Gaza as Metaphor
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Open-air Prison, Terror, Resistance, Occupation, Siege, Trauma: irrespective of when, where, and to whom the word is uttered, "Gaza" immediately evokes an abundance of metaphors. Similarly, a host of metaphors also recall Gaza: Crisis, Exception, Refugees, Destitution, Tunnels, Persistence. This book brings together journalists, writers, doctors, academics and others, who use metaphor to record and historicise Gaza, to contextualise its everyday realities, interrogate its representations and provide an understanding of its real and symbolic significance. Offering perspectives from residents and observers, these essays touch on life and survival, the making of the Gaza Strip and its increasing isolation, the discursive and visual tools that have often obscured the real Gaza, and explore what Gaza contributes to our understanding of exception, inequality, dispossession, bio-politics, necro-power and other terms which we rely on to make sense of our world. The contributors reveal the manner of Gaza's historical and spatial creation, to show that Gaza is more than simply a metaphor for far-away humanitarian disaster, or a location of incomprehensible violence – it is above all an inseparable part of Palestine's past, present, and future, and of the condition of dispossession.
About the Author
Helga Tawil-Souri is Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication and Director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University. Her work focuses on issues of spatiality, technology, and politics in the Middle East, and especially Israel/ Palestine.
Dina Matar is Associate Head, Centre for Media Studies at SOAS, University of London. She is the author of "What it Means to be Palestinian" and co-author of "The Hizbullah Phenomenon: Politics and Communication".
