Defiant Dakota Access Pipeline water protectors faced-off with various law enforcement agencies on Wednesday, February 22, 2017, the day the camp was slated to be raided. Michael Nigro/PA Images. All rights reserved.
On Saturday the 4th November, the Berliner Gazette‘s Friendly Fire (https://berlinergazette.de/friendly-fire/) conference asked: how is citizenship changing in war times? Two prolific speakers looked for answers: the geographer Deborah Cowen, whose books "War, Citizenship, Territory" and "The Deadly Life of Logistics" explore the politics of violence in the global age, and the historian Felicity Scott, whose Silicon Valley research sheds new light on the emergence of the military-entertainment complex. Closing the three-day conference, their talks reflected the crises of citizenship in the context of states of exception. In the following interview Deborah Cowen reflects on the role of logistics for emergent forms power and counter-power.
Krystian Woznicki (KW): The post-'89-logic of war still prevails today, characterized by ever-shifting and gradually increasing states of exception. Could you briefly explain this logic of war and elucidate what it means to introduce critical geography into the analysis of the ubiquity and normality of war?
