Released 30th November, 2022 // 72 pages //  978-1-915079-46-6
 
In this collection, Robert Bal interrogates on-going and belated conditions he names “the imperial benign.” Protection is both a work of aftermath and an intense succession of colonial instants, scenes or sensations experienced in the United Kingdom, though processed (felt) elsewhere. With deep care, Bal marks the transposition between external forms of oppression and their internalization, tracking the fact of otherness, the poesis of cultural deletion, into the felt or bodily zone, the experience of being subaltern to “the culture of the kill” as it manifests at both macro and micro levels.
 
PRAISE for Protection:
This is a book of its time, a world time or moment that is examining the origin and expression of colonial violence in all sectors. Hope, in some form, comes in the very last moments of the book: the warm sunlight, a natural setting, and the words “there can be no other side to this but love."
   - Bhanu Kapil, How to Wash a Heart