Critical Inquiry (@criticalinquiry.bsky.social)

"Where is, I ask, the outpouring of sadness, the melancholic rage, and the moral outrage against the suffering of Palestinians amid this growing wave of normalizations?" Read Nouri Gana's "Melancholia and Moralism in the Wake of Gaza" on the CI blog.

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Melancholia and Moralism in the Wake of Gaza Nouri Gana More than three decades ago, in the wake of the AIDS epidemic, Douglas Crimp wrote a well-known essay against melancholia and moralism for October, which he edited from 1977 to 1990. I write this brief essay in defense of both melancholia and moralism in the wake of Gaza. Whereas during the AIDS crisis the outpouring of conventional moral rhetoric about homosexuality amounted to the vilification of the victims of the epidemic, a good dose of scrupulous moralizing in the wake of the gruesome Israeli atrocities in Gaza (through worldwide vocal condemnations of genocide as a moral abomination; vowed commitments to the inherent entitlement of every human being to life, liberty and equality as unalienable rights; vociferous denunciations of brazen dehumanization practices as the profoundest expression of moral depravity; and bold demands that any breach of international law by the law of the jungle be subject to criminal prosecution and severe punishment) would go a long way in awakening the hampered or hibernating conscience of regional and world leaders to the justness of the Palestinian cause. https://critinq.wordpress.com/2026/01/09/melancholia-and-moralism-in-the-wake-of-gaza/