On the lawn at the RGS-IBG 2010 Conference, London

The RGS-IBG annual conference was in London this year, at the beginning of September. A three-day event, with sessions starting at 09:00 and running through right into the evening, combined with a daily commute, meant I was exhausted by the time it came to a close. I attended a variety of different sessions, met up with a number of familiar faces and was lucky enough to make some new acquaintances. I also tried to make the most of being in London, and was able to visit the Science Museum, an interesting but half-finished exhibition at the V&A and an event over at Tate Britain.

I

Where to start though? Looking back at my scribble of notes, what I propose to do here is make some very brief comments on what caught my attention during the conference, and include all the calls for papers of those sessions (as they the online programme is only due to reamin online until the end of September). Having recently re-read Latour’s (2005) Reassembling the social, I thought it might be interesting to go along to a session on actor-networks. However, as the discussant Peter Jackson noted, there was a noticeable theoretical eclecticism! Unfortunately, it didn’t feel like this was very productive. The next session I attended was the launch of Peter Adey’s new book, Aerial Life: Spaces, Mobilities, Affects. Adey opened and closed the session, first introducing aspects of the book and then responding to those who had read his book. These included Ben Anderson and Tim Cresswell, among others, who were full of praise for the book. Anderson was interested in the relational configurations in the book, the on-going composition of relations, and had some questions on method. Firstly, he noted that the book is organised around events rather than specific types of connections, resulting in surprising juxtapositions. How then, he asked, to learn to attend to resonances between events that are drawn out?  Secondly, how is Adey theorising the process of change and the irruption of the new from within this relational account? Cresswell had fewer questions but remarked that the mundane is much harder to account for, and to write. He also noted that the book was an example of geography that is happy to be theoretical. I took a break after lunch, and then sat at the back of the room for a session on anarchist geographies. It was all rather tame though. The closest I came to being surprised was when I nearly fell off my chair; it had only three legs. I did a little writing in my notebook, then listened closely as Hilary Ramsden talked about her research on clown activism. I liked her comments on temporary wrong-footings, and the play on misunderstanding and mistake. Indeed, her paper was quite simply disarming.

II

The session on theorising the sea was interesting, in particular the paper that considered the surfed wave as a relational place, both unstable and provisional. There was an uncomfortable silence after another paper in the same session though, and I was trying to work out if it was because it didn’t offer much in the way of questions, or if it was because the presenters were Israeli. Perhaps both. I couldn’t find anything in the programme that was very appealing for the next session, and so I wandered over to the V&A. There they had an exhibition, called Architects Build Small Spaces, which had finished earlier on in the week. I asked about it and found that parts of the exhibition were still on-site and could be visited. These structures were explorations of notions of refuge and retreat and although I wasn’t convinced that small spaces “can push the boundaries and possibilities of creative practice”, I did rather like the ‘Ark’ project, a beautiful bookcase-tower-archive. I spent the first part of the afternoon at a session that I had expected would be about affect and emotion but turned out to be more about well-being. David Conradson’s consideration of therapeutic practices for affective modulation was fascinating, and I found some of the terms he used very thought-provoking: relational ecologies, orchestration of feeling and affective field. His paper was on the techniques for summoning stillness and how places of retreat operate. I found there to be an interesting overlap between this paper, the exhibition I had just been to, and my participation at the Luminous Green (LG) gathering. Louisa Cadman’s presentation on the art of living well attended to the idea of staying with the present, of staying with the problem. Hers was more a story than an argument and there was a noticeable unease with the audience as to how to engage with it. As for myself, I found myself listening to experiences that were unsettlingly similar to those from LG. Instead of a mint-leaf, she spoke of a raisin. But the same tenets of non-judgement, of awareness, of presencing even, were all there. I was surprised then, to find that some of what I had liked so much about LG was perhaps not as specific to that event as I had first thought. The last session was all about surfaces. Rachel Colls spoke of bodily, and in particular placental, surfaces, which was remarkable. Drawing on Luce Irigaray, the placenta was a device for re-thinking the ways we live together, of new forms of relating. Alan Latham’s paper on jogging as a way of thinking with, and about, surfaces was an exercise in thoughtful self-experimentation, and Hilary, mentioned earlier, told a story of walking in Detroit. There was lots going on, following a finger-walking introduction (which had to be seen to be believed!): Hilary reading, a friend walking her fingers over a projector, and a slideshow of pictures and quotes that seemed to have little to do with what was being read. The person doing the walking of fingers, Libby Straughan, was up next with a talk on taxidermy. There was a visceral video of her practising taxidermy which was hard to watch but nonetheless fascinating. I was more concerned by the seemingly conflictual citations of psychoanalysts and those who are rather less interested in that sort if thing. A certain ontological dissonance perhaps? The last paper maintained the high level of the session, with a lyrical tale of the Aberfan mining disaster, a scrutiny of the surface.

