Beyond genocide: colonial modernity and the destruction of the ‘infrastructures of existence’ in Gaza

Genocide is commonly approached as an exceptional crime defined by episodes of mass killing, yet such understandings remain inadequate for grasping how colonial modernity organises the systematic destruction of collective existence. Dominant approaches to genocide have historically been shaped by Eurocentric legalism and Holocaust-centred paradigms, which have constrained analysis to questions of intent and eventfulness. As a result, they have struggled to apprehend forms of violence that unfold through racialised governance, infrastructure, and the gradual erosion of the conditions that sustain collective life over time, particularly in settler-colonial contexts. The article advances the concept of ‘infrastructures of existence’ to capture the material, social, symbolic and political systems through which racialised populations reproduce themselves across generations. From this perspective, genocide is understood as a cumulative process that operates through coordinated assaults on these infrastructures rather than solely through direct killing. Four interrelated vectors are identified: ontological denial, through which racialised groups are positioned outside the moral boundaries of humanity; reproductive destruction, which undermines intergenerational continuity; epistemic erasure, which targets knowledge systems and testimonial authority; and necropolitical domination, which governs racialised populations through managed unlivability. The argument is developed through an analysis of Gaza, approached as a paradigmatic site of contemporary colonial violence. The genocide since October 2023 is situated within a longue durée of settler-colonial harm that Palestinians describe as an ongoing Nakba, which aims at the systematic dismantling of collective existence.