Papers by Rodrigo Bueno Lacy
Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 2015
Ever since the 15th century, empires have invented Europe as a meaningful political space to legi... more Ever since the 15th century, empires have invented Europe as a meaningful political space to legitimize territorial ambitions and establish hierarchies between Europeans and professedly lesser geocultural entities. Maps have played a crucial role in naturalizing the geopolitical arbitrariness-what we term cartopolitics-that has underlain such Europeanization. In this article, we draw on historical maps to expose the cartopolitical cleansing done by the EUtoday's grand Europeanizing power-and free Europe from its hegemonic cartopolitical inscription. Heavy on symbolism yet light on mathematical accuracy, old maps of Europe readily earn our mistrust. Meanwhile, EU cartography, foreseeing that strident symbolism could antagonize its members' national iconography and hamper enlargement, offers a plain technicality divested of political allegory that demands indifference. However, the seemingly unobjectionable Europe portrayed by EU maps relies on decorative strategies analogous to those of ancient maps and should arouse similar suspicion. Ironically, for all their subtlety to cultivate an affiliation with Brussels, EU maps inadvertently prop up Eurosceptical discourses chewing at the EU's external appeal and internal cohesion. Our conviction is that dislocating Europe's borders to show Europes that were and could be may inspire refreshing imaginations about the meaning and boundaries of Europe and the EU.
Key challenges in geography, Dec 31, 2022
Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG eBooks, 2024
XIV Colóquio Ibérico de Geografia, Jun 17, 2014
Los cafetines bonaerenses son fronteras culturales cuya poesia estetica tiene la capacidad de evo... more Los cafetines bonaerenses son fronteras culturales cuya poesia estetica tiene la capacidad de evocar una familiaridad transatlantica geopoliticamente desestabilizadora. Su rebeldia espacial emana del inesperado parentesco que evoca su ‘poetica fronteriza’—su sediciosa alteracion de significados espaciales e ideologicos. Esta sugiere que el Atlantico no separa lo que parecida germinacion tuvo y tan similarmente se experimenta tanto en Buenos Aires como a lo largo del Mediterraneo. Estos enclaves revelan una genetica colonial que recorre America entera y que es herencia de la incesante copula fisico-intelectual esta ha sostenido con Europa desde su mutuo descubrimiento. El embrollo de elementos que dotan a estos cafes de su particular bohemia, remonta a epocas de la inmigracion que pincelo su caracter y evoca cartografias alternas que unen lo que el mapa distancia. El amotinamiento emocional que suscitan los cafetines portenos sugiere que la experiencia sensorial es quiza mas importante que la contiguidad territorial para la conceptualizacion de fronteras. Dichas fronteras emocionales deslavan etiquetas geopoliticas que inspiran apreciaciones intangibles en las que se basan nuestras acciones. Al exponer el bagaje cultural de los cafetines y el ambiente en el que se gestaron, asi como la iconografia de las socializaciones que en ellos ocurren, esta ponencia pretende socavar la nocion de que los legados culturales le temen al agua y se detienen al borde de los continentes. Si el cartografo y el historiador pretenden mapear los confines de Europa y America o los geografos desafiar la perniciosa vanagloria de nacionalismos e imperialismos, bien harian en escuchar el vaiven de los oceanos en una taza de cafe porteno.
Journal of Borderlands Studies, Jan 3, 2017
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2024
Mourning the murder of Nahel Merzouk by the French police and the drowning of 750 human beings by... more Mourning the murder of Nahel Merzouk by the French police and the drowning of 750 human beings by the Greek coastguard's recklessness, we argue that the erosion of human rights at the EU's external borders is being co-constituted by an analogous erosion within its internal borders. To establish this connection, we re-conceptualise the EUropean b/ordering regime as a network of fractal borderscapes characterised by a selective criminalisation of mobility that reproduces longstanding racist prejudice along socio-spatial borderlines. We argue that the proliferation of these spaces of exception is degenerating into a state of exception: a polity's self-destructive tendency to replace the rule of law for legalised despotism. Such autoimmune reaction, we claim, is rooted in borderism: a spectacle that misshapes geography into spurious antagonisms epitomised by national and civilisational dichotomies ("friends" and "foes"), thus creating a hyperreality that breeds racism, spatialises apartheid and exacerbates animosity.
Master's Thesis for a degree in Human Geography, Sep 1, 2011
The history of the European Union is a story of rebordering. This is no accident.