III

The sonic methods session had some technical difficulties but this did not prevent the papers from going ahead. Many of the participants had also attended the ‘Experimenting with Geography’ workshop earlier on in the year but here I was able to hear more about their work. Jonathan Prior’s soundwalks were very interesting, especially the ways in which he encouraged a holding of attention through détournement. His soundwalks are available to download from his blog. The next two sessions attended, both before and after lunch, were on geography and the future. Nick Bingham presented a story of a food inspection of a Chinese restaurant, highlighting the ways the future can be folded into the present. Ben Anderson and Pete Adey had a paper on governing emergencies, and discussed the interval of peril. An emergency, they argued, is only over when the potential to surprise had been exhausted. Sam Kinsley talked about futurity in the making, and explored the notion of communities of practice. He contended that ubicomp (ubiquitous computing) remains anticipatory, always looking to a proximate future. Gail Davies gave a very interesting talk about experimental temporalities (and temporalities of the experiment). I agreed with her argument that experimental practices enact more than one future . Derek McCormack chose to surprise, engaging with the futures of inflation (financial rather than balloon). I  had a giggle when he talked about practising thrift (!) but I was intrigued by his thoughts on the pre-disciplining of the imagination. Leila Dawney invoked a particular set of philosophers (Stengers, Simondon, Nancy, Spinoza) to discuss on-going presencing or becoming. She was especially interested in the imaginative capacities of the body, arguing that imaginative constructions of the future highlight some of the relations in the present. The final paper came from Jamie Lorimer, who spoke of enginnering new ecologies and cosmopolitics, of learning to live with others. Interestingly he also touched upon diagrams, which could anticipate and summon forth futures. I decided to leave on a high, those sessions proving very stimulating, and made my way over to Tate Britain for the ‘The Real Thing‘:

Urbanomic present an evening event at Tate Britain with contemporary sound, video and sculptural work, and other interventions exploring the emerging philosophical paradigm of Speculative Realism and its impact on contemporary art practice.

Although fairly ambivalent about Specualtive Realism, I did follow the recent discussions on its merits on the Crit-Geog mailing list. Moreover, I was interested in how artists might explicitly explore this sort of philosophy and in particular, the question of engaging with realities that exist before, after and outside of human experience. There was a lot to see and to listen to and unfortunately I didn’t manage much in the end. But I did stumble across Mike Nelson’s (2000) The Coral Reef, which had nothing to do with the event, but has really stayed with me since. I’ve included a video below, before the list of CFPs, but I would recommend you visit the installation rather than watch this!

—

Can we have political Actor-Networks?

Charlotte Chambers & Katherine Smith

Over the past twenty years, theoretical contributions employing the term actor-network theory (or ANT for short) have enjoyed huge popularity within the social sciences, and particularly human geography, to the extent that some of the original contributors to this body of work have expressed concern at its translation into a specific, almost concrete, academic space (e.g. Law, 1999). Attempts to reclaim the term as something less fixed and more problematic have been made (e.g. Latour, 2005; Law & Hassard, 1999). It is contended, however, that because actor-network theorists tend to have their sights firmly fixed on micro-level analysis, none of the various interpretations (or translations) of ANT have, so far, dealt adequately with the agency of political context in mediating interactions of actors and networks.

