The Discursive Constitution of a World-Spanning Region and the Role of Empty Signifiers: The Case of Francophonia

ISSN： 1465-0045

Source： Geopolitics, Vol.12, Iss.4, 2007-10, pp. : 656-679

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Abstract

The cultural turn in political science, history, and political geography has opened new perspectives on the division of the world into geographic entities. Nation-states, regions, districts, etc., are no longer qualified as quasi-natural objects based upon intrinsic qualities but, rather, as contingent results of social or accordingly discursive processes. The Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) defines Francophonia as an "geocultural space" (espace géoculturel) and an international community of more than 50 states. In this contribution, the concept of political communities as "imagined communities" and the advancements of discourse theory by Laclau and Mouffe are used in order to conceptualise and analyse the discursive constitution of this world-spanning region. The findings show that Francophonia has been constituted during the process of decolonisation as a community bound together by the idea of a shared language - largely by reproducing patterns of a superiority of French language and culture. Critique against a neo-colonial character of Francophonia and the changing contexts of international relations led to breaks and shifts of the discourse. Thus, since the end of the 1990s, the OIF delimits Francophonia as the space of cultural diversity against the cultural homogenisation of an "Anglo-Saxon dominated globalisation".