The geontological time-spaces of late modern war

Abstract

Attending to connections between serious health conditions (cancers and congenital disorders) and weapons residues in Iraq, Afghanistan and Gaza, this article develops a geographical agenda for examining power in late modern war from the perspective of the ground and the life it sustains. A case is made for understanding the time-spaces of war as not compressed, vertical or remote but enduring, terranean and proximate in which violence emerges through processes (carcinogenic and teratogenic) that transcend boundaries between ‘life’ (bios) and ‘nonlife’ (geos). Such are the geontological time-spaces of late modern war that geographers – in both ‘physical’ and ‘human’ sub-fields – are uniquely equipped to examine.