ABSTRACT

This volume seeks to uncover and discuss the links between genocide, geopolitics and transnational networks. By studying the destruction of the Union Patrotica (UP) in Colombia - a process usually regarded as one of the extreme by-products of the Colombian armed conflict- through the lens of genocide studies, Gomez-Suarez challenges mainstream international relations, genocide and Colombian armed conflict studies.

Moving beyond the analysis of the Colombian case, the book offers a broader interdisciplinary theoretical framework that also attends to transnational relations of perpetrators and resisters and the political economy of affective-dispositions for mapping genocidal conjuncture. Methodologically, the text aims to present a re-interpretation of what constitutes genocide beyond its legal definition and turn towards its political and ethical dimensions to create a conceptual framework in which genocide appears to turn ever more into a decentralized network of various actors that contributed to a genocidal mentality, which, ultimately, enable the destruction of the civil society networks.

This work will be an important contribution to both the debates on genocide and international relations and the study of global connectivities.

chapter |11 pages

Introduction

chapter |20 pages

Con-textualising genocide

Geopolitics, transnational networks and affective dispositions

chapter |30 pages

The Unión Patriótica

Civilian social networks and the social construction of genocide-victims

chapter |31 pages

The perpetrator bloc in Colombia

A critical mapping of genocidists

chapter |25 pages

The hyperreal writing of Colombia

Con-textualising the UP genocide in US foreign policy space

chapter |21 pages

Drug traffickers, paramilitaries and transnational companies

Mapping il(legal) material/discursive flows in the unfolding of the UP genocide

chapter |21 pages

Anti-geopolitics

The UP as part of a transnational network of resistance to genocide