An articulation of geopolitics otherwise? Indigenous language‐use in spaces of Arctic geopolitics

Abstract

AbstractThis paper takes up the call for political geographers to engage more directly with Wittgenstein's later philosophy of language, namely his emphasis on language as activity and practice. In particular, it considers his approach to linguistic demonstration over representation, whereby the reader is not ‘told’ but ‘shown.’ This arguably instructive conceptualisation of the functioning of language is here applied to a space of geopolitics, focusing on the political potentialities of articulating an Arctic otherwise through selective bilingualism and language‐use. More specifically, the paper centres on the particular use of North Sámi language in a conference space otherwise dominated by English and Norwegian. The act of ‘articulating otherwise’ is not here an act of defiance but rather an invitation for re‐conceptualisation. In making Indigenous voices heard on their own terms, it is not only the words but even more so the act of their utterance that carries political power. The paper therefore argues that political geographers ought to (re)direct attention to language‐use and the socio‐political practices of linguistic world‐making. By drawing on Wittgenstein's approach to language‐use, what here becomes clear is that geopolitical questions too are negotiated not through given answers but rather through the interactive process of reaching these together – insights that in turn allow us to consider how agency and change may play out through language‐use, potentially articulating geopolitics otherwise.