Writing in the Time of Mass Murder

Abstract

Unbearable scenes of cruelty and human suffering challenge the tendency of a section of academics to overlook the reality of everyday life and to remain detached from the wider world that they are supposed to serve intellectually. The recent episode of prolonged genocidal killings of Palestinians by Israeli forces has brought this question again to the fore. Given the ongoing human tragedy in Gaza, in this essay I seek to advance the ethos of writerly commitment to promoting equity and justice, drawing especially on the works of Edward Said and Ngugi wa Thiong’o.