Inspired by the distinction that Gilles Deleuze drew between the ‘movement-image’ and the ‘time-image,’ the paper considers the ‘film’—the ‘skin’—of ‘film geography,’ not in terms of the customary ...geography
of
film, the geography
in
film, or the geography
from
film, but rather in terms of geography
as
film, a literal ‘film’ geography or ‘filmic’ geography. To get under the skin of film geography, the paper proceeds in three parts. The first part shatters the conception of film as a re-presentation. The second touches a raw nerve by channelling the power of the false. The third splits open and unfolds the two faces of film, namely the ‘movement-image’ and the ‘time-image.’ By way of conclusion, the paper ends its flaying of film geography with a ‘stirring still’ taken from Michael Madsen’s (2010)
Into Eternity: A Film for the Future
, which documents the construction of Onkalo, the world’s first deep-geological nuclear-waste disposal facility that must remain undisturbed for at least 100,000 years once the tomb is sealed in the early twenty-second century.
In dialogue with recent studies that have sought to foreground the negative and the abyssal in human geography and that have struggled in vain to prevent their foreclosure, we introduce the work of ...the French theorist Maurice Blanchot, whose challenging and thought-provoking writings remain largely unknown within our discipline despite their significance for deconstructing geography’s conceptual architecture. After explicating Blanchot’s neutralization of the problem of negativity and positivity, the paper brings Blanchot’s neutral writings to bear on three areas of contemporary geographical concern: the trouble with subjectivity and identity; the unhinging of space and time; and the disaster of writing.
Placed. Displaced Doel, Marcus A.
Children's geographies,
09/2020, Letnik:
18, Številka:
5
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Given that the working title of the collection of essays gathered in this issue of the journal was 'children displaced across borders,' the paper considers the implications of this strange and ...arresting word, 'displaced,' which can be read in conflicting ways, depending on the weight, stress, and strain that one applies to the rift that traverses it: displaced, dis-placed, and di-splaced. Drawing upon structuralist and poststructuralist influences, such as Alain Badiou, Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida, and Jacques Lacan, the paper stresses the place of displacement and the displacement of place, and deconstructs the 'taking place' of each, as well as of emplacement, misplacement, and mal-placement. The comeuppance of this contortion in the fabric of space-time is an unfathomable commotion or 'loco-commotion' in the structure of placement, where 'displaced children,' like any split subject, come to be 'splaced' out and 'splayed' out.
The prominence of witness testimony in a range of contemporary political events is reflected in interdisciplinary efforts to theorise the act and genre of witnessing. Notably, this literature has ...framed the occurrence of errors, contradictions, and other instances of "problematic" speech in testimony as attesting to the traumatic quality of disastrous events. In this paper we extend this line of reasoning by recasting the fundamental quality or "witness‐ness" of disaster survivor testimony outside a logic of representational correspondence. Instead, drawing on the philosophy of Maurice Blanchot, we suggest that the disorienting features of testimony can be interpreted as the disruptive influence or inscription of the disaster itself on the recollections of survivors; a certain "writing of the disaster." Furthermore, we suggest that different disasters disrupt the testimonies of its survivors in unique ways, thus imprinting a signature that betrays the material and psychological character of the event. The "witness‐ness" of survivor testimony is therefore argued to dwell not in its representational accuracy, but in the distinctive, signature ways that it disorients the search for a coherent accounting of the disaster. We explore this proposition first in relation to Nazi death camp survivor testimony, before exploring this approach in the very different testimonial context of the 2011 tsunami in Tohoku, Japan. In the wake of these readings, we argue that the concept of the signature has potential not only for broadening the repertoire of testimonies admissible in the study of disaster, but also for investigating the societal impacts and "countersignatures" of disasters more generally.
