Speaking Out of Place

Today on Speaking Out of Place, we have a conversation with critical political theorists Adom Getachew and Ayça Çubukçu on the colonial construction of the international system and its organization around the institution of the nation state.  Our conversation covers and uncovers so many aspects of the hidden colonial history behind the constitution of this system, but also the resistance and creat...

Since October the 7th we have seen an eruption of support for Palestinian liberation. On university campuses we find both the tremendous growth of activism for Palestine, and repressive and punitive measures that seek to discourage and curtail these activities. One of the most important tasks for activists is to organize broad networks of support. Today we speak with two people who have helped org...

Today we speak with Professor Amahl Bishara about her book, Crossing a Line: Laws, Violence, and Roadblocks to Palestinian Political Expression. She is joined by Professor Nayrouz Abu Hatoum to discuss the ways that notions of national identity, cultural commitments, and political expression are all complicated when juxtaposing two groups of Palestinians—those living under occupation, and those wh...

In January, the University of Michigan Faculty Senate passed a resolution  calling for “the University’s leadership, including the Board of Regents, to divest from its financial holdings in companies that invest in Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza.” The statement highlighted the unprecedented rate of civilian deaths in Gaza, and that American financial sources are central to Israel’s ong...

Today we speak with publisher Judith Gurewich and translator Luke Leafgren about a remarkable first-person narrative by Nasser Abu Srour, a Palestinian political prisoner who in 1993 was given a life sentence. His memoir, The Tale of a Wall , tells of the author’s decades-long life in multiple prisons, moving through many historical periods and shifting personal and political lives. The one thing...

Ever since the beginning of Israel’s genocidal attacks on Gaza, global protests have grown exponentially. This is most evident on the streets, and also, very importantly, on college campuses, where activism for Palestinian liberation have often been met with brutal repression.  Chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace have been shut down, students placed under surve...

After the International Court of Justice's finding that Israel's war on Gaza was a "plausible case of genocide," Israel smeared the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, claiming that four or five UNRWA employees were affiliated with Hamas. These employees were fired without any proof of wrongdoing, and several countries stopping funding UNRWA, also without seein...

Today we speak with scholar Julie Norman about her book, The Palestinian Prisoners Movement: Resistance and Disobedience . She is joined in conversation by her colleague and collaborator Amahl Bishara. Based on extensive interviews with Palestinian prisoners, Norman’s study delineates in detail and depth the centrality of the movement in the broader Palestinian national struggle. Palestinian priso...

Today, on Speaking Out of Place , we discuss the recent International Court of Justice ruling on the Gaza genocide case, which found that Israel is plausibly engaging in genocide in Gaza. We discuss the case and its implications, as well as the colonial backdrop of the international law behind it, with former UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Michael Link, Palestinian human rights attorney, schol...

Plants show signs of communication and of learning. They produce and respond to many of the same neurochemicals as humans, including anesthetics. They share resources with one another, and when under threat, emit signals of warning and of pain.  Today on Speaking Out of Place , we are joined in conversation with eminent Anishinaabe legal theorist John Borrows and philosopher Paco Calvo to discuss...

Today I speak with noted researcher and scholar Ben Franta about two new articles he has written that add to his growing archive of seminal work on climate change.  Ben tells us now the fossil fuel industry paid economists to join scientists in denying the true nature of the fossil fuel industry’s destruction of the environment. Economists argued that even if some science were correct, implementin...

Today on Speaking Out of Place, we talk with artists and activists Isabelle Frémeaux and Jay Jordan about their book, We are ‘Nature’ Defending Itself: Entangling Art, Activism and Autonomous Zones Vagabonds/Pluto/Journal of Aesthetics & Protest, 2021. They tell the story of a 40-year struggle to preserve 4,000 acres of wetlands from being destroyed to make way for an airport, but the book is...

Today we speak with Japanese philosopher Kohei Saito, whose book, Marx in the Anthropocene , sold over half a million copies. In it, Saito shows how late in life Marx came to a richer sense of production when he realized that there was a law above the economic as he had conceived it—it was the law of Nature. Marx saw how disturbing Nature’s metabolism could bring about a “rift” that sent destructi...

