earth writing academis edu
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Earth Writing
Simon SpringerDepartment of Geography, University of Victoria
simonspringer@gmail.com
AbstractGeography means earth writing, and so it is perhaps fitting that writing itself has become a primaryintellectual battleground in contemporary geographical thought. This paper advocates for metaphoricalearth writing, arguing that it unchains our geographical imaginations from the shackles of ourdisciplinary past by boldly embracinggeopoetics. I hope to spark debate by promoting the un-discipliningof geography as a means to open up a theoretical space for voice, where a material space ofemancipation might follow. I am guided by the notion that our epistemological, ontological, andmethodological choices are not apolitical decisions without consequence. Accordingly I critique theaccusation of esotericism as a narrative that reifies the false dichotomy between academia and society.
Aversion to metaphor fails to recognize the epistemological challenge it raises and underestimates how
jargon combats commonsense notions that reinforce hierarchical power relations. How we write theearth constitutes a political choice, where disciplining others into a singular way of knowing, being, anddoing geography is an affront to the possibilities of space. When we make space for earth writing as abeautiful flourishing ofgeopoetics, we place the earth at the center of experience, releasing the light andenergy of a more powerful geography.
Keywordscommonsense, esotericism, geography, geopoetics, metaphor, praxis
Introduction
[Geopoetics] is deeply critical of Western thinking and practice over the last 2500 years and its separation
of human beings from the rest of the natural world, and proposes instead that the universe is a potentially
integral whole, and that the various domains into which knowledge has been separated can be unified by a
poetics which places the planet Earth at the center of experience. It seeks a new or renewed sense of
world, a sense of space, light and energy which is experienced both intellectually, by developing our
knowledge, and sensitively, using all our senses to become attuned to the world.
- Kenneth White (1989: np)
Geography means earth writing. Given this etymology it is both fitting and paradoxical that the issue of
writing has become one of the primary intellectual battlegrounds of contemporary geographical
thought. It was not too long ago that writing in the discipline proceeded through a naive realism and
was considered an entirely objective and unproblematic process wherein words were thought to link
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thoughts with objects in irrefutable ways (Peet 1994). Geography was accordingly a discipline
concerned with providing mirror representations of a predetermined, and already labeled earth. In this
sense, writing about the earth was envisioned as quite a straightforward process. The crisis of
representation and the cultural turn in geography changed the parameters of such positivist thinking
(Barnes 2001), and representation could no longer be seriously claimed as truth, but rather as
interpretation. Methodologically, positivist and scientific reliability of results necessarily gave way to
interpretive validity, and epistemologically writing can no longer be considered a factual endeavor,
since truth is now recognized as being made through texts, rather than outside of them. Writing, and
indeed earth writing, reveal as much about individual authors as they do about the ostensible real
world they serve to represent. Thus, Richard Peet (1994: 297) argues in writing worlds, rhetorical
devices such as metaphors, irony, and smiles are not merely decorative, but central for conveying
meaning. Metaphors play a pivotal role in shaping interpretive communities (Fish 1980), and thereby,
the facts that they emphasize. Moreover, a metaphors success or failure is based on whether it
identifies similarities between the thing investigated and the thing it is being compared with, and from
this we can recognize that knowledge is acquired via an inherently metaphorical process. In contrast,
naive realism results in a breakdown of communication because if two people perceive things
differently, particularly if they witness it with their own eyes, each can only conclude that the other is a
fool or a liar, and neither of these conclusions are conducive to fostering respectful conversation
(Wright 1994).
I want to explore some of the problematics of this divide between metaphorical earth writing and
the specter of naive realism that continues to haunt the discipline of geography, arguing that it is high
time, once and for all, to unchain our geographical imaginations from the shackles of our disciplinary
past and boldly embrace the immanence of geopoetics. Yet my purpose in this paper is not to engage a
polemic about what earth writing should look like in absolute terms. In fact, my objective is to do quite
the opposite, as I instead hope to open up debates about earth writing by advocating for the un-
disciplining of our discipline. The polemicist, Michel Foucault (1998) once noted,
proceeds encased in privileges that he possesses in advance and will never agree to question. On principle,
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whether religious or secular, where reality is a fixed parameter that we reveal through observing its true
nature, while the latter opens up an aperture on a more grounded and democratic basis of knowledge
by recognizing that perception defines reality, not the other way around. Our epistemological,
ontological, and methodological choices are accordingly not apolitical decisions without consequence.
