Critical Geopolitics: Discourse, Difference, and Dissent

Abstract

In the 1980s international relations theory has been undergoing a major methodological and theoretical debate which has challenged much of the recent disciplinary orthodoxy. This has been inspired by the introduction of contemporary critical social theory and poststructuralist themes into international relations by a new generation of practitioners. Given the close intellectual proximity of international relations to political geography's concerns with geopolitics, these current debates are of great relevance to any attempt to retheorise global politics from the perspective of political geography. Although the recent revival of interest in political geography has led to a considerable interest in rethinking the historiography of the subdiscipline and to reevaluating its tainted past, the necessary accompanying theoretical rethinking has not progressed in a similar fashion. The theoretical issues discussed in the contemporary international relations literature have much to offer political geographers in pursuing this important task.

Re-interpretation of the classical geopolitical theories in a critical geopolitical perspective

“…However, this term "critical geopolitics" was created by three political geographers (Gearóid Ó Tuathail, John Agnew and Simon Dalby) in the early 1990s (Ó Tuathail et al, 1992;Dalby, 1991aDalby, , 1991b. The critical geopolitics came into being due to the following main three reasons: (1) changes in pattern of Geopolitics after the Cold War; (2) uniquely-divided research field driven by desire; (3) sense of responsibility undertaken by many English-speaking scholars who deeply felt that it was necessary to correlate the ideas with political practice in the post-Cold War years (Dodds, 2001).…”

Discourse in the production of political space: decolonizing the symbolism of provinces in Finland

“…Conceptual and theoretical accounts of this "linguistic turn" are now numerous, and different viewpoints, philosophical positions and strands of research have been employed in highlighting discourses' social implications and forms of existence (e.g. Agnew, 1987Agnew, , 1993Dalby 1991;Driver, 1992;Pickles, 1992;Smith and Catz, 1993;Ó Tuathail, 1992bÓ Tuathail, , 1994a. We may no longer have to "go outside geography for the best critiques of the politics of geographical dialogue" (Taylor, 1989: 104).…”

“…Dalby, 1991;Reynolds, 1993;Dodds, 1994a;Dodds and Sidaway, 1994;Sidaway, 1994;Ó Tuathail, 1995Ó Tuathail, , 1996. Rather than provide yet another reading of this heterogenous and contradictory endeavor, I seek to point out affinities between my own project and what in various instances has been presented as the core arguments of 'critical geopolitics'.…”

“…The 1990's has witnessed a rapid increase in critical analyses of various 'geographs' and their discourses, i.e. of naturalist descriptions and orderings of the global political space prevalent both in the practices of (post) Cold War international politics, and realist (policy oriented) scholarship (see Dalby, 1991;Reynolds, 1993;Dodds, 1994a;Dodds and Sidaway, 1994;Ó Tuathail, 1995). Consequently, assumptions of the territorial state system as the most important framework for global politics, and along with that both the taken-for-granted formulations of the state and the governmental and academic representational practices, have all been subjected to scrutiny.…”

“…For instance, when thinking of the relationship between institutional practices founded upon the abstract space of surveys, maps, statistics and regional descriptions on one hand, and everyday social life literally taking 'place' within a myriad of unspecifiable spatial, practical, cultural contexts on the other, a question arises concerning the authority of the geographs produced and reproduced within such very different modalities and sites of social action. Critical analysis that seeks to expose "how geographical knowledge is transformed into the reductive geopolitical reasoning of intellectuals of statecraft" (Ó Tuathail and Agnew, 1992: 195) must pay close attention to the unequal relations of power between dominant official discourses and the geographs produced and meaningful in everyday social life (see also Dalby, 1991Dalby, , 1993Dodds and Sidaway, 1994). The official discourses may well dominate, even colonize the popular ones, but it should be noted that the latter may equally come to resist the former even where the resistance does not manifestate itself politically (as social movements, conscious production of counter-discourses, explicit political argumentation, or violence).…”