This session incorporates a range of papers which employ or engage with elements of ANT, each of which illustrates or questions the centrality of political context and address the question of whether it is possible for ‘actor-network theories’ to engage with politics beyond the micro level. Drawing on topics as diverse as environmental justice, health inequalities, financial services corruption and Tuscan wine production, this session will provide a provocative discussion about one of the most widely applied theoretical lenses in contemporary human geography. The first paper, by the session organizers, will outline some of the key difficulties and debates on this topic.  The second will respond to this directly by arguing ANT is already a viable approach for critical, politically engaged analysis. The final two papers will each present examples of politically critical, empirical geographical work in which ANT is employed, providing further insights into the possibilities and difficulties in using ANT in politically sensitive research. The broader aim of the session is to promote a better understanding of how ANT might be usefully developed and applied within the social sciences to better understand situations that are as complex and politically sensitive as the post-crisis global economy and environment upon which this conference is focused.

RGS-IBG/Wiley-Blackwell Book Series panel. Aerial Life: Spaces, Mobilities, Affects: author meets interlocuters panel

Kevin Ward

Anarchist geographies: Place, identity and participatory approaches

Adam Barker, Jenny Pickerill & Gavin Brown

Anarchist theory has had much to say about the importance of place, especially in critiques of how territory is claimed by power – whether the state or corporate interests – but also in proposing different ways of relating to land. Such theory needs to be engaged with by geographers not only in enhancing our understanding of place and identity, but in supporting social justice activism which seeks to challenge these power relations. Ecologically-based concepts such as bioregionalism and examinations of place-based autonomy have brought diverse groups together in discussions of how land is related to and used to sustain non-hierarchical more participatory social forms.  However, anarchist theory has not included much commentary on how place relates to political, social, and cultural identities.  This session seeks to engage with the various ways – contested, overlapping, and often incomplete – that place informs identities, both for anarchist individuals and communities, and for groups that anarchists may find themselves working with (or against).  As anarchists in practice seek to work within localized networks of activists in the anti-globalization movement, or in partnership with Indigenous peoples and communities, anarchists must consider the full range of implications for the development of senses of self and ‘other’, production of cultural and social meaning, and formation of political identities tied to place. Such an approach also asks geographers to develop a more participatory approach in understanding how place is understood and the construction of place and identities through the processes of activism.

This session seeks to consider (but should not be limited by) the following questions:

- How are variations within anarchistic identities tied to locality and place-specific struggles?

-What are the implications for international solidarity, geographically-dispersed affinity, and other networking concepts that must account for place-based identities?

- Do ties to localized identities strengthen or weaken opposition to globalizing power?

- Can experiences on, in, and with, specific places be used to help form particular anarchistic identities?

- What challenges are posed by identities such as those of some Indigenous communities which are place-based but also claim particular and inaccessible relations to places?

- What do the ethics that inform participatory approaches add to understandings of anarchist geographies?

Theorising the Sea

Jon Anderson & Kimberley Peters

The oceans and seas cover approximately two-thirds of the Earth’s surface, not to mention the watery worlds which lie below, forming the largest percentage of our planet. Rachel Carson wrote of the sea, “it lies all about us” (1950, 216), yet it has strangely failed (until recently) to gain much attention in social and cultural geography. The sea is a space often invisible, forgotten (Lambert et al, 2006), marginalised, ‘out there’ (Steinberg, 1999) mystical and strange (Westerdahl, 2005). Yet paradoxically, it has been, and remains, fundamental to the making of the world as we know it (Lavery, 2005, Rediker, 2007). As a “scholarly turn towards the ocean” currently develops (Connery, 2006), this session seeks to consider how we might theorise the sea – this strange, liquid, undulating space which is often credited as being entirely different from the land (see Jackson, 2005, Langewiesche, 2004, Steinberg, 1999). In particular, this session will endeavour to theorise oceanic, maritime and sea spaces not only in terms of interconnections and networks, but also as spaces of power, society, imagination, emotion, materiality, mobility and enchantment. This session invites papers concerned with (but not limited to) the following themes:

- The tensions, contradictions, relationships between the land and sea

- The sea as a ‘place’

- Materiality and sea

- The sea as space of emotion

- Ocean and seas spaces as magical, mystical and enchanted

- Society and the sea

- The fluid, undulating, mobile nature of the sea

Geographies of (dis)ability, (ill) health, emotion and affect

Louise Holt, Jennifer Lea & Hannah MacPherson

This session aims to explicitly connect work on the geographies of (dis)ability, ill health and wellbeing with research on emotion and /or affect. Over recent years, the interest that human geographers have shown in the emotional and (broadly conceived) affective realms has increased substantially, making an impact in most areas of the discipline. From the emotional responses that shape and arise from embodied relationships with particular spatial settings, to the ‘logics’ of affect that shape configurations of economic, social and cultural life, the emotional and affective realms are increasingly being called upon as legitimate ways of knowing the world.

It was critical geographies of disability and chronic illness (e.g. Dyck 1999, Moss 1999, Chouinard 1999) that proved one of the most willing to ‘admit emotions into [the] production of geographical knowledges’ (Davidson et al 2005, 4). Despite that starting point there has been limited sustained dialogue. As such, this session calls for papers that explicitly take this dialogue forward by investigating aspects of the multidimensional and varied relationships that exist between (dis)ability, health and wellbeing and emotion/affect.

What are surfaces?

Isla Forsyth, James Robinson, Hayden Lorimer & Peter Merriman

Geographers have held a long-standing concern with describing and understanding the Earth’s surface and the social and environmental interactions which it enables or constrains, some employing creative methods to produce myriad explanations of surface pattern, processes and peopling (Harrison et al. 2004). However, critical reflections on different understandings of ‘the surface’ have been relatively neglected in contemporary geographical study, with emphasis being placed on geographical concepts such as ‘place’ or ‘landscape’.

Commonly, and metaphysically, we come to know the world, and figure our place in it, as surface-dwellers, moving over ground, across bodies of water or occasionally taking to the air to see patterns of life and habitats from on-high (Cosgrove 2001; Ingold 2008). Meanwhile, much of the commonplace, metaphoric language of the surface is deeply pejorative: beauty is said to be skin-deep or someone is warned they are skating on thin-ice. If surfaces are objects of attraction, they are also subject to our suspicion and distrust.

This session asks what a serious consideration of the superficial might allow, hinging on the question ‘What are surfaces?’ We welcome proposals for papers which have a theoretical and/or empirical focus which critically address different social, cultural, historical and physical engagements with surfaces: human and nonhuman; topographical, topological and technological; imagined, visualized and inhabited; material and metaphoric; reproduced, modelled and designed.

Sonic methods in human geography

Michael Gallagher & Jonathan Prior

This session brings together researchers who are actively using sound to explore geographical issues, providing a platform for methodological development to complement the growing interest in the geographies of sound and music (e.g. Anderson et al, 2005; Cameron and Rogalsky, 2006; Wood et al, 2007). Papers will cover topics such as:

- Sonic research methods: soundwalking; deep listening; multi-sensory ethnography; acoustic mapping; sound design and architecture; acoustic ecology; field recording; sound art and experimentalism.

- The interface between academic research and creative practice in the sonic arts.

- Cartographies of sound and other forms of representing sound.

- Experimentation with different forms of sonic dissemination: blogs, podcasts, performances, radio broadcasts, etc.

