Flat maps, fluid worlds: the EU’s geopolitical connectivity and the interlocking worlds of Afro-Eur-Asia

This article critically reconceptualizes what we call topographical approaches to connectivity—exemplified by the European Union’s Global Gateway (EUGG) strategy; instead, we call for a topological approach. We argue that the Union’s geopolitical ambitions entail a modernist topographic logic, which prileges territorial extension, linear infrastructures and quantifiable influence. This logic is fundamentally misaligned with the complex, relational realities of the interlocking regional worlds of Afro-Eur-Asia which we read through a topological approach to connectivity as the produciton of ′presence′ through entangled, dynamic and power laden interactions. This framing reimagines connectivity not as a fixed grid of influence, but as an infrastructure of encounter—a generative terrain where power reconfigures agency (and vice versa) through contested proximities. This recognition demands a radical shift toward a relational EU connectivity strategy attuned to the co-constituted realities of Afro-Eur-Asia′s nterlocking regional worlds.