They have resonant material effects that pulse throughout the integral whole of the universe, wherein
the closer we are to their epicenter of influence, the stronger the vibrations. The final section before the
conclusion accordingly highlights the implications of methods in relation to metaphor, wherein I argue
that how we write about the world accordingly constitutes a political choice, where disciplining others
into a singular way of knowing, being, and doing geography is a violent affront to the possibilities of
space (Massey 2005). When we make space for earth writing as a beautiful flourishing of geopoetics,
rather than as a constrained geoprose of tedious data, objective facts, and an ostensibly transcendent
researcher, we place the earth at the center of experience, releasing the light and energy of a much more
powerful geography.
Dead Metaphors
metaphor connects abstract thought with embodied experience, providing a grounding we often fail to
see precisely because it is so pervasive and fundamental.
- N. Katherine Hayles (2001: 44)
Delicate words exhausted through overuse. Bawdy words made temperate by repetition. Enchanting and
enchanted words wand broken. Words of the spirit forced into flesh. Words of the flesh unlovely in a
white gown. Slang in a sling shot hurled and hurled and hurled. That is the legacy of the dead.
- Jeanette Winterson (1996: 65)
At the time of this writing I am less than five years into a career as a professional geographer, but
within this time span, like many other young scholars concerned with the pressures of securing a
position and attaining tenure in a context where PhD graduates are increasing while actual jobs are
decreasing, I operate with a certain degree of anxiety and have self-admittedly seen my own subject
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position transformed into a publish or perish mentality. What this adds up to is a fairly significant
amount of experience with peer review in a relatively short period of time. What stands out as most
notable in my negotiation of the peer review process to date are the ways in which the echoes of
geographys past continue to visit the present. While not often expressed in published work, although
there are exceptions (cf. Binns 2007), behind the scenes there seems to be somewhat of an aversion for
metaphorical or poetic writing, and a clear preference for empirical descriptions of material conditions.
I find this extremely troubling insofar as it risks taking us a step backwards to the colonial geography of
yesteryear. Description, Edward Said (1978/2003: 84) argued, was the first great collective
appropriation of one country by another. This revelation isnt surprising, since colonialism itself is
premised upon the power of representing Other peoples and their worlds as not like us, and thus in
need of salvationary gestures like the white mans burden. Nonetheless, I have encountered peer
reviewers who seem intent on pressing hang ups over metaphors as far as they can possibly take them
in suggesting that earth writing should forward material descriptions: is this scholarship as I would like
to see it in a flagship journal, a referee wrote of my essay (Author 2013), or simply a series of
rhetorical tropes (e.g., zombies, vampires) used to construct a polemic about a situation whose
materiality deserves far greater attention. My earth writing was, in the view of this anonymous
reviewer, not grounded enough to warrant publication as I was somehow doing injustice to my research
participants by employing metaphors in the presentation of my arguments. I was, as is to be expected,
upset by such commentary.
Even more concerning than any wound to my own ego is that such a method of critique
proceeds as an attempt to invalidate alternative epistemological positions, and literally seeks to discipline
others into one particular mode of earth writing, as though there is only one correct way to do
geography. The parallels with colonialism are hard to ignore, as its gaze constitutes a strategy of
embodying disciplinary mechanisms through which power is relayed through various nodes that
legitimize particular ways of seeing and doing (de Certeau 2000). Of course this could instead be a case
of my chosen metaphors ultimately failing to resonate, but given that they were all borrowed directly
from the particular interpretive community that I intended as my audience, I am inclined to think
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otherwise. Chris Harmans (2012) recent book Zombie Capitalism: Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx,
and a number of articles including ones by geographers such as Jamie Peck (2010) employ the
zombification metaphor, while the phrase vampiric state was popularized by J. H. Frimpong-Ansah
(1991) in The Vampire State in Africa: the Political Economy of Decline in Ghana, and taken up by geographers
like Barry Riddell (1997) to refer to the idea that the state saps individuals of their full potential, treating
human lives as expendable. In this particular instance, the metaphors usage actually extends back over
a century to Karl Marx (1867/1976), when he made an analogy to vampires in Capital Volume 1, stating
that Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more,
the more labour it sucks. So complaining about a metaphor that has been in circulation within the
realm of political economy for almost 150 years seemed quite misguided. Nonetheless, I was explicitly
told that this type of earth writing had no place in a leading disciplinary journal. This sort of critique
then fundamentally amounts to an imposition of what constitutes authentic geography, rather than
remaining open to the legitimacy of other epistemological and ontological views and making space for
the different senses of earth writing that might be productively employed.
