Non-Representational Geographies
Research Group Affiliation
Social & Cultural Geography Research Group History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group Postgraduate Forum A dozen or so years have passed since the advent of 'non-representational theory' (Thrift, 1996), and from the turn of the century UK-based human geography in particular has witnessed a rapid upsurge of interest in new conceptualisations of, for example, practice, performance, politics, embodiment and materiality. This session proposes to look at the ongoing evolution of NRT, how it continues to problematize the heart of social scientific endeavour by acting as "a machine for multiplying questions, and thereby inventing new relations between thought and life" (Thrift, 2002). For our purposes here, we can think these relations as those that interfere with preconceived ideas (1) around perception - thus the precognitive, noncontemplative excessive array of forces and flows capturing and creating life in a multiple and becoming world; (2) across representations - expressive and affective experiments presenting and orientating dispositions to the world that perform it into being as well as give some capture of it, that thus touch the intangible and that which cannot be arrested by linguistic systems of representation, and that therefore witness and testify to life itself; and (3) within practice - rethinking matter as agency and as distributed inbetween object and subject, human and nonhuman, action and inaction thus soliciting a social that lies in ecologies of practical intelligibility and inarticulate affective modes of understanding. These sessions aim to promote papers by postgraduates and postdoctoral fellows providing a forum to showcase new and emerging engagements with non-representational geographies. Session Organisers Ben Anderson (Durham University), David Bissell (University of Brighton), JD Dewsbury (University of Bristol), Paul Harrison (Durham University), Derek McCormack (University of Oxford) & John Wylie (University of Exeter) Session Chair JD Dewsbury (University of Bristol), Ben Anderson (Durham University) & David Bissell (University of Brighton) SESSION 1 Paper 1 The violence and opportunity of laughter in the space of disability research Presenter Hannah Macpherson (Royal Holloway, University of London) Research with people who have disabilities is often treated as a space of serious ‘authentic testimony’, however this is not necessarily the case. In this paper I think through the laughter and humour of some people who have blindness or visual impairment. I show how laughter and humour is emergent from particular ‘background dispositions of cheer’ a disposition which is open to others, to the present moment and to the laughable. I also show how laughter and humour worked to give people with blindness and visual impairment a sense liberation from stereotypes of ‘the blind’ as subjects of pity and how laughter worked to express confusion, relieve nervousness, calm anxieties and ease embarrassments. While for some social commentators laughter and humour is a source of lightness and hope, I also wish to consider the more depressing aspects of laughter, how laughter can indicate ‘….the beginnings of a curious pessimism’ (Bergson 1912, 199) and perform a form of violence that closes off possibilities.
Paper 2
‘Praxio-geographies’: A Paper on Annemarie Mol, Practice and NonRepresentational Geographies Presenter James Clarke (University of Bristol) Non-representational theory engages with the notion of practices in that the world is always being enacted or performed through practice. In this paper I will attend to the work of Annemarie Mol by presenting her work, through tracing its relations to various other scholars and arenas of thought, predominantly ActorNetwork-Theory and the philosophy of Michel Foucault, as a practice based multiple ontology. I will discuss whether Mol’s prioritising of practice is useful for current geographic thought, in particular (but not only) that mode of thought labelled as non-representational theory. I will propose that Mol by beginning with and tracing ‘praxio-geographies’ presents a multiplicity of practices enacting a multiplicity of objects that are topologically related and co-exist as a singularity. This paper proposes, with some caution and criticism, that this combination of multiplicity yet singular co-existence (which can include both tension and cohesion) could provide geographers who are interested in the apparent stability of a singular object, despite the constant differences played out by the different multiple practices that enact this object, considerable
non_representational_geog.doc
-1-
