Archiving Gaza in the Present
The Power of Bearing Witness at a Time of War and Destruction
Edited by Dina Matar and Venetia Porter
About the Book
Conflict does more than destroy physical spaces – it extinguishes lives, erases histories and disrupts the collective memory of entire communities. In Gaza, where genocide has brought unimaginable suffering, the destruction of cultural heritage adds another dimension of loss. Tangible and intangible legacies – the sites, artifacts and stories that anchor identity – are being destroyed alongside the people who create and preserve them. In such a context, the act of archiving becomes vital, a way to resist erasure and to preserve memory amid destruction.
Archiving Gaza in the Present addresses this urgent crisis. Edited by Venetia Porter and Dina Matar, this interdisciplinary collection gathers voices from diverse fields – law, art, archaeology, journalism, architecture and more – who document the degradation of Gaza’s rich cultural landscape and explore the ways in which we can preserve its memory and heritage. In essays, interviews, poems and visual materials, including more than one hundred photographs, maps and artworks, this invaluable collection emphasises the legal, emotional and cultural stakes of the preservation of Gaza and its culture.
Archiving Gaza in the Present is a crucial resource for understanding the intersections of war, heritage and identity, and a call to action for intervention and preservation.
About the Contributors
Dina Matar is Professor of Political Communication and Arab Media at the Centre for Global Media and Communication at SOAS, University of London. She is the chair of the Centre for Palestine Studies at SOAS, and the founding editor of the Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication. Matar is the author of What it means to be Palestinian: Stories of Palestinian Peoplehood and the co-editor of Narrating Conflict in the Middle East: Discourse, Image and Communications Practices in Lebanon and Palestine (with Zahera Harb).
Venetia Porter is an Honorary Research Fellow at The Courtauld Institute of Art and at The British Museum. She was formerly Senior Curator for Islamic and Contemporary Middle East art at The British Museum and the lead curator for the Albukhary Foundation Gallery of the Islamic World, which opened 2018. Her publications include Artists Making Books: Poetry to Politics, Reflections, Contemporary Art of the Middle East and North Africa (with Natasha Morris and Charles Tripp), Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam (ed.) and Word into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East.