The claim that language ought to have clarity or simplicity, which is a typical reactionary
response to poststructuralist writings see The Bad Writing Contest run by Denis Dutton (1998),
former editor of the journal Philosophy and Literature, in which Judith Butler was awarded the top prize
cuts to the heart of the crisis of representation that continues to trouble geographical scholarship,
most overtly through the recent turn towards non-representational theory (Thrift 2007). The quest for
simplicity is linked to a problematic, modernist understanding of language that suggests language itself
conveys an already existing truth, as though we can ever say what we mean, or conversely mean what
we say. In other words, at the heart of the issue of writing style is actually an epistemological challenge,
as the notion of clarity in writing is premised upon a scientific/positivist positioning that posits
objective reality, which itself is the sine qua nonof the god-trick that Donna Haraway (1988) identifies.
Those who champion conservative views frequently scold those who advance a more radical
perspective, where the latter have accordingly long been the focus of polemics. As Herbert Marcuse
(1964/1991: 192) argued,
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The intellectual is called on the carpet. What do you mean when you say? Dont you conceal
something? You talk a language which is suspect. You dont talk like the rest of us, like the man in the
street, but rather like a foreigner who does not belong here. We have to cut you down to size, expose your
tricks, purge you.
Marcuse continues by suggesting that the only response to such an attack is to argue that if what the
intellectual says could be said in terms of ordinary language, she would probably have done so in the
first place. So the idea that earth writing can avoid what some might label as jargonistic or turgid
language and somehow still seriously challenge traditional, commonsense ideas is self-contradictory as
the epistemological position here is irreducibly linked to language. If we are to challenge existing
understandings, particularly when they are rooted in an unreflexive sense of tradition, it becomes
necessary to write very carefully and in terms that avoid everyday conventions. As Judith Butler (1999:
np) contends:
If commonsense sometimes preserves the social status quo, and that status quo sometimes treats unjust
social hierarchies as natural, it makes good sense on such occasions to find ways of challenging
commonsense. Language that takes up this challenge can help point the way to a more socially just
world. The contemporary tradition of critical theory in the academy, derived in part from the Frankfurt
School of German anti-fascist philosophers and social critics, has shown how language plays an
important role in shaping and altering our common or natural understanding of social and political
realities.
Thus, while the anti-commonsense language of some earth writing might seem challenging, obscure, or
even esoteric, particularly to those who disagree with a poststructuralist interpretation of language, this
is actually an epistemological challenge, and not simply a matter of writing style.
Rather than being obtuse or conveyed with froth, as has been said of my own work, I would
instead like to think of my choice of metaphors and writing style as part of a poetic shift in earth
writing, particularly as regards violence, which has been the primary focus of my research to date
(Author 2011, 2013). Theodore Adorno (1981: 34) once argued that To write poetry after Auschwitz
is barbaric as he couldnt fathom how a humanity, capable of such bloodshed, could make sense of
and in turn relate this horrific tale. Yet Adorno, burdened by the emotional weight of violence, was
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wrong. It is not poetry that is impossible after Auschwitz, but ratherprose. As Slavoj Zizek (2008: 4-5)
writes Realistic prose fails, where the poetic evocation of the unbearable atmosphere of a camp
succeeds. That is to say, when Adorno declares poetry impossible (or, rather, barbaric) after Auschwitz,
this impossibility is an enabling impossibility: poetry is always about something that cannot be
addressed directly, only alluded to. Thus, in the wake of the crisis of representation, where earth
writing can no longer be considered as a straightforward process of conveying the real word, poetry
becomes an essential component of geographys recent affective turn, it becomes enabling, and
particularly so vis--vis the commonsense logics and structural violence of capitalism, law, and the state.
Consequently, my choice of language, that is, my style of earth writing and its inflection with metaphor,
is a purposeful tactic, one that I contend is necessary not only because of the philosophical nature of
the arguments I choose to make, but as a particular challenge to commonsense.What those who
advocate for a more empirical or scientific frame to geographical scholarship so often forget is that
these too are discursive fields laden with their own particular jargon, technobabble, and gobbledygook.
Yet because all researchers are immersed in a specific epistemic field, in the same way that a fish is not
aware of the water it swims in until it is pulled to the surface and can no longer breathe, we are not
appropriately cognizant of our surroundings until someone from outside that field attempts to
asphyxiate us. While fostering awareness of this field is a crucial measure of reflexivity that keeps
scholarship alive, meaning that we should be made aware of the fragile mortality of our limited
perspectives, stifling that which you dont understand to the point of promoting its cessation is a
reactionary and intensely oppressive undertaking that murders both philosophy and metaphor.
