Intellectuals and geopolitics: The ‘cultural politicians’ of Central Europe

Abstract

This paper investigates the role of intellectuals in the production of geopolitical discourses. It analyzes how the cultural capital of humanist credentials and artistic aura functions to authenticate and legitimate geopolitical claims. Drawing empirically from Central Europe and especially Estonia, I argue that intellectuals are central to the production of a particular ‘cultural’ concept of geopolitics – the notion that foreign policy expresses the state’s and the nation’s identity. As cultural capital gives intellectuals a special license to speak about culture, it constitutes an essential component in geopolitical discourses in Central Europe. The paper contributes to Europeanist geography by clarifying the mechanisms through which Central Europe is cast externally and internally as a place particularly imbued with culture and identity – a place whose integration with the EU and NATO represents its cultural ‘return’ to Europe. It takes us beyond the romanticized notion of intellectuals – especially the formerly dissident ones – as ‘speaking truth to power’, and offers a more subtle account of their role as producers of power discourses. Beyond Central Europe, the paper underscores the political and cultural milieu of geopolitical claims and the specific structures of legitimacy through which these claims are justified and normalized. A nuanced understanding of the role of ‘culture’ in geopolitical discourses requires that we closely examine the cultural and moral capital of intellectuals. This would also enable us to better delineate human agency in the production of geopolitics.