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

Reconsidering the concept of discourse for the field of critical geopolitics: Towards discourse as language and practice

............................................................................................................................. ii Co-Authorship Statement .................................................................................................. iv Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................. v Table of

/pdf/grasping-for-the-ends-of-the-earth-framing-and-contesting-3y6uirotyy.pdf

Grasping for the Ends of the Earth: Framing and Contesting Polar Sovereignty, 1900-1955

Discourse in the production of political space: decolonizing the symbolism of provinces in Finland

How can the ‘materialist turn’ contribute to the reshaping of critical geopolitics? This article draws attention to the limits of an approach that emphasises the representational, cultural, and interpretive dimensions of geopolitics, while acknowledging the difficulties of an ontological shift to materiality for many scholars of critical geopolitics. It draws on the work of Karen Barad and Annemarie Mol in order to advance three arguments for the reshaping of critical geopolitics as a field of research. First, it argues for an approach to the analysis of power that examines materialdiscursive intra-actions and that cuts across various ontological, analytical, and disciplinary divides. Second, it argues for an analysis of boundary-production that focuses on the mutual enactment or co-constitution of subjects, objects, and environments rather than on performance. Third, it argues for an analytical approach that engages the terrain of geopolitics in terms of a multiplicity of ‘cuts’ that trouble simplifying geopolitical imaginations along with the clear-cut boundaries that these often imply. In so doing, the article makes the case for a more-than-human approach that does not overstate the efficacy of matter, but rather that engages processes of materialisation and dematerialisation without assuming materiality to be a determinant force.

/pdf/reshaping-critical-geopolitics-the-materialist-challenge-53f1ugkt5d.pdf

Reshaping critical geopolitics? The materialist challenge

Existing studies of Anglo-Argentine relations tend to neglect the period 1945-61. The paper presents a critical geopolitical analysis of British representations of Argentina within foreign policy discourse. Geopolitical and geoeconomic representations, including those based on science, mapping and surveying, are understood as crucial to the legitimation of foreign policies. Government records are used to explore how a long-standing trading relationship was being replaced by relations based increasingly on conflict and geopolitical competition in the Antarctic and the South Atlantic.

Klaus-John Dodds

Papers

Geopolitics in the Foreign Office: British Representations of Argentina 1945-1961