Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: In its attention to urban aerial bombardment in World War II, geographer Kenneth Hewitt’s work charts the annihilation of place while carefully centering the devastation of civilian life therein. Following the entrenchment of drones as fixtures of contemporary skies, this article reflects on Hewitt’s work in the context of the contemporary drone age. It identifies resonance between Hewitt’s contributions and the concerns of feminist geopolitics, attentive as it is to the diversity of geopolitical actors, agencies, and everyday sites and spaces comprising war. In revisiting Hewitt’s work in dialogue with feminist geopolitics, it focuses on several areas. First, it turns to actors and agencies. It highlights shared interests in civilian suffering while also urging the extension of Hewitt’s discussion through attention to feminist debates around resistance. Further, while recognizing the centrality of the human in Hewitt’s work, it argues that technological developments in aerial bombardment mark and usher changing machinic agencies departing from Hewitt’s thesis and necessitating critical attention. Second, in turning to the homes and neighborhoods foregrounded by Hewitt as targets of aerial destruction, it engages feminist thinking attentive to war’s destruction of the spaces and places of everyday, domestic life. It urges that debates around the “making” and “unmaking” of home help in highlighting the diversity of civilian relations with home in wartime. At once celebrating Hewitt’s significant contributions and urging their revisiting through an explicitly feminist vocabulary, this article understands feminist geopolitics as a useful tool in the telling of further stories of urban aerial bombardment still.
Author: Anna Jackman
Institution: University of Reading
Language: English
Subfield: Gender Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7160837043