Progressive Geographies

Those attending the AAG in Chicago are very welcome at any or all of the seven sessions on carceral geography that will span the first and second days of the conference.

Final details are:

1141 Carceral Geographies I: Theorisations of Confinement

Tuesday 8:00 AM – 9:40 AM in New Orleans, Hyatt, West Tower, Gold Level

8:00 AM   *Christophe Mincke – Prison: Legitimacy Through Mobility?

8:20 AM   *Elizabeth A. Brown – Care, carceral geographies, and the reconfiguration of mass incarceration

8:40 AM   *Kimberley Peters, Jennifer Turner – ‘Unlock the volume’: bringing height and depth to carceral mobilities

9:00 AM   *Stephanie Figgins – Between the Sheets of the U.S. Deportation Regime

9:20 AM   Discussant: Nick Gill

1241 Carceral Geographies II: Prison Architecture and Design

Tuesday 10:00 AM – 11:40 AM in New Orleans, Hyatt, West Tower, Gold Level

10:00 AM   *Gideon Boie, Fie Vandamme – Prison Up Close: subject positions in the…

Thanks to Stuart Elden and Marie-Eve Morin for simultaneously sending me along the Research in Phenomenologyreview (my library for some odd reason–an odd reason [making sure that libraries get the print version?] shared by previously libraries for my universities–embargoes RIP for a year online). As Stuart Elden noted, it is the best of reviews out there on the Black Notebooks and indeed a good piece of writing in itself. (Writing an insightful review of a short book is one thing; writing one on volumes taking thousands of pages that has already been the subject of quite a few polemics is another. I’ve barely had the energy–who wants to think alongside that?–to look through those volume’s pages stacked in the corner of my office, let alone the energy to make sense of them to any audience.) Krell’s review is often repetitive but his point is that this matches…

It’s not easy to keep track of the intensifying civil war/proxy war in Yemen, but the New York Times has published a series of maps – including the one below – that sketch out some of the contours of violence.

Not surprisingly, the Saudi-led air strikes (‘Operation Decisive Storm’ – really) have been ineffective in halting the advance of the Houthis; in fact, they may be counterproductive.  Three days ago senior United Nations officials warned that the loss of civilian lives and the repeated attacks on civilian infrastructure may constitute grave violations of international law, and there are now reports that US officials are also becoming alarmed at the mounting toll of civilian casualties.

The United States is, of course, intimately involved in the air campaign.  According to the Los Angeles Times:

Pentagon officials, who pride themselves on the care they take to avoid civilian casualties, have watched with…

For those of us headed to AAG in Chicago next week, this mini-conference, “Prisons, Racism, Empire, Militarism,” organized by Lindsey Dillon, Javier Arbona, and Jenna Lloyd may be of interest. Presenters will include “Inhabiting Containment” keynote speaker Rashad Shabazz, as well as Caren Kaplan, Jeremy Crampton, Ian Shaw, and SRGSTEL member Andrea Miller:

PREM AT THE #AAG2015 • Prisons, Racism, Empire, Militarism • Chicago, IL April 2015

In advance of the NATO Summit in Chicago in 2012, artists Patrick Lichty and Mark Skwarek tested a virtual reality “love bomber” over Bushwick. The superimposition of a drone dropping 8-pixel hearts over city spaces unsettles war-making as a distant, abstract operation and raises a host of questions about the collective and affective targets of violence. This series of sessions aims to provide the space to draw connections among technologies and practices of war-making, imperialism and settler colonialism, carceral institutions and practices, and…