A subaltern critical geopolitics of the war on terror: Postcolonial security in Tanzania

Reading Brand Africa Geopolitically: Nation Branding, Subaltern Geopolitics and the Persistence of Politics

“…27 Indeed, Sharp argues that when attention has been focused on the representations of the marginalised there has been an unfortunate tendency to look for romanticised political alternatives untainted by Westernisation and power. 28 Significantly, for the purposes of this paper, Sharp explicitly identifies pan-Africanist discourses as instances of such 'subaltern geopolitics'. 29 For Sharp, what the (military) concept of the subaltern illuminates is the fact that the weak and marginalised are rarely completely excluded and 'outside of the ranks', but rather of a 'lower rank'.…”

“…Situated within and towards dominant geopolitical scripts the subaltern can still establish 'creative alternatives' 32 that do not outright reject dominant scripts, but rather seeks to secure a position of greater power through a mixture of reproduction and subversion. 33 Aligning herself with Ayoob's concept of 'subaltern realism', a concept that links an apparently weak position with a powerful vision, she also draws on Bhabha's ideas about the potentials of hybridity and in particular the idea of 'mimicry' as an ambiguous strategy of subversion and survival that destabilises binary categories of inside/outside and that offers 'a way of "doing" world politics in a seemingly "similar" yet unexpectedly "different" way. 34 Although broadly in agreement with her reading, we feel that Sharp over-emphasises the rational dimensions of subaltern geopolitics.…”

War without end? Military humanitarianism and the limits of biopolitical approaches to security in Central America and the Caribbean

“…Eliding questions about when and where humanitarian aid is delivered and how its intended recipients are identified, it leaves unanswered questions about the uneven distribution of that condition and its geostrategic significance (Dunn & Cons, 2014;Li, 2010;Ticktin, 2011). Such concerns are crucial to a geopolitical analysis of humanitarianism, particularly one that aims to do more than focus purely on matters of statecraft (Hyndman, 2004;Robinson, 2003;Sharp, 2011). Getting at those questions requires a reconsideration of vulnerability as a politically and historically induced condition rather than an ontological one (Butler, 2004(Butler, , 2009Povinelli, 2011).…”

Predator Empire: The Geopolitics of US Drone Warfare

“…These shared stories of the women, children, and men of FATA "disturbs and disrupts the hegemonic foreign policy gaze" 64 , and refocuses the lens of the White House's geographical imagination. Drone warfare in Pakistan, just like the "war on terror" more generally, is not a universal experience 65 : it is differentially distributed and violently uneven, split between suburban pilots that sit in air-conditioned trailers and scan video screens, adjusting their "soda straw" digital view of the world with a joystick, and the everyday experiences told by the people of FATA. While not wanting to overstate the case, these stories are important for rehumanising the abstract discourses of security strategy and the bureaucratic spaces of the disposition matrix.…”