List of Figures xi
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xvi
1 The Colonial Present 1
Foucault’s Laughter 1
The Present Tense 5
2 Architectures of Enmity 17
Imaginative Geographies 17
“Why do they hate us?” 20
September 11 24
3 “The Land where Red Tulips Grew” 30
Great Games 30
Uncivil Wars and Transnational Terrorism 36
The Sorcerer’s Apprentices 44
4 “Civilization” and “Barbarism” 47
The Visible and the Invisible 47
Territorialization, Targets, and Technoculture 49
Deadly Messengers 56
Spaces of the Exception 62
Deconstruction 72
5 Barbed Boundaries 76
America’s Israel 76
Diaspora, Dispossession, and Disaster 78
Occupation, Coercion, and Colonization 89
Compliant Cartographies 95
Camp David and Goliath 102
6 Defiled Cities 107
Ground Zeros 107
Besieging Cartographies 117
Identities and Oppositions 138
7 The Tyranny of Strangers 144
“Not as conquerors or enemies . . .” 145
Coups and Conflicts 151
Desert Storms and Urban Nightmares 156
8 Boundless War 180
Black September 180
Killing Grounds 197
The Cutting-Room War 214
9 Gravity’s Rainbows 248
Connective Dissonance 248
The Colonial Present and Cultures of Travel 256
Pandora’s Spaces 258
Notes 263
Guide to Further Reading 352
Index 359
Derek Gregory is Distinguished University Scholar and Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
“This is a great book. 'Gregory has written a book entwining global
geography with social danger. The Colonial Present takes us through
the contemporary wars in Afghanistan, the Palestinian territories
and Iraq as connected projects of imperial ambition... The Colonial
Present is a refreshingly angry book, with all the geographical and
historical scholarship to buttress its indictment of American,
Israeli and British behavior around the world. It is exquisitely
written... This book's screaming truths are must-read heresy."
Neil Smith, Los Angeles Times
"An impassioned plea by one of the world’s most eminent geographers
to displace the distorted imaginative geographies that have so
corrupted our representations of the Islamic world with a
geographical imagination that enlarges and enhances our
understandings. The long historical geography of the colonial
encounter in the Middle East is here laid bare in all its twisted
detail in order to comprehend the fractures underpinning
contemporary political impasses in Palestine, Afghanistan, and
Iraq. The Colonial Present is a ‘must read’ for all those concerned
for peace and justice in our time.”
David Harvey, author of The New Imperialism
"The originality and profundity of Derek Gregory's The Colonial
Present puts it at the top of my list."
Richard Falk, Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International
Law and Practice at Princeton; author most recently of The Great
Terror War (2003)
“Brilliantly condenses the multiple geographies of colonialism ...
so that their contemporary entanglements with the flexings of
modern imperial power crackle with intensity. Using September 11
2001 as a political fulcrum, Gregory traces the searing effects of
fluid but durable cartographies of violence in the intersecting
wars in Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iraq.”
Cindi Katz, Graduate Centre, CityUniversity of New York
“Powerfully and persuasively argued. Passionately written. A
daring, brilliant analysis … Quite simply the most significant book
written by a geographer in some time.”
Allan Pred, University of California, Berkeley
“The Colonial Present marshals concepts of imaginative geography
and insight from the spatialisation of cultural and social theory
developed in the past thirty years … An impassioned but
theoretically rich critique of the ‘war on terror’ and the wider
Zeitgeist that it shapes and embodies … Crucially, the book is a
compelling critique of and American Empire … This is a significant
book … Vintage Gregory again; enticing and provoking his audience …
There is no doubting that The Colonial Present sets both standards
and agendas.”
Environment and Planning D
"The Colonial Present is an important and politiclly engaged
book."
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