purchase in their research. Therefore this paper urges that a careful negotiation between Mol’s praxiographic ontology and non-representational theory could be a potentially fruitful experience for geography. Paper 3 (Fullmetal) alchemy: on the illiteracies of reading Presenter Lesley Gallacher (Open University) The work of reading is often overlooked, and undervalued, in comparison to its transcendentalising achievement: the meaning that it contains. Yet, reading is more than the absorption of meaning. Nor is reading simply about learning to read 'correctly'. No. Reading is an intriguing phenomenon. The practices of reading are completely undisguised, but reading itself becomes all the more mystifying for that. 'Poetic objects' are particularly interesting because they expose the lived and practical achievements of reading. They can only 'work' through and by 'illiteracy'; it is the experience of illiteracy that allows us to make sense of poems. This is what Livingston has referred to as the 'alchemy' of reading (2001). Comics can be understood as 'poetic objects' in this way (Smith, 2007). To read amalgams of words and images, panels and gutters is to perform a curious 'sorcery'; it is to participate in the creation of meaning. And so, in this paper, I want to practice my alchemy with help from Hiromu Arakawa's Fullmetal Alchemist (2001?present). Paper 4 Materialising Africanness: the aesthetics of the African tourist souvenir Presenter Nissa Ramsey (University of Sheffield) This paper employs the term Africanness to conceptualise how an aesthetic of ‘Africa’ is recognised and materialises momentarily through specific configurations of objects, people and spaces. To do so, it draws upon visual and narrative material generated through ethnographic research with souvenir-objects, tourists and producers in Swaziland (Southern Africa). It begins by discussing Africanness as a general aesthetic of colours, textures, material qualities and symbols. It then discusses how the wrinkles, creases, details and imperfections in objects are mobilised as manifestations of the handmade, authentic and unique by tourists and producers. Finally, this paper considers the ambiguities and tensions between Africanness as a general unifying aesthetic and tourists’ demands for unique and contemporary objects. The design, sale, promotion, purchase and display of souvenir-objects revolve around their aesthetics, ‘feel’ and colours. However, the competition and copying within the souvenir industry creates a constant need for redesign and innovation, constantly reworking this African aesthetic. This approach therefore privileges matter as productive rather than simply embodying discursive representations. It challenges a turn away from discourse, from essences and from representations advocated by calls for ‘rematerialising’ research in social and cultural geography. Instead discursive constructions of Africa gain fluidity as it partially takes form in configurations of matter, people and space. Paper 5 Doing Disorder: Michel Serres’ Language of Cacophony Presenter Craig Martin (Royal Holloway, University of London) “I’m trying to think the multiple as such, to let it waft along without arresting it through unity, to let it go, as it is, at its own pace” (Serres, 1995:6) The discussions within the present paper emanate from an interest in attempts to ‘undo’ the ordering systems of mobility manifest in the distributive space of global commodity movement. My concern with undoing, interruption, disordering through accident or design is a wilful desire to traverse the complexity of movement, to muster the forces that compete within an assemblage of mobility and immobility. The ‘struggle’, if you like, is the means through which these forces of disruption and opposition can be ‘produced’ – or rather moved with – without stultifying these affective forces. This is still concerned with language above all else. Michel Serres’ corpus of writing will be used as an exemplar of this approach – for his use of language is there as an apposite form, a method that multiplies the subject; when discussing communicative noise in Genesis (1995) for example, his writing is cacophonous, communication is lost in the melange of style. Language is at stake in non-representational theory – as such, this paper does not reject the written form, but rather attempts to situate a means of writing that can ‘cajole’ the forces of disorder within the geographies of mobility and immobility. SESSION 2 Paper 6 Hardened commuters: passivity, habituality and vulnerability Presenter David Bissell (University of Brighton) One of the tensions that has emerged from non-representational theory in recent years is the dialectic between bodily activity and passivity. Much initial research inspired by the insights of nonrepresentational theory tended to privilege an agentive model of subjectivity dominated by corporeal energetics. This paper follows a growing sensitivity towards domains of experience that require forms of passivity in order accomplish particular events. Drawing on Guattari’s notion of the ritornello and Bateson’s writings on habituality, this paper offers some preliminary thoughts on the
non_representational_geog.doc
-2-
relationship between habituality, and passivity in the context of commuting. Specifically it asks us to consider whether, through repetitive practices, commuters enact forms of passive subjectivity in order to deal with undesirable dimensions of the commute. Does passivity and withdrawal paradoxically assist in the formation of travel-savvy ‘hardened commuters’? What kinds of vulnerability emerge from these passivities? Is passivity therefore an intrinsic and valuable part of the commuting experience? At a time where, particularly in the context of public transport, specific forms of vigilance, heightened awareness, and increasingly-demanding perceptual skills are being advocated from above, this paper asks to what extent these forms of passivity are at odds to these tactics. Paper 7
