War-Making as Worldmaking: Kenya, the United States and the War on Terror
This talk explores the entanglement of militarism, imperialism, and liberal-democratic governance in Kenya today, asking what a view from East Africa can tell us about the shifting configurations and lived realities of post 9/11 imperial warfare. Informed by ethnographic research in the cities of Nairobi and Mombasa, I will explore how Kenyan Muslim activists contend with the deaths and disappearances of their fellow citizens at the hands of U.S.-trained Kenyan police. If the Kenyan state and its security partners collect information to anticipate risk and guide decision-making, so too must the subjects of surveillance and policing gather knowledge and make calculations about their own safety as they grapple with what it means to remake a world unmade by imperial warfare.