Geography and the Future

Ben Anderson & Peter Adey

How are futures governed, enacted, invoked and known? And how might geographers respond – analytically, methodologically, and politically – to the making of geographies through the future? Addressing these questions requires that we explicitly conceptualise the relation between space-time and futurity. However, with some exceptions, including work on figuring futures (Kitchen & Kneale 2002; Pinder 2005), experiencing futures (Kraftl 2007) and practices such as planning, Social and Cultural Geography has rarely explicitly engaged with the category of the future (compare with the amount of work on the past, memory and haunting). This is not to say that the future is absent from geographical work. On the contrary, recent research on climate change, trans-species epidemics, terror, obesity, financial crises and other risks, threats and hazards has shown how acting in advance of the future is an integral, if taken-for-granted, part of specific substantive geographies (e.g. Adey 2009; Anderson 2010a, b; Amoore 2009; de Goede & Randalls 2009; Evans 2009; French & Kneale 2009; Hannah 2009). Carbon is traded, birds are culled, bodies are measured and banks are saved on the basis of what has not and may never happen; the future. We also find hints of the complicated interrelations between past, present and future across a wide range of work within Social and Cultural Geography. A simple list of just some ‘future geographies’ gives us a sense of the sheer variety of ways in which futures may be related to and made present. Futures are: traded in futures markets, promised in contracts, created by birth, commodified by finance capital, secured against, invested in by savers animated by a Calvinist work ethic, divined by fortune tellers, promised in the context of new technologies, coaxed into being by theorists of diverse economies, projected by certain utopians, deterred by nation states, regularised through clock time, prophesised by evangelicals, and destroyed in war, to name only some relations to the future (see Adam & Groves 2007; Anderson 2010a).

The sessions consist of a series of papers that think the relation between geographies/geography and the future by describing how futures are theorised, known, governed and enacted in relation to the following themes:

1. Theorising the future and spatiality/temporality (the future as not-yet, a mystery, virtual, difference, outside, becoming, event).
2. Figuring the future (‘the future’ understood as catastrophe, crisis, disaster and or in terms of progress, providence, or promise)
3. Enacting futures. (How are futures embodied, experienced, told, narrated, imagined, performed, wished, planned, (day)dreamed, symbolized, and sensed? And how are future made present through specific affects, materialities, and epistemic objects).
4. Governing the future (different anticipatory logics such as risk, insurance, preemption, precaution, preparedness or anticipatory techniques such as scenarios, exercises or risk modelling).

Jane Bennett: reading group and talk, Royal Holloway, University of London

Last week I was lucky enough to attend a couple of events at Royal Holloway where Prof. Jane Bennett was visiting for the day (thanks to Sebastian for letting me know). The first was a reading group:

The Contemporary Political Theory Research Group and the Humanities and Arts Research Centre at Royal Holloway, University of London, are pleased to be hosting Prof. Jane Bennett of Johns Hopkins University.  Prof. Bennett will be attending our Contemporary Political Theory Reading Group from 12-1:30 pm, to discuss two chapters of her recently published Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Duke University Press, 2010).¹

Jane introduced her book, which draws on alternative traditions of materialism, as both trying to to do away with the idea of inert matter, and attempt to move discourse away from moral responsibility towards a political pragmatism more concerned with problem-solving than with evaluating responsibility. The questions posed at the reading group were not straightforward and, at times, perhaps a little aggressive but Jane did well to respond to claims that (1) the work was reactionary and that (2) there was no argument. The first point, that her work was reactionary, was prompted by a reading of a particular paragraph in Chapter 2 (‘the agency of assemblages’, p.37-38) of Vibrant Matter:

Perhaps the ethical responsibility of an individual human now resides in one’s response to the assemblages in which one finds oneself participating: Do I attempt to extricate myself from assemblages whose trajectory is likely to do harm? Do I enter into the proximity of assemblages who conglomerate effectivity tends toward the enactment of nobler ends? Agency is, I believe, distributed across a mosaic, but it is also possible to say something about the kind of striving that may be exercised by a human within the assemblage.

Arguing that perhaps she is not as radical (as some of the people who were sitting round the table?), Jane explained that she was developing an incrementalist political imaginary. There are always lines of flight and dysfunctional elements that you can accentuate, and you never know what the political implications are, or might be, in advance. Indeed, she compares the exertion we might possess as being analogous to that of riding a bicycle on gravel: whilst you can move yourself in different direction to inflect the bike’s path, you are but one actant operative in a moving whole. The second point, concerning the style of the book, was acknowledged by Jane, who noted that there was not a log of antagonism in the book. However, the book was written as a narrative of experience, as a story and not an argument. The relation between politics and ontology is not direct, she contended, and the book was pitched on a micropolitical register, where sensibilities are formed or altered. Although unable to guarantee the effects of a book , there is definitely a mood to the book which Jane hoped was infectious. Perhaps the book itself is another example of thing-power (developed, in part from Spinoza’s notion of power: the capacity to affect and be affected), which encourages, or fosters, a susceptibility to being altered by encounters. My question, at the end of the discussion, concerned a particular passage in the text: if affiliations in an assemblage require a certain proximity, and if so, is that a spatial proximity? Recognising it was controversial among Deleuzeans, she argued that affiliations did require a spatial proximity as her materialism is very literally physicalist. The most potent affiliations have a physical proximity, she argued, and added that she was moving towards an image of politics that is very much at the city-level. I was rather taken aback, and was unable to press her on this. Perhaps another time!