For weeks, hundreds of international law and genocide experts have been warning that the situation in Gaza is approaching or has become an active genocide, a conclusion very vociferously rejected by Israel and its allies. Today on Speaking Out of Place, we are joined by state crime expert Penny Green and Holocaust historian Omar Bartov to discuss the applicability of the term genocide, the history...

Today on Speaking Out of Place , we are joined by Frédéric Mégret, Neve Gordon, and Nicola Perugini. As the devastation of Gaza is permitted to continue to unfold, and colonial violence also intensifies in the West Bank, we discuss the role and responsibility of international law in enabling and structuring mass violence, the enduring importance of colonial histories in shaping the colonial presen...

Today’s conversation is perhaps one of the most unusually important ones we have had on the podcast.  Len and Hwei-ru Tsou are two Taiwanese activists whose main commitment, over a period of decades, has been to discover and disclose the involvement of Asian and South Asian anti-fascists in the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War.  Not only do we discover their longstanding friendsh...

Today I talk with Marthie Momberg, whose book 21 Voices from Israel and South Africa: Why the Palestine Struggle Matters , compiles interviews Momberg conducted over many years. Her interviewees are Israelis and South Africans who have followed different paths to become activists for Palestine. The 21 voices speak about this connection, but about many other things as well, including gender, genera...

Today we speak with legendary climate activist Bill McKibben and scholar Caroline Levine. McKibben relates his long struggle to get companies to divest from fossil fuels and for the world in general to act immediately to seriously and substantially address this existential crisis. Levine tells of her efforts to get the giant pension fund, TIAA-CREF, to divest. She also talks about her new book, Th...

We recorded this episode of Speaking Out of Place on Saturday the 18th of November, 2023, as Israel’s massive attack on Gaza passed the 40-day mark. Almost immediately after the deadly October 7 Hamas attack, the image of the child, both Israeli and Palestinian, began to dominate the media’s coverage, and appeals to international humanitarian law were made to “save the children.” Azeezah Kanji and...

This is a special project of Speaking Out of Place , meant to collect and amplify the voices of artists, musicians, and publishers from around the world raising their voices in solidarity with the people of Palestine. We will add to this episode as statements come in.  Here you will hear James Schamus, Ben Ehrenreich, Judith Gurevich, Raja Shehadeh, Ariel Dorfman, Bora Chung, Intan Paramaditha, Na...

On Saturday 4th November, 2023, leading scholar activists, anti-genocide campaigners, human rights defenders, and musicians from 20 countries, as well as Rohingya refugees joined Palestinians from the West Bank as a global online show of support for the 2.3 million residents of Gaza, who are currently under Israel’s genocidal onslaught perpetrated with the unconditional backing of the United State...

On Wednesday, 1 November, the Palestine Festival of Literature held an event in New York titled, "But We Must Speak: On Palestine and the Mandates of Conscience."  On that occasion, Noura Erakat delivered a powerful and stunning speech entitled “In This Moment,” in which she spoke on the genocide in Gaza from her perspective as a teacher, a legal expert, a Palestinian, as a mother, and a...

Today we speak with Palestinian American poet and physician Fady Joudah. We are recording this interview on Thursday, November 2, 2023, as the State of Israel expands its brutal and illegal collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza—an act of genocidal ethnic cleansing. Health authorities in Gaza report more than nine thousand deaths in a population where 60 percent are under the age of 18. The...

How have companies like Uber and Lyft, Instacart and DoorDash and others, changed the nature of work from bad to horrific? Veena Dubal joins me to explain how such companies have exported globally a technique of algorithmic wage discrimination that pays workers based on data to which they have no access. Owners dangle bonuses before workers but take away work from them as they draw close to achiev...

Today we talk with the prolific and wide-ranging scholar Charisse Burden-Stelly about her new book, Black Scare/Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States , just out from the University of Chicago Press. The book shows the emergence and conjuncture of two strands of discourse and practice that were used to suppress Blacks in the United States, beginning in the early twentieth cen...