Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
7-2018
Abstract
As Donald Trump’s presidential campaign showed, walls are a hot topic. While ‘globalisation’, with its free flow of capital and goods, characterised world politics after the end of the Cold War, the twenty-first century has witnessed a reassertion of cultural, legal, and physical barriers. It is common to criticise such post-Cold War walls, especially the US-Mexico Barrier and Israel’s West Bank Barrier, as ineffective and immoral. This article problematises such critical discourse by using unlikely juxtapositions (the Great Wall of China) and new conceptual frameworks (gaps, critical aesthetics) to explore: (1) how walls can be a rational security policy; (2) how they are not simply barriers, but can be complex sites of flows; and (3) how walls are not simply texts waiting to be decoded: they are also sites of non-narrative affective experience that can even excite the sublime. This critical juxtaposition of walls first explores what they can tell us about the politics of borders, identity, and foreign policy, and then considers how walls, as concrete visual artefacts, can be examples not simply of ideology, but also of affect. The article aims to understand walls in a different register as active embodiments of political debate – and of political resistance.
Keywords
Governmentality, affect, visuality, China, United States
Discipline
American Politics | Asian Studies | International Relations | Politics and Social Change
Research Areas
Political Science
Publication
Review of International Studies
Volume
44
Issue
3
First Page
456
Last Page
481
ISSN
0260-2105
Identifier
10.1017/S0260210517000638
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Citation
CALLAHAN, William A..(2018). The politics of walls: Barriers, flows, and the sublime. Review of International Studies, 44(3), 456-481.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/4165
Copyright Owner and License
Publisher
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210517000638
Included in
American Politics Commons, Asian Studies Commons, International Relations Commons, Politics and Social Change Commons
