is an integral part. The engine of Dabashi’s book is the question of what we owe Palestinians beyond their metaphorical meanings for an anticolonial struggle. Rather than solipsistically instrumentalizing Palestinian suffering for rehabilitating the modern West’s presumed moral authority or Jewish innocence as "exilic" as so many other authors in the post-Holocaust and post-Gaza genre book business do, After Savagery enacts a stunning decolonial move through a poetic meditation on an intersectional imagination that destabilizes modernity’s genocidal logic." Atalia Omer, author of Days of Awe: Reimagining Jewishness in Solidarity with Palestinians"Based on a rich survey of poems, literature and philosophical tracts, Hamid Dabashi exposes how the genocide in Gaza epitomizes a longer history of racism, Islamophobia and orientalism that produced the colonial and post-colonial global order, and informed Europe’s most known thinkers who ironically perceived themselves as beacons of humanity. An incisive, disturbing yet thoroughly convincing essay." Ilan Pappé "[After Savagery] covers a lot of ground. It delves deeply into ontology, epistemology, semantics, literature, art, filmmaking, poetry, politics, religion, exilism, and — especially — philosophy. After Savagery is not focused solely on the here and now of what is transpiring in historical Palestine. The book goes into the history, background, and philosophy that enables genocide. The book is scholarly and is well footnoted. If that is what the reader is looking for, then Hamid Dabashi’s After Savagery is well worth the read." Dissident Voice"Arguing that settler colonial genocide in Gaza is historically an extension of the Holocaust, which itself was preceded by racial genocidal practices in the colonies, Hamid Dabashi considers solidarity with Palestine as a truly universal liberation that exposes the provinciality of Western philosophy. If readers evade facing Dabashi’s compelling arguments, they can’t but enjoy his erudition, his almost poetic literary style, and admire his resolute moral commitment." Azmi Bishara, author of Palestine: Matters of Truth and Justice"With formidable rigour, sophistication, and tenacity, Hamid Dabashi situates Palestine at the heart of a global struggle for liberation from the age of European colonialism. After Savagery places the reader on a daring path to build a new world that is fit for the "total human beings" that we are and aspire to be. Dabashi resolutely and defiantly insists that after savagery must come a committed intellectual and political project of resuscitating our collective humanity." Muhannad Ayyash author of Lordship and Liberation in Palestine-Israel"Hamid Dabashi has written a distinguished philosophical reflection on civilization and its opposite, on violence in thought and action, on the role of the imagination in human life, and on the enduring consequences of colonialism. In his work, Gaza becomes a paradigmatic example of the conceptual denigration and attempted eradication of all those whom Western governments and thinkers define as irremediably ‘other’. Dabashi’s analysis is truly impressive in its erudition, sympathetic breadth of vision, and passionate engagement." Raymond Geuss, professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Cambridge“Reading Dabashi is like going for an extended coffee with a very smart friend.” Vijay Prashad, author of The Poorer Nations“The grand clash of civilizations and ideologies will increasingly take place in the West, with such writers and intellectuals as Dabashi.” The Guardian“A leading light in Iranian studies.” The Chronicle of Higher Education Show more