Both IR scholars and geographers have interrogated the power invested in the way states are projected and understood. Feminist and de-colonial perpectives have unsettled the self-evident nature of established states to facilitate alternative ways of conceptualising politics and state conduct. This is instructive for our project, because it opens space for movements and entities that vie for recognition and/or challenge the prevalent international order of states.

The list of authors who could be mentioned here is long, but it would certainly include Cynthia Weber, Costas Constantinou, Fiona McConnell and their co-authors.

Some authors in this field have specifically focuses on political aesthetics, thus forging the path for our project to study separatist democratic politics through its images, icons and symbolic references. Sophie Harman’s work and the volume by Pnina Werbner, Martin Webb and Kathryn Spellman Poots inspire us.