Performance, Emotions, and Diplomacy in the United Nations Assemblage in New York

Abstract

Emotions are decisive to geographies of performance, yet our understanding of their role in critical geopolitics is non-existent. This paper addresses this deficit. We argue performances link statecraft with statehood to create geopolitical power in what we term 'spaces of possibility'. Examination of these spaceswhere state claim-making materialises through diplomatic performance and emotionsis we argue crucial, for representing the state is far more than the simple articulation of claim-making discourses. Instead, it is an active 'lived experience' for diplomats that exposes the challenges and vulnerabilities of personal performance through everyday political geographies. Consequently, here we set out a new research agenda for an emotional geopolitics that directly addresses the pivotal role of performance in state claim-making. Our focus for this is the 'topography of action' of the United Nations (UN) in New York. Deploying assemblage thinking and using extensive primary interview data from 11 current and former UN Ambassadors, we illustrate the centrality of material, visceral and sensual embodiments as they emerge out of and through diplomatic claim-making in different performative contexts. In doing so, we advance geographic debates by demonstrating how emotions are inseparable facets of diplomatic life.

Sensing scalarity: Towards a humanistic approach to scale

“…Emotions and affects are not produced by hermetically individuated subjects nor by agentive objects, but rather in the relational encounter between the two. Emotions, therefore, index wider fields of action, up to and including the diplomatic and geopolitical (Jones and Clark, 2019). Objects and subjects themselves, meanwhile, are both already constituted through their own multiple relations to other objects and subjects.…”

Introduction

“…It therefore seeks to show how a geopolitical discourse reinforces power relationships. For example, an emerging area of critical enquiry is emotional geopolitics, which considers the affective influence of diplomatic 'performance' to impress and distress, to vocalise and to silence (Jones and Clark 2019). The critical position is normative in that it seeks to uncover and bring to light exploitation of marginalised groups and peoples by those with greater power.…”

Professions and their expertise: Charting the spaces of ‘elite’ occupations

“…They discuss the ritualized character of diplomatic performance, they analyze the materiality of mundane diplomatic practice, and they include numerous quotes from practitioners to illustrate this (e.g. Dittmer, 2017; Jones and Clark, 2019; Kuus, 2019; McConnell, 2016). They thereby document the existence of, and struggle over, professional norms.…”

“…Effective diplomats receive popular coverage only when the system fails. ‘Much of the most difficult coalition building’, a diplomat says to Jones and Clark (2019: 1270), ‘happens out of the spotlight, in private and informal settings.’ There is an intricate topography to such settings. It is, on the one hand, a topography of a particular place, such as quiet discreet restaurants for a lunch near the Berlaymont (European Commission headquarters in Brussels).…”