Later on in the day, Jane presented some of her work-in-progress:

Provisional title: “Michel Serres, A Topography of Becoming, and the Practice of History”²

Abstract: There is a group of political theorists today who affirm one of the various ontologies of “becoming” that philosophers such as Nietzsche, Bergson, Whitehead, Deleuze and Guattari, and Michel Serres have articulated.  For these thinkers, the cosmos is best characterized not as a fixed order but as a flow, generative process, creative evolution, or ontological ruckus.  While a focus on the fragility and changeability of orders has received much attention, it is also important, I contend, for political theorists of becoming to try to characterize, to give some specificity to, the strange systematicity proper to a mobile and protean world.  My essay draws upon Michel Serres to address the question of how it is that forms manage to appear amidst the general hustle and flow of life.  Serres, I contend, offers a rich conceptual and metaphorical repertoire for thinking about the formativity of becoming and for mapping the course of its congealments.  I first consider Serres’ metaphysics of “noise,” I then turn to the distinctive phases he discerns with it, and I conclude by drawing out some implications of his topography of becoming for the practice of doing history and political theory.

The paper could be seen as a development from her last two books and was modest in its aims. She opened with a discussion of ‘Thing-theory’, mainly discussing the work of Graham Harman who she started reading after finishing Vibrant Matter. An object-oriented philosopher, Harman is critical of two ‘camps’ (process / product) of philosophers who have theorised things. He argues against the grandeur of Duration or Becoming (Bergson, Deleuze), whilst claiming that there is more to the object than its relations (Latour, Whitehead). The task of Jane’s paper was to try to bring these groups together again by seeking to understand how objects withstand the flow of becoming – what she called a ‘strange structuralism’ – through the (perhaps) less well-known metaphysics of Michel Serres, who offers a rich conceptual and metaphorical repertoire for thinking the forms and structures of becoming. Instead of becoming, Serres talks of noise, a hum or buzz, a background of life. So how might shapes take form in this noise?

The aleatory quality of formativity – it could happen, but maybe not – is described using Serres’ vocabulary of surge, fluctuation, rhythm / cadence, vortex, turbulence, and invariance. These phases do not follow a linear progression but are instead contemporaneous, both multi-temporal and poly-chronic. What then, would a political theory alert to the crumpled or unfolded nature of space-time look like? Perhaps (and Jane was not entirely happy with this) theorists might make experimental connections between events or bodies which resemble one another;  Serres endorses this experimentalism. Social scientists should be like Hermes: experimental messengers, exporting and importing, traversing, inventing, working through analogies. The social scientist as maker of analogies: we know no other route to invention, we have to proceed by way of analogy. There is a lot of play in analogies, and they are not founded on a causal relationship but rather a co-shimmering. This does not however, sit comfortably with Deleuze’s preference for examples rather than analogies (preferring an exemplary rather than an analogical philosophy) and when asked, Jane explained that she was most interested in thinking about echoes and sympathies (or lines of affective connection) which perhaps have more to do with webs of resemblance and similitude.

