2.7 Geopolitics and Discourse

As you read Toal's Chapter 12 Geopolitics and Discourse: Practical Geopolitical Reasoning in American Foreign Policy, do some critical thinking and ask yourself:

• How does this article's application of the ideas of discursive formation compare to the ideas of Painter articulated earlier in this lesson?
• The authors say that geography in traditional geopolitics is held to be a non-discursive phenomenon that separates the social, political, and ideological dimensions of international politics. Going back to Lesson One on the basics of physical and human geography, can you make the argument that physical geography is a material (non-discursive) phenomenon on which discursively formed human geography is overlain?
• Consider the author's four theses and the role of power in each.
• To what extent does the author's approach to critically deconstructing the American geopolitical discourse demonstrate the critical thinking skills previously identified?