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questioning assumptions in a taken-for-
granted world and examining the institutional
modes of producing such a worldvis-a`-viswrit-
ing about the world, its geography and politics.
Such an approach does not subscribe to any
one mode of apprehending the geopolitical
world; it eschews the idea that anygeography
can be fully finalized or authoritative (Sparke,
2005). Rather, it seeks to reveal and examine
the assumptions, constructions andpower
relations that are foundational to such appre-
hension (Shapiro, 1997).
A central project for critical geopolitics is
analysis of the discursive practices by which
scholars spatialize international politics: it asks
why and how a particular geopolitical narra-
tive is normalized and accepted (O ́Tuathail,
1996b) (see discourse; cf. Mu ̈ller, 2008).
Critical geopolitics thus seeks to politicize
knowledge production through discourse
analysisof dominant geopolitical practices,
such as foreign policy and techniques of repre-
senting war (Shapiro, 1997; Gregory, 2004b).
Within geography, ‘[c]ritical geopolitics is one
of many cultures of resistance to Geography as
imperial truth, state-capitalized knowledge,
and military weapon. It is a small part of a
much larger rainbow struggle to decolonize
our inheritedgeographical imaginationso
that other geo-graphings and other worlds
might be possible’ (O ́ Tuathail, 1996b,
p. 256). Sparke (2005, p. xiv) adds that ‘any
assumption about geography either as a result
of or as a basis or container for other social
relations always risks fetishizing a particular
spatial arrangement and ignoring ongoing pro-
cesses of spatial production, negotiation, and
contestation’.
O ́Tuathail’s (1996b) agenda-setting call for
critical geopoliticswas a central text in the
unravelling of dominant geopolitical dis-
course. It provided compelling critiques of
geopolitics, but through its distance from
alternative epistemological ways of knowing
how to ‘geo-graph’ the world (seeepistemol-
ogy) or from ontological commitments to it
(see ontology), critical geopolitics risked
becoming disembodied critical practice and
suffered from ‘a dearth of commentary on the
prospects for resistance’ (Sparke, 2000b,
p. 378; cf. Routledge, 1996a). Even as he
argued against positions that are unmarked,
unmediated and transcendent, then, O ́
Tuathail unwittingly became part of this cat-
egory. How dominant geopolitical scripts can
be destabilized and recast to take account of
people and places represented as the oriental-
ized Other (seeorientalism), for example, orexcluded from understandings ofsecurityand
political economyaltogether, represents a
major challenge for critical geopolitics. To
expose the subjects effaced by realist geopolitics
and international relations is a laudable goal,
but how might political change be effected once
power relations have been exposed?
Sparke (2005) seeks to bridge this gap in his
analysis of the ways in which a Canadian
organization – the National Action Committee
on the Status of Women (NAC) – displaced the
masculinist and state-sponsored ‘big picture’
politics through the formation of acounter-
public. Sparke’s analysis of the material, polit-
ical and gendered dimensions of geopolitics
employs a feminist politics of location that
goes beyond a purely discursive exegesis.
Dalby (1994) noted the lack of attention to
genderat the intersection of IR theory and
critical geopolitics, reiterating important
issues that had long been raised by feminists.
He examined the ways in which geopolitical
categories of security are gendered and the
gender-blind analysis of much IR theory.
His overview of gender andfeminismin IR
underscored the broader absence of feminist
voices in geopolitics during the 1990s, with
notable exceptions (Kofman and Peake,
1990; Kofman, 1996). Since then, conversa-
tions between feminist geography and geopol-
itics have considerably increased, and much of
the work that fills these silences is directed
towards an explicitly feminist geopolitics
(Staeheli, Kofman and Peake, 2004; Hyndman,
2004, 2007).
Critical geopolitics is not limited to the
orthodoxtrinityofgender,raceandclass.
Sharp (2000a) took critical geopolitics in new
directions in exploring the underdeveloped
connections between politics, popular culture
andsexuality, and studies like hers have also
extended the engagement of critical geopolit-
ics with the visual rather than narrowly textual
(cf. Hughes, 2007; Stru ̈ver, 2007). The
agenda of critical geopolitics has been further
enlarged through explorations of discourses of
danger and security (Megoran, 2005), gener-
osity and nationalist identity (Carter, 2006)
and affect, fear and emotion (Pain and
Smith, 2008). None of these studies is limited
to the analysis of discursive effects. These
extensions, and others like them, have opened
up the field of critical geopolitics and forged a
series of connections that involve far more
than political geography; critical geopolitical
perspectives now reach deep into human
geography at large and, as befits their inter-
disciplinary orientations, across a still widerGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_C Final Proof page 122 31.3.2009 9:45pmCRITICAL GEOPOLITICS