TY - JOUR
T1 - The meaning of light: seeing and being on the battlefield
AU - Thornton, Pip
PY - 2015/7/30
Y1 - 2015/7/30
N2 - On the battlefield, light and dark mean much more than the (dis)ability to see. While the darkness of night-time can be used as a tactic, providing cover for personal and territorial defence and attack, it also affects and secures bodies and the spaces they inhabit in other more immediate and intimate ways, recalibrating senses and redefining distance. Light too can spell both safety and danger on the battlefield, disciplining and controlling its occupants with often asymmetrical power-plays of affect and aggression. Using autoethnographic examples of experiences in Iraq in 2003 (based on the poem below), this article sets out to challenge traditional binaries of light/dark, good/bad and to question the elemental, cultural and technological sovereignty of light and vision in modern battlespaces.
AB - On the battlefield, light and dark mean much more than the (dis)ability to see. While the darkness of night-time can be used as a tactic, providing cover for personal and territorial defence and attack, it also affects and secures bodies and the spaces they inhabit in other more immediate and intimate ways, recalibrating senses and redefining distance. Light too can spell both safety and danger on the battlefield, disciplining and controlling its occupants with often asymmetrical power-plays of affect and aggression. Using autoethnographic examples of experiences in Iraq in 2003 (based on the poem below), this article sets out to challenge traditional binaries of light/dark, good/bad and to question the elemental, cultural and technological sovereignty of light and vision in modern battlespaces.
U2 - 10.1177/1474474015595795
DO - 10.1177/1474474015595795
M3 - Article
SN - 1474-4740
VL - 22
JO - Cultural Geographies
JF - Cultural Geographies
IS - 4
ER -