Research Workshop: Literary Politics and Geopolitics

At our first workshop, ‘European Centres and Peripheries in the Political Novel’, we moved away from the idea of Europe’s inner unity and homogeneity in favour of a conception of Europe as a ‘combined and uneven formation that in itself is characterised by economic, social, cultural, and literary asymmetries’. In this final workshop, we take a global perspective and transcend Europe’s borders. We have framed this exploration within the controversial term ‘geopolitics’.

Today’s global political situation is characterised by wars, increasingly overt imperialist ambitions and rivalries, power struggles, and hegemonic conflicts over new spheres of influence. Colonial dependencies have also been revived, often manifesting as access to raw materials and licences for their unhindered extraction. The idea of a ‘new world order’ based on globalisation, which was promoted until recently, has given way to a new combination of isolationism and imperialism. The ideal of free world trade, itself anything but innocent, has been replaced by global war economies. Not only are ‘rogue states’ of various hues ignoring international law, which was supposed to guarantee precisely this kind of order and freedom, but the very powers that have always acted as its advocates are also aggressively delegitimising and actively suspending it.

This brings us to the inevitable, and perhaps somewhat naïve, question: What role can literature play in this – admittedly painted in somewhat dystopian terms – situation? Can it (still) serve as a register, a medium for recording and processing global conditions and interactions? Or do these ultimately transcend the scope of literature? Is it possible to record conditions in such a way that they can be perceived as changeable? Can the achievements of political novels be simply scaled up to a global framework? To put it bluntly: In our project, we assume that there is such a thing as contemporary political literature – but is there also such a thing as geopolitical literature?

The decision to use the term ‘geopolitics’ already implies several assumptions that we now put up for debate. In terms of conceptual history, the term ‘geopolitics’ is considered highly problematic and ideological. It stands for a view of politics in which national states appear as ‘biological entities’ whose behaviour and development are defined and determined by their position in and relationship to space. The history of the theory and concept of geopolitics is closely linked to 19th-century nationalism, imperialism, and biologism, as well as the ongoing impact of these issues in the 20th century. The current resurgence of interest in the theoretical-political construct of geopolitics (which has been evident for a few years now) can be seen as a judgement on our present, regardless of the validity of individual analyses.

However, we choose to interpret the term ‘geopolitics’ in a slightly different way, namely, as an indicator of a problem. It signals to us that the traditional understanding of politics is not (or no longer) fit for purpose. The term ‘geopolitics’ indicates that we can only think about politics today if we also consider its global framework. In short, national and local politics no longer exist in isolation, because both can only ever be viewed in the context of the global landscape, whether we like it or not.

Our hypothesis, however, is that literature may be able to help here. On this point, regarding the history of theory, the traditional concept of ‘politics’ has recently been called into question and redefined by the concept of ‘the political’. The decision about what is considered political and what is considered apolitical must then be regarded as a highly political question itself. Literature played a pivotal role in reframing ‘politics’ within the horizon of a broader concept of ‘the political’. The problem of geopolitics can perhaps be seen as a similarly far-reaching and necessary questioning of classical politics (those of the nation state). Today, the concept of geopolitics can be seen as the ultimate intensification of the attempt to objectify politics and detach it from society, from individuals and collectives. ‘Geopolitics’ is often seen as a code word for the experience and the feeling of powerlessness that individuals face when confronted with political issues in a global context. Can literature help us to reopen that area which is named (and sometimes immunised and sealed off by the term) ‘geopolitics’ to democratic intervention? Can literature provide alternative ways of thinking about global politics to those offered by ‘geopolitics’? Can there be a global politics of literature that suspends and disempowers the prevailing ‘geopolitics’?