Cat Amongst the Pigeons? : Montaigne, ‘Creatureliness’, and the Problem of the Post-Human. Presenter Thom Sullivan (University of Sheffield) ‘We are more concerned to sell our wares than collect new stock’ – Montaigne (1695) The concept of the post-human and the relationship of man to animal – of which so much is currently spoken by existentialists, phenomenologists, ethicists and bio-philosophers of all kinds – has become one of the pivots upon which contemporary geography is building itself. Put to us, by some, as a radical theoretical event it is, however, one which harbours within itself a more distant ancestry too readily pushed aside. What might happen if, instead of using Descartes (and everything that goes by the name of a Cartesian legacy) as the signifier of all that the ‘post paradigm’ reacts against, we choose to think along with an anterior figure and an alternative philosophical formulation - Michel Montaigne? Indeed, as Descarte’s near-contemporary, it is Montaigne, I will argue, who not only offers a fuller genealogy for understanding the provocations of the ‘post-human’, but who anticipates much of what is considered contemporary to debates around the ethical, affective and experiential charge of human - nonhuman relations. Paper 8 The affection of the object: a post-phenomenology of a glance Presenter Paul Simpson (University of Bristol) In walking down a street, in the event of entering into that ecology, we are affected by a multiplicity of stimuli – the passing of cars and the traffic lights at crossings, fragments from the chatter of passersby, music bleeding out of shops, drops of rain and splashes of puddles and so on. Some stimuli aim for our attention, others don’t. Some are barely acknowledged, others solicit a glance or perhaps more. While geographers have approached ‘visualicity’ – the seen but also the potentially (un)seen (Shields 2003) – in terms of surveillance and spectacle in the city, little has been done on such fleeting acts of attending and audiencing as glancing. In this paper I am then interested in the event of such a glance, specifically within the context of the study of street performance. In approaching the glance, I will undertake a critical reading of Husserl’s discussion of the affection of the object as put forward in his analysis of active and passive synthesis while taking inspiration from Deleuze’s affirmation of the passive. This then calls for an understanding of the glance as a pre-reflexive act rather than as an initiatory subjective act, of the subject as differentiated or always coming in such acts of attending, and of affection then as a virtual solicitation rather than a causal stimulus. Paper 9 Writing the void: the continuing demand of the (non) representational Presenter Jenny Carton (University of Sheffield) This paper expresses a commitment to the representational. If non-representational theory’s engagements with the fleeting, ephemeral and ineffable dimensions of social and cultural life has afforded, and continues, to trouble the ‘arresting linguistic systems of representation’; then it also provokes questions about how we may come to re-think the representational itself. To this end, this paper seeks to explore the ‘non’ of non-rep; less as a prohibitive declaration, than as a constitutive condition of the (im)possibilities of representation. By this I mean to suggest that representation is not only a means of bringing to presence that which is absent, but that every representational act bears within it that recalcitrant absence which not only refuses presence, but is the very force which hollows out or unworks representation, causing it to confront its own impossibility as impossibility. Drawing on the work of Maurice Blanchot and Jean Luc Nancy, and responding to the aporetic necessity to represent even after the ruination of all representation, the paper articulates a call that we learn to write, witness and represent within failure.
Paper 10 Is it Possible to Write a Non-Representational History? Presenter Julian Brigstocke (University of Bristol) If one of the central aims of non-representational geography is to enliven space, it is unsurprising that its
non_representational_geog.doc
-3-
analyses have largely focused on present and future spaces rather than those of the dead past, emphasizing the ephemerality and irreproducibility of performative encounters with space. Theoretically, much of the motivation for this has been drawn from Deleuze’s neo-Bergsonian philosophy of time and the materialist/vitalist critiques of Foucault’s theorization of a body entirely imprinted by history. At its heart, then, is the distinction between time and history, or between intensive, experiential time and extensive, spatial time. So if non-representational theory sets out to witness the event of sheer temporality, does this mean that a non-representational history is impossible? In this paper, I explore the connections between these two understandings of time, and argue that a non-representational history need not be committed to a Messianic resurrection of the dead. Rather, it must work at and on the limits between life and death, time and history, and movement and stasis. SESSION 3: Panel Panelists
Ben Anderson (Durham University), JD Dewsbury (University of Bristol), Derek McCormack (University of Oxford), Paul Harrison (Durham University), John Wylie (University of Exeter), David Bissell (University of Brighton)
non_representational_geog.doc
-4-
