Documenting International Relations: Documentary Film and the Creative Arrangement of Perceptibility

Abstract

International Relations (IR) is taking a stronger interest in visual practices and representations both as popular imaginaries that shape how we understand and act in the world and as vehicles for teaching empirical events and abstract concepts. The genre of documentary film has, however, received virtually no attention, which is striking given the last decade's explosion of widely circulated documentaries revolving around questions of central importance to IR. In this article we argue that IR needs to take documentary film‐making seriously as a separate and significant medium of representation that—moving smoothly between fact and fiction, education and entertainment—directly intervenes in international politics by laying claim to (parts of) truth and reality. To this end, we introduce an analytical framework based on the idea of arrangements of perceptibility, a term that refers to the creative arrangement of sensorial perceptions (saying and showing) in documentary film. We distinguish between three such arrangements, each characterized by a specific theoretical modality (reality, truth, doubt), educational model (instruction, facilitation, problematization), and political efficacy (exposition, disclosure, destabilization). This framework enables a critical analysis of the politics of documentary film, which we demonstrate through a reading of recent documentary films about global politics.

Theanti‐geopoliticalcinematic eye: Documentary film and critical geopolitics

“…The role of filmmakers is of central importance in the creation of documentaries as filmic resemblances of reality, and directors often acknowledge the choices made in this process (Gaines, 1999;Van Munster & Sylvest, 2015a).…”

“…The postmodern critique of the genre has drawn into question the distinction between reality and representation as elicited by the visual and the image (Gaines, 1999; Gaines and Renov, 1999). Documentaries are frequently geopolitical in their content and scope and appeal to audiences from the local to the global; with their claims to veracity, the expectations of viewers are distinct from the audiences of feature films (Van Munster & Sylvest, 2015a, 2015b). At the same time, the networks of creation and distribution for documentaries have been democratized to allow alternative voices to emerge.…”

Waiting for International Political Sociology: A Field Guide to Living In-Between

“…Other scholars, including myself, have offered more detailed analyses of how global power relations emerge in specific modes of visual representation, for example, film, television, photography and art (Danchev, 2009;Kiersey & Neumann, 2013;Lisle, 2007Lisle, , 2010Möller, 2010;Shapiro, 2008;Weldes, 2003). All this has produced an exciting and widespread interest in how visual culture -especially film -can be used in the classroom to engage students in the pressing issues of global politics (Dodds, 2008;Swimelar, 2013;Van Munster & Sylvester, 2013;Weber, 2005).…”

“Men behaving badly”? Representations of masculinity in post-global financial crisis cinema

“…Recent work in international political economy (IPE) has echoed and extended Parvulescu's point to reflect on the way in which films about finance can contribute to critical engagement with the politics of global finance, exposing the power relations, hierarchies, and vested interests that pervade (Blyth 2013, 21;Brassett and Clarke 2015;de Goede 2015). Indeed, this might speak to a wider discussion about the potential role of film and documentaries in the pedagogy of global politics (van Munster and Sylvest 2015). Beyond these possibilities, however, there are reasons to remain cautious about the politics and limits of popular culture.…”