Geopolitical a... more The history of the European Union is a story of rebordering. This is no accident.
Geopolitical assimilation is hardwired to the very essence of the EU project—which
is a refined model of international organisation that emerged after previous his-
torical experiments ended with ever more catastrophic consequences. The Union’s
model relies on a process of imperial governance that seeks compliance in ex-
change for incentives. It starts with economic interdependence, goes through
gradual identification and institutional rapprochement and ends with a geographi-
cal embrace. The novelty of this conflict resolution model is that, unlike traditional
ones, it is not primarily based on coercion or threats but on an assertive self-
righteousness buttressed by a powerful economic leverage. This approach allows
the EU to overcome traditional obstacles for international governance—
particularly national opposition—which have made previous models of interna-
tional organisation unstable. Contrary to the mainstream belief—both in politics
and scholarship—in this thesis I argue that the ENP is nothing but enlargement in
disguise and that, if certain conditions remain, it will lead to the eventual absorp-
tion of the EU’s periphery, which could include Turkey, Morocco and Russia. I ad-
vance the idea that the EU has an inertia of its own which is likely to progress
unless a relapse into xenophobia and nationalism takes place.
Fennia, Jun 19, 2017
In this article we carry out a geopolitical analysis of the turbulent breeze driving the EU into ... more In this article we carry out a geopolitical analysis of the turbulent breeze driving the EU into uncharted extremes. To do this we zoom in on three cases that we deem both a response to political extremism and a source of political extremism in themselves: France's state of emergency, Brexit and the pyrrhic victory over the far-right in the Dutch elections of 2017. Our analysis suggests that even though the political forces behind these events have praised their policies or electoral victories as bulwarks to keep extremism in check, the sort of extremism that they try to keep at bay is not as worrying as the counter-productive realpolitik of the traditional establishment they represent. By surreptitiously adopting precisely the kind of extremist political preferences that they claim to set themselves against, these politics show how the establishment in the EU is normalising the extreme geopolitics of exclusion that are structurally undermining the very principles of rule of law, liberal democracy and overall openness on which the EU is based. The result: what used to be easily dismissed as irrational or evil has become the everyday normal. The extremism we so much fear has become the new normality.
Expanding Boundaries: Borders, Mobilities and the Future of Europe-Africa Relations , 2020
Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks, Mar 31, 2023
Geopolitics, Mar 10, 2020
In this article we argue that the EU suffers from autoimmunity: a self-harming protection strateg... more In this article we argue that the EU suffers from autoimmunity: a self-harming protection strategy. Drawing on Derrida's political understanding of autoimmunity, we contend that the root of this malfunction lies in the EU's own b/ordering and othering policies, which are intended to immunise the foundational ethos of the EU. For this purpose, we dissect the EU border regime into three linked b/ordering mechanisms: the pre-borders of paper documents that regulate from afar the mobility of the people from visa-obliged countries; the actual land borders often consisting of iron gates and fences regulating mobility on the spot; and the post-border in the form of waiting/detention camps that segregate and enclose the undocumented migrants after entry. We make clear how this discriminatory b/ordering and othering regime has led to a recurrent drawing of ever less porous, inhumane and deadlier borders. Such thanatopolitics finds itself at odds with the humanist values that the EU is supposed to uphold, particularly cross-border solidarity, openness, non-discrimination and human rights. We argue that the EU b/ordering regime has turned fear of the non-EUropean into an increasingly unquestionedeven 'commonsensical'anxiety that has become politically profitable to exploit by extreme nationalistic and EUrosceptic parties. The core of the EU's autoimmunity that we want to expose lies within this irony: in its attempt to protect what it considers meaningful, the EU has unleashed an autoimmune disorder that has turned the EU into its own most formidable threat. DRAWING INSPIRATION from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe, from which have developed the universal values of the inviolable and inalienable rights of the human person, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law.
Journal of Contemporary European Studies, Aug 24, 2015
Ever since the 15th century, empires have invented Europe as a meaningful political space to legi... more Ever since the 15th century, empires have invented Europe as a meaningful political space to legitimize territorial ambitions and establish hierarchies between Europeans and professedly lesser geocultural entities. Maps have played a crucial role in naturalizing the geopolitical arbitrariness—what we term cartopolitics—that has underlain such Europeanization. In this article, we draw on historical maps to expose the cartopolitical cleansing done by the EU—today's grand Europeanizing power—and free Europe from its hegemonic cartopolitical inscription. Heavy on symbolism yet light on mathematical accuracy, old maps of Europe readily earn our mistrust. Meanwhile, EU cartography, foreseeing that strident symbolism could antagonize its members' national iconography and hamper enlargement, offers a plain technicality divested of political allegory that demands indifference. However, the seemingly unobjectionable Europe portrayed by EU maps relies on decorative strategies analogous to those of ancient maps and s...
