The convergence of technologies of mass destruction, the camera, and 21st-century communications infrastructure has turned Gaza into a place exclusively accessible through live-streamed images of destruction and atrocity so profound that many human rights organizations regard them as evidence of a genocide. In result, global witnesses have been cognitively, affectively and somatically brought into processual proximity to the realities of war--including possible war crimes and crimes against humanity--in unprecedented ways.

Jonathan Beller and Ali Musleh discuss the consequences of this emergent media ecology, how it shapes our everyday encounter with war, and the ethical and political implications of inhabiting a world fractured and fractalized by the question of genocide.

About the Speakers

Jonathan Beller is Professor of Humanities and Media Studies and co-founder of the Graduate Program in Media Studies at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn. Beller is also a Distinguished Visiting Professor of English, Film, and Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University.

Ali Musleh is the Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Postdoctoral Fellow at the Columbia University Center for Palestine Studies.