Retrieving the Indo-Pacific dispositif from within and beyond major security discourses

Abstract

The ‘Indo-Pacific’ term has recently garnered immense attention in international relations and within the discourses of major powers. This paper will attempt to extricate the origins of the term and examine its contemporary uses, whether by states or in academic research. Through the employment of a critical, postmodern, eclectic approach, it breaks down how the “Indo-Pacific” becomes a field for security contestation as it emerges from co-constitutive assemblage of discourse, activities, and objects, arguing that this assemblage privileges state-centric conceptions of security, while eliding aspects important to individual humans. The paper concludes by considering some avenues for retrieving human and environmental security from the dispositif.