ENVIRONMENTAL DETERMINISM IN THE MODERN/COLONIAL GEOPOLITICAL DISCOURSE: FOR A DECOLONIAL GEOPOLITICS

Authors

  • Pedro Diniz Rocha Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais (PUC-Minas)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5380/cg.v7i3.60794

Abstract

The expansion of the modern/colonial system from the fifteenth century originated the construction of a differentiation between colonizers and colonized based on the idea of race. This became the founding element of the relationships of domination, articulating and crystallizing the geographical power: Europe and the Americas, White and Black; Indian; Half-breed; Yellow, Occident and Orient; Developed and Underdeveloped. The aim of this article then is to analyze geopolitical thesis of the nineteenth century founded initially around the prism of the environmental determinism, in order to understand if and how its discourse legitimate at that time the new wave of colonialism, the European rule over the world and the intensification of colonial violence. Therefore, it will be carried out a short genealogy of the environmental determinist discourse in the western thought, an analysis of its influence in the thesis of Friedrich Ratzel, Ellen Semple e Ellsworth Huntington and some of its parallels and counterpoints with French geopolitics, specially with the thinking of Paul Vidal de la Blache. This article is expected to amplify the call for the construction of a subaltern geopolitics that points out the vices of the modern/colonial geopolitical discourse, responsible to erase the spatial practices produced on the global south.

Key words: determinism; geopolitical-discourse; decolonial-geopolitics.

Author Biography

Pedro Diniz Rocha, Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais (PUC-Minas)

Mestrando em Relações Internacionais (PUC-Minas)

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Published

2018-12-28

How to Cite

Rocha, P. D. (2018). ENVIRONMENTAL DETERMINISM IN THE MODERN/COLONIAL GEOPOLITICAL DISCOURSE: FOR A DECOLONIAL GEOPOLITICS. Conjuntura Global, 7(3). https://doi.org/10.5380/cg.v7i3.60794

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