'Walling' Baghdad: Spatial dissonance and tactics of war. Issue 1 (1st March 2013)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Mehta, Brinda J.
• Is Part Of: International journal of contemporary Iraqi studies. Volume 7:Issue 1(2013)
• Page Start: 55
• Page End: 69
• Publication Date: 2013-03-01
• Subjects: Iraq -- Periodicals; 956.705
• DOI: 10.1386/ijcis.7.1.55_1
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1751-2867

Abstract

This article examines the phenomenon of 'walling' in Baghdad. I demonstrate how barrier walls and internal borders represent a politicized manifestation of what Anibal Quijano calls the 'coloniality of power' (Quijano 2000: 533) a highly racialized and power-inflected Euro-centered discourse of Otherness destined to create distinctions between Euro-American 'civilization' and 'third world backwardness'. At the same time, I will also show how Iraqi writers and poets create resisting narratives that contest the walls of coloniality in an anti-occupation poetics. These writers also contest the sectarian and gender violence that results from physical and symbolic territorial demarcations destined to create a fragmented city and a violated national imaginary.