Bases, Militarization, and Spaces of Containment

This working group seeks to think through specific techniques of knowledge production at work around US military bases/facilities, especially those that enable "spaces of containment" and "spaces of exception" to be maintained and sustained through the discourse of liberalism.  The members of this group will read a list of texts and articles (see below) influenced by the works of Giorgio Agamben (1998) and those who have expanded on his concept of the "the camp" in order to extrapolate a better feminist model which addresses the inextricable links between race and gender that all too easily erased in thinking through official rhetoric and polices around "national security" and bases.  We are a group of seasoned activists, scholars, and students who hope to ultimately rethink discursive theoretical models that are used by scholars and policy makers which sometimes tends to reify the silencing of certain racialized and gendered bodies in and around military facilities.  We hope that our own grounded experiences as activists will be put into tension with the readings and that we can explore and offer a stronger cartography to explore this subject