An innovative critique of the way historians and political scientists study war. How can we resist a nation-state vision of the globe? What is needed to "unmap" the familiar world? In Violent Cartographies, Michael J. Shapiro considers these questions, exploring the significance of war in contemporary society and its connections to the geographical imaginary. Employing an ethnographic perspective, Shapiro uses whiplash reversals and bizarre juxtapositions to jolt readers out of conventional thinking about international relations and security studies. Considering the ideas of thinkers ranging from yon Clausewitz to Virilio, from Derrida to DeLillo, Shapiro distances readers from familiar political and strategic accounts of war and its causes. Shapiro uses literary and film analyses to elucidate his themes. For example, he considers such cultural artifacts as U.S. Marine recruiting television commercials, American war movies, and General Schwarzkopf's autobiography, elaborating how a certain image of American masculinity is played out in the military imaginary and in the media. Other topics are Melville's The Confidence Man, Bunuel's film That Obscure Object of Desire, and a comparison of the U.S. invasion of Grenada to an Aztec "flower war". Throughout, Shapiro draws attention to the violence of the colonial encounters through which many modern nation-states were formed, and ultimately suggests possible directions for an ethics of minimal violence in the encounter with others. The overall effect is of a complex, cumulative, and layered analysis of the historical and moral conditions of the current use of violence in the conduct of international relations. A fascinating andchallenging work, Violent Cartographies will interest anyone concerned with the connections between war and culture.

"In 1942, the federal government expelled more than 22,000 Japanese Canadians from their homes in British Columbia. From 1942 to 1949, they were dispossessed, sent to incarceration sites, and dispersed across Canada. Over 4,000 were deported to Japan. Cartographies of Violence analyses the effects of these processes for some Japanese Canadian women. Using critical race, feminist, anti-colonial, and cultural geographic theory, Mona Oikawa deconstructs prevalent images, stereotypes, and language used to describe the 'internment' in ways that masks its inherent violence. Through interviews with women survivors and their daughters, Oikawa analyses recurring themes of racism and resistance, as well as the struggle to communicate what happened. Disturbing and provocative, Cartographies of Violence explores women's memories in order to map the effects of forced displacements, incarcerations, and the separations of family, friends, and communities"--Publisher's website.

In 1942, the federal government expelled more than 22,000 Japanese Canadians from their homes in British Columbia. From 1942 to 1949, they were dispossessed, sent to incarceration sites, and dispersed across Canada. Over 4,000 were deported to Japan. Cartographies of Violence analyses the effects of these processes for some Japanese Canadian women. Using critical race, feminist, anti-colonial, and cultural geographic theory, Mona Oikawa deconstructs prevalent images, stereotypes, and language used to describe the 'Internment' in ways that masks its inherent violence. Through interviews with women survivors and their daughters, Oikawa analyses recurring themes of racism and resistance, as well as the struggle to communicate what happened. Disturbing and provocative, Cartographies of Violence explores women's memories in order to map the effects of forced displacements, incarcerations, and the separations of family, friends, and communities.

An innovative critique of the way historians and political scientists study war. How can we resist a nation-state vision of the globe? What is needed to "unmap" the familiar world? In Violent Cartographies, Michael J. Shapiro considers these questions, exploring the significance of war in contemporary society and its connections to the geographical imaginary. Employing an ethnographic perspective, Shapiro uses whiplash reversals and bizarre juxtapositions to jolt readers out of conventional thinking about international relations and security studies. Considering the ideas of thinkers ranging from yon Clausewitz to Virilio, from Derrida to DeLillo, Shapiro distances readers from familiar political and strategic accounts of war and its causes. Shapiro uses literary and film analyses to elucidate his themes. For example, he considers such cultural artifacts as U.S. Marine recruiting television commercials, American war movies, and General Schwarzkopf's autobiography, elaborating how a certain image of American masculinity is played out in the military imaginary and in the media. Other topics are Melville's The Confidence Man, Bunuel's film That Obscure Object of Desire, and a comparison of the U.S. invasion of Grenada to an Aztec "flower war". Throughout, Shapiro draws attention to the violence of the colonial encounters through which many modern nation-states were formed, and ultimately suggests possible directions for an ethics of minimal violence in the encounter with others. The overall effect is of a complex, cumulative, and layered analysis of the historical and moral conditions of the current use of violence in the conduct of international relations. A fascinating andchallenging work, Violent Cartographies will interest anyone concerned with the connections between war and culture.

This edited volume seeks to propose and examine different, though related, critical responses to modern cultures of war among other cultural practices of statecraft. Taken together, these essays present a space of creative engagement with the political and draw on a broad range of cultural contexts and genres of expressions to provoke the thinking that exceeds the conventional stories and practices of international relations. In contrast to a macropolitical focus on state policy and inter-state hostilities, the contributors to this volume treat the micropolitics of violence and dissensus that occur below [besides and against] the level and gaze that comprehends official map-making, policy-making and implementation practices. At a minimum, the counter-narratives presented in these essays disturb the functions, identities, and positions assigned by the nation-state, thereby multiplying relations between bodies, the worlds where they live, and the ways in which they are ‘equipped’ for fitting in them. Contributions deploy feature films, literature, photography, architecture to think the political in ways that offer glimpses of realities that are fugitive within existing perspectives. Bringing together a wide range of theorists from a host of geographical, cultural and theoretical contexts, this work explores the different ways in which an aesthetic treatment of world politics can contribute to an ethics of encounter predicated on minimal violence in encounters with people with different practices of identity. This work provides a significant contribution to the field of international theory, encouraging us to rethink politics and ethics in the world today.

This work examines violence in the age of the terror wars with an eye toward the technologies of governance that create, facilitate, and circulate that violence. In performing a rhetorical cartography that explores the rise of the US armed drone program as well as moments of resistive violence that occurred during the Arab Spring directed at generating a counter-hegemony by Muslim populations, the author argues that the problem of the global terror wars is best addressed by a rhetorical understanding of the ways that governments, as well as individual subjects, turn to violence as a response to, or product of, the post September 11th terror society. When political examinations of terrorism are facilitated through understandings of discourse, clearer maps emerge of how violence functions to offer mechanisms by which governing bodies, and their subjects, evaluate the success or failure of the “War on Terror.” This book will be of interest to public policymakers and informed general readers as well as students and scholars in the fields of rhetoric, political theory, critical geography, US foreign relations/policy, war and peace studies, and cultural studies.