(Counter)-Mapping US Empire in Africa

This essay scrutinizes the visual configurations that continue to shape critical understandings of Africa and its relationship to war and empire in the twenty-first century. It explores how maps of US military bases simultaneously enable and foreclose critical analysis, reproducing a lingering fascination and preoccupation with US technological and military power. Against theorizations of empire that privilege the spectacular, the omnipotent, and the overtly militaristic, the essay argues that AFRICOM's network of military bases is only one aspect of a much wider set of power formations that intimately shape the lifeworlds of people across the continent. The essay draws on the works of feminist scholars of war, empire, and geopolitics to call for a situated epistemological and methodological approach—one that exceeds the visuality of the military base, and that is more attuned to the sensorial, embodied knowledge formations of populations that have been caught in the crosshairs.