To See in the Dark: Palestine and Visual Activism Since October 7

Nicholas Mirzoeff

Book cover for To See in the Dark: Palestine and Visual Activism Since October 7
Book cover for To See in the Dark: Palestine and Visual Activism Since October 7

To See in the Dark: Palestine and Visual Activism Since October 7

To See in the Dark: Palestine and Visual Activism Since October 7

Nicholas Mirzoeff

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Description

"Timely and clearly written, To See In the Dark is a manifesto to solidarity" Stephen Sheehi, co-author of Psychoanalysis Under Occupation

"Mirzoeff sharply urges us to divest from a mere spectatorship to a genocide, and insists that we see in relation, in solidarity and as an anti-colonial collective" Simone Browne, author of Dark Matters

"Mirzoeff argues incisively for a return to ways of seeing that are grounded in solidarity and resistance" Candice Breitz, video and photography artist

To see Palestine is to see the world. Since October 7th 2023, the forces of racial capitalism and settler colonialism have become all too visible in Israel's genocidal war on Gaza.

In To See In the Dark, Nicholas Mirzoeff explores how images, and especially video, viewed outside Palestine enabled a dramatic switch in public opinion, leading to a global uprising against the genocide.

In this groundbreaking analysis, he connects the personal and the political through his own anti-Zionist Jewishness and its histories of violence.

The result is a new collective and anti-colonial way of seeing, intersecting online and embodied experience.

Nicholas Mirzoeff is a pioneering figure in the field of visual culture and has written extensively on Jewishness and Palestine. His books include How To See The World, and The Right to Look. He has written for the Guardian and The Nation.

About the Author

Among the founders of visual culture as a field, Nicholas Mirzoeff has also written extensively on Jewishness and Palestine. His books include How To See The World, The Right to Look, and The Appearance of Black Lives Matter. He has written for the Guardian, Hyperallergic, and The Nation. He lives in New York City.

Critical Reviews

'If ever we ever needed a contemporary rejoinder to John Berger's Ways of Seeing, this is the book. Timely and clearly written, To See in the Dark is a manifesto to solidarity, a foraging, salvaging and a way to unset alongside the opaque lives of Palestinians, who struggle under organized, genocidal state violence. Through engaging visual works of Palestinian and other artists, Mirzoeff leads us past the "colonial visual screen" and over the rubble, to see new solidarities that arise from associating with the oppressed by dissociating with systems of oppression whose surveillance, checkpoints, prisons, and drones appear in the "white sight" of genocide'
Stephen Sheehi, co-author of Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine

'Mirzoeff deftly dissects the violent abstractions that are characteristic of the drone's remote-controlled gaze, arguing incisively for a return to ways of seeing that are grounded in solidarity and resistance'
Candice Breitz, artist

'Mirzoeff sharply urges us to divest from a mere spectatorship to a genocide, and insists that we see in relation, in solidarity and as an anti-colonial collective. To See in the Dark is to settle for no less than to see Palestine free'
Simone Browne, author of Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness

Publishing Information

Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)
Pub date: 2025-01-20
Length: 176 pages

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