Theorising the Conjuncture Through Gaza: Urban Destruction and the Intensification of Authoritarian Neoliberalism

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper deploys a Gramscian theorisation of the conjuncture to argue that the contemporary global political economy is becoming constituted through the destruction of Gaza. It contends that Gaza's destruction illuminates the current conjuncture as an intensification of earlier authoritarian neoliberal tendencies. First, Gaza functions as a key testing ground for technologies of containment, policing and destruction—technologies that are central to an increasingly militarised global political economy and are subsequently deployed across other geographies. Second, Gaza operates as a globally significant site of (un)creative destruction, where speculative and utopian plans for the redevelopment of the territory have been rolled out to sustain processes of financialised accumulation. Finally, Gaza plays a central role in legitimising these dynamics through the mainstreaming of a racist and ethnonationalist worldview, reinforced by the failure of the ‘rules‐based’ international order. Gaza should therefore be understood relationally: as emblematic of wider processes unfolding across other geographies, as central to understanding contemporary global capitalism and as a critical locus for thinking about possibilities of resistance and solidarity.

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