Abstract In this introduction, we argue that the political, socio-economic and ethical ramifications of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the complicity of institutional actors require a radical rethinking of the “facts” of colonial genocide as against the narrative of a liberal democratic international order. We offer a broad survey of the extant state of discussions about Palestine in the field at large and then turn to anti-colonial thinkers including the foundational work on the discourse and narratives of colonialism by both Aime Césaire and Edward Said, which informs how we might meet the current moment. As the world’s first livestreamed genocide fades from view and is replaced by growing concerns about the increasing power of big tech-enabled fascism and new wars of empire the introduction and the issue as a whole attempt to intervene in what the field and the Western media have taken for granted, arguing that Palestine offers its own communicative epistemology.
Chakravartty et al. (2026) studied this question.