—————————————————————————————————————————–

Dewsbury, J-D. (2009) Performative, Non-representational, and Affect-Based Research: Seven Injunctions. In: DeLyser, D., Atkin, S., Crang, M., Herbert, S. & McDowell, L. (eds.) Handbook of Qualitative Research in Human Geography. London: Sage. Ch. 18

This is a very welcome paper to find in a handbook of research methods within human geography, advocating resolute experimentalism through the series of seven bold injunctions. Striking in its opening, the chapter is built around four key qualifications that are outlined early on. Firstly, there are few references to qualitative research in geography. Secondly, the emphasis is on the generation of problems rather than solutions. Thirdly, and perhaps unsurprisingly given Dewsbury’s other publications, there is an emphasis on the non-representational. Lastly, the paper attempts to stage the danger of scientism, the view that natural sciences have authority over all interpretations of life. As part of this ethos of disrupting, Dewsbury calls for us to strive to think the unthought and contends that this must take place at every step of the research because “[m]ethodology is far from dull: it is extremely political” (p. 323).

Following a lengthy (though necessary) introduction, the chapter opens out to explore some key agendas within performative research: thinking, sensing and presenting. Arguing that methodologies have always been somewhat improvised, Dewsbury suggests that approaches which fall broadly under the banner of the performative question why only some ways of knowing count. Put differently, performative research embraces the failures as much as the successes of research. This of course raises the thorny question of what might be considered a failure, and who might be able to decide whether or not something is a failure, an issue which is perhaps not adequately addressed. Running throughout the piece is the aforementioned series of injunctions, which are compared to proscriptions rather than prescriptions; proscriptions do not “suggest a formula or a known or better way to proceed to in performative methodological endeavour” (p. 322). This term reminded me of Whitehead’s (and more recently Isabelle Stengers’ and Erin Manning’s) use of propositions. Neither judgements nor necessarily true, propositions are theories-in-the-making, generative constraints for the opening of a relational process (Manning, 2009). Dewsbury’s injunctions-proscriptions-propositions encourage the reader to: embrace experimentation (rather than fret about the risks), have conviction in your experiments, not fear the judgement that tethers social science to scientific values (such as efficacy and rigour), remember you are producing an understanding of the world because it is not given, concentrate on experience, and to be more acute and cute in the research stories told.

The chapter is sharp, witty and eminently readable. It might even be described as a manifesto for doing non-representational geography. Witness:

“The idea is to get embroiled in the site and allow ourselves to be infected by the effort, investment, and craze of the particular practice or experience being investigated. Some might call this participation, but it is a mode of participation that is more artistic and, as with most artistic practices, it comes with the side-effect of making us more vulnerable and self-reflexive. It is not however an argument for losing ourselves in the activity and deterritorializing ourselves completely from our academic remit, but nor does it mean sitting on the sidelines and judging. Rather the move, in immersing ourselves in the space, is to gather a portfolio of ethnographic ‘exposures’ that can act as lightening rods for thought. It is then in those key ‘times out’ as we set upon generating inventive ways of addressing and intervening in that which is happening, and has happened, as an academic, that such a method produces its data: a series of testimonies to practice. This is of course the flipping over of ‘participant observation’ to ‘observant participation’ that Thrift made (2000) to emphasise the serious empirical involvement involved in non-representational theory’s engagement with practices, embodiment and materiality.” (p. 326-327)

It is not however, Dewsbury reminds us, a question of ‘anything goes’. Embracing uncertainty through experimentation and employing an extended notion of the empirical – where encounters might include readings of philosophy, material sites or even research problematics – might allow for alternative methodological strategies (see also Adkins & Lury, 2009). Therefore, alongside an ethos of disrupting, there is also an “ethos of stretching the means by which research is done and striving to continue as experiments fail or always come short in the attempt” (p. 323). Here, research is treated as an ongoing process, where data – or rather materials (see Whatmore, 2003) – could, and perhaps should, include “the feelings, the codes, the awkward intensities, the architected space, the architecture of time, to name but a few” (p. 326). The attempt at the articulation of these empirical experiences or events is more important than its success; indeed, the very attempt to articulate is part of a project which takes materials seriously, allowing them to work-with, and against, initial research questions. Approaches need to be adapted to each singular situation; there is no one-size-fits-all methodology which can be used and re-used again and again. To combat this methodological conservatism we are encouraged to engage with resolute experimentalism, at once productive, proliferative and interfering.

