A thought-provoking look at attempts by scholars, artists and others to bring an understanding of war and mass violence to those places that don't often experience it. Here, a commentary on one attempt to "graph" the violence in Aleppo onto the cities of London and Berlin. What are the ethical issues that arise when attempting to explain violence spatially?
From the post by Derek Gregory, "Aleppo in London and Berlin," from the blog "geographical imaginations: war, space and security":
"A common response to mass violence elsewhere is to imagine its impact transferred to our own lives and places. It’s a problematic device in all sorts of ways. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki US media became obsessed with imagining the impact of a nuclear attack on US cities – though, as I’ve also noted elsewhere, there were multiple ironies in conjuring up ‘Hiroshima, USA’ – and in the wake of the US-led invasion of Iraq there were several artistic projects that mapped the violence in Baghdad onto (for example) Boston, New York or San Francisco..."
"A common response to mass violence elsewhere is to imagine its impact transferred to our own lives and places. It’s a problematic device in all sorts of ways. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki US media became obsessed with imagining the impact of a nuclear attack on US cities – though, as I’ve also noted elsewhere, there were multiple ironies in conjuring up ‘Hiroshima, USA’ – and in the wake of the US-led invasion of Iraq there were several artistic projects that mapped the violence in Baghdad onto (for example) Boston, New York or San Francisco..."
