“Emotionscapes of geopolitics”: Interpreting in the United Nations Security Council

Abstract

The agency of interpreters has been kept out of view in human geography. This paper corrects this by focusing on embodied interpretation: bodies, freighted with their own relations, expectations, and experiences in the context of “emotionscapes,” settings for emotional communication. Conceptually, “emotionscapes” enable the exploration of the potentiality of an emotion in its spatial setting. Emotionally expressive behaviour is a process of the emotion; a potentiality to be realised. Emotions are distinctively connected to specific sites and spaces. This potentiality shifts the analytical focus away from what emotion is to what emotion can do to the alteration or reproduction of relations. I argue that this is vitally important to understanding geopolitical exchange, that is, how global politics is made and remade. However, the potentiality of emotions is made more complicated when interpretive bodies are involved in geopolitical exchange. They are intrinsic to the relational fluxes, currents, and flows of emotion – its potentialities – they identify and relay emotionally laden language of others for others in geopolitical communication. They observe, relay, and mutate emotional potentiality in “emotionscapes.” In doing so, they wrestle with more than just words. They seek to capture emotions and geopolitics between real‐life people in real places. Understanding their endeavour should challenge us therefore to [re]consider geopolitical exchange in “emotionscapes” and the mediatory and performative roles played by interpretive bodies in these spaces of geopolitical knowledge production. This is my key purpose in this paper. Underpinning the paper’s conceptual ideas are qualitative data on the role of interpretive bodies in realising emotional potentialities in the “emotionscape” of the UN Security Council in New York, arguably the most high‐profile geopolitical institution.

Ruralidad y fronteras de recursos en regiones de la zona central y patagónica de Chile: paisaje y nuevas relaciones de poder

“…La ocupación de zonas que antes no eran consideradas para la producción industrial implica que aquellas actividades que quedan fuera de los nuevos usos entran en conflicto precisamente porque están ausentes en la definición del marco de lo posible (Baglioni & Campling, 2017). En consecuencia, a través de la apreciación del paisaje y de su transformación es que surgen voces críticas que identifican, en estos cambios, un nuevo sistema de relaciones de poder que ya no hace sentido (Fortin et al, 2019;Jones, 2022).…”

“…[L]a gente es poco participativa no más [...] o será porque la gente trabaja y todos tienen trabajo. (Habitante rural, región de Aysén, 2021) La noción de paisaje permite manifestar una posición contrahegemónica, pues involucra una crítica a las relaciones de poder que se han asentado recientemente en estos territorios (Dang, 2021;Fortin & Gagnon, 2006;Fortin et al, 2019;Jones, 2022). La valoración de aquella porción de naturaleza significativa para quien la observa permite acceder a la relación con la naturaleza no solo a actores hegemónicos o ligados a las actividades industriales, sino a cualquiera que tenga una relación con el medio.…”

“…En la definición de paisajes se conjugan una capacidad de control sobre la naturaleza -a través de la evocación (Simmel, 2018)-, una espacialidad -pues están siempre situados-y una corporalidad -dada por quien interpreta el paisaje-, lo que implica politizar los procesos que acontecen en un determinado lugar (Jones, 2022). Es en este cruce donde los habitantes de territorios disciplinados por economías extractivistas pueden plantear sus resistencias y afirmar sus propias posiciones ante el avance del modelo industrial sobre modos de vida rurales, especialmente allí donde el empleo y el subsidio estatal para cubrir necesidades básicas dificultan una crítica directa a las actividades industriales.…”

How to Build Strategic Communication: Speech Act Analysis on King Salman’s Speeches at the United Nations General Assembly

“…The two leaders tend to convey contradictory historical journeys and defend each other so that peace becomes difficult to achieve. Jones (2022) and Jones & Clark (2019) said that emotional factors in speeches by state leaders at UN forums are something that cannot be separated from diplomatic life. Meanwhile, Ghanem & Speicher (2017) made a larger classification in analyzing speeches by state leaders at the UN assembly by dichotomizing Arab leaders and Western leaders.…”