Space and Territoriality

Abstract

Territorial modernity signifies the transformation of the space of fluidity into territories or geometric grids of permanence. Border in International Relations with its constructed disciplinary gaze performs the role of a spatial unit and a decidable between a set of mutually reinforcing dualisms. In mainstream IR theory encrusted within the Western hegemonic discourse, transformations that exemplify the process of territorialization supplements the grammar of territorial epistemology. However, the ontology of the modern bounded ‘political’ marginalizes and makes invisible alternative mode of being. In post-colonial practices of South Asia, the dispositif of territorial modernity as a universal discourse and the ‘international’ is suggestive of resistance and contestations articulated via certain categories of bodies. This is prominent at the periphery of the post-colonial nation-states, as the actions of certain recalcitrant bodies often problematize the reified international. By taking the case study of the chars or river islands that often shift their location along India–Bangladesh riverine border, the paper also seeks to understand the political in these zones of indistinction and its (dis) association with the normative space that territoriality enacted in the first place.