Liminal Strategies in the Margins of International Politics: The State-Like Power of Non-State Greenland

Abstract

A growing body of literature builds on the observation that power is relational and directs attention to the diplomacy of marginal and liminal subjects, implying that they harbor a potential to change the structures undergirding international politics. However, performances of state power routinely find other loci than diplomacy, and all states are more or less marginalized from the conceptual core of statehood. This article therefore offers a re-calibrated take on the liminal potential emanating from marginal subjects in international politics, broadening the analytical focus beyond classical diplomacy to wider discourses of international law, international security, and international economy. After introducing the notion of power as performative, the article conceptualizes the margins and what liminality adds in terms of a different temporality, developing transition, suspension, and hybridization to describe marginal strategies with a liminal potential for change. The article then analyzes how the Greenlandic non-state, as an exemplary case, works in the margins to empower itself internationally. In conclusion, Greenlandic political practice reveals how the spatio-temporal margins of international politics—the gaps in and between the three constitutive discourses of law, security, and economy—enable the wielding of Greenlandic power with liminal potential.