by Hamid Dabashi
Haymarket Books
9/30/2025, paperback
SKU: 9798888904503
Written during a genocide, After Savagery reveals the ethical bankruptcy of "Western philosophy" and how it undergirds the erasure of the colonized.
The death toll in Gaza continues to rise―a cold, lifeless number representing entire communities crushed under the weight of settler colonialism.
What remains of the theories we use to understand our world? With lyrical and lucid fury, Hamid Dabashi exposes the racist roots of Western philosophy, demanding that readers overcome its pernicious phantom of relevance. Rather than perceiving "the West" as giving carte blanche to Israel, Dabashi insists that Israel must be understood as its quintessence.
If Israel is the West and the West is Israel, then Palestine is the world and the world is Palestine. Holding to glimmers from revolutionary works of literature and film, Dabashi argues, in grief and love, that the wretched of the earth need poetry after barbarism-and that Palestine is the site of a liberated imagination.
Reviews:
"This is a book of witness and a book of strategy disguised as philosophy. It will be shelved under Middle East Studies; it belongs on your desk, annotated, next to your news feed. Dabashi does not ask you to admire his argument. He asks you to risk something for it." -Middle East Eye
" After Savagery is a fountain of arguments and evidence that goes beyond and gives full meaning to the critiques of 'the West and the rest', and of supporters of Israel's settler colonial erasure against the Palestinian people. Palestine is a revealer-Dabashi exposes the irredeemable racism behind the posture of universalism adopted by the Global Minority (the so-called 'West'), but he also shows the path toward collective liberation from apartheid and its genocidal consequences. The genocide in Palestine has pushed us toward a critical juncture. Suspended between abyss and hope, we have the choice to preserve what remains of humanity and rebuild Gaza and the rest of Palestine from the ashes of this monstrosity." - Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories
"Dabashi's profound reflections are intertwined with updates from Israel's genocide in Gaza, spelling both urgency in ending the obliteration of Palestinians, and the necessity of understanding what Israel and Zionism mean, what they reflect and embody, which is the entire Western spectrum of colonial brutality." -Middle East Monitor
About the Author:
Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Among Dabashi's recent books are On Edward Said: Remembrance of Things Past, The End of Two Illusions: Islam after the West, and Iran in Revolt: Revolutionary Aspirations in a Post-Democratic World.