Critical Geopolitics

Abstract

Critical geopolitics is a post-structural approach which insists that rather than being an apolitical influence on international politics, as conventional accounts of geopolitics would argue, geographical relationships and entities are specific to historical and cultural circumstances. The meaning of geography can be made to change so that there is a politics to the use of geographical concepts in arguments about international relations. Following Foucault, critical geopolitics analyzes discourses of geography in international relations theory and practice to examine the power relations supported by such representations. Various attempts have been made to apply the critical geopolitics approach to the analysis of political speeches and policy documents, popular culture, and to go beyond the approach’s origins in textual analysis to provide a critical account of geopolitics which understood the inscription of international politics in the body.