References

Adkins, L. & Lury, C. (2009) Introduction: What Is the Empirical? European Journal of Social Theory, 12(1): 5-20

Manning, E. (2009) Relationscapes: Movement, Art, Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Whatmore, S. (2003) Generating materials. In: Pryke, M., Rose, G. & Whatmore, S. (eds.) Using Social Theory: Thinking Through Research. London: Sage

Joe Gerlach, Cologne

There’s a great post over at Vernacular Mappings which attempts to ‘conjure’ the micropolitics at play in the recent publication of disOrientation². I think it’s great because Gerlach (2009) really tries to stretch and put at risk, in the Stengersian sense, the notion of micropolitics: neither small-scale nor situated on the ‘left’ or ‘right’ of the political spectrum, micropolitics operates transversally, activating the “affective potential of the interval between feeling and doing” (Himada & Manning, 2009: 5). I would like to quote at length from this paper, found in the recent issue of Inflexions, Micropolitics: Exploring Ethico-Aesthetics:

“For some, this may make it sound like a “soft” politics, but it’s quite the opposite. What is usually constituted as the real thing – Politics with a capital P – is far less rigorously inventive, precisely because it operates in the sphere of representation where precomposed bodies are already circulating. The micropolitical is that which subverts this tendency in the political to present itself as already fully formed. All politics is infested with micropolitical tendencies. This is what makes the political an event. In my opinion, much of political theory continues to invest too heavily in the already articulated “capital P” Politics. The reason for this is simple: it is extremely challenging to speak of what has not yet fully taken form. Like the microperception that tweaks the event of perception, the micropolitical is the force of the political event that potentially unmoors it.” (2009: 5).

Micropolitics, or the creation of techniques for collaboration, involve experimentation and an openness to be experimental. Micropolitics then, offers a point of departure for a new kind of politics.

The description of the disOrientation² project is rich and does not seek to reduce the mapping as a simple “case of resistance versus a nebulous hegemony, but instead it seems to offer tactics, or lines of flight for others to generate their own articulations of the university and beyond” (2009: 2, original emphasis). I liked the way in which it related the project to the SenseLab’s concept of a ‘technology of lived abstraction’ (the name for the lab’s new series of books): “an active platform of creative productivity and political movement” (Gerlach, 2009: 4).

The exploration of affect, increasingly well-honed with every iteration it seems, is refreshingly clear. It highlights what I find most interesting and productive about affect, that it does not start with the subject, and while it can be bodily it is not embodied. However, Gerlach does point to some difficulties of engaging with affect. One troubling aspect is his suggestion that we strive to animate affect; this seems to suggest that not only does affect exist a priori but that it is qualitatively different kinds of affect that we are generating by seeking to animate. I wonder if it is possible to write of affect without writing for affect.

Navigating the tension between disOrientation² as a representation and as a technology of lived abstraction is not straightforward. I would be very interested to hear how the 3Cs generated techniques to keep the virtual open, to allow space for the unexpected, to not know everything that is possible, when they were working on this project. Gerlach’s engagement with disOrientation²’s micropolitical articulations are at once exploratory and experimental, yet reach-towards a becoming-with the world. This is neither an idealisation nor a festishization of a concept (micropolitics) that has been put to work in a radically empirical manner. Bravo!

Sofas and coffee table, TML

I was invited to initiate a conversation about my work this afternoon, in the TML. Unfortunately it clashed with a lecture at McGill and so several people could not attend; however, there were several people from the lab and beyond. In attendance were Xin Wei (lab director), Harry Smoak (co-founder of the lab, now doing a PhD), Jen Spiegel (a PhD student from Goldsmiths), Christoph Brunner (a member of the SenseLab) and Yu Satow (a Masters student in the lab).

I introduced my work as best I could, explaining my interests and the literature I had been reading. I also outlined the aims and questions of the research and my methods. You can listen to some of the conversation here:

We chatted for another hour or so after the recording stops, discussing among other things: field-sites, collective action and intuition. I really enjoyed the chat and it was good to be asked questions about my work – it made me think carefully!