Yves Lacoste is a geographer and geopolitician, born on September 7th 1929 with Fès, Morocco.

Function

Geopolitical professor emeritus of to the University Paris VIII.

Formation

Doctorate of State in geography and Aggregation of geography.

Course

It is at the origin of a recasting and a democratization of the Géopolitique. In 1976, it founds Hérodote, re-examined reference as regards Géographie and of Géopolitique). highly skilled Teacher with the University of Paris VIII, it teaches with the French Institut of geopolitics which it also founded, institute now directed by Béatrice Giblin.

After a youth in Morocco (his/her father is Géologue), it makes its studies in France and goes to North Africa to the beginning of the year 1950 with his wife, the ethnologist Camille Lacoste-Dujardin, working on the Berber ones. Member then of the PCF (until 1956), Yves Lacoste is in relation to the Algerian anticolonialist mediums. Under the direction of Jean Dresh, it carries out in Algeria its thesis of State.

Returning to France in 1955, he teaches at the university, in particular with the beginning of the year 1960 at the university of Vincennes where he creates there the review Hérodote - what publishes at its beginnings François Maspero - in a context of boiling within social sciences due to the pregnancy of the political question.

With Hérodote, then its work the Geography, that is used, initially, to make the war , particularly noticed, it undertook to reintroduce the study of geopolitics in France by removing it in particular from its unjust image of " science nazie".

Especially, this work is resulting from its stay in July 1972 to the Vietnam where it signs, on her return, an article in the edition of August 16th, 1972 of the Le Monde by showing the the United States to have bombarded the bases of the dams of the deltas of the Red Fleuve with an aim of causing the destruction of the stopping at the time of the risings of the autumn, that in order to put on the account of " catastrophe naturelle" victims of the floods. In this article, he affirms that the geographical knowledge can be used for a State to make the war. In the geography, that are used, initially, to make the war (1976), it distinguishes three geographies: school and university geography, the geography " spectacle" and geography like " instrument of pouvoir" , two first dissimulating the last. If this theory is called today into question by part of the community of the geographers (moreover as of the publication of this test, Pierre George breaks with Lacoste), the great merit of this test was initially to have encouraged the geographers to be interested in the epistemological problems of their discipline like starting again a " geography active" who engages in the organization of space.

He adds to the geography the concepts of Territorialité and representation (ideas, perceptions, imaginary collectives). For him, geopolitics is not only one “product” of the geography and one cannot privilege the only geographical factors apart from the political context. Geopolitics seeks the collective intentions, and allows the description of power struggles.

He criticizes also the theories of Roger Brunet, his propensity with the models, the obedience of his charts to the only laws of the economy evacuating the topography and the impact of the policy on space, finally his obsessional side (concept of the " dorsal européenne" or of the blue Banana, etc) and its role of guarantee to the policies implemented by DATAR. At the origin of these divergences, the Brownish article of entitled a Geography of Gulag in Hérodote which defined this space as the product of the need for labor of the the USSR, which Lacoste will refute by seeing a will for the Soviet State there to create a new space, the Siberia.

In 1995, he is the researcher invited to present his discipline, Geopolitics, in the emission Inventer tomorrow diffused on the Fifth. During one week, to 7:45 and in less than 5 minutes, it presents an approach set of themes going from epistemology to the questions of immigration.

Yves Lacoste is Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.