“Political Atmospherics”: The India Round Table Conference’s Atmospheric Environments, Bodies and Representations, London 1930–1932

Legg, Stephen

doi:10.1080/24694452.2019.1630247

Cited by 13 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…By offering a thick exegesis of the ways in which these affective stirs practically unfold, it has elucidated how an assortment of moods are constantly brought into being, and into resonance with one another (Connolly, 2005), in diplomacy. To be sure, recent geographical work is not oblivious to the “affective potential” of international relations (Dittmer, 2017, p. 3; Legg, 2020). Yet, there remains a tendency for these studies to trace and unpack the said affects within disparate “sites” (Neumann, 2013), most prominently, in formal meetings and geopolitical forums (see Jones, 2020a, 2020b; McConnell, 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If studies on environmental politics have provided a sketch of the performative contours entailed in geopolitical summits, recent work on the United Nations (UN) system and its affiliates has made more explicit references to their affective tonalities. While some historical studies allude to the atmospheric effects of the weather, opening ceremonies, and personality cults in global conferences (Craggs, 2014; Legg, 2020), Jones’s (2020a, 2020b) pair of papers on the “emotional geographies” of geopolitical claim‐making at the UN Security Council (UNSC) is unique in offering a live account of atmospheres‐in‐action in the meeting chamber. In particular, his work charts the moment‐by‐moment affective labour that diplomats engage in to manipulate and achieve an upper hand in negotiations.…”

Section: Atmospheres Politics and Diplomacymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The atmospheres in play are, furthermore, extremely obtuse, masking histories of interpersonal alliances or animosities (sometimes both) that require keen insider’s knowledge to decode. Such latencies are complicated by the elusiveness of atmospheres themselves, which are not easily reducible to words or texts, and whose naming and translation often prove “contradictory and futile” (Legg, 2020, p. 776). Accordingly, there is a need to recognise the limits of writing about atmospheres in this context, which, at best, only imperfectly traces the kinds of eruptions that are in play (Allums, 2020).…”

Section: Summit Atmospheresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The affectivity of this statement is difficult to represent completely (Legg, 2020), but there was something chilling about the way a slightly quavering female voice spoke about young protestors’ “passion” and the risk of “waiting” any longer. Calling their act “powerful,” her performance evocatively related recent emergency‐filled atmospheres surrounding the march – and the assembly shutdown it caused – to the fearful prospect of ICAO’s inaction.…”

Section: Capturing Climatementioning

confidence: 99%

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Summit atmospheres: Aviation diplomacy and virtual infrastructures of politics

Lin

2021

Trans Inst British Geog

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This paper examines the role of affective atmospheres in "doing" politics in diplomacy. By offering a thick exegesis of the ways in which these moods practically unfold at two International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) aviation summits, the paper shows how affective atmospheres have a potent steering effect on (geo) politics, constituting the virtual infrastructures of its conduct. While geographers have recently begun paying attention to the salience of affective atmospheres in diplomacy, current approaches still tend to treat themif at allas situational productions at specific sites. Engaging in ethnographic immersions in two ICAO summits, the paper offers an intimate reading of international-relations-in-action, across multivalent atmospheric experiences and transects. In particular, it highlights two modes of atmospheric conditioning in aviation diplomacy: one, the intermingling of work and play across time and, two, the overlap of various affective captures across space. The paper advocates a fuller appreciation of the contingency and adaptive nature of (geo)politics in its atmospheric productions. It also highlights the influence that these virtual infrastructures can have on decisionmaking in diplomacy.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Atmospheres Politics and Diplomacymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Summit Atmospheresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Capturing Climatementioning

confidence: 99%

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Summit atmospheres: Aviation diplomacy and virtual infrastructures of politics

Lin

2021

Trans Inst British Geog

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“…In his study of British airshows, Rech (2015: 538) argues that the ‘gaze of an attentive public’ is as central to the event as aerodynamic skill. Any study of ‘affective nationalism’ at this national airshow would need to consider these aspects, as well as the heteronormative cultures at work in a branded ‘family day out’, the political economies of cities and their branding exercises, and the ways ‘political atmospheres are inherently and always racialised’ (Legg, 2019; see also Tolia-Kelly in this symposium). But perhaps here we also encounter some of the difficulties with the concept of ‘affective nationalism’ in that it may be too totalising in explaining this event.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A hot afternoon

Stephens

2020

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

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It has become rather commonplace for critics of affect and non-representational theories to ask whether such approaches are capable of supporting 'new models of progressive politics' (Barnett, 2008: 198). Brian Massumi (2015: ix) has stressed that affect is 'proto-political', being concerned with 'the first stirrings of the political, flush with the felt intensities of life', and the trick here is to expand conceptions of 'the political' to take account of transversal 'molecular' and 'micro' political movements, actions and events, as well as perceptible 'molar' or 'macro' political relations established around material and social markers of difference such as race and gender (Bissell, 2016; Jellis and Gerlach, 2017). In attending to the partial, relational flagging of nations-and the welling-up of feelings, atmospheres and collective affiliations aligned with the nation-I would emphasise that molecular and micro political forces, movements and affects can bring about more fundamental molar shifts in atmospheres, moods, materialities and habits (see Ahmed, 2004; Closs Stephens, 2016; Closs Stephens et al., 2017). In contrast to many early works on the politics of affect which focussed largely on the engineering of affects by powerful (state) actors and agencies for manipulative ends (Barnett, 2008), it is also important to acknowledge the ways in which affects are engineered with the intention of creating more hopeful, joyful and 'happy atmospheres' (Closs Stephens, 2016: 181). Progressive futures and inclusive atmospheres can emerge from molecular or micro-political actions, events and movements associated with a range of bodies held in tension, but it is not just the molar or macro-political potential of affect theories which is questioned by some critics. References to 'the body' in Spinozan and Deleuzian affect theory have, of course, been criticised for tracing a rather abstract, blank, universal, unmarked and 'pre-figured' body (see Tolia-Kelly, 2006, and section 'Affective nationalisms and race' in this issue). This is, of course, the point, for although these (morethan-human) bodies are inevitably and incessantly figured, fleshed out, essentialised and differentiated in and through innumerable practices, many affect theorists do not want to mark or figure such bodies a priori using essential pre-established categories of difference. Speaking of pre-figured bodies in the abstract does not universalise a particular body, subject or experience (however marked); rather, it insists that such markings are inscribed and differences formed in the unfolding of (national) events, emerging from specific affective ties and tensions between bodies, even if that unfolding generates familiar refrains and repetitious exclusionary practices which must be highlighted and ultimately challenged and undermined. With the de-coupling of national communities from an essential or fixed relationship with territories in many theories of nations and nationalism-including those focussing on the performance of national identity, the s...

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Spaces, Places, and Networks: Geographical Approaches to Methodism in the Past

Slatter

2024

Springer International Handbooks of Human Geography

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“Political Atmospherics”: The India Round Table Conference’s Atmospheric Environments, Bodies and Representations, London 1930–1932

Cited by 13 publications

References 39 publications

Summit atmospheres: Aviation diplomacy and virtual infrastructures of politics

Summit atmospheres: Aviation diplomacy and virtual infrastructures of politics

A hot afternoon

Spaces, Places, and Networks: Geographical Approaches to Methodism in the Past

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