Functions of sovereign violence: Contesting and establishing order in Darjeeling, India

Wenner, Miriam

doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2019.102094

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…These anxieties over sovereignty are distinct from those experienced by postcolonial state subjects. First, states are not the only provider of protection and belonging in these contexts, as sovereignty is often multiple and highly contested (Baruah, 2020;Hansen & Stepputat, 2001;Sidaway, 2003;Wenner, 2020). In Myanmar, BRI projects have been delayed or suspended, in part, because they intersect with areas claimed by ethnic armed organisations (Dean, 2020;Kiik, 2016).…”

Section: Towards An Emotional Geopolitics Of Infrastructurementioning

confidence: 99%

Sovereign anxiety in Myanmar: An emotional geopolitics of China's Belt and Road Initiative

Mostafanezhad

Farnan

Loong

2022

Trans Inst British Geog

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Geographers have increasingly attended to the role of emotion in geopolitical encounters and the geopolitics of cross‐border infrastructure projects. While scholars have theorised fear as an emotion produced by elite geopolitical discourses and encounters between bodies, we know much less about how infrastructure's materialities provoke fear and anxiety. Furthermore, key distinctions between anxiety – or a psychological state of insecurity and unease – and fear, which is attached to a specific target object, are still not fully understood. Focused on the uncertainties over China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), we develop the concept of sovereign anxiety – a generalised condition of unease over the security of one's political community – to account for how the BRI generates not only the hard materials of infrastructure (e.g., roads, dams and pipelines), but also the social practices of affect and emotion. Sovereign anxiety, we argue, is heightened by the absence of transparency over China's infrastructure investments in Myanmar. In this paper, we trace how sovereign anxiety is variously experienced and grounded in residents' observations, personal biographies, social histories, and sense of community belonging. We also identify three themes by which fears of the BRI are articulated: relations, roads, and resources. This article contributes an emotional geopolitics perspective to grounded studies of the BRI, while also demonstrating the geopolitical significance of attending to the emotional lives of infrastructure in relation to the BRI and beyond.

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Section: Towards An Emotional Geopolitics Of Infrastructurementioning

confidence: 99%

Sovereign anxiety in Myanmar: An emotional geopolitics of China's Belt and Road Initiative

Mostafanezhad

Farnan

Loong

2022

Trans Inst British Geog

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“…In a similar way, the dehumanisation of black people in the context of slavery might be understood as an exception that “is always in place” in the sense of a permanent state of exception that serves to assert sovereign power. Alternatively, we might stretch the very notion of sovereignty to encompass any de facto formation of colonial and postcolonial power, akin to Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat’s (2006) heuristic notion of “de facto sovereignty”, understood as a “form of authority grounded in violence” that is “tentative and always emergent” (Hansen and Stepputat 2006:297; see also Wenner 2020). 7…”

Section: From Shifting Sovereignties To Sovereign Necropoliticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 9 9 Hansen and Stepputat build on Agamben when, in a much‐cited paraphrase, they define “de facto sovereignty” as the “ability to kill, punish, and discipline with impunity” (2006:296; see also Wenner 2020). …”

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confidence: 99%

Necropolitics Beyond the Exception: Parapolicing, Milícia Urbanism, and the Assassination of Marielle Franco in Rio de Janeiro

Hutta

2022

Antipode

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Engaging with the assassination of black city councillor Marielle Franco, the paper discusses how “milícia urbanism”, a formation of power and capital accumulation driven by parapolice networks, intensifies the necropolitical governance of Rio de Janeiro. Specifically, this necropolitics is characterised by liaisons among armed, political, institutional and economic actors that enable acts of violence with impunity, aggravating the conditions of violence for subaltern populations. Dialoguing with the Black Studies debate on necropolitics and works on violent democracies, the paper situates milícia urbanism within a postcolonial genealogy of parapolicing. Ever since the colonial plantation, it is argued, parapolicing has been integral to a power technology that avoids sovereign accountability while serving white capital interests. Whereas previous accounts of necropolitics have centred on the sovereign exception, this genealogy furthers an understanding of necropolitics “beyond the exception”. The paper concludes that Marielle Franco’s black‐feminist politics has been vital to contestations of this necropolitics.

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Nepali Speakers of West Bengal, Politics of Self-Rule, and Political Elites

Chamlagai

2023

Migration, Regional Autonomy, and Conflicts in Eastern South Asia

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Functions of sovereign violence: Contesting and establishing order in Darjeeling, India

Cited by 5 publications

References 27 publications

Sovereign anxiety in Myanmar: An emotional geopolitics of China's Belt and Road Initiative

Sovereign anxiety in Myanmar: An emotional geopolitics of China's Belt and Road Initiative

Necropolitics Beyond the Exception: Parapolicing, Milícia Urbanism, and the Assassination of Marielle Franco in Rio de Janeiro

Nepali Speakers of West Bengal, Politics of Self-Rule, and Political Elites

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