CULTURES OF MILITARIZATION

This special issue of TOPIA Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies addresses the ubiquity of militarization, a presence that is woven into the very fabric of civic culture.Militarization is not just something that happens in war zones; when our government invests billions of dollars in war planes, prisons and the "digital economy," while starving resources in social justice, education, the environment and culture, we are living the consequences of global militarization. To talk about cultures of militarization is to talk about the terms in which collective identity is militarized and resistive forms of agency allowed and disallowed. By recognizing the human relations within capitalism and how these have come to be defined increasingly by military interests, we reveal that militarism is a global master narrative; military diction becomes inseparable from the language of power, sweeping aside human suffering as mere "collateral damage." We are led to believe that it is temporary, and we are compliant in our acceptance of these narratives.

Jody Berland is Professor in the Department of Humanities, York University, Toronto. She has published widely on spatial and environmental themes in cultural studies. She is the author of North of Empire: Essays on the Cultural Technologies of Space (Duke University Press 2009) and editor of TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies.

Blake Fitzpatrick is Professor and Graduate Program Director, Documentary Media (MFA) Program at Ryerson University. He is an active photographer, curator and writer whose research interests include the photographic representation of the nuclear era, the Cold War and contemporary responses to militarism.