Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space (Volume 6)

Borderlines #6

by Gearóid O’Tuathail

Geography is about power, an ever-changing map of the human struggle over borders, space, and authority. In Critical Geopolitics, Gearóid Ó Tuathail writes about the politics of this geographical struggle, and about the geography of global politics. Thoroughly engrossing and theoretically ambitious, the book is the first geographical study to tackle geopolitical writing from a poststructuralist position. Focusing particularly on Bosnia and Ireland, the author uses radical concepts of mapping and seeing to subvert traditional assumptions about global politics.

The book begins by outlining a general theory of geo-power, or the governmentalization of geographical knowledge by the state. Ó Tuathail then considers the twentieth-century constellation of geo-power that we know as “geopolitics.” He shows how geopolitics is not a fixed and stable phenomenon but varies historically with governmentalized geographical discourse.

Ó Tuathail delivers a deconstructive critique of various twentieth-century attempts to impose grand geopolitical visions on the spinning surface of global affairs. In doing so, he outlines a new “critical geopolitics” approach to geographical representations in political discourse.

Genres: Geography, Nonfiction

328 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1996

Reviews

[Javier · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overall, I was very unimpressed with this book. I would've given it 1 star if not for the chapter on Bosnia as being "between a quagmire and a Holocaust." This was the only redeeming aspect of the book for me, since I learned from that (reflecting my ignorance about the Balkan wars of the 1990's). The author is way too enamored with Foucault and post-structuralism for me. This leads him to have no material analysis of capitalism or imperialism in a book that is supposedly all about a "critical approach" to geopolitics. So much filler and excessively academic jargon here.

[Taha Acar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jeopolitik kuramlarıyla ilgilenen her öğrencinin okuması gereken, günümüz Eleştirel Jeopolitik yaklaşımının kurucularından olan Gearoid O Tuathall'ın 'mükemmel' kitabı.