In Defence of Esotericism
Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in
academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint your
pages with respectful yellow highlighter. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not a lucid one,
surely, for clarity would expose your lack of content.
- Richard Dawkins (1999: 141)
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[Esotericism] has always been considered the domain of the Other. It has been imagined as a strange
country, whose inhabitants think differently from us and live by different laws: whether one felt that it
should be conquered and civilized, avoided and ignored, or emulated as a source of inspiration, it has
always presented a challenge to our very identity, for better or for worse.
- Wouter Hanegraaff (2012: 3)
The writing styles of a great many Continental philosophers, critical theorists, and poststructuralist
thinkers like Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Bruno Latour, Gilles Deleuze, Flix Guattari, Jacques
Rancire, Emmanuel Levinas, and Pierre Bourdieu have been critiqued as being elitist, obscure, and
esoteric (Eagleton 1996; Epstein 1995; Sokal and Bricmont 1998). While I do not want to lend the
impression of self-importance that sees my own work as of the same caliber as these profound
thinkers, each of these authors has greatly inspired me. In spite of the ongoing critiques of their
particular styles of writing, the work of critical theory remains some of the most highly regarded, highly
read, and highly cited writings in the academy today, and in this regard, I do not worry that my writing
style will diminish how my work is received or how widely it might be read. If we are to be honest
about our practice, the work of professional geographers appears by and large in academic journals, not
popular magazines, so in most instances we are clearly not trying to speak to a general audience. My
expectation is that those who will chose to read my articles will already have some interest in the topic,
and some appreciation of the literature in which it is framed. I also believe the intellectual importance
of a contribution should exceed concerns for the number of citations or downloads it might receive in
the future. If that were the sole concern of any given academic journal, it would be a losing game akin
to playing the stock market or gambling, rather than an intellectual exercise. Nonetheless, I have
frequently encountered reviewers who have encouraged me to operate in a more realist frame of
reference so that I might gain a larger audience, as though we can ever interpret who might read our
work and for what means and ends it might be used after it is written up. In a review of Gayatri
Spivaks (1999)A Critique of Post-Colonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present, Terry Eagleton
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(1999) attacked the book as an exercise in being as obscurantist as you can decently get away with.
Yet Spivaks interrogations of political commonsense have reached thousands of scholars and have
resonated far beyond the academy, as her work is highly regarded in activist circles as well. Butler (1999:
np), whose work has been at the center of similar critiques, defends Spivak against Eagleton by
suggesting that, perhaps it is precisely her well-earned popularity, her ability to reach so many people,
and change their thinking so profoundly, that forms the basis of Eagletons ressentiment. Likewise, I
wonder how many contemporary earth writers would regard Gayatri Spivaks (1988) monumental Can
the Subaltern Speak? as an exercise in elitism simply because of its poetic quality. Does this character
of poetics in itself make academic work rarefied?
The accusation of esotericism is a difficult one to counteract. Yet we should recognize this
particular line of critique in academia as polemical and antagonistic precisely because it is meant to
discredit and silence those who are subjected to it, to render them as Other. Since so much of
contemporary academia is tied up in ego, which is an unfortunate repercussion of the neoliberalization
of the academy and the heightened individualism that comes with it (Canaan and Schuman 2008, Ginn
2013), when one achieves a certain level of notoriety, you can almost be certain that there will be a
groundswell of detractors vying for attention, where allegations of esotericism resound like a battle cry.
The accused is not supposed to be able to defend her position as the charge has been made, and in its
presentation, it is typically mounted as a truth claim. Of course one of the central concerns of critical
theory is challenging how truth claims are constructed, buttressed, and perpetuated, so it is both ironic
and somewhat unsurprising that critics would employ the very tactic that is being opposed as an
attempt to discredit poststructuralist authors as the message challenges the foundation of authority and
expertise from which so many scholars derive their identity. Yet beyond what I would consider a form
of self-conciliation, such charges of esotericism are divisive, particularly when conceivably we, as
geographers, are not nihilistic in our outlook and view our earth writing as collectively contributing
towards some modicum of greater good. This is where a union of scholarly activity and activism should
come into play (Fuller and Kitchen 2004; Hay 2001). Do any of us really expect that if we publish in
leading disciplinary journals our work will make any more of a political intervention simply by using
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straightforward language and keeping our studies firmly rooted in empirical concerns? To venture a
yes to this question seems like an ill-conceived, anti-reflexive leap of logic, which problematically
demonstrates a treatment of theoretical concerns in a pejorative sense and overlooks the possibility of
making meaningful changes by using a more hands-on approach of scholar-activism, where theory and
practice converge aspraxis (Chatteron 2008).
