Education and the formation of geopolitical subjects

Despite the crucial role of schools and universities in shaping the worldviews of their students, education has been a marginal topic in international relations. In a plea for more engagement with the power and effects of education, this paper analyzes the interplay of discipline and knowledge in the formation of geopolitical subjects. To this end, it employs material from ethnographic research at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, the premier university for educating future Russian elites in the field of international relations. The paper draws on Foucault to chart the ensemble of disciplinary practices producing “docile bodies” and objective knowledge and traces how these practices are bound up with the geopolitical discourse of Russia as a great power: while they fashion the great power discourse with objectivity, disruptions in the discourse also disrupt disciplinary practices.