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After Savagery: Gaza, Genocide, and the Illusion of Western Civilization
Written at the time of 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 continues to rise―a cold, lifeless number representing entire communities crushed under the weight of settler colonialism. At a time of global outrage against a livestreamed genocide, politicians, well-respected scholars, and influential celebrities remain perplexed by the notion of Palestinian humanity.
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 a carte blanche to Israel to commit atrocities in Palestine, Dabashi insists that Israel must be understood as the “quintessence of the West.”
If Israel is the West and the West is Israel, then Palestine is the world and the world is Palestine. Holding on 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.
The death toll in Gaza continues to rise―a cold, lifeless number representing entire communities crushed under the weight of settler colonialism. At a time of global outrage against a livestreamed genocide, politicians, well-respected scholars, and influential celebrities remain perplexed by the notion of Palestinian humanity.
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 a carte blanche to Israel to commit atrocities in Palestine, Dabashi insists that Israel must be understood as the “quintessence of the West.”
If Israel is the West and the West is Israel, then Palestine is the world and the world is Palestine. Holding on 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.
304 pages, Paperback
Published September 30, 2025
About the author
Hamid Dabashi
81 books213 followersBorn on 15 June 1951 into a working class family in the south-western city of Ahvaz in the Khuzestan province of Iran, Hamid Dabashi received his early education in his hometown and his college education in Tehran, before he moved to the United States, where he received a dual Ph.D. in Sociology of Culture and Islamic Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University.
He wrote his doctoral dissertation on Max Weber’s theory of charismatic authority with Philip Rieff (1922-2006), the most distinguished Freudian cultural critic of his time.
Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York, the oldest and most prestigious Chair in his field. He has taught and delivered lectures in many North and Latin American, European, Arab, and Iranian universities. He is a founding member of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, as well as a founding member of the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University.
He has written 20 books, edited 4, and contributed chapters to many more. He is also the author of over 100 essays, articles and book reviews in major scholarly and peer reviewed journals on subjects ranging from Iranian Studies, medieval and modern Islam, comparative literature, world cinema, and the philosophy of art (trans-aesthetics). A selected sample of his writing is co-edited by Andrew Davison and Himadeep Muppidi, The World is my Home: A Hamid Dabashi Reader (Transaction 2010).
Hamid Dabashi is the Series Editor of Literatures and Cultures of the Islamic World for Palgrave Macmillan. This series is putting forward a critical body of first rate scholarship on the literary and cultural production of the Islamic world from the vantage point of contemporary theoretical and hermeneutic perspectives, effectively bringing the study of Islamic literatures and cultures to the wider attention of scholars and students of world literatures and cultures without the prejudices and drawbacks of outmoded perspectives.
An internationally renowned cultural critic and award-winning author, his books and articles have been translated into numerous languages, including Japanese, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Hebrew, Danish, Arabic, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Polish, Turkish, Urdu and Catalan.
In the context of his commitment to advancing trans-national art and independent world cinema, Hamid Dabashi is the founder of Dreams of a Nation, a Palestinian Film Project, dedicated to preserving and safeguarding Palestinian Cinema. He is also chiefly responsible for opening up the study of Persian literature and Iranian culture at Columbia University to students of comparative literature and society, breaking away from the confinements of European Orientalism and American Area Studies.
A committed teacher in the past three decades, Hamid Dabashi is also a public speaker around the globe, a current affairs essayist, and a staunch anti-war activist. He has two grown-up children, Kaveh and Pardis, who are both Columbia University graduates, and he lives in New York with his wife and colleague, the Iranian-Swedish feminist, Golbarg Bashi, their daughter Chelgis and their son Golchin.
He wrote his doctoral dissertation on Max Weber’s theory of charismatic authority with Philip Rieff (1922-2006), the most distinguished Freudian cultural critic of his time.
Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York, the oldest and most prestigious Chair in his field. He has taught and delivered lectures in many North and Latin American, European, Arab, and Iranian universities. He is a founding member of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, as well as a founding member of the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University.
