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After Savagery: Gaza, Genocide, and the Illusion of Western Civilization
By (Author) Hamid Dabashi
Haymarket Books
Haymarket Books
7th January 2026
United States
General
Non Fiction
Social and political philosophy
Middle Eastern history
Paperback
320
Width 152mm, Height 228mm
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.
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.