The Architecture of Slow, Structural, and Spectacular Violence and the Poetic Testimony of War

The Law of War and Peace

“…147 The framing of collective security thus binds the women, peace and security agenda to a limited account of gendered approaches to conflict, not only in terms of the conflict-affected subjects it excludes, but also in terms of topics, perpetuating the idea that gender is about sexual violence and participation alone. Women, peace and security, for example, could look extremely different if it were to include feminist perspectives on military technologies, from experiences of living under drones, 148 to the consideration of the ways in which data collection is used post-conflict to invisibilize men of colour as refugees when it comes to resource distribution and aid, 149 to noting the ways in which military technologies are used to uphold and perpetuate gendered, racialized, ableist and humanist norms. 150 After examining the Security Council women, peace and security framework, it appears that while it has opened opportunities, it also presents serious limitations and challenges.…”

An unbound critical lived-built environment

“…This underlines my argument for an analysis of this lived–built condition beyond the differentiating thresholds of violence as environmental- and conflict-based, as well as beyond disciplinary bounds. Distinctions across this critical environment provide space for impunity against the history of human (in)action resulting in its collective violent outcomes (Kazan, 2018; Khalili, 2020).…”

“…In my argument for a methodological imagining to dismantle the inherently asymmetric power structures continuing to produce such conditions of violence (Kazan, 2021), I outline that this may only be possible through sensitive readings and understandings of the complex, interconnected human and non-human histories and potential futures visible in its wake (Bhandar and Ziadah, 2020; Haraway, 2016). Through this ‘Frames of Accountability’ and ‘Mount Mound Refuse’ I embody my proposition of poetic testimony : the necessary engagement of radical forms of poetics in expressing, translating and decoding the experience of violence beyond disciplinary boundaries (Da Silva, 2014; Kazan, 2018; Khazrik, 2019; Otomo, 2016; Spivak, 1988). This work comes forward as poetic, scientific, legal, bodily and environmental, in intersection voice, labour and human/nonhuman interaction.…”

“…This article reasserts risk as a human-made artefact, the collective processes and technologies of which have produced (un)natural separations across environments, lived and built, across the cumulative and leaky effects of slow, structural and spectacular violence (Nixon, 2011). As discourse on ‘built environments’ is more traditionally found in reference to the field of architecture, this is broadened in this article to point to a complex of violent legal and political processes that produce a lived–built environment of human and non-human forced dwelling and participation (Bou Akar, 2018; Kazan, 2018). Further, ‘lived’ has been added to the phrase ‘built environment’ to emphasize agency in the nuanced subjective experience and analysis of this condition.…”

The memory of earth and land dispossession in Urabá

“… 6. Other techniques of situated testimony have been discussed by authors such as Janet Walker and Bishnupriya Ghosh in Documentary Testimonies: Global Archives of Suffering (Walker and Sarkar, 2010); also see Kazan’s concept of poetic testimony in her extensive work in Lebanon Kazan, (2018). …”