International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment and Technology, Mar 6, 2017
Contains fulltext : 183035.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)The frontier is one of t... more Contains fulltext : 183035.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)The frontier is one of the most fascinating concepts in geography. It is a border, yet not a well-demarcated line but a fuzzy zone of transition, not a finished world but a world in sketch and a gate to the future. Because of its conceptual openness and relation to exploration, the frontier has been in partnership with imperialism and evokes the ancestry of an oppressive term. Arguably, however, the frontier is simultaneously a better allusion to the ceaseless flows that shape societies and thus a refined notion to analyze the transformations that are the concern of human geography
Mobilities, Nov 14, 2019
How is undocumented migration typically mapped in contemporary cartography? To answer this questi... more How is undocumented migration typically mapped in contemporary cartography? To answer this question, we conduct an iconological dissection of what could be seen as the epitome of the cartography on undocumented migration, the map made by Frontexthe EU's border agency. We find that, rather than a scientific depiction of a migratory phenomenon, its cartography peddles a crude distortion of undocumented migration that smoothly splices into the xenophobic tradition of propaganda cartographyand stands in full confrontation with contemporary geographical scholarship. We conclude with an urgent appeal for more scientifically robust, critical and decidedly more creative cartographies of migration.
On the 7 of October 2013 the EU added around 350 corpses to the mass grave that it has been pilin... more On the 7 of October 2013 the EU added around 350 corpses to the mass grave that it has been piling up in the Mediterranean. These needlessly wasted lives speak not only of the EU’s appalling border management. They should be taken as a warning of a far wider tragedy unfolding all across the EU. The dead African migrants could be thought as potentially dead EU citizens. The disregard for their humanity may be seen as a dramatic result of the expanding disrespect for minorities all across the EU.
Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks, Mar 28, 2023
Expanding Boundaries, 2020
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Papers by Rodrigo Bueno Lacy
Geopolitical assimilation is hardwired to the very essence of the EU project—which
is a refined model of international organisation that emerged after previous his-
torical experiments ended with ever more catastrophic consequences. The Union’s
model relies on a process of imperial governance that seeks compliance in ex-
change for incentives. It starts with economic interdependence, goes through
gradual identification and institutional rapprochement and ends with a geographi-
cal embrace. The novelty of this conflict resolution model is that, unlike traditional
ones, it is not primarily based on coercion or threats but on an assertive self-
righteousness buttressed by a powerful economic leverage. This approach allows
the EU to overcome traditional obstacles for international governance—
particularly national opposition—which have made previous models of interna-
tional organisation unstable. Contrary to the mainstream belief—both in politics
and scholarship—in this thesis I argue that the ENP is nothing but enlargement in
disguise and that, if certain conditions remain, it will lead to the eventual absorp-
tion of the EU’s periphery, which could include Turkey, Morocco and Russia. I ad-
vance the idea that the EU has an inertia of its own which is likely to progress
unless a relapse into xenophobia and nationalism takes place.
Geopolitical assimilation is hardwired to the very essence of the EU project—which
is a refined model of international organisation that emerged after previous his-
torical experiments ended with ever more catastrophic consequences. The Union’s
model relies on a process of imperial governance that seeks compliance in ex-
change for incentives. It starts with economic interdependence, goes through
gradual identification and institutional rapprochement and ends with a geographi-
cal embrace. The novelty of this conflict resolution model is that, unlike traditional
ones, it is not primarily based on coercion or threats but on an assertive self-
righteousness buttressed by a powerful economic leverage. This approach allows
the EU to overcome traditional obstacles for international governance—
particularly national opposition—which have made previous models of interna-
tional organisation unstable. Contrary to the mainstream belief—both in politics
and scholarship—in this thesis I argue that the ENP is nothing but enlargement in
disguise and that, if certain conditions remain, it will lead to the eventual absorp-
tion of the EU’s periphery, which could include Turkey, Morocco and Russia. I ad-
vance the idea that the EU has an inertia of its own which is likely to progress
unless a relapse into xenophobia and nationalism takes place.