The last outpost of Empire: Rockall and the Cold War

MacDonald, Fraser

doi:10.1016/j.jhg.2005.10.009

Cited by 19 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…In this vein, MacDonald's (2006) evocative study of Rockall, a tiny uninhabited North Atlantic islet that in 1955 became the last piece of territory to be formally annexed by the United Kingdom, is a marvelous investigation of the interconnections of geography, science, and British statehood through the periods of empire and Cold War. Cook (2004) used a study of papaya commodity chains to unpack multiple and highly contrasting experiences of work and consumption in different sites in Jamaica and the United Kingdom.…”

Section: Biographies Of Medicine Chests Rivers Rockall-and Boundariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking the Study of International Boundaries: A Biography of the Kyrgyzstan–Uzbekistan Boundary

Megoran

2012

Annals of the Association of American Geographers

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Section: Biographies Of Medicine Chests Rivers Rockall-and Boundariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking the Study of International Boundaries: A Biography of the Kyrgyzstan–Uzbekistan Boundary

Megoran

2012

Annals of the Association of American Geographers

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“…In this way, the Hebridean landscape and seascape not only became a theatre in the specular sense, but a theatre of military operations and the arena of clandestine military intelligence. The visibility of state secrets became such a matter of national security that the British state was forced to annex the hitherto unclaimed stack of Rockall, simply to monopolize what was one of the most valuable perceptual fields in the world (MacDonald forthcoming). The geopolitical theatre of the Cold War consisted of many such minor cameos: oddly literal struggles for visual dominance.…”

Section: ‘The Vision Thing Is Always More Than Just a Vision Thmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geopolitics and ‘the vision thing’: regarding Britain and America's first nuclear missile

MacDonald

2006

Trans Inst British Geog

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Critical geopolitics, despite its radical ambitions, has been reluctant to shift its emphasis from the figure of the geopolitical tactician, 'decisive' events and the agency of the military-state. This paper, in common with recent work on 'popular geopolitics', offers a different agenda. It takes up the story of Britain and America's first nuclear missile -the US-made 'Corporal' -through the testimony of a self-described 'spacedaft' schoolboy who, in 1959, travelled alone across Scotland to witness the first British testing of the missile. However, unlike much of the literature on popular geopolitics, this paper is concerned with the more-than-representational question of observant practice. Addressing recent calls for a more empirical enquiry into the relationship between geography and visual culture, the paper examines how geopolitical power operates through sights and spectacles. key words Hebrides geopolitics visual culture observant practice Corporal missile Cold War

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“…More recently, researchers have suggested ways in which the Cold War can be studied in self-reflective, microsociological, and more than textual ways (MacDonald, 2006a;Matless et al, 2008), paying attention in particular to abandoned military landscapes, including bunkers (Bennett, 2011a;2011b;Woodward, 2014, page 46). Whilst geographers have long argued that Cold War geopolitics emerged smoothly from fascist and imperialist mappings (MacDonald, 2006b;Ó Tuathail, 1996, page 87), the question of Cold War biopolitics is yet to be explored and placed in its historical context. This paper makes a tentative step in this direction, refocusing the question of geopolitics and biopolitics from the camp onto what is perhaps the most defining of Cold War spaces: the nuclear bunker.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Bunker and the Camp: Inside West Germany's Nuclear Tomb

Klinke

2015

Environ Plan D

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Recent research has located the camp as the paradigmatic space that emerges when geopolitics and biopolitics intersect. In doing so, it has neglected another space that is indispensable for an understanding of the nexus of these two modalities of power: the nuclear bunker. This paper explores the West German government's now abandoned nuclear bunker in the Ahr valley. Constructed on the site of a subterranean World War 2 concentration camp, the bunker hosted a number of NATO exercises, which simulated nuclear war on German soil. Through an analysis of the site's military-strategic context and its technical and security features, the paper relates it to its predecessorthe camp-and uncovers a number of spatial overlaps and inversions between the two. Whilst similarly situated within a context of legal exceptionality, logistics, and total war, the concentrated and confined living space of the nuclear bunker turned the camp's logic of extermination inside out. The nuclear bunker was a concrete crypt in which sovereign power and total war sought to find eternal peace.

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The last outpost of Empire: Rockall and the Cold War

Cited by 19 publications

References 36 publications

Rethinking the Study of International Boundaries: A Biography of the Kyrgyzstan–Uzbekistan Boundary

Rethinking the Study of International Boundaries: A Biography of the Kyrgyzstan–Uzbekistan Boundary

Geopolitics and ‘the vision thing’: regarding Britain and America's first nuclear missile

The Bunker and the Camp: Inside West Germany's Nuclear Tomb

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