RGS-IBG Annual Conference: Decolonizing Geographical Knowledges

Royal Geographical Society, London

Tuesday 29 August to Friday 1 September 2017

CfP: Political geographies of the event

Sponsored by the Political Geography Research Group

Session organisers: Alan Ingram (UCL) and Andrew Barry (UCL)

The idea of the event has emerged as a focal point for thinking in political geography and related fields in relation to a variety of concerns. Ontologically, the concept of the event raises questions in terms of its relationship to ideas such as process, object, invention and situation and correspondingly in relation to how we understand space and time. Thematically, the idea of the event appears in work on security (e.g. as incident) and infrastructure (e.g. as disruption) as well as in work on politics (protest, revolution), rebordering, art, colonialism and the Anthropocene/Capitalocene. Politically, there are concerns with determining the nature and status of ‘true events’ and the critical importance of accounts and analyses of events in political life. We can further ask how events catalyse the emergence of theory and, conversely, how theoretical shifts reframe our understanding of events.

For this session we invite further reflections on political geographies of the event with particular reference to questions of epistemology, methodology and fieldwork. For example, how do we recognise events as events? If the event is non-localisable in space and time, what does this mean for the conduct and location of fieldwork? What about the slow, small or the invisible event, or the non-event? How do we engage with the event in terms of aesthetics? How do we understand how one event leads to another? What is the relationship of the event to the archive, or the trace or bodies of multiple kinds? How do events and publics enact each other? How is power exercised in the delineation and narration of events? What does it mean to pursue the eventalization (Foucault) of a situation or the counter-actualisation (Deleuze) of an event?

Please send title, abstract (max 250 words) and author details, plus any enquiries about the session, to both convenors (<[log in to unmask]> and <[log in to unmask]>) by Friday 3 February 2017. We will reply regarding session participation by Friday 10 February.