Category: Hilary 2026
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“Houses are murdered just as their inhabitants are killed and the memories of things are slaughtered, wood, stones, glass, iron, mortar – scattered like human limbs. And cotton silk, linen, notebooks, books – all torn apart like the unspoken words of people who did not have the time to say them.” – “The House Murdered”,…
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From Santiago to São Paulo, Bogotá to Buenos Aires, some of the world’s largest demonstrations in support of Gaza have taken place thousands of kilometres from Palestine. Latin American governments, activists, and prominent cultural figures have emerged as some of the most vocal critics of Israel’s military campaign – a stance often dismissed as ideological…
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‘What matters are the needs which art answers.’ – John Berger Fathi Ghaben (1947-2024) was a Palestinian painter whose work played a dual role: at once witness to the struggles of his life in Gaza and a rallying call to oppose this oppression. Both are acts of resistance. So too is the survival of his…
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Spring, 1951. A young boy called Edward was expelled from Victoria College, a prestigious English boarding school in Alexandria, for troublemaking. Whatever commotion led to his expulsion, it could not have been as significant as the furore caused by this boy some three decades later. Few could have predicted that this privileged boy would go…
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Defining Highly Repressive Environments Davenport defines political repression as the state’s use of physical sanctions to deter ‘specific activities and/or beliefs perceived to be challenging to government personnel, practices or institutions.’[1] This helps distinguish highly repressive states from others. If we understand that political repression is an inherent feature of all states, it is inappropriate to…
The Oxford Arabist 