In this seminar, Professor Paul Higate focuses on the Royal Navy’s recent recruiting campaign Made in the Royal Navy. He considers how far and to what extent Foucault’s concept of heterotopia is used to obfuscate the violence at the heart of the Royal Navy as a branch of the armed forces.

In particular, Paul argues that heterotopias demand resilience from those who experience these spaces that are couched – in the current substantive focus – as superior to those of civilian life, as life changing in regard to the transformations they engender, and as profoundly self-actualising. In sum, the space of the ship (Foucault’s exemplary heterotopia) is shown to be a deeply political and violent space rooted in Empire and conquest.

Speaker profiles

Paul Higate is a Professor in Conflict & Security in the Department of Politics, Languages & International Studies at the University of Bath.

He has written on military masculinities, private military and security companies and UN/NATO peacekeeping operations.

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