SPACES OF DANGER by Heather Merrill (Editor), Lisa M. Hoffman (Editor) ( 9780820348766 )

Item Details

Title:

SPACES OF DANGER
CULTURE AND POWER IN THE EVERYDAY

By:

Heather Merrill (Editor), Lisa M. Hoffman (Editor)

Format:

Hardback

List price:	£96.95
Our price:	£96.95

ISBN 10:

0820348767

ISBN 13:

9780820348766

Availability:

Usually dispatched within 1-3 weeks.

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Stock:

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Publisher:

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA PRESS

Pub. date:

1 December, 2015

Series:

Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation

Pages:

320

Description:

"On July 22, 2011 a 32 year old far right activist clothed as a police officer opened fire on a Labor Party youth camp on Utoya Island in Norway, slaughtering 69 people and maiming many more. The vast majority of the victims were between 14 and 19 years of age. He also placed bombs in a government building in Oslo, killing 8 and wounding others. In a 1,500 page manifesto in English posted on the internet hours before the massacres in which he referred to himself as a "Marxist hunter," he declared "preemptive war," targeting "Cultural Marxists" who propagate a "multiculturalist," ideology to which he attributed the decay of Western European and American "civilization and culture" and the promotion of a pro-Islamic "Eurabia." What is compelling about this story is less what the content of the killer's easily downloadable manuscript reveals about far right thinking, than how the significance of the event was concealed and silenced as it was interpreted for the public by journalists and political figures. By characterizing Breivik as an evil 'aberration' and abstracting his acts from the social and political context in which they took place, persuasive political arbiters and media reproduced what Allan Pred referred to as "situated ignorance," keeping people from attaining a more accurate knowledge and understanding of the events"--

Synopsis:

These twelve original essays by geographers and anthropologists offer a deep critical understanding of Allan Pred's pathbreaking and eclectic cultural Marxist approach, with a focus on his concept of "situated ignorance": the production and reproduction of power and inequality by regimes of truth through strategically deployedmisinformation, diversions, and silences. As the essays expose the cultural and material circumstances in which situated ignorance persists, they also add a previously underexplored spatial dimension to Walter Benjamin's idea of "moments of danger." The volume invokes the aftermath of the July 2011 attacks by far-right activistAnders Breivik in Norway, who ambushed a Labor Party youth gathering and bombed a government building, killing and injuring many. Breivik had publicly and forthrightly declared war against an array of liberal attitudes he saw threatening Western civilization. However, as politicians and journalists interpreted these events for mass consumption, a narrative quickly emerged that painted Breivik as a lone madman and steered the discourse away from analysis of theresurgent right-wing racisms and nationalisms in which he was immersed.The Breivik case is merely one of the most visible recent examples, say editors Heather Merrill and Lisa Hoffman, of the unchallenged production of knowledge in the public sphere. In essays that range widely in topic and setting-for example, brownfield development in China, a Holocaust memorial in Germany, an art gallery exhibit in South Africa-this volume peels back layers of "situated practices and their associated meaning and power relations." Spaces of Danger offers analytical and conceptual tools of a Predian approach to interrogate the taken-for-granted and make visible and legible that which is silenced.

Illustrations:

29 black & white photographs, 2 diagrams

Publication:

Imprint:

University of Georgia Press

Returns:

Returnable

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