The latest addition to the RGS-IBG book series, Geopolitics and the event: rethinking Britain’s Iraq war through art, is now available to order online.
Written by Dr Alan Ingram (University College London), the book explores new ways of thinking about geopolitics through art, focusing on Britain’s relationship with Iraq and particularly its involvement in the Iraq War (2003-2011). Based on a study of dozens of artworks, artists and exhibitions, the book looks at the diverse ways in which artists experienced the war and how these critical, creative and imaginative works can focus attention onto how war is conducted, experienced, made sense of and made public.
Dr Ingram explains: “The experiences and the critical and creative agency of people of Iraqi heritages have been much more visible in art than in official, political or media accounts of the war, or in official memorials. An exploration of their work, alongside other artists and curators, provides an essential counterpoint to other accounts, draws us into an appreciation of geopolitical events as multiple as well as singular things, and challenges us to imagine Britain as a postcolonial country.”
More broadly, Geopolitics and the event argues that by offering new perspectives of an event, in this case the Iraq war, artworks can offer distinct insights into the very nature of geopolitical events, allowing us to better understand where they begin and end, who and what are involved in them, how this involvement takes place and what the wider effects of that involvement might be.
As Dr Ingram points out: “Artworks might not do the actual work of changing the world, but they do ask us to imagine how it might be otherwise, or at least understand how it came to be that way.”
Geopolitics and the event is available to order now from the Wiley website.
Society Fellows and members receive up to a 35% discount on titles in the RGS-IBG book series when ordering through Wiley. Log in to our website to access your discount code and simply enter it at the checkout on the Wiley website.
Find out more about the book on the Geography Directions blog or watch Dr Ingram talk more about his book below.