Thoughts of Gaza Far from Gaza

by Soumyabrata Choudhury

The terror unfolding in Gaza looms over us all. We find ourselves unable to think, content with reciting decades-old truisms. Teacher and philosopher Soumyabrata Choudhury intensifies this disquiet. He enquires into the fantasies of nationhood that plague both Israel and Palestine. Does the figure of the Hamas terrorist occlude the existence of a Palestinian ‘world’? What do the harrowing images of suffering children in Gaza force us to think? How does the flat world of capitalism square itself with the absolute otherness to which Gaza is consigned? What is the meaning of the Zionist claim, ‘Palestine is a land without a people’? How does the media force us to consume the catastrophe? All the emergent paranoias and fantasies are analysed.

Thoughts of Gaza Far from Gaza is a clear-eyed reckoning with how dehumanisation and slaughter become normalised and institutionalised, despite the pretensions of civilisation.

120 pages, Paperback

Published August 15, 2024

Reviews

[Vaidya · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author reveals remarkable ability to write in very dense impenetrable language. The odd part is there are some chapters where he writes clearly in a way everyone understands but for the most part he eschews this form of comprehensible discourse preferring to further his considerations in a manner of philosophically sophisticated exchange which is so incomprehensible that the editors seem to have given up.

The book is important and much needed and where I could penetrate the maze of words he lays out some very good arguments. But again the book suffers from the author.