He has written 20 books, edited 4, and contributed chapters to many more. He is also the author of over 100 essays, articles and book reviews in major scholarly and peer reviewed journals on subjects ranging from Iranian Studies, medieval and modern Islam, comparative literature, world cinema, and the philosophy of art (trans-aesthetics). A selected sample of his writing is co-edited by Andrew Davison and Himadeep Muppidi, The World is my Home: A Hamid Dabashi Reader (Transaction 2010).
Hamid Dabashi is the Series Editor of Literatures and Cultures of the Islamic World for Palgrave Macmillan. This series is putting forward a critical body of first rate scholarship on the literary and cultural production of the Islamic world from the vantage point of contemporary theoretical and hermeneutic perspectives, effectively bringing the study of Islamic literatures and cultures to the wider attention of scholars and students of world literatures and cultures without the prejudices and drawbacks of outmoded perspectives.
An internationally renowned cultural critic and award-winning author, his books and articles have been translated into numerous languages, including Japanese, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Hebrew, Danish, Arabic, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Polish, Turkish, Urdu and Catalan.
In the context of his commitment to advancing trans-national art and independent world cinema, Hamid Dabashi is the founder of Dreams of a Nation, a Palestinian Film Project, dedicated to preserving and safeguarding Palestinian Cinema. He is also chiefly responsible for opening up the study of Persian literature and Iranian culture at Columbia University to students of comparative literature and society, breaking away from the confinements of European Orientalism and American Area Studies.
A committed teacher in the past three decades, Hamid Dabashi is also a public speaker around the globe, a current affairs essayist, and a staunch anti-war activist. He has two grown-up children, Kaveh and Pardis, who are both Columbia University graduates, and he lives in New York with his wife and colleague, the Iranian-Swedish feminist, Golbarg Bashi, their daughter Chelgis and their son Golchin.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 17, 2026
"Israel is not a country. It is not a Homeland. It is not a rooted culture. Israel is a settler Colony. A moral depravity created by the West. Enabled and empowered by the West. Israel is the most wicked evidence of the West. Israel is every atrocity ever committed around the world in Asia, Africa and Latin America by the West in a nutshell, staged for the whole world to see."
"It is impossible to think of the world after the genocide in Gaza as we did before the genocide in Gaza. It is a different world. Not just because of the enormity and brazenness of how Israel has treated Palestinians. It is a different world because Zionism has exposed, for the whole world to see, what European colonialism has done to the world for over 500 years."
Hamid Dabashi
"It is impossible to think of the world after the genocide in Gaza as we did before the genocide in Gaza. It is a different world. Not just because of the enormity and brazenness of how Israel has treated Palestinians. It is a different world because Zionism has exposed, for the whole world to see, what European colonialism has done to the world for over 500 years."
Hamid Dabashi
April 18, 2026
"This war is a war that is not only between Israel and Hamas. It’s a war that is intended, really, truly, to save Western civilization, to save the values of Western civilization." - Israeli President Isaac Herzog (December 12, 2023).
"Western Civilization" has been on full display in Gaza for the last 2 years, as Israel has mercilessly slaughtered Palestinian civilians with full support from Western governments, media, and intellectuals. The apologetics coming from the United States and the U.K., particularly, are the most shameful display of racism and cowardice in recent memory, though I can't say I'm surprised. Non-Europeans aren't people in the eyes of the West. This has been a consistent trend in both their thought and their conduct, and the entire world is seeing it right now in Gaza.
Dabashi has exposed the moral bankruptcy of Western civilization and the philosophy that enabled it. This is not an easy book to read, either in terms of content or style, but its arguments are convincing, and its significance should be pondered.
