MESA Book Awards
Lisa Bhungalia
University of Wisconsin - Madison
2024 Albert Hourani Book Award Winner
Lisa Bhungalia
Elastic Empire: Refashioning War through Aid in Palestine
Stanford University Press
Brilliantly written, theoretically sophisticated, and meticulously researched, Elastic Empire: Refashioning War through Aid in Palestine invites us to rethink the breadth and scope of American imperial sovereignty along with the centrality of Palestine to the post-2001 US security state. Carefully tracking the historical development and expansion of counterterrorism laws and discourses, Lisa Bhungalia demonstrates how new post-9/11 architecture of the security state becomes built around Palestine, where Apartheid Israel functioned as a crucial interlocutor in articulating these new discourses and legal practices. Elastic Empire is a powerful and highly original contribution that allows us to understand the legal structures and mechanisms that extend and normalize US imperial sovereignty far beyond its apparent reach into the everyday Palestinians struggling for liberation under Israeli occupation and Zionist settler colonialism. The tremendous relevance of this analysis cannot be overstated, especially in understanding the tragic genocide that is taking place in Gaza as we speak.