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Text, Discourse, Affect and Things
Series
Ashgate research companion
ISBN
978-1-4094-2380-5
Type
book section
Date Issued
2013
Author(s)
Mueller, Martin
Editor(s)
Dodds, Klaus
Kuus, Merje
Sharp, Joanne
Abstract
Texts are at the heart of the critical geopolitics enterprise. Critical geopolitics hinges on the assumption that we can read global politics off textual evidence. More than that, it argues that texts are not mimetic but productive of the political world: texts construct geopolitics. This premise sparked most of the thrust for the engagement with the written and spoken word and the analysis of texts became the bread-and-butter business of critical geopolitics. So much so that in 2000, in a short commentary in an edited collection on geopolitical traditions, Nigel Thrift expressed apprehension of the ‘mesmerized attention to texts and images' and the ‘interpretation of hyperbolic written and drawn rhetoric … often read by only a few and taken in by even fewer' (Thrift 2000, 381 & 385). As a parallel agenda, Thrift outlined a path for critical geopolitics that would see it becoming more sensitive to what he called ‘the little things' - the mundane details of life -, however without jettisoning the concern with language and text.
The present contribution charts the engagement with text and discourse in critical geopolitics. It starts from the staple of textual analysis, tracing the outlines of existing bodies of work in formal, practical and popular geopolitics and introducing deconstruction as a principal reading strategy. Staking out the difference between text and discourse, it reviews approaches to discourse analysis in critical geopolitics and points to a number of methodological lacunae that remain to be addressed. The final outlook section takes up the challenge posed by Thrift and explores perspectives of integrating text with other categories, i.e. text and …, in considering practices, affect and things as central components of a broader notion of discourse.
The present contribution charts the engagement with text and discourse in critical geopolitics. It starts from the staple of textual analysis, tracing the outlines of existing bodies of work in formal, practical and popular geopolitics and introducing deconstruction as a principal reading strategy. Staking out the difference between text and discourse, it reviews approaches to discourse analysis in critical geopolitics and points to a number of methodological lacunae that remain to be addressed. The final outlook section takes up the challenge posed by Thrift and explores perspectives of integrating text with other categories, i.e. text and …, in considering practices, affect and things as central components of a broader notion of discourse.
Language
English
Keywords
critical geopolitics
discourse
affect
things
actor-network theory
discourse analysis
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
HSG Profile Area
SHSS - Kulturen, Institutionen, Maerkte (KIM)
Refereed
No
Book title
The Ashgate research companion to critical geopolitics
Publisher
Ashgate
Publisher place
Farnham
Start page
49
End page
68
Pages
20
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Eprints ID
71738