NEMLA 2019 SEMINAR: CONTEMPORARY EPISTEMOLOGIES OF MILITARIZATION IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH
Washington, DC
Event: כנס האגודה הצפונית לשפות מודרנית NeMLA
Event Date: 2019-03-21 to 2019-03-24
Abstract Due: 2018-09-23
A few months ago, an Afro-Brazilian councilwoman investigating police brutality in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas was gunned down. Ballistics showed a match for the weapons used by military police. After a failed military coup in Turkey in 2016, thousands participated in overnight “Democracy Watches,” turning public squares into sites of mutual surveillance. And, in the US, nearly two decades after 9/11, the logic of the “war on terror” has spilled over into “wars” on drugs, illegal immigration, and inner-city violence.
Though unique, these local forms of militarization are linked by the deployment of military and intelligence capabilities to regulate civic relations. The convergence of the military and civic realms demands a critical reappraisal of the definition, causes, practices, and consequences of militarization. Such an analysis must also take into account both unconventional agents (such as militias and mercenaries), as well as geographic spaces delinked from the nation-state (such as the Mediterranean Sea and the Western Sahara). Finally, it requires a closer look at the mutual imbrication of the global North and South.
We welcome papers exploring film, photography, literature and other forms of media to answer questions such as:
in what forms does militarization take place across the globe today? How do they suggest a nexus between the so-called global North and South, or otherwise impact our understanding of borders, belonging, and citizenship? In what ways do the state and its public collaborate in militarization? What role do non-state actors play in this trend?
Renee M Ragin and Giulia Ricco