All,
Some years ago, at a time when my wife was going through chemotherapy, I was tasked with reading Marcus Doel’s excellent book Poststructuralist Geographies. Chapter two is titled ‘Lyotard’s Cancerous Geography’ and is described as an attempt to “affirm
the ethico-political implications of a certain experience of cancer”. I recall quite clearly that the chapter was difficult for me to get through, and the suggestion that we should cultivate an “ethic of cancer” felt to me a bit cruel. But I could appreciate
Doel’s erudite and provocative argument (drawing from Lyotard, but also Baudrillard, Deleuze and others) that, as a metaphor for a certain style of thinking, cancer can open us up to an ethos of proliferation, deterritorialization, unexpected mutation, and
a certain kind of productive experimentation. It was my choice to read this chapter, of course, and Marcus did not post about these idea on this form. But I would not consider such a discussion inappropriate, and nor, I would wager, would most members of
this list.
So, is Hillary’s rather less sophisticated use of this metaphor to describe urban growth sufficiently less ‘critical’ so as to be out of bounds? I do not feel that is for me to say. Personally, I found the post to be a bit trite, but certainly not “appalling” or “obnoxious” or even especially insensitive (though I do agree with previous posters that the ‘snowflake’ response was unnecessarily snarky).
Count me among those who feel that the way to deal with posts that one may find unproductive is to simply hit delete, and not to request that a list member voluntarily resign from the forum. This is what I have done for many years with Hillary’s posts. I probably delete them without opening about half the time. Occasionally, I will linger over one a bit. And every once in a while, I find something potentially valuable, such as a time-lapse video of urban growth in Australia. Those few seconds spent deleting are really a small price to pay for the rare nuggets, and, more importantly, for keeping the forum an open and non-judgmental space of exchange.
Jeff
--------------
Jeff Popke
Department of Geography, Planning and Environment
East Carolina University
Greenville, NC 27858
Dear all,
I think I feel differently about this. I wonder whether we could hear in Hilary's many posts a desire to share something that he/she finds interesting and hopes someone else might too. And perhaps that's not really so different to how many of us relate to our research and work. And perhaps amongst all the people who subscribe to this list someone does find something of interest. It's not for me to judge. And, if we don't, it takes almost no time at all to delete an occasional email and think about something else entirely (provided, of course, they are not worded in a way that might cause hurt and injury).
Best wishes,
Ben
Professor Ben Anderson
Department of Geography
Durham University
https://www.dur.ac.uk/geography/staff/ geogstaffhidden/?id=985
________________________________________
From: A forum for critical and radical geographers [[log in to unmask]UK] on behalf of Linda Estelí Méndez [[log in to unmask] ]
Sent: 30 November 2016 20:42
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Does Gaiai need some chemo?
Every year since I've joined this list (a few years now..), the 'Hillary hiccup' never disappoints (read with sarcasm here)! I was wondering when were you going to screw up again this year? Right after thanksgiving 2016 it is!
Why is it that after all of this time, we have not reach to a unanimous conclusion that this person can't just help himself/herself. Why don't we all just agree that in light of his/her repeated behavior we can move on and he/she can do that as well, with a twitter account or whatever chosen, and get him/her out of the list?
On Wed, Nov 30, 2016 at 12:19 PM, Erin Araujo <[log in to unmask]<mailto:ela120@mun.ca >> wrote:
Dear Dr. Hillary J. Shaw,
Please understand that no one on this list is calling you names, not even snowflakes. I’d like to express to you in the kindest of words that people on the list are respecting your work by asking you to open a twitter account. This forum is not the appropriate place for your posts. Your writing covers a wide range of topics. The problem that arises is that many people spend years if not a life-time of intense work in investigating the complexities, intimacies and fascinating provocations that arise in the process of research of each topic. It is often out of the work of people on this list that you appropriate the statistics that you use. The work that is done in conjunction with this space is the work of knowledge production in all of its facets. There are great struggles within the production of knowledge. For me, the critical in critical geography arises through those struggles. They are epistemic and ontological as expressed through a complexity of theory/praxis/agency/assemblage etc. That is what is meant when your writing is critiqued as banal. The topics you cover do not reflect or resonate within a praxis of extensive investigation. On Nov 30, 2016, at 11:15 AM, J.P. Sapinski <[log in to unmask]<mailto:jpsa
Furthermore, I think many people on this list highly respect and often demand empathy in the communications that transpire in this forum. Do you care so little about the way that you injure others that you can only think about the injury you yourself have received in being told you have offended someone? Why seek to demean people that criticize your work? Why demean a graduate student? Why insist on using an inappropriate metaphor that further hurts people that are already in pain over losing a loved one? Your comments reflect a lack of empathy. Much of the work that comprises the immensity of what is critical geography is driven by empathy.
So please, Hillary, we all have a lot of work to do, a sea of emails each day, and complex discussions to have; get a twitter account.
Please understand, I wouldn’t have taken an hour out of my day to write this or added another email to this already frustrating conversation if I didn’t think sharing this with you was important.
Sincerely,
Erin Araujo
[log in to unmask] >> wrote:
The analogy has been made many times, it's simply about the mechanism of exponential growth that drives both *capitalism* (not just population/urban growth, you gotta name what you're talking about) and cancer, nothing new.
The comment about chemo is very inappropriate, it is the same language the neo-nazis, white supremacists, etc. use. If you had any idea how chemotherapy works you'd understand.
jp
On 2016-11-30 07:01, Hillary Shaw wrote:
Hmmm, number of listmembers on CG = almost 5,000, all (well mostly all) adult. Expected mortality rate overall = 70 per year, or 1 every 2 months. Include immediate friends and family, that's over 1 per week. Expected mortality from cancer alone, ca. 1 per month. Sorry, snowflakes, but we're never more than 1 month away from a tragic death of a close loved one from cancer on this list. Does that mean we can never mention the word at all? Not even in an impersonal ecological setting?
Dr Hillary J. Shaw
Director and Senior Research Consultant
Shaw Food Solutions
Newport
Shropshire
TF10 8QE
www.fooddeserts.org<http://www.fooddeserts.org/ >
-----Original Message-----
From: David C Gibbs <[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask] >
To: hillshaw <[log in to unmask]><mailto:hill[log in to unmask] >
Cc: CRIT-GEOG-FORUM <[log in to unmask]UK><mailto:CRIT-GEOG-FORUM@ On 30 Nov 2016, at 16:24, Hillary Shaw <0000004f24593c23-dmarc-JISCMAIL.AC.UK >
Sent: Wed, Nov 30, 2016 1:25 pm
Subject: Re: Does Gaiai need some chemo?
Hillary
Given the recent loss of our colleague Sally Eden at Hull I find this needless allusion to cancer insensitive & crass & I'm sure others with family
/friends In similar situations will as well
Please take the longstanding advice on this Forum & get a twitter account - that way people have to opt in to read your banal ramblings
David
[log in to unmask] <mailto:0000004f24593c23-dmarc- >> wrote:[log in to unmask]
an't help feeling here's a slight similarity between this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p16m5BBjXUQ (cancer cells spreading)
and this
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3984622/ Australia-Timelapse-satellite- shows-Sydney-Melbourne-Perth- Hobart-Darwin-Canberra- Adelaide-Brisbane-changed.html
(Australian cities growing, time lapse video)
Maybe Gaiai needs some chemotherapy :>)
Dr Hillary J. Shaw
Director and Senior Research Consultant
Shaw Food Solutions
Newport
Shropshire
TF10 8QE
www.fooddeserts.org<http://www.fooddeserts.org/ >
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