ABSTRACT
The significance of language in the construction of knowledge is a theme that has gained interest in geography, giving a different twist to the long-standing area of research on 'mapping' languages. This chapter examines whether the new geography and the themes it introduces make space for an engagement with experiences originating in different places or whether it establishes new kinds of foreclosures. It proposes to examine this by drawing examples from our own work, from a different point of departure which determines both our perspective and our focus. The chapter focuses on highlighting how non-dominant experiences at various geographical scales sit uneasily within a dominant discourse, these days anglophonic, which, even in its radical version/s, formulates theory and posits it as universally relevant. In political geography, globalisation, the new world order and global security seem to have replaced imperialism, aggressiveness and military power as analytical/explanatory concepts of the emerging geopolitics.
