Film, geopolitics and the affective logics of intervention

Abstract

Abstract This paper explores the way in which questions of affect are implicated in the relation between film and popular articulations of geopolitics. Recent work in political and cultural geography has foregrounded the role of affect in the performative enactment of space and spacing. Drawing upon such work, in this paper we explore the particular role of film as an affective assemblage through which geopolitical sensibilities emerge and are amplified. More specifically, we argue that the relation between cinema and enactments of geopolitical intervention must be understood not only in terms of the way one reproduces or subverts the discursively framed codes and scripts of the other but also in terms of the amplification and anchoring of particular affects through specific tactics and techniques. We illustrate this through a brief discussion of how the relations between the affective and geopolitical logics of intervention are implicated in U.S. involvement in Somalia in 1993 and its depiction in the 2002 film Black Hawk Down. In moving towards a conclusion, we draw upon this engagement with film in order to point to the possibilities for a more expansive engagement with the role played by the logics of affect in contemporary geopolitical cultures.