Geopolitical Concepts as Ideational Technologies: Imperialism, Ideology, and the Invention of the Middle East

Abstract Of all the geopolitical concepts to emerge in the twentieth century, the Middle East is arguably one of the most consequential yet contested. In an effort to understand the power and durability of the idea of the Middle East, this paper will reframe it as an ideational technology. A review of earlier efforts to understand the emergence and functions of this geopolitical concept will draw upon insights from the critique of ideology in the historical-materialist tradition. While many scholars have explored the ideological utility of the Middle East in the hands of imperial practices, few have examined the ideological power of the Middle East to call forth its own historical-empirical elaborations. To account for these powers, this article engages with theorizations of ideational technologies as an alternative and more productive way to grapple with two key questions in the historiography of the Middle East as a geopolitical concept: what conditions led to its invention, and what conditions allowed for its rapid reformulation and cooptation by the imperial British military? Though the Middle East is invented at the dawn of the twentieth century, it emerges not from human ingenuity but rather within a preexisting conceptual schema ripe for rearticulation. A decade later, the British Empire repurposes this ideational technology as a means to assert power over that which they have redefined for that very reason.