When academics, including geographers, are really honest to themselves about what the impact
of their published research might be, they soon start to realize that it is unlikely that one particular piece
of writing will singularly bring about any revolutionary change. To think otherwise about ones own
work is not only a delusion of grandeur, but it conveniently skirts around the asymmetrical power
involved in any research project, as though you can give back simply by writing your research up and
publishing it. An academic journal article is, after all, for an academic audience, where the targeted
readership most definitely isa particular interpretive community. How one gives back to a research
community in contrast, is an entirely different question from that of our written output and speaks to
the need for an activist orientation in our commitments as scholars (Autonomist Geographies
Collective 2010). We need the theory to engage a process of meaningful action, and we need the action
to refine our theories (Dempsey and Rowe 2004; Ward 1973/2001). Of course committing human
geography to a progressive, inclusive, and emancipatory agenda necessitates a negation of the ivory
tower syndrome and the false dichotomy it maintains between the academy as a space of knowledge
production on the one hand, and wider society as the domain of social struggle on the other. But
thinking that the means to achieve this is simply by making our metaphors more accessible, our writing
style more clear, and our theory more simplistic within academic forums is a naive assessment of how
this might actually be achieved. We need a dual approach that on the one hand maintains theoretical
sophistication in academic forums, and on the other hand attempts to build solidarities through activist
connections and by producing more accessible works for a public audience in non-academic forums.
There is also a distinct need, as Don Mitchell (2008) persuasively argues, for desk-bound radicals to
make space for activism by guarding an intellectual space that fosters dissent. The academy is not a
separate sphere of society, but an integral component of it, which can be used as a site to nurture
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activism through promoting greater community participation among students (Rouhani 2012). In short,
there is no such thing as theory-for theorys sake, which is an unhelpful derisive that gives license to a
dangerous sense of anti-intellectualism (cf. Best 2009). Even the most abstracted of concepts, like
neoliberalism, can be shown to have grounded material effects (Peck 2010).
Coupled with the perpetuation of the great man game, where winning means other scholars
turn your name into an adjective, it is at least partly owing to the competitive nature of contemporary
academia that scholars proceed on the facile hope that their next paper will receive thousands citations
and be regarded as a watershed moment. Yet a more honest appraisal of the intellectual milieu
recognizes that every brilliant idea is merely a snapshot, an incremental moment in time that is
relationally connected to the entire body of knowledge within which it engages, a corpus that emerges
from endless conversations occurring both inside and outside of the academy (Graeber 2007). Any
supposed stroke of genius is not separate from the ongoing processes in which that achievement is
rooted. All ideas grow as a rhizome, branching off in new directions, but nonetheless irrevocably
connected to a source that provides nourishment (Deleuze and Guattari 1987). So, for example,
although my name appears as the author of this paper, I did not conceive the ideas that compose it
anymore than a chef invents vegetable soup. She may decide on the ingredients in a methodical fashion,
or arrange them in new ways through experimentation and serendipity. She may even cultivate a garden
to grow the vegetables and spices herself, watering them and ensuring that they have enough sun, but
regardless of any of this activity that went into the eventual arrival at soup, she did not make the
vegetables, nor the water, nor the sun. All she really did was offer a new preparation of constituents
through trial, error, and fortuity. The building blocks were there for her to use, so her authorship of the
soup comes only through its poetic arrangement. We may enjoy her soup or despise it depending on
our own aesthetic taste, or we may even qualify it as chowder, potage, consomm, or bisque, but we
can hardly deny that it is soup. Earth writing is much the same. It is a symptom of ego that denies the
integrality of knowledge, and a wasted effort to dictate the correct way to do geography. If you dont
like the soup, dont eat it, but at least be willing to try new flavors instead of simply rejecting them as
esoteric, and appreciate that taste is always something that is acquired; making it is inseparable from
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power relations and cultural hegemony (Bourdieu 1979). To combat the dominance of the normative,
Antonio Gramsci (1971: 10) recognized that intellectuals play a key role insofar as they can either
reinforce or reject the status quo. He understood that clarity in writing was not enough to transform
society, and that we must embrace a more holistic praxis: The mode of being of the new intellectual
can no longer consist of eloquence, which is an exterior and momentary mover of feelings and
passions, but in active participation in practical life, as constructor, organizer, as permanent persuader,
not just simple orator.
