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Hello let me have another pennorth at this (oh please!?'). I think it was the anthropologist Csordas who wrote, more than a decade ago, that calling a new set of ideas with a negative was neither wise nor exactly engaging! He was right. It’s all about trying to be New. The error [or one of them] is to appear to want to strip aside everything prior to the New over-anxiously, instead of being able to take forward what was there, critically into the new without suffocating the previous. My friend, anthropologist of performance (note not ‘-ativity’) Sally Ness at California Riverside develops (even much) earlier theory on representation, into Colapietro’s ideas on ‘mediation’: “The shift from representation to mediation reinforces the dance-like character of the pragmatic sign, rhetorically conceived…. Asserting that the play of relationships-in-movement in which all kinds of signs participate agentively can matter – can ‘bear fruits, or make differences… even when play entails nothing that could be identified as representational. Signs… do not have to ‘stand’ to make sense. They can move (in-)formally as well.” Yes, and this echoes other recent work on creativity- not so much of geographers or of other disciplines, but amongst life and living. and now Thrift is selling educational tours! all good wishes David ________________________________ From: A forum for critical and radical geographers <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Owain Jones <[log in to unmask]> Sent: 19 November 2018 21:09:02 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: FW: More? Other-Than? Non? how about Anti? ART Hi Paul A much more sensible intervention than mine – thanks I would like a copy of the chapter please Cheers Owain Owain Jones Professor of Environmental Humanities<https://ecologicalhumanities.wordpress.com/what-are-the-environmental-humanities-definition-of-the-environmental-humanities/> Bath Spa University Environmental Humanities Research Centre<https://www.bathspa.ac.uk/research-and-enterprise/research-centres/environmental-humanities/> [cid:image001.jpg@01D480B0.AE05EB90] From: HARRISON, PAUL [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: 19 November 2018 23:44 To: [log in to unmask]; Owain Jones Subject: Re: FW: More? Other-Than? Non? how about Anti? ART Hello everyone, coincidentally, I have recently finished writing a chapter on the history of the names of 'Non-Representational Theory', which pays particular attention to the various roles played by and fates of the 'non-'. It's forthcoming in a book being wonderfully edited by Mitch Rose and David Bissell on The Politics of the Negative. I would be happy to send anyone interested a pre-publication copy of my chapter, but, a few things are perhaps worth noting in the context of this email exchange. 1. What we now (somewhat loosely) refer to as Non-representational Theory didn't have a stable name for quite some time. You won't find the term in Thrift's Spatial Formations. In 'Strange Country' - the intro to that text and arguably the key early text- for example, but are rather referred to the much less clearly defined and much more multiple 'non-representational models of the world'. (Which includes quite a few references to pragmatist (or closely aligned) understandings of language use - indeed, the introduction has long but all too often conveniently forgotten account of language use). 2. Indeed, what is now named in the singular 'Non-Representational Theory' (or even worse, NRT) only came to be known as such over a period of years. In my account I date the stabilisation (signalled by a sift in grammar in a series of papers) in the singular to the mid-2000s. Before then a cluster of terms were in use, ones which tended to preserve the idea that what was being named was composed of multiple things. 3. It's very difficult to tell who was responsible for this shift to the singular or proper name or indeed quite why. I make a number of claims around this in the chapter, but cannot really go into those here in sufficient detail, but my intuition is that this singularisation occurs in relation to the operation of critique. The proper name is then redeployed by people (Thrift included) in response to this process, doubling down as it were. 4. Arguments about the role of the 'non-' have been there from the beginning, but really get underway around the same time that the singular or proper name is becomes the norm. Indeed for a few years (and clearly still now) the 'non-' is an overt topic of concern and worry, with multiple instances of it being found wanting, needing to be replaced, and so on. Again, I think there are particular reasons for this, some of which are bound up with the types of demands and expectations which are held about the status of 'theories' and concepts. 5. In particular, I think it was (and is) that the non- does not offer a positive nominalisation that caused a lot of people unease (think here of the difference between the non- and the more-than or other-than). And this, I think, speaks to some very deeply held assumptions about what concepts should and shouldn't do. 6. Following on, while many rush to it, the non- is not, or need not be read as a 'not'. Taking care on this point is, I think, important, as it opens the role of the 'non-' to more insightful examination, rather than all too quick (and often somewhat smug) gotcha put downs. No, the non- is not a negation, but neither is it an affirmation. 