Slow Urbicide: A New Materialist Account of Political Violence in Palestine

The book presents a new materialist understanding of acts of deliberate destruction of the built environment and, specifically, of the politics of aggressive spatial containment and regularization of urbanity employed within the conflict in Israel/Palestine. Building on recent scholarship on slow violence and urbicidal policies, it discusses the different dimensions of the violence against the urban space, as well as exposes the complex material-semiotic character of the urban territory and of its destruction. By referring to the concepts of ＂ethno-territoriality＂ and ＂the right to the city,＂ the book aims to generate an enhanced understanding of problems situated at the overlap of urban studies and investigations of state-sponsored violence, focusing specifically on issues related to urban warfare.

Adopting a new materialist perspective, the book is a searing examination of political violence in our times. The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of political science, international relations, cultural studies, and urban studies. It will also appeal to NGO professionals and activists across the world.

Dorota Golańska is Associate Professor (Cultural Studies and Religion) at the Department of Cultural Research, University of Lodz, Poland. She has degrees in Cultural Studies, Literary Studies, and International Studies. Her research interests include feminist approaches to political violence and studies of collective memory, especially in relation to traumatic experiences and their representation in culture. She also works on such issues as creative strategies of resistance as well as intersections of memory, art, and activism. In her work she uses philosophical and methodological approaches related to new materialism and posthumanism. Since January 2021 she has served as a Principal Investigator in the project Political Dimension of Violence Against Cities: Urbicide in Palestine--A Case Study, funded by the National Science Centre in Poland under grant number UMO-2020/37/B/HS5/00837.