This panel examines the shifting infrastructures of resistance and repression that define solidarity from Palestine to South Africa, focusing on legal and institutional frameworks, social and material infrastructures, and social justice archives.
These frameworks and infrastructures are subject to particular dynamics in a digital context which the panel will explore. As international legal institutions such as the ICC and ICJ intervene in unprecedented ways, the question is raised how these shifts recalibrate the global framing of Palestinian liberation – legitimizing perspectives from the Global South while also reinforcing imperial modes of governance. Concurrently, other vital global institutions, including universities, have become key battlegrounds where students and faculty engaged in Palestine solidarity efforts face increasing policing, surveillance, and repression. From bureaucratic restrictions and disciplinary actions to targeted harassment, the infrastructures of repression extend beyond state mechanisms, infiltrating educational spaces that have historically been sites of radical critique.
‘Resistant Energy’, a forthcoming booklet published by the Institute for Technology in the Public Interest (TITiPI), forms the starting point of this event. The booklet compiles a year-long investigation into archival visuals of infrastructure and apartheid – from South Africa to Palestine – exploring the material and symbolic energies that sustain resistance. The discussion explores the social and digital infrastructures that resist imperial forms of governance and institutional repression, mobilizing networks of solidarity and counter-surveillance. The aim of this event is to situate contemporary struggles within longer histories of decolonial resistance, tracing how infrastructures of power are both dismantled and repurposed in the fight for
justice.