Making Death And Life In Palestine (social Reproduction In Settler Colonialism)

Edited by Bhattacharya Tithi; Edited by Ferguson Susan; Foreword by Gilmore Ruth Wilson
Short description/annotation:

Why is the Israeli assault against Palestinians so shockingly brutal?

Description:

Social reproduction theory is a big idea. It explores how the daily renewal of human life, and therefore human labour, is essential to capitalism. Here, leading feminists come together to apply the theory to one of its most extreme settings - that of Palestine.

Israel’s settler colonialism is premised on the eradication of Palestinian lives, undermining Palestinian social reproduction at every turn. This project, which ramped up after October 7th, does have a logic, and by examining the concrete, historically specific details, the authors begin to reshape and refine the theory of Social Reproduction, shedding light on why Israel’s assault is so brutal.

Chapters look at Israel’s mass murder of a generation of Palestinians in Gaza, the effects of ecocide, the relationship between land dispossession and class, Israel’s selective pronatalism, scholasticide and other topics. By understanding this deadly logic, we can look deeper into the heart of the evils of capitalism, and stand in solidarity with Palestine.

Table of contents:

Foreword - Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Introduction - Tithi Bhattacharya and Susan Ferguson
1. Gaza: Care, Hope and Genocide - Asmaa AbuMezied 
2. Childhood and Social Reproduction in Palestine: They Didn''t Know We Were Seeds - Mai Abu Moghli and Rachel Rosen
3. ''I Forgot to Die:'' Thinking through Social Reproduction of Palestinian Life - Tithi Bhattacharya 
4. Decolonialism as Social Reproductive Class Struggle - Tal-Hi Bitton
5. Scholasticide and Social Reproduction in Palestine - Sue Ferguson
6. The Colonial Rift: Affirming Life in Palestine''s Frontiers - Layal Ftouni and Omar Jabary Salamanca
7. Checkpoints, the Sexual Division of Labour and Social Reproduction in the West Bank - Jemima Repo
8. Insurgent Social Reproduction: The Home, the Barricade and Women’s Work in the 1936 Palestinian Revolution - Mai Taha
9. ''Genocidal Hauntings of Pronatalism'': The Dialectics of Assisted Reproduction in Israel/Palestine - Sigrid Vertommen, Weeam Hammoudeh and Michal Nahman
Onward- Fady Joudah

Review quote:

''In this important edited volume, two pioneering figures in Social Reproduction Theory, Tithi Bhattacharya and Sue Ferguson, extend their framework beyond the working-class struggle for life in advanced capitalist societies, accounting for the specificity of settler-colonial capitalism. The essays they have assembled here urgently address the contemporary case study of Palestine in the horrific era of the Gaza genocide. They reveal the intensity of the battle between the exterminationist death-making force of Israeli colonialism and the Palestinian determination to produce and sustain a flourishing and liberated collective life''

Review quote:

''A theoretically grounded and politically urgent book that reminds us of beauty, resistance and courage at a time in which Israel’s genocide wants us to succumb to despair and the feeling of powerlessness. Palestinians continue to teach us life, as they have done for over 75 years. They show us that affirming life against capital’s death drive and settler colonialism in the midst of unspeakable atrocity is the only way forward. Everyone should read this book!''

Biographical note:
Tithi Bhattacharya is a Marxist historian and activist, writing extensively on gender and the politics of Islamophobia. She has been active in movements for social justice throughout her life, spearheading campaigns across three continents. She is Professor of South Asian History at Purdue University and the author of Ghostly Past, Capitalist Presence, editor of Social Repr