Political Geographies: Putting Khanna & Anderson together

I recently discovered LinkTV on my tv, which is amazing. It is also noteworthy in that Link carries Al Jazeera English here in America. What people don't seem to realize is that AJE is actually a great news source and not a terrorist organization...but that's a sidebar, albeit related, to the discussion of political geographies that I'm concerned with this evening.

Link also replayed the above video of Parag Khanna speaking at TED in 2009. He discusses the Middle East, mentioning that these countries are often "uncomfortable" in the borders left them by colonial realities. I didn't hear Khanna reference Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, but I'd be highly surprised if the articulate Khanna has not read this incredible and (rightly) influential tome.

In Anderson's revised edition (1991), Anderson added a chapter on "Census, Map, Museum." He writes about how these elements are crucial in providing information to buttress, describe, divide? the imagined community of the nation. Anderson writes that these "three institutions of power which, although invented before the mid nineteenth century, changed their form and function as the colonized zones entered the age of mechanical reproduction. These three institutions were the census, the map, and the museum" (163). Anderson points out that maps essentially create imaginary boundaries, and that the word country connotes "bounded territorial space" (173). To this end, Khanna points out that Africa's map is covered with "suspiciously straight lines." The lines show how unnatural, how inorganic, these national boundaries are.

Khanna ends by noting that "Geopolitics is constantly morphing - we are always searching for equilibrium, we fear changes on the map...but the inertia of our current borders is far worse. We focus on the lines that cross borders, the infrastructures lines, we'll end up with the world we want: a borderless one."

I question, do we truly want a borderless world? Khanna opened with a note about 90% of the world's population living outside of the 40 biggest population centers in the world. Are borders meant to give those within them a sense of belonging, or to keep others out? They do in fact provide definitions we rely on, especially in this country (ie, American, Mexican). Khanna is right, borders denote power and money and the flows of both. Are we - here, in the US, in particular - willing to give up some of our privilege to really truly begin to stabilize the world? Power, wealth, and privilege cannot continue to be located in such small loci as the world's population expands and demands their fair share of these privileges.

As I write this, I watch images of the protests in Egypt as its people attempt to redefine their country, their rights as citizens, their image and place in the world. (Meanwhile, Egyptian state tv, according to reports, continues to show soap operas & cooking shows instead of international news.) Commentary runs on about how these protests, and those in Tunisia and in Yemen, can destabilize Israel or the entire Arab world, even though the US claims to support burgeoning democracy. Interestingly enough, this political struggle reflects Khanna's point about internal lines: the news I get on Facebook and via Twitter, from those I went to school for Middle Eastern studies with, and my other Syrian connections, is faster, and more...honest (in my view) than what I see a day later on the international news. There are no borders, in a sense, in the age of information (despite Mubarak's attempt to shut down all internet communication services). But how far gone are the very real borders and mentally calcified divisions that have seemingly evaporated in the digital world?