Geopolitics and humiliation: The ‘sinking islands’ of Tuvalu

Abstract

Emotions play a key role within geopolitics; spatial representations draw upon, create, and reinforce emotional responses within and from political actors. Bringing together critical literature on emotion and geopolitics, this paper sets out to examine the underexplored ways in which humiliation features in geopolitical discourse and practice. Through elite interviews and participant observation in the South Pacific at the 50th Pacific Islands Forum in August 2019, we analyse the impact of popular representations of Tuvalu in relation to sea-level rise on Tuvaluan diplomats. In doing so, we argue that atolls figure within climate politics as not only harbingers of potential climate futures, but also as objects of humiliation, ridicule, and mockery. Further, we elaborate on two components of humiliation. Firstly, that humiliation creates a hierarchical power relationship through the (neo-colonial) production and subsumption of an Other; and secondly, that humiliation relies on and undermines existing relationships and is something that is seen, felt, and heard – it is not only emotive for the actor being humiliated but is directed towards and reaches a wider audience.