The Method of Metaphor
mathematics, which most of us see as the most factual of all sciences, constitutes the most colossal
metaphor imaginable, and must be judged, aesthetically as well as intellectually, in terms of the success
of this metaphor.
- Norbert Weiner (1954: 95)
[N]ot everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
- William Bruce Cameron (1963: 13)
The union of the mathematician with the poet this surely is the ideal.
- William James (1879/1987: 356-357)
Paul Feyerabend (1975/2010) has argued in favor of epistemological anarchism, which contends that
science is just one way of conceiving reality that cannot be shown to have any more validity than any
other world view or cosmology. Although Feyerabend insisted that his arguments were apolitical and
refused to see their potential beyond a theoretical implication, Hakim Bey (1991) has argued in favor of
an ontological anarchism, which extends this conversation outwards into the grounded experience of
being. Yet to sever epistemology from ontology is yet another in a long line of false dichotomies, and
indeed the political implications of Feyerabends version of anarchism are existential regardless of
whether he wanted to explore this avenue or not. The rise of modern science coincides with the
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suppression of non-Western peoples, and its historical and ongoing relationship to both the
justification for and the perpetuation of colonial rule should not be overlooked (Smith 1999). Given
that the modern state is a fractal of the colonial state, where a substantively post-colonial positionality is
necessarily also post-statist, or anarchic (Springer 2012), it is imperative to recognize the political
application of epistemological anarchism. Science still reigns supreme because, as Feyerabend
(1975/2010) argues its practitioners are unable to understand, and unwilling to condone, different ideologies,
because they have the power to enforce their wishes, and because they use this power just as their
ancestors used their power to force [their views] on the peoples they encountered during their
conquests. Yet science has no greater epistemological significance than any other way of knowing the
world. Its authority comes from its embeddedness in the authority of the state, both colonial and
nationalist, where it has replaced former religious epistemologies. The theme remains the same, except
that secularization has reconfigured the legitimizing cosmology. The reason for this special treatment
of science is, of course, our little fairy-tale Feyerabend (1975/2010) maintains, continuing that if
science has found a method that turns ideologically contaminated ideas into true and useful theories,
then it is indeed not mere ideology, but and objective measure of all ideologies. This is the hallmark of
polemics and the antagonism it is premised upon, as science refuses to accept or accommodate any
other position, claiming its results have arisen without any assistance from and in total independence
of non-scientific elements, where indigenous and Other knowledges are regarded as totally without
merit (Haraway 1988).
The fallacy of this dichotomy should be clear enough given, for example, the renewed interest
in the properties of herbal medicines and the innumerable tools humans manufactured prior to the
advent of scientific methodologies. Yet science alone is said to give us effective medicine and useful
technologies. This arrogant separation of science and non-science is not only artificial but also
detrimental to the advancement of knowledge. If we want to understand both our physical
surroundings and human relations, then we must be willing to accept all epistemologies, all ontologies,
and all methods, and not just a small selection of them (Feyerabend 1975/2010). Such a view is also
more in tune with deconstructing the false dichotomy between the university as a space of knowledge
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production, and wider society as the domain of social struggle (Pickerill 2008). Indeed, when we view
the role of the intellectual as simply one of interrogating anew the evidence and the postulates, of
shaking up habits, ways of acting and thinking, of dispelling commonplace beliefs, of taking a new
measure of rules and institutions it is a matter of participating in the formation of a political will
then the distinction between inside and outside of the academy becomes even more meaningless
(Foucault 1991: 12), as academics are simply engaging with and reflecting upon the world the same as
anyone else, only our task is to analyze the limits of our knowledge and write about it. Thus, it is not
the place of the earth writer to be prescriptive as to how society shouldbe organized, as imposing ones
own view in such a manner would simply recapitulate the essence of imperialist/state-making projects.
The task of (re)imagining society should rightfully be an ongoing, protean process, enacted through the
collective will and empowered by the solidarity of those communities concerned through the process of
radical democracy. Moreover, the insistence that (social) science possesses the only correct method
(empiricism) and the only acceptable results is mere ideology. As A. J. Baker (1960/2009: 240) argues,
There are various false theories, metaphysical views, overt and concealed moral and political
assumptions that have wide influence in society; the role of the critic is to expose these as illusions or
ideologies, and this is a permanent job which has to be carried on from generation to generation. So it
is for good reason that much of contemporary geographical scholarship is not rooted exclusively in
empiricism, as significant doubt has been cast on scientific methodologies and the ocular-centrism of a
mode of inquiry that privileges the observable as the foundation of certainty in knowledge.
