I've been following the discussion sparked by Allen Scott's 'dyspeptic ruminations' with interest, but sitting on the fence as to whether to add anything. Several very good points have been made already. But I would like to clarify something Simon mentioned, and then toss in a couple of extra thoughts.
Simon helpfully referred list members to Peter Jackson's very good article in the online journal Social Geography, but characterised this journal as 'German'. As someone who has been heavily involved in Social Geography since its inception a few years ago, I would like to emphasise that, although it is run out of Germany by the excellent Antje Schlottmann at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, it is an international journal with an international editorial board, and has published a range of articles in English. I encourage list readers to visit its website, both for interesting content and to have a look at the innovative open review process (http://www.social-geography.net/index.html).
A couple of thoughts on the ongoing discussion. It seems to me that dissatisfaction with the way theory circulates in human geography has a vaguely cyclical structure. To the extent that this is true, the cycles undoubtedly have something to do with generational rhythms among scholars. However, it certainly also expresses something about the dynamics of intellectual discourse. My impression over the last few years is that we're reaching a paradoxical stagnation stage within this cyclical rhythm. This impression comes from trying to keep up with the published literature, but even more from the refereeing work I (like most list readers) do.
This stage can be described provocatively as follows: on the one hand, we human geographers, and especially those of use doing some form of cultural geography, are finding and engaging with an ever-wider range of theorists at an accelerating pace (this point was made in the flap about the uptake of Badiou a few years ago). Like many of the contributors to the current discussion, I think the quality of most of these engagements is actually quite high. But at the same time, we seem to be using this rich panoply of ideas in ever-more narrow, or maybe 'convergent', ways: basically, to argue for the contingency of everything.
Obviously, there are many different forms of contingency, and it would be irresponsible to suggest there is no difference between the different theoretical approaches made to the issue through concepts of performance, events, fluidity, flat ontologies, Actor-networks, etc. And most authors I read, to be fair, are in fact not claiming that "everything" is contingent, only certain aspects of their particular topics of study. But in the end, the range of conclusions drawn in the many papers I've read that refer explicitly to social or cultural theory is distressingly narrow: "This study has shown that the apparent stability of X (X can be a category, a process, a causal relation…) is troubled, disrupted or undermined by a careful look at the evidence; and this disruption can be understood as a confirmation / illustration / new application of theoretical concept or argument Y".
I don't mean to impugn the quality of the research that undergirds such conclusions. As a rule it is quite good, as the phrase 'careful look at the evidence' should suggest. I am also aware that a good deal of the focus on contingency is connected to what has become a sort of 'standard model' of critical academic politics. According to this model, by demonstrating the contingency of X, we are contributing to the possibility that people dealing with X will recognise that it can be challenged and transformed.
I don't reject the basic validity of this political argument either, though I, like many others, think it has limitations. In all of this, though, it seems to me that we are losing a sense for how to use theoretical concepts for anything other than furthering a sort of blanket recognition of contingency. There are of course exceptions within cultural geography, some of them quite well known, for example in efforts to insist on the reality of physical and economic violence.
But apart from those few bright moments, I increasingly find myself thinking, "OK, I get it!" We now seem to have full and ample inductive grounds on which to accept that everything is contingent. Instead I'm interested in how we explain, and respond in constructive ways, to our own (and everyone else's) patent ability (or perhaps even 'need') to keep on living and acting in the world as if large swathes of it are not contingent. I'm also interested to see what the longer-term impact might be of the works of Zizek, Badiou and other thinkers who militate against the 'everything is contingent' line. Finally, like Peter Jackson, I'm hoping a much fuller recognition of issues of political economy will seep back into cultural theory and cultural geography in ways that render these enterprises capable of providing a more complete account of sources of suffering, injustice and inequality.
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