Spatialities of Power and Postmodern Ethics—Rethinking Geopolitical Encounters

Abstract

There is still a tendency in contemporary currents of political theory to marginalize the spatialities of power. In this paper I argue that the development of a critical geopolitical imagination can help to illuminate issues of inside and outside, the transgression of borders, and the subversion of sovereignties, and that these issues are vital to our global understanding of democracy, justice, and ethics. I consider three interrelated questions. First, I emphasize the importance of situating the discussion of justice, equality, and power in a context which is not only transnational but in which a consideration of the geopolitics of power over other non-Western societies is also in the foreground. Second, I examine critically those treatments of ethics and politics that tend to isolate the national from the international, especially when the West is represented as a self-contained entity. Third, in the context of recent discussions on politics and the postmodern, I explore aspects of the ethics of difference and intersubjectivity. This is done against a general background of West–non-West relations, and the impact of geopolitical encounters.