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SUMMARY:Territorial Phantom Pains and Other Cartographic Anxieties - Dr Fr
 anck Billé (Social Anthropology)
DTSTART:20120523T110000Z
DTEND:20120523T130000Z
UID:TALK38125@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Ruth Rushworth
DESCRIPTION:The study of borders has traditionally been the remit of polit
 ical geography. Territorial disputes in particular have frequently been ap
 proached in terms of their economic and geopolitical significance. However
  political geography has found it notably difficult to account for a natio
 n’s strong emotional attachment to territories that are often small\, wi
 th little material or geopolitical value. In fact\, if territorial dispute
 s are conceptualised as disputes at state level\, resolutions are frequent
 ly hampered by the emotional attachment of ordinary citizens to these ‘t
 iny specks of largely uninhabited and essentially useless isles or peaks
 ’ (Chung 2004). State leaders are forced to play a two-level game of neg
 otiations\, with the other country as well as with their domestic constitu
 ents.\n \nSuch emotional responses bear testimony to the intimate melding 
 of individual and national identities. Socialised into seeing themselves a
 s inherently tied to the nation in its current physical incarnation\, indi
 viduals frequently perceive the loss of national territory as an assault o
 n bodily integrity. In revisiting the common trope of the nation-as-body t
 hrough inclusion of valuable insights from neuroscience\, my paper will ex
 plore what happens when a lack of fit intervenes between the physical geog
 raphical extent of the nation and the mental map held by its inhabitants. 
 Such a disconnect becomes especially visible when a nation loses part of i
 ts territory. ‘Lost’ territories\, no longer included within the natio
 nal body\, remain nonetheless part of a previous national incarnation. As 
 such\, they frequently draw national sentiments and affect\, producing wha
 t can be labelled ‘phantom pains’. Similar disconnects can also occur 
 when a nation finds itself in rapid expansion: as the borders of the natio
 n extend outwards to include more and more territory\, the divide between 
 self and Other becomes clouded\, and the mental map of that nation’s cit
 izens requires constant reframing.\n\n 
LOCATION:CRASSH\, Alison Richard Building\, 7 West Road\, Cambridge\, CB3 
 9DT
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