Geopolitical Subjectivity (original) (raw)
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Making geopolitics otherwise: artistic interventions in global political space
This article considers how contemporary artists have have engaged with processes of militarization and governmentalization since 11 September 2001. It signals three areas of critical thematic interest where contemporary art intersects with contemporary geopolitics -questions of the body, of technology and of 'things out of place' -and suggests that, while its practices and effects require careful critical attention, contemporary art is a field in which it is possible to reflect on how geopolitics might be enacted differently.
Globalization, Imagination, Social Space. The Making of Geopolitical Imaginaries
2016
This article conceptualizes the term "geopolitical imaginaries" by offering a critical reading of the description of globalization processes based on theoretical considerations formulated by Arjun Appadurai and a brief case study in form of a comparison between two book covers. Appadurai's understanding of imagination is based on three elements: images, the imagined, and the imaginary. On an analytical level these terms hint at three important dimensions which are crucial for the understanding of geopolitical imaginaries: the material, the creative, and the social. The article highlights the impact of geopolitical imaginaries by comparing the different book covers of the English and the Spanish version of Christopher Baily's The Birth of the Modern World (El nacimiento del mundo moderno). Both book covers outline a specific geopolitical imaginary which implies the connection between different world regions and historical epochs and builds on the intersection of racial, gendered, and other asymmetrical power relations.
Through the looking blast: geopolitics and visual culture
Geography Compass, 2007
It is often argued that the most commonly assumed visual mode in geopolitics is the objective and disembodied gaze of the master geopolitical tactician. This is a charge that has been levelled at both geopolitical figures such as national leaders, and at academics who write about historical and present-day geopolitics. However, recent work has diversified the way in which formal, practical and popular geopolitical visions may be examined in critical geopolitical studies. Such work calls for greater attention to be paid to popular visual cultures and to geopolitical practice as a way of envisioning global space that is embodied and subjective.
Desire and Form: Transnational Art Events and Artistic Positions
Active Withdrawals: Life and Death of Institutional Critique, 2016
The collapse of the bi--polar world order with the demise of the Berlin Wall has triggered a previously uncharted cartography of the art world. The incorporation of the newly emerging contemporary art contexts into the globalized art scene, which operates on the claim of democratizing the art system and absorbing yet "undiscovered" cultural territories, has arguably followed the trajectory of neo--liberal economics. The newly discovered art worlds for the increasingly globalizing art system have been those with natural resources, financial markets and geopolitical currencies. This economic and cultural expansion has been often coupled with the post 9/11 Bush doctrine that hails negative liberty as a positive notion by coercively imposing "freedom" onto various post--colonial contexts formerly aligned with one of the Cold War vectors of power. We can call these contexts post--peripheries since with globalization and increasing transnationalization of capital, the age--old center--periphery distinction is no longer viable. However, this does not mean that peripheries are extinct, but rather this suggests that power itself is dispersed to the extent that it becomes intangible. Dispersion and fragmentation of power and the subsequent complexity of center--periphery distinctions mask the real operation of capital that is always a totality. I define post--peripheries as discursive, geographic and cultural spaces that can and do exist in traditional centers of power and not only in the formerly colonized territories: increasing marginalization of the working classes and the structural exclusion of the unemployed from social life in the UK and the US post 1980s is one example of a post--periphery. Post--peripheries are those spaces and discourses wherein technologies and techniques developed in the center are consumed rather than produce. But these can also be consumed subversively, by misuse or misappropriation. Transnational art events such as biennales and festivals structurally reproduce the characteristics of the post--periphery: the means of representation and the discursive tropes emanate from the center, yet these are used and consumed in other geographies sometimes with conformism and at other times critically and subversively. Geographically dispersed and varied, transnational art events often promote a mobile cast of cultural workers and artists with repeated appearances in Gwangju, Sharjah, São Paolo, Istanbul and Dubai sequentially or at time synchronically. What the political and cultural geographies of various post--peripheries share is the ways in which the globalized art scene has constructed the notion of the art event which in turn relies on the
2023
NO Rhetoric(s) examines a subject intensely debated during the last three decades but rarely a topic of its own: art as an agent of resistance, whether as a rhetorical stance or critical strategy. In the face of today’s discourse on revolt and insurrection, it is necessary to ask whether the gesture of “negation” still has an emancipatory potential. NO Rhetoric(s) contributes a deeper understanding of the different logics of resistance at play between art and politics. Showcasing a diverse array of voices, this volume presents contributions on topics as varied as sexual dissidence, ecology, and geopolitics in the digital age. Through this interdisciplinary show of force, the collected authors, artists, and scholars shed light on how art approaches the most urgent issues facing today’s society.
In Search of Thinking Space: Reflections on the Aesthetic Turn in International Political Theory
In the fifteen years since the Millennium special issue on “Images, Narratives and Sounds” scholarship on aesthetic politics has proliferated. Countless inquiries now show how aesthetics is about far more than art: it is about rethinking the fundamental issues that drive global politics. The moment has come to reflect on the contributions of the aesthetic turn and identify potentials and challenges ahead. I do so by stressing that the key is not agenda-setting, but to continue the search for thinking space: to explore ever new ways of writing, seeing, hearing and sensing the political. I then identify two challenges: 1) to push creative work while, at the same time, increasing the ability to speak to a broad audience; 2) to avoid the hubris of overarching explanations and, instead, cultivate pluralism and self-reflexivity. The latter is important to address practices of exclusion, such as those linked to the Western legacy of aesthetic theories.