Cities of Banal Warfare : Affective Geographies in Violent Times

Abstract

“Banal warfare” describes the ways in which the vision of the city perpetually ridden with conflicts, terrorist attacks, and disease infuses everyday urban life to the point of becoming invisible or taken for granted. The book is situated within decolonial urbanism as, to understand the urban geopolitical struggles in western Europe, it employs the conceptual framework developed in relation to cities conventionally considered war cities in the global east and south. In “reversing the gaze” on urban warfare, the focus is on the impact of framing different public emergencies and incidents of violence in Paris and Brussels as acts of war and how this contributes to the normalization of militarism within urban contexts traditionally viewed as “non-war zones.” From lockdowns to states of emergency, the book addresses how this process shapes urban governance agendas, constructs the notion of the “enemy within,” and conditions the everyday affective atmospheres of urban dwellers in Paris and Brussels. These citizens are not presented as passive victims of military urbanism, but as active subjects in the doing and undoing of notions of cities at war. The book highlights the politics of affective atmospheres in an effort to “make feminist sense” of urban warfare, drawing attention to the processes that sustain social inequalities and deepen urban geographies of exclusion while, at the same time, rethinking notions of urban peace.