I am purposefully an intellectual, and purposefully not a social scientist. What I mean by this is
that I am not committed to any one epistemological, ontological, or methodological understanding, but
am instead prone to continuously re-evaluating my own positionality through employing a certain
anarchism. To quote Foucault (1988: 10) once more, The main interest in life and work is to become
someone else that you were not in the beginning. So in response to Marxs famous thesis that
philosophers have only hitherto interpreted the world when the real point is to change it, Foucault
would have undoubtedly argued that our constant task must be to keep changing our minds. Changing
our minds is changing the world, and academic stasis and the refusal of other epistemological,
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ontological, and methodological positions is thus of the same chord that privileges entrenched
hierarchies. It is disciplinary in the most regressive sense of working alongside regulatory power
(biopower and governmentality) to control individual bodies, and specifically how those bodies think
and what they can do (Foucault 1976/2003). Rather than using disciplinary strategies to encourage
docile scholars with no sense of what it means to be political (K. Mitchell 2008), we should be
unleashing our epistemological and ontological precepts to encourage the wilding of our earth writing.
Within the methodical fashioning of a domesticated geography, there is a feral yearning for exploration
that cannot be repressed. The desire to open up the idea of method itself to critique is not akin to a
refusal of validity. Interpreting the validity of a particular work is a matter of positionality. This is not to
argue for relativism, which is as much of a disembodied god-trick as objectivity, but to locate validity
as a form of situated knowledge (Haraway 1988). Positivists contend validity is interpreted exclusively
as the reliability of results, where personal bias is seen as destroying reliability. Yet validity can take
many forms including validity-as-culture, validity-as-ideology, validity-as-gender, validity-as-
language/text, and validity-as-relevance/advocacy. Rather than presenting one particular view of
validity as correct, Altheide and Johnson (2000: 290) acknowledge interpretive validity, which suggests
that, validity should be relevant and serviceable for some application of knowledge asking the
questions Is it useful? and most importantly Does it liberate, or empower?. This final question is
what drives my research, where I have sough to contribute to a discourse of non-violence and to
promote the furtherance of emancipatory ideas and liberatory politics, not to appeal to the
institutionalized channels of the status quo in putting forward formal (policy) proposals, or to offer
prescriptive overviews of what those groups who I have been researching should be doing. Such
articulations are bureaucratic at best and authoritarian at worst.
It should be fairly obvious that all of this is antithetical to a more emancipatory geography, where
individuals are self-empowered and collectively organized through voluntary associations to chart their
own future paths, rather than being coerced to accept the guidance of a state leader or cajoled by a
patronizing and misguided academic. I see the role of the intellectual, and hence the purpose of
scholarship, as precisely being the social conscience of society. Not speaking for society, but thinking
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critically within it as an integral component of the larger whole. Much of my work is accordingly
written in such a way that I intend for it to be read as diagnostic. Foucault (1990: 36), from whom I take
my cue, once said, I would like to say something about the function of any diagnosis concerning the
nature of the present... any description must always be made in accordance with these kinds of virtual
fracture which open up the space of freedom understood as a space of concrete freedom, i.e. of
possible transformation. Geography, when given methodological freedom, when attuned to
interpretive validity, and when positioned as a situated knowledge, can provide that space. It is only
through a radical, committed, and sustained critique of the violent institutions and practices that shape
our lives, including our own individual implication in them, that humanity might be able to cast off the
chains that we have made for ourselves in the form of capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, statism,
militarism, classism, racism, ethnocentrism, sexism, genderism, ageism, ableism, speciesism,
homophobia, and transphobia. As such, I make no apologies for the diagnostic approach that I have
adopted in my earth writing, as its intention is to open up a potential space for emancipatory action.
Along these same lines, Colin Ward (1973/2001) argued that it should be obvious that a whole series
of partial and incomplete victories, of concessions won from the holders of power will not lead to a
free society, but it will widen the scope of free action and the potentiality for freedom in the society
we have. These sentiments hint at how achieving social justice is not actualized as a cut and dry
process of direct action, but rather through opening up a political and geographical imagination, out of
which the freedom of individuals might become more possible (Springer 2012). Action is not separate
from theory, where one is material and the other disengaged; rather there is an inescapable mathematics
that forms from the ongoing chain of being. Our collective endeavors are part of an earth that
constantly moves, where in our earth writing we get to decide what counts. This is of course a calculus,
but it is also undeniablygeopoetryin motion.
