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Jaffa: Fragments from a Continuous Modernity explores the unrealised 1946–48 master plan for Jaffa, the last attempt by the city’s Palestinian mayor to present a ‘modern’ vision to the British Mandate authorities, aimed at preventing the city’s occupation. Srouji revives this phantom plan not out of nostalgia, but as a critical reflection on the assumed relationship between modernity and freedom. She uncovers the irony that, by embracing the coloniser’s definition of ‘modernity’, the plan inherently contained the logic of its own erasure, challenging the assumption that marginalised peoples must perform civilisation to exist. In a context where architecture often plays a role in systems of violence, Srouji’s work stands as a powerful reminder of its potential as a tool for memory, a vessel for the spirit and a foundation for liberation.