SOAS Research Online

Abstract

The Cold War brought into the world and the world of inter-state relations a novel kind of space, Division Space – really, a novel mode of spatialisation altogether. The double Germanies, the double Vietnams, the double Koreas, the double Berlins, and the double Chinas were split along the Cold War fault line itself. But that line was not merely a geological feature or a surveyor’s or boundary commission’s line of demarcation, not a 38th parallel or River Elbe. They were only the most spectacular instances of a new space of division of unprecedented scope and penetration, simultaneously jurisdictional (legal), geographic, demographic, political, cultural, economic and ultimately civilisational. The scale of division was adjustable and fractal: city, state, continent, globe.