August 2012

Seeing from Above: The Geopolitics of Satellite Vision and North Korea

Satellite imagery plays an important role in contemporary geopolitics. The reflections of a geographical surface that satellite images provide, are not, however, necessarily objective but rather underlie what will be called a logic of inclusion and exclusion that makes the images deeply political. Referring to the linkages between seeing, knowing and acting, this article examines the role of remote sensing as a way of knowing and inquires as to the immediacy of images and the ensuing imperative to respond to them.

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