"Western Civilization" has been on full display in Gaza for the last 2 years, as Israel has mercilessly slaughtered Palestinian civilians with full support from Western governments, media, and intellectuals. The apologetics coming from the United States and the U.K., particularly, are the most shameful display of racism and cowardice in recent memory, though I can't say I'm surprised. Non-Europeans aren't people in the eyes of the West. This has been a consistent trend in both their thought and their conduct, and the entire world is seeing it right now in Gaza.
Dabashi has exposed the moral bankruptcy of Western civilization and the philosophy that enabled it. This is not an easy book to read, either in terms of content or style, but its arguments are convincing, and its significance should be pondered.
February 26, 2026
“Palestine is neither the first nor the last homeland that the West has conquered and abused, but the history of the world has been summarized in Palestine.”
(Analytical, Layered, Uncompromising) This book is dense and highly analytical - not an easy read. It meticulously dissects the conflict, arguing that what we have witnessed so far of genocide, apartheid, and colonialism barely begins to capture what is really unfolding on the ground.
(Analytical, Layered, Uncompromising) This book is dense and highly analytical - not an easy read. It meticulously dissects the conflict, arguing that what we have witnessed so far of genocide, apartheid, and colonialism barely begins to capture what is really unfolding on the ground.
December 1, 2025
Excellent analysis and straight to the point 👌🏻
March 16, 2026
In another even more precise report by CNN, they wrote of “a facility where doctors sometimes amputated prisoners’ limbs due to injuries sustained from constant handcuffing; of medical procedures sometimes performed by underqualified medics earning it a reputation for being ‘a paradise for interns;’ and where the air is filled with the smell of neglected wounds left to rot."
As a “human animal” myself, as an Iranian with a lifetime commitment to the Palestinian cause, I too smell that rot while reading Habermas, Levinas, Kant, or Hegel. The same report continues: “They stripped them down of anything that resembles human beings.” When I read that phrase, I think of the entire history of European philosophy and what it represents.
"I am not Palestinian. But the defiant cry for freedom from injustice and tyranny of all Palestinians has shaped my life. I am not African American. But the beautiful writing of James Baldwin has spoken directly to my soul ever since I set foot on this land in 1976 and read The Fire Next Time for the first time"
“What we are seeing in Gaza is a repeat of Auschwitz,” says the Burmese genocide expert and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Maung Zarni. “This is a collective white imperialist man’s genocide"
As a “human animal” myself, as an Iranian with a lifetime commitment to the Palestinian cause, I too smell that rot while reading Habermas, Levinas, Kant, or Hegel. The same report continues: “They stripped them down of anything that resembles human beings.” When I read that phrase, I think of the entire history of European philosophy and what it represents.
"I am not Palestinian. But the defiant cry for freedom from injustice and tyranny of all Palestinians has shaped my life. I am not African American. But the beautiful writing of James Baldwin has spoken directly to my soul ever since I set foot on this land in 1976 and read The Fire Next Time for the first time"
“What we are seeing in Gaza is a repeat of Auschwitz,” says the Burmese genocide expert and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Maung Zarni. “This is a collective white imperialist man’s genocide"
December 25, 2025
This author does a disservice to the cause of the victims of Zionist genocide in Palestine and Gaza. It is a shame how intellectuals from within the belly of the beast try to appeal to our lower instincts. Leave your ivory tower, dude.
December 13, 2025
I wanted to learn more about what’s going on in Gaza, but this book made that unnecessarily hard. The writing is so dry and academic it sucks the life out of an already heavy subject. If a reader invests the time and money and comes away bored instead of informed, that’s a problem. This kind of book doesn’t move people to care—it makes them check out.
March 12, 2026
A work that will be referred to for years to come in the struggle to break free from the dead weight of a thoroughly discredited western liberal edifice built on the bones of the dispossessed over centuries. "The West has had its historical course and died in Gaza"
February 14, 2026
Very well written, great reminder and straight to point. Reminds me of Edward said analysis and thinking. Wonderful work for a great scholar
March 19, 2026
Too academic for me and unfocused.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews