Popular culture, the body and world politics
| Date | 01 March 2020 |
| Published date | 01 March 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1354066119851849 |
| Author | Tim Aistrope |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066119851849
European Journal of
International Relations
2020, Vol. 26(1) 163 –186
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1354066119851849
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JR
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Popular culture, the body
and world politics
Tim Aistrope
University of Kent, UK
Abstract
Popular culture is widely understood to intersect with and shape our understanding
of world politics. Numerous studies have highlighted the way language and imagery
from literature, drama, film, television and other sites of cultural production make their
way into political discourses on geopolitics, terrorism, immigration, globalisation and
arms control, to name a few. Conversely, world events, especially international crises,
provide rich materials for popular culture across mediums and genres. This interchange
has often been understood through the theory of intertextuality, which highlights the
way the meaning and authority of any text is established by drawing on, or positioning
against, other texts from the surrounding culture. This article develops an account
of intertextuality that takes seriously the embodied dimensions of popular culture
and political discourse. Revisiting the work of Julia Kristeva, I argue that a framework
binding together bodies, discourses and social practices offers a promising avenue for
International Relations scholars grappling with the embodied aspects of intertextuality.
The article explores the implications and potential of this conceptualisation through a
case analysis of the sport–war intertext and spectacular war. In doing so, it demonstrates
that the legitimising effects ordinarily understood to accompany intertextuality are
intensified when bodily drives, impulses and affect are taken into account.
Keywords
Discourse, body, practice, sport, War on Terror
Introduction
Things began well, with a moving ceremony commemorating the firefighters who had lost their
lives and honouring local firefighters who had gone to New York afterward to help out. There
was even a lot of cheering when the Yankees took the field, a highly unusual transcendence of
Corresponding author:
Tim Aistrope, School of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent, Canterbury, CT2 7NZ, UK.
Email: T.G.Aistrope@kent.ac.uk
851849EJT0010.1177/1354066119851849European Journal of International RelationsAistrope
research-article2019
Article
164 European Journal of International Relations 26(1)
local attachments. As the game went on and the beer flowed, one increasingly heard ‘U-S-A,
U-S-A’ echoing the chant from the 1980s Olympic hockey match in which the United States
defeated Russia. This chant seemed to express the wish for America to defeat, abase, and
humiliate its enemies. Indeed it soon became a general way of expressing the desire to crush
one’s enemies, whoever they were. When an umpire made a bad call against the Sox, the same
group turned towards him chanting ‘U-S-A’. In other words, anyone who crosses us is evil and
must be crushed.
Martha Nussbaum, 2001
Popular culture is widely understood to intersect with and shape our understanding of
world politics. Numerous studies have highlighted the way language and imagery from
literature, drama, film, television and many other sites of cultural production make their
way into political discourses on geopolitics, terrorism, immigration, globalisation and
arms control, among many others. Conversely, world events, especially international
crises, provide rich materials for popular culture across mediums and genres.1 This inter-
change has often been understood by International Relations (IR) scholars through the
theory of intertextuality, which highlights the way the meaning and authority of any text
is established by drawing on, or positioning against, other texts from the surrounding
culture. At stake here is the cultural production of political legitimacy, as well as the pos-
sibility of contestation and resistance. For instance, an intertextual analysis might point
out how various texts that comprise a foreign policy discourse draw from the surround-
ing political culture, mobilising widely shared values and assumption, and rendering
particular perspectives intelligible. While this literature is well established and, in many
respects, incisive, it has mainly focused on textual representation. Yet, as the opening
quote from Martha Nussbaum suggests, the interchange between popular culture and
world politics often exceeds the boundaries of cultural artefacts and representational
practices. Nussbaum’s (2001) reflection on a post-9/11 baseball game at Chicago’s
famous Comiskey Park explicitly highlights the bodily dimensions of intertextuality, as
empathy and compassion gave way to ‘us versus them thinking’ and sports spectatorship
intersected with deep cultural scripts rooted in the darkest hours of the Cold War. Here,
intertextuality was practised en masse and spontaneously; it was imbricated with the
surge of the crowd, the momentum of the game, exhilaration and adulation, rage and
disdain; it even had something to do with the consumption of beer.
Of course, as Michael Shapiro (1989a: 70) noted in his groundbreaking treatment of
intertextuality in IR, ‘the leaves of the sport and war texts have been sifted together in
human society for centuries’. While Shapiro’s analysis of the sport–war intertext is com-
pelling, the bodily register remains implicit, captured, for instance, in his reflections on the
historical evolution of sports culture, including long-run processes of bourgeoisification
that have shaped bodies and social practices alike (Shapiro, 1989a: 76–85). Such concerns
are largely absent from later IR scholarship on intertextuality, where textual artefacts like
books, television programmes, speeches and policy documents are systematically analysed
for traces of the other texts that constitute and legitimise them. To point this out is not to
dismiss this research, which has often been illuminating and persuasive. Instead, the point
is to highlight the significance of the body and think about how it might be better under-
stood as part of intertextual meaning-making processes.
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