Category Archives: militaries

LA/LB

Posted on 20 April 2014 by Laleh Khalili

There is an amazing bit in Alan Sekula‘s magisterial Forgotten Space where Angelenos of Latino origin sit at an outdoor space drinking beers and watching enormous container ships glide towards the unloading docks and cranes.  Ever since watching that, I really wanted … Continue reading →

Posted in Allan Sekula, infrastructure, logistics, militaries, political economy, ports, transport | Leave a comment

“Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges…”

Posted on 21 March 2014 by Laleh Khalili

From Melville’s Billy Budd: …war contractors, whose gains, honest or otherwise, are in every land an anticipated portion of the harvest of death…. And he is the inventor of “fog of war” too: Forty years after a battle it is … Continue reading →

Posted in literature, logistics, Melville, militaries, quotations, readings, ships, the sublime, war | Tagged , | Leave a comment

On the interweaving of fiction and reality

Posted on 19 March 2014 by Laleh Khalili

I hate to use the formally inventive and affectively brilliant Cities of Salt (by Abdulrahman Munif) as a sociological text or a total mirror of reality, which is what so many people do probably because until America’s Kingdom came along very few texts … Continue reading →

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