Arctic geopoetics: Russian politics at the North Pole

Abstract

The article develops a geopoetic approach to Russian Arctic politics. It rests on the empirical observation that due to climate change, the Arctic landscape is undergoing profound transformations, which has led to multilateral governance efforts but also unilateral pursuits. In this general heterogeneity, Russia’s policies have raised the most pressing questions regarding the country’s motivations to engage in the region. Cultural approaches to global politics are most suitable to create holistic understandings and explanations in this regard, but they lack discussing a spatial dimension of Russian identity. By developing a geopoetic account, the article complements this research through methodological insights from critical geography. Geopoetics focuses on the cultural roots and their cognitive-emotional dimension, on the basis of which claims to the Arctic and related policies resonate with a broader audience. The article argues that Russian policies have their foundation in a utopian ideal of Soviet socialist realism that was widely popularised in the 1920s and later decades. Applying the hermeneutic tool of topos, the article highlights that three features stand out that interweave into a coherent imaginary of the Arctic: first, the heroic explorer; second, the conquest of nature; and third, the role of science and technology. Analysts would do well to bear in mind how the Arctic becomes intelligible when commenting on policies.

Between global collaboration and national competition: Unraveling the many faces of Arctic science diplomacy

“…Our approach in this part of the study is based on the theoretic assumption that language expresses and structures how actors perceive and make sense of the world (Fischer & Forester, 1993;Hansen-Magnusson, 2019). Language in politics matters as it creates and constructs reality.…”

Making Polar and Ocean Governance Future-Proof

“…Surprisingly, the forum continued to function well even after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, which has been linked to trust established between individual delegates as well as the comparatively low salience of policy issues (although, at the time of writing, the future of the Council is open as a consequence of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022). For decades, the region has been marked by long-term national identity projects (Burke, 2017;Hansen-Magnusson, 2019a;Wood-Donnelly, 2019), albeit not at the level of intensity that is often portrayed by news outlets which like to evoke the headline-grabbing spectre of a heating "cold" war confrontation (Wehrmann, 2019): While the economic viability of resource exploitation is not a given (Keil, 2014), even disputes over the status of maritime zones around the archipelago of Svalbard and ensuing rights to issue fishing licences (Østhagen & Raspotnik, 2018) are mostly of interest for regional experts. Yet the security community is uncomfortable with Russia's refurbishment of some of the military infrastructure situated along the Northeast Passage (or Northern Sea Route), and the presence of China in the region, which has declared itself to be a near-Arctic state and is increasingly importing liquified natural gas from Russia while increasing its engagement in Arctic governance more generally (Kraska, 2011;Pelaudeix, 2018;Wilson, 2016).…”

More than words: Geopolitics and language

“…Staying with what may exceed and go beyond traditional geopolitical analyses, several geographers have considered the practice of writing (Noxolo, 2009), geopoetics (Cresswell, 2014;Hansen-Magnusson, 2018;Magrane, 2015Magrane, , 2020, and sensory experiences of war, territory, and terrain (Thornton, 2015). And here, exploring the more-than must also include the impact that digital technologies are having on not only cultural but also geopolitical narratives and indeed truths.…”