Bahrani, Z.;
(2025)
War Essays.
[Book].
UCL Press: London.
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Abstract
More than 20 years have passed since Iraq was invaded in an illegal war, justified on the basis of falsified evidence. Operation Iraqi Freedom led to untold human suffering and massive destruction, the ruinous consequences of which persist to this very day. The war and occupation also had a devastating impact on the history and heritage of Iraq, a land ironically seen as the cradle of civilisation. The scale of theft and destruction of heritage sent shockwaves around the world that had radical consequences for the trade in antiquities and museum practices across the globe, and contributed to a paradigm shift in the discipline of archaeology. In War Essays Zainab Bahrani charts the devastation, cultural cleansing and targeted erasure of Iraq’s past, and argues that the topics of archaeology, history and memory must be analysed within the larger geopolitical issues of the contemporary Middle East. The essays present a counter-narrative of events that historicize the position of the historian and illustrate the enduring colonial practices of archaeology. Set within a narrative that reflects at once upon the violence of war and the processes of writing, an archaeologist’s personal journey unfolds. War Essays intertwines the autobiographical with the historical and analytical aspects of scholarship, weaving an eye-witness account of war with theoretical discussions around writing, the relationship of monuments, historical landscapes and memory, and how one’s sense of place in the world is disrupted by war.
| Type: | Book |
|---|---|
| Title: | War Essays |
| ISBN-13: | 9781800087538 |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.14324/111.9781800087538 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800087538 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Collection © Zainab Bahrani 2025 Text © Zainab Bahrani in years of original publication Images © Zainab Bahrani in years of original publication Any third-party material in this book is not covered by the book’s Creative Commons licence. Details of the copyright ownership and permitted use of third-party material is given in the image (or extract) credit lines. If you would like to reuse any third-party material not covered by the book’s Creative Commons licence, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright owner. This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. This licence allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work for personal and non-commercial use provided author and publisher attribution is clearly stated. Attribution should include the following information: Bahrani, Z. 2025. War Essays. London: UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800087538 Further details about Creative Commons licences are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ |
| Keywords: | Iraq War, Imperialism, heritage destruction, post-disaster heritage preservation, decolonisation, postcolonial theory |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10199740 |
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