The Kent Interdisciplinary Centre for Spatial Studies, working in partnership with the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), is delighted to host the KISS Annual Lecture 2019. This year’s lecture, which is entitled The Spaces of Modern War, will be delivered by world renowned human geographer, Derek Gregory, Peter Wall Distinguished Professor at the University of British Columbia, a distinguished speaker and topic in the launch year of the new BSc Programme in Human Geography.
The Spaces of Modern War – Professor Derek Gregory
14th March, 18.00 – Templeman Lecture Theatre, Canterbury campus
Since the disintegration of ‘the battlefield’ that was inaugurated by the aerial violence of the First World War, war zones have had a complex and dispersed geography and depend on intricate performances of space. In this presentation, Professor Gregory focuses on three of them. First, the space of the target, paying close attention to the production of a target space, the networks within which targets are located, and the dispersed geography of the ‘kill-chain’. Second, and closely connected, the space of the enemy: the constitution of the enemy as ‘other’ (often a racialised Other), the attempt to erase the body from the battlefield and the use of social media to advance a ‘post-trust’ version of military and paramilitary violence. Third, the space of exception: the uneven geographies of international law, the incorporation of military lawyers and the role of law in legitimising military violence. All three dimensions involve an artful and often deceptive dialectic between distance and intimacy. Examples will be drawn from the First and Second World Wars, and from contemporary conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Gaza.
Professor Derek Gregory, from the University of British Columbia, Canada, is interested in the spatial modalities of late modern war, where military violence, occupation and peace bleed into one another. Professor Gregory’s focus for these investigations is the Middle East, specifically Iraq and Israel/Palestine, but he also considers Afghanistan/Pakistan, East Africa and the geography of the global war prison.
The event is free and open to all: please register via our EventBrite page.