In this paper we extend recent advances in witnessing theory to argue that the fundamental quality or "witness‐ness" of disaster survivor testimony lies outside a logic of representational correspondence. Drawing on the philosophy of Maurice Blanchot, we suggest the disorienting features of testimony can be interpreted as the disruptive influence of the disaster itself, and that different disasters inscribe themselves on testimonies in unique, signature ways. We explore this proposition first in relation to Nazi death camp survivor testimony, then in the very different testimonial context of the 2011 tsunami in Tohoku, Japan.
A unique writing style, and comprehensive and international coverage of the history of violence, make this a thought-provoking read for human geographers.
Abstract This review paper makes the case for the usefulness of qualitative research methods in the context of epilepsy research. It begins with an assessment of the current state of epilepsy ...literature and identifies gaps especially in the following: research in ‘developing’ countries and research around surgery for adults with epilepsy. It makes the case that disclosure of people's behaviors, actions, and reactions in different, often complex health-care situations can indicate how they bring meaning to their disease experiences and support needs. It shows the value of encouraging work that clarifies how patients manage their illness and how they understand changes in their health and well-being over the life course of their illness and how health-care professionals and other stakeholder groups care for those with epilepsy. The paper suggests a range of methods for addressing gaps in the literature and highlights a range of data collection, data analysis, and data interpretation and synthesis techniques that are appropriate in this context. It pays particular attention to the strengths of qualitative applications in mixed-methods research using an example from a recent ulcerative colitis drug trial that indicates how they can be integrated into study findings, add rich description, and enhance study outcomes. Ethnographic methodology is also presented, as a way of offering rare access to the ‘lived experience’ dimension, before the paper concludes with an assessment of the qualitative criteria of credibility, dependability, transferability, and confirmability for judging a study's ‘trustworthiness’. The criteria evidence not only the trustworthiness of data and findings but also the ways in which a study has approached any challenges inherent in its research design.
The article critiques the theoretical basis for researching global cities as structures, networks, and actor‐networks. First, Sassen's and Taylor's concepts for global urban command are closely ...examined to reveal, amongst other things, their inherent contradiction. This revelation is of fundamental importance because current research is proceeding apace on the assumption of their compatibility. Second, we move beyond a critique of structures and networks to expose a problem with re‐conceptualizing cities as actor‐networks. We explain how actor‐network theory runs aground on a ‘plasma’ and consequently suggest a route out of that theoretical impasse by arguing for a re‐conceptualization of cities modelled on the work of Badiou. Finally, we demonstrate how such a conceptual shift provides the theoretical basis for a new type of urban analysis that examines how cities strive to prohibit and dissimulate their unbinding and destabilization as networks. Thus, the article advances a new model for global‐urban studies about how cities as networks are fragile, ongoing achievements, not only because — as actor‐network theory has taught us — they hold together only because they are held together, but because — as Badiou shows us — they are blind to what they cannot take into account: multiplicity and event as products of subtraction.
Résumé
L’article critique la base théorique des recherches qui considèrent les villes planétaires comme des structures, réseaux ou acteurs‐réseaux. D’abord, les concepts de commandement urbain mondial de Sassen et de Taylor sont examinés afin de dévoiler, entre autres, leur contradiction intrinsèque. Ce point est fondamental puisque la recherche actuelle progresse en postulant leur compatibilité. Ensuite, dépassant la critique des structures et réseaux, l’article expose la problématique de la reconceptualisation des villes en tant qu’acteurs‐réseaux. Après avoir expliqué comment la théorie de l’acteur‐réseau se brise sur un ‘plasma’, il préconise une issue à cette impasse théorique en reconceptualisant les villes à partir des travaux de Badiou. Pour finir, il montre comment ce changement de référentiel conceptuel apporte une base théorique à un nouveau type d’analyse urbaine qui traite la manière dont les villes s’efforcent d’empêcher et de dissimuler leur rupture et leur déstabilisation en tant que réseaux. L’article propose ainsi un nouveau modèle pour des études sur les villes planétaires qui s’intéressent au fait que les villes en tant que réseaux sont des réalisations permanentes fragiles, pas seulement parce que (comme l’a enseigné la théorie de l’acteur‐réseau) leur cohérence tient uniquement au fait que les réseaux sont maintenus assemblés, mais parce que (comme Badiou le montre) ces réseaux n’envisagent pas ce qu’ils ne peuvent prendre en compte: multiplicité et événement en tant que résultat d’une soustraction.
