Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

‘The Production of Space’, in: Frans Jacobi, Imagine, Space Poetry, Copenhagen, 1996, unpaginated.

The Production of Space

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers

From a world history perspective, the most noticeable trend in the history of the late 19th century was the domination of Europeans over Non­Europeans. This domination took many forms ranging from economic penetration to outright annexation. No area of the globe, however remote from Europe, was free of European merchants, adventurers, explorers or western missionaries. Was colonialism good for either the imperialist or the peoples of the globe who found themselves subjects of one empire or another? A few decades ago, the answer would have been a resounding no. Now, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the more or less widespread discrediting of Marxist and Leninist analysis, and the end of the Cold War, political scientists and historians seem willing to take a more positive look at Nineteenth Century Imperialism. One noted current historian, Niall Ferguson has argued that the British Empire probably accomplished more positive good for the world than the last generation of historians, poisoned by Marxism, could or would concede. Ferguson has argued that the British Empire was a \" liberal \" empire that upheld international law, kept the seas open and free, and ultimately benefited everyone by ensuring the free flow of trade. In other words, Ferguson would find little reason to contradict the young Winston Churchill's assertion that the aim of British imperialism was to: give peace to warring tribes, to administer justice where all was violence, to strike the chains off the slave, to draw the richness from the soil, to place the earliest seeds of commerce and learning, to increase in whole peoples their capacities for pleasure and diminish their chances of pain. It should come as no surprise that Ferguson regards the United States current position in the world as the natural successor to the British Empire and that the greatest danger the U.S. represents is that the world will not get enough American Imperialism because U.S. leaders often have short attention spans and tend to pull back troops when intervention becomes unpopular. It will be very interesting to check back into the debate on Imperialism about ten years from now and see how Niall Ferguson's point of view has fared! The other great school of thought about Imperialism is, of course, Marxist. For example, Marxist historians like E.J. Hobsbawm argue that if we look at the l9th century as a great competition for the world's wealth and …

The New Imperialism

Culture and Imperialism

This article proposes a framework for considering materiality in the field of geopolitics: assemblage and complexity theories. Drawing on literatures beyond the field to imagine a posthuman geopolitics, this article argues for a relational ontology that emphasizes the complex interactions among the elements of an assemblage. These interactions produce emergent effects which themselves reshape the assemblage’s elements. This has implications for understandings of agency, subjectivity, and systemic change. The article concludes by highlighting the methodological and ethical challenges that such a project would face.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0309132513501405

Geopolitical assemblages and complexity

This article introduces comic books as a medium through which national identity and geopolitical scripts are narrated. This extension of the popular geopolitics literature uses the example of post-11 September 2001 (“9/11”) Captain America comic books to integrate various strands of theory from political geography and the study of nationalism to break new ground in the study of popular culture, identity, and geopolitics. The article begins with an introduction to the character of Captain America and a discussion of the role he plays in the rescaling of American identity and the institutionalization of the nation's symbolic space. The article continues by showing how visual representations of American landscapes in Captain America were critical to constructing geopolitical “realities.” A reading of post-9/11 issues of the Captain America comic book reveals a nuanced and ultimately ambiguous geopolitical script that interrogates America's post-9/11 territorialization.

/pdf/captain-america-s-empire-reflections-on-identity-popular-lu23lytte1.pdf

Captain America's Empire: Reflections on Identity, Popular Culture, and Post‐9/11 Geopolitics

This short and hopefully provocative paper serves as both a retrospective of the past twenty years of critical work on so-called popular geopolitics and also an impetus for a more theoretical connection to related areas within cultural studies, such as fan studies. An overarching theme of the history of popular geopolitics has been a concern over geopolitical representation and discourse, which is only now beginning to shift towards audience interpretation, consumption and attachment. This shift in focus parallels a similar move in cultural studies made several years prior. Therefore, this paper advocates combining theories from cultural studies with empirical studies of concern to popular geopolitics to further our understanding. Specifically outlined as a possibility in this paper is the viewing of nationalism and religion as forms of fan-based identities, in that both can be understood as adherence to serial narratives. This perspective carries several corollaries regarding methodology and object of st...

Popular Geopolitics Past and Future: Fandom, Identities and Audiences

This paper argues for the renewal of popular geopolitics through the adoption of a research agenda that emphasizes everyday life Popular geopolitics as commonly practiced has adopted a focus on textual deconstruction that neglects the practices and performances that mark much of the everyday experience of the geopolitical This paper reviews the literature on feminist geopolitics, non-representational theory, and audience studies to find points of intersection between them Following this a renewed popular geopolitics based on the common themes of embodiment, emotions/affect, performativity, and post-human networks is sketched out It is hoped that this 'popular geopolitics 20' might allow scholars to truly engage with the everyday without trying to impose a new theoretical orthodoxy © 2010 The Authors Geography Compass © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Jason Dittmer

Papers

Geopolitical assemblages and complexity

Captain America's Empire: Reflections on Identity, Popular Culture, and Post‐9/11 Geopolitics

Popular Geopolitics Past and Future: Fandom, Identities and Audiences

Popular Geopolitics 2.0: Towards New Methodologies of the Everyday

Have you heard the one about the disappearing ice? Recasting Arctic geopolitics