SPIN book launch + drinks – The Covert Colour Line
Oliver Kearns
Verdon Smith Room, Royal Fort House, University of Bristol
SPIN is delighted to host the book launch for SPIN-ster Oliver Kearns’ new book, The Covert Colour Line: The Racialised Politics of Western State Intelligence
About the Event
Dr. Oliver Kearns (SPAIS, University of Bristol).
Chair: Dr. Elspeth Van Veeren
Please join us for a discussion of the book followed by a drinks reception in the Verdon Smith Room, Royal Fort House, University of Bristol.
About the Book
Using declassified documents from the 1940s to the present, The Covert Colour Line argues that postwar Western intelligence represents an emergency response to anti-colonialism. As European empires collapsed, intelligence analysts scrambled to come up with ways of studying new independent governments and populations, while still defending the right of the US and Britain to dictate Middle Eastern affairs. The racial ideas they produced over the next decades – from ‘Arab regimes’ to ‘strategic cultures’ – always exacerbated a basic tension, between trying to understand a changing world and insisting that only white Westerners can see that world objectively. Today, this racist delusion continues to shut down opportunities to de-escalate global conflict.