In the wake of the elision of the 35th and 40th anniversaries of the History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group (HPGRG) of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British ...Geographers) (RGS-IBG) due to a coronavirus pandemic, the paper takes advantage of the anniversal twists and turns to deconstruct what is going to come without getting any closer and without moving any further away, and to hail the cancerous growth that is driving the revolution of geographical thought. With candles at the ready, my birthday wish is for geographical thought to perish, save the cancer (and the virus).
•An anniversary has a strange temporality and spatiality, by way of which what is going to come and coming to go approaches without getting any nearer.•The twists and turns of an anniversary exemplify the deconstruction of time and space.•By deconstructing the anniversary of the RGS-IBG's History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group, the paper reveals a cancer at the core of geographical thought.•Given that the history and philosophy of geography continues to be ravaged by a cancerization of its theoretical discourse, the paper argues that it would be advisable to let geographical thought perish and to save the cancer instead.
Breast cancer risk classifications are useful for prognosis, yet little is known of their effect on patients. This study clarified women’s understandings of risk as they “journeyed” through the ...health care system. Breast cancer patients and women undergoing genetic investigation were recruited (N = 25) from a large UK Health Board, 2014–2015, completing a “Book of Experience,” and Bio-photographic elicitation interviews. Stakeholder and Participant Feedback Forums were undertaken with key stakeholders, including patients, oncologists, funders, and policy developers, to inform team understanding. Thematic and visual frameworks from multidisciplinary analysis workshops uncovered two themes: “Subjective Understandings of Risk” and “Journeying Toward an Unknown Future.” Breast cancer patients and women undergoing investigation experienced risk intuitively. Statistical formulations were often perplexing, diverting attention away from concrete life-and-death facts. Following risk classification, care must be co-defined to reduce patients’ foreboding about an unknown future, taking into consideration personal risk management strategies and aspirations for a cancer-free future.
Against the horizon of Earthly depletion and social exhaustion, miserly thinking is once again on the ascendancy, catching hold of critical and radical thought as well as the popular and conservative ...imagination. Whatever its ethicopolitical inflection, miserly thought enjoins one to conserve, constrain, and sustain. It is consumed by scarcity: specifically, the inability of the world to accommodate itself to the insatiable demands that are placed upon it. Faced with lack, miserly thought advances its ethic of restraint, the target of which is everything that would exceed the paucity of means placed at our world's disposal. Pitching itself against miserly thinking, the paper unfolds a form of thought animated by excession rather than immiseration, by a world given as excess rather than as privation. This is accomplished in four parts, the first of which dislodges the grip of miserly thinking by recourse to Georges Bataille's notion of general economy. The paper then considers arguably the best-known form of excessful thinking: Marxian political economy, as rendered by David Harvey. Nevertheless, while this successfully reveals how social formations are animated by surplus rather than by scarcity, its desire to restitute excess remains mired in miserly thinking. Consequently, the third part of the paper considers the fate of excess once it suffuses the whole of existence. With its ontology of association, Bruno Latour's actor-network theory has gone the furthest in this regard. However, this ontology runs aground upon an inconsistent excess held in reserve: plasma. The final part of the paper addresses the limitations of Latour's actor-network theory by way of Alain Badiou's ontology of subtraction. In the final analysis, the sequence of ‘lack’, ‘surplus’, and ‘association’ gives way to the constellation of ‘multiplicity’, ‘situation’, and ‘event’, which is illustrated with reference to the global financial crisis of 2008 and 2009.
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