Place-identity and renewed materialism in geopolitics: towards an analytical approach?

Abstract

Where Classical Geopolitics sees a determinate effect of geography on politics, Critical Geopolitics sees the production of selective geographical knowledge and seeks to expose and displace it. Central to this critique is a concept of identity as a product of mental and material practices that erect a difference of the 'Self' in relation to a threatening 'Other'. Similar logics are present in critical studies of nationalism when they deal with the geopolitical practices that shaped nations, states and their identities. Nevertheless, this logic of relational identity formation is open to criticism too. Because apart from identity formation that depends on social categories, roles and significant 'others', an underlying literature also accepts a broader understanding of identity with references on material artefacts and significant places. This means that, under certain conditions, material geography might be constitutive of a 'place-identity' that feeds into national identity. To even consider this possibility, however, it is necessary to avoid the heavy-duty caveat of essentialism and determinism. In this regard, engaging with New Materialism, the article approaches geography in terms of its on-going materialization in identity formation processes. Such a renewed materialism implies certain limits on the capacity of politics to 'master space'.