Camera, Body and Genome: An Ecosocial and Technofeminist Analysis of Villar’sGaza Medic and Alaqad’s The Eyes of Gaza

Abstract

This research examines the intersection of medicine, technology, and the humanities in contemporary war, highlighting how political violence is experienced, mediated, and embodied in Gaza. Rather than treating war solely as a military or political event, the study views it as a multifaceted issue encompassing medical, technological, and ethical aspects. It highlights how injured people, failing healthcare systems, and different ways of beholding become key to comprehending its influence. This study uses two memoirs for analysis: Richard Villar’s Gaza Medic, a doctor’s memoir recording medical practices under blockade, and PlestiaAlaqad’sThe Eyes of Gaza, a Palestinian journalist’s chronicles of gendered and emotive ways of perception in wartime. These works integrate medical occurrences, technologies, and individual testimonies, and foreground a counter discourse to prevalent health, media, and humanitarian discourses. This research employs the Ecosocial lens by Nancy Krieger to express how structured scarcity, degradation of the ecosystem, and conflict-related atrocities are biologically and psychologically epitomized as trauma(s), illnesses, and damages. To examine the role of technologies in creating visibility stratifications and agency, this study uses Judy Wajcman’s technofeminism. The results prove that the Israel-Palestine war works as a community-based turbulence in which bodies accumulate violence gradually, while digital and medical technology instantaneously authorize medical and ethical care, and mediate international discernment.