Introduction to “Cartographic Anxieties”

Billé, Franck

doi:10.1353/ach.2017.0000

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Rather than simply being disconnected, seemingly remote areas are usually shot through with uneven forms of connectivity, wiring them to the world economy and into global politics and mediascapes. And second, we contend that the active process of making remoteness remains entangled with substantial geopolitical and often cartographic anxieties (Billé ) that directly affect both outside perceptions and experiences on the ground.…”

Section: Remaking Remotenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Against this background, remoteness, indeed, is better understood as a topological phenomenon than as a purely topographical one. At the same time, however, the cartographic anxieties (Krishna ; Painter ; Billé ; Saxer 2016b) that develop around the topography of competing mappae mundi – the new ‘Silk Roads’, the no‐go zones of the ‘war on terror’ – have a profound and lasting effect on the topology of remoteness. It is this rift, and the frays and fragments it reveals to the anthropologist, that we collectively seek to investigate.…”

Section: Remaking Remotenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The return of remoteness: insecurity, isolation and connectivity in the new world disorder

Saxer¹,

Andersson

2019

Soc Anthropol

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Remoteness has returned to world politics. Instead of the flat world’ once proclaimed by leading liberal voices, the world map today looks more rugged and uneven than it has in a long time. While some areas are smoothly connected to global capital and cultural flows, others are becoming more marginalised and ‘distant’, at least from the viewpoint of global centres of power. In this introduction, we build an analytical approach to remoteness as a social and political process rather than a primordial condition. We emphasise three key aspects of remoteness: its deep entanglement with forms of connectivity; its economic usefulness; and its amenability to ‘remote control’. In considering these aspects, we bring anthropology's long heritage of studying ‘marginal’ societies to bear on the political resurgence of remoteness in a new world disorder of proliferating global dangers, lucrative frontier economies and heritage‐making.

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Section: Remaking Remotenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Remaking Remotenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

The return of remoteness: insecurity, isolation and connectivity in the new world disorder

Saxer¹,

Andersson

2019

Soc Anthropol

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“…In anthropological research, Franck Billé (2014: 163, 168) found that a ‘lack of fit … between the physical geographical extent of the nation [the state] and the mental map held by its inhabitants’ sees ‘lost’ territories continue to draw on and elicit nationalist sentiments and affect. Billé likens this sentiment to the ‘phantom pains’ felt by patients suffering from the phenomenon of ‘phantom limbs’ after amputation; but he also refers to this sentiment as ‘cartographic anxiety’, using conceptual language that is readily applicable to my framework (see also Billé, 2017). Such cartographic anxieties may relate to more than territory alone.…”

Section: Perpetual Ontological Crisismentioning

confidence: 99%

Perpetual ontological crisis: national division, enduring anxieties and South Korea’s discursive relationship with Japan

Deacon

2023

European Journal of International Relations

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The broad agenda of ontological security scholarship in International Relations is to examine states’ (in)security of Self-identity and the implications for their international conduct. While ontological security may be an illusory goal, states vary in their levels of ontological insecurity, with more extreme levels producing acute defence mechanisms. Such ontological crises are therefore an important area of focus gaining increasing attention. Thus far, however, they have generally been conceptualised as ‘critical situations’: unpredictable, transient and practically resolvable ruptures of routinised practices. I argue that such a conceptualisation neglects the possibility of a more fundamental, long-term crisis of Self-identity, which I term perpetual ontological crisis. Such crises stem from inherent contradictions within dominant constructions of identity that may have always existed – rather than exogenous shocks to a hitherto secure Self – and are therefore irresolvable within the bounds of those constructions. I develop the example of nation/state incongruence: when a state’s territorial boundaries do not accord with the national spatial imaginary dominant in that state, resulting in an inherent and enduring contradiction. I then illustrate these contentions with a case study of South Korea, whose borders have never matched the imagined spatial bounds of the Korean nation. To demonstrate the implications of this crisis, I conduct a discourse analysis evidencing a nexus between enduring ontological anxieties concerning Korean division and South Korea’s persistently antagonistic relationship with Japan. In doing so, this article has important implications for how we understand ontological crisis and offers a novel account of its empirical case.

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“…Another instance of hyper‐bordered vulgar territory can be found in various territorial fantasies that reimagine existing state borders to recall past periods of greatness or future expansion. These fantasies can be promoted by state agencies and actors: in an introduction to an edited volume on “cartographic anxieties,” Billé (2017) documents some instances of efforts to portray greater territorial extent such as the “vertical map” that places islands claimed by China in the South China Sea in visual equivalence with the mainland. This kind of defiant flouting of internationally recognized territorial claims also finds expression by nonstate actors who dream of restoring their nation's lost status.…”

Section: Vulgates Of Territory: Hyper‐bordered and Feminized Variatiomentioning

confidence: 99%

The mainstreaming of “vulgar territory” and popular visions of hyper‐bordered and feminized territory

Lizotte

2020

Geography Compass

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I lay out a case for recognizing “vulgar territory,” a fusing of superficial categories of spatial sovereignty with identarian rhetorics of belonging. I argue that vulgar territory is composed of two primary elements: first, a simplistic conception of sovereignty as being entirely contiguous with state borders. Second, affective elements of spatial belonging, particularly hope and fear. These two basic elements combine in various ways depending on the particular meanings, images, and emotions that are assembled in particular geohistorical contexts. I show this with a rough typology of “vulgates” of hyper‐bordered and feminized territory by examining recent examples from around the world.

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Introduction to “Cartographic Anxieties”

Cited by 5 publications

References 33 publications

The return of remoteness: insecurity, isolation and connectivity in the new world disorder

The return of remoteness: insecurity, isolation and connectivity in the new world disorder

Perpetual ontological crisis: national division, enduring anxieties and South Korea’s discursive relationship with Japan

The mainstreaming of “vulgar territory” and popular visions of hyper‐bordered and feminized territory

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