7. Non- words have a long - a very long - history, and are more common than people often think. For example, non-citizen, non-profit, non-state, non-event, and so on. Before rushing to think to know what the non- in non-representational is doing, it could be worth pausing to consider what non- words do more broadly. (And of course there are many terms which begin with suffixes with similar effects which go less noticed, uncanny, unbelievable, and so on). As I discuss in the chapter, Daniel Heller Rosan's recent book No One's Ways. An Essay on Infinite Naming does an astonishing job of giving the history and troubling place of such terms with various system of logic and reasoning. The more analytically minded may also want to look at Laurence Horn's formidable book A Natural History of Negation. For me, the ambivalence of the non- is its importance, for reasons I explore, but it is also this ambivalence which makes the non- a cause for concern, suspicion, disquiet. And why, I think, it often functions as a screen or mirror onto which people project these concerns, and continue to try and name exactly what it is the non- doesn't and never quite names. Apologies for the long post, but, as I said, I've been thinking about this for a while, and its always fascinated me how people so confidently claim to know what the name 'non-representational theory' refers to, as, for me, this is far from being settled even now. Yours, Paul Paul Harrison Department of Geography Durham University ________________________________ From: A forum for critical and radical geographers <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> on behalf of Owain Jones <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> Sent: 19 November 2018 17:34:52 To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: FW: More? Other-Than? Non? how about Anti? ART Thank R (and D C too) I am happy to think anyone has taken any notice of my ART initiative I do think the 'creative turn' associated with Non-Rep geog kind of just does away with all this angsty debate It is about attitude really If anyone is idly or desperately seeking to know more see Jones O., (2008) 'Stepping from the wreckage: Geography, pragmatism and anti-representational theory'; special issue on Pragmatism and Geography, (eds) N. Wood and S. Smith; Geoforum, 39, 1600-1612. A kind of update of that is soon to appear in a new book on Geog and Pragmatism, "The power of pragmatism: knowledge production and social research", Edited by Jane Wills and Robert Lake. (:) I point back further still to this lovely and inspiring article that I refer to quite a lot Emel, J. (1991) Ecological Crisis and Provocative Pragmatism, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 9, 384-90. In a few years' time that article will be 3 decades old - have we made progress theoretically / politically ? Probably not, because we remain stuck in useless/destructive thought systems. Non rep, or whatever you want to call it, was / is an effort to do something to get de-stuck. That is why it is of interest Cheers Owain Jones Professor of Environmental Humanities Bath Spa University Environmental Humanities Research Centre -----Original Message----- From: Reed [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: 19 November 2018 17:02 To: Owain Jones Cc: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: FW: More? Other-Than? Non? how about Anti? ART I've been silently repeating Rorty-ian mantras non-stop while reading this thread. From the pragmatist perspective, there's no need to describe anything as non-representational, because thought and language themselves are never representational. Calling one thing "representational" and another "non-representational" arguably says nothing about their respective uses or capacities. The distinction seems rooted in other pernicious philosophical distinctions, e.g. mind/body, appearance/reality. This is not to say, however, that I don't value the NRT/ORT intervention. I wonder, is the term "humanistic" in geography still generally associated with phenomenology? I've always thought it would be nice if it weren't so and we could instead have more work evincing the appealing (to me) stylistic tendencies of humanistic geographies tinged with the pragmatists' evasion of epistemology. Is that a thing? I believe Dr. Jones has done some work I see as falling along these lines, but he may resent that association. Yours in the pursuit of absolute truth and ultimate reality, R. On Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 03:50:38PM -0000, Owain Jones wrote: > A-RT (Anti-Representational Theory) > > 'Nietzsche was as good an anti-Cartesian, anti-representationalist, > and anti-essentialist as Dewey. He was as devoted to the question > "what difference will this belief make to our conduct?" as Peirce or > James' (Rorty > 1991b: 2, emphasis added). > > > > > > Owain Jones > > > > Professor of Environmental Humanities > <https://ecologicalhumanities.wordpress.com/what-are-the-environmental <https://ecologicalhumanities.wordpress.com/what-are-the-environmental%0b>> -human ities-definition-of-the-environmental-humanities/> > > > > Bath Spa University Environmental Humanities Research Centre > <https://www.bathspa.ac.uk/research-and-enterprise/research-centres/en <https://www.bathspa.ac.uk/research-and-enterprise/research-centres/en%0b>> vironm > ental-humanities/> > > > > > > > > > > > ###################################################################### > ## > > To unsubscribe from the CRIT-GEOG-FORUM list, click the following link: > https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=CRIT-GEOG-FORUM&A=1 ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the CRIT-GEOG-FORUM list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=CRIT-GEOG-FORUM&A=1 ________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CRIT-GEOG-FORUM list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=CRIT-GEOG-FORUM&A=1 The University of Derby has a published policy regarding email and reserves the right to monitor email traffic. 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