An occupation, military or civilian, is lived out at many different levels, modalities and distances. The suffering that is visited upon those whose freedoms are curtailed, whose movement is blocked and whose lives are threatened is rarely matched by the misgivings of those implicated in inflicting the occupation, or those associated with it through citizenship or other modes of inscription. Our concern here is with the question of how the occupiers might vigilantly live out an occupation beyond the simple rhetorics of resistance. There are many levels to such a living – out ; the need to be alert and vigilant in seeing what is actually going on, the need to document it, the need to find ways of incorporating what one sees into one’s work – often in oblique and indirect modes. At times one is close to the action taking place, close enough to have each and every detail register on one’s consciousness and at times one is distant , distant enough to observe the larger framework of what all this is leading to. To understand how an occupation not just restricts those occupied, but how it corrupts and erodes those who are occupying. The supposed boundaries between occupier and occupied are far more porous, far more eroded than one would tend to think and vigilance serves the purpose of keeping them so.

DICTIONARY OF WAR / dictionaryofwar.org
English / 00:29:20 / 72 MB / Ogg Theora

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