[Public Lecture] Counter Forensics in Palestine and the Treachery of Images

This talk examines the role of images in Palestine’s ongoing Nakba and its history of settler colonialism. Changes in the classical forensic denial and the massive scale of destruction that has constituted the global orchestra of genocide in Palestine across the political lines since October 2023 has made the terrain of investigation different, and to some extent, even unprecedented. At the same time, the proliferation of images from Palestinian journalists and civilians documenting their own genocide of course has also meant that monopoly over the means of evidence production no longer remains with the ‘master’. In the case of the genocide in Gaza the redaction or obscuring of the crime simply has not played out in the same manner. This talk examines the role of counter-forensic practice in Palestine in the past decade. With reference to grounded projects and investigations in the territory, the talk examines the ways in which the counter-forensic modus is geared towards confronting sovereign denial and asks: what are the demands of this practice when there is no longer a ‘secrecy’ to confront?