Conclusion
Wanting to lay down the law for each and every science is the project of positivism. Its up to you, who
are directly involved in what goes on in geography, faced with all the conflicts of power which traverse it,
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to confront them and construct the instruments which will enable you to fight on that terrain.
- Michel Foucault (1980: 64-65)
Visionaries are derided or despised, and practical men rule our lives. We no longer seek radical solutions
to the evils of society, but reforms.
- Marie Louise Berneri (1950/1982: 1)
A great deal of contemporary earth writing is still stymied by a quagmire of authority that claims a
truth about what constitutes social science (i.e., naive realism) and presents arguments about how that
geography is to be constructed (i.e., based on empiricism), where alternative constructions, most
notably poststructuralist, feminist, indigenous, and anarchist interpretations, are implied as invalid and
are accordingly marginalized or excluded. Clamoring for pragmatism, the goal of earth writing is
conceived as a mapping out of concretized, material answers to social problems. It is meant to be
prescriptive, or at least so we are told. Yet all of this is premised on the presumed expertise of the
social scientist as a producer of knowledge, the assumption that social science proceeds through the
straightforward collection of empirical data and the fallacious implication that every analysis will result
in the same or nearly the same conclusion, regardless of the positionality of the researcher. Arising
from this supposedly unvarying and systematic process, a definitive solution will be revealed. All of
this amounts to a detached gods eye positioning (Haraway 1988), as though the world can ever be
understood fully enough by a single individual to allow for definitive answers. Positivism lingers,
gnawing away at the gains made by feminist geographers in particular, who have repeatedly
demonstrated the importance of making space for other ways of thinking and being in the world as a
measure of decolonizing methods, ontologies, and epistemologies (Bondi 2002; Shaw et al. 2006; Smith
1999). Critique without solutions is derided again and again, where leaving pathways open for collective
exploration and reinterpretation by relevant communities and participants to the research is rarely
celebrated, and the authorial voice of the geographer becomes entrenched. For some, there is a hidden
anxiety that comes with claiming expert knowledge, whereby yet another solution is proposed: we are
told to simply dumb down our language, to make it more accessible and straight to the point.
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"*
Although such an argument may appear as an exercise that counters esotericism, it should be
recognized that it could only be taken seriously when articulated from above by an expert. Writing
and language are cultural artifacts that depend upon the value judgement of the reader or listener, and
what is rendered as academic jargon as opposed to colloquialisms is not simply a matter of fact, but
an aesthetic construction that is inseparably linked to class (Bourdieu 1979).What this suggestion to
dumb down problematically does then is entrench particular ways of knowing as elitist, as though they
can only be understood by the few rather than the many. The outcome is an anti-intellectualism that
produces the academic as an Other who lacks empathy for common folk and everyday concerns,
which is not only divisive, but also frequently gives license to the silencing of political dissent.
Language, and by extension writing, can be a powerful tool when aimed at dismantling
hegemonic ways of seeing and disrupting existing power constellations. The articulation of theory
accordingly allows anti-colonial discourse to permeate a broad spectrum of material interventions
(Jiwani 2011), while direct action similarly invigorates our systems of thought and the expression of
philosophy. As a consequence of acknowledging this reciprocating relationship of praxis, I am
anathema to the idea that an original contribution to geographical scholarship must only arise from
empirical research. As earth writers we need to be very cautious not to treat theoretical inquiry in a
pejorative sense, particularly considering the history of geography as a discipline and its intersections
with colonialism. Inordinate focus on empiricism risks bringing geography right back to its colonial
heritage of being a sternly practical pursuit, as the first president of the Royal Geographical Society,
David Livingstone (1992: 216), once vehemently claimed it should be, by which he meant practical in
the service of colonialism. As Derek Gregory (1993: 275) has argued, geographers have to work with
social theory we have little choice. Empiricism is not an option, if it ever was, because the facts do
not (and never will) speak for themselves, no matter how closely we listen. Yet I also want to be
careful here not to suggest that empirics is tantamount to empire, as I do concede that a certain
baseline of empirical information has to be met in order to contextualize certain arguments, but
empiricism alone is never enough. We need theory. In order for our activist tactics to have any chance
of success, we need to breathe life into them by embracing an ongoing, iterative process of theory and
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action. It is, quite ironically, impractical to think solely in terms of practicality, which actually closes
space for radical transformation by being too prescriptive and refusing the openness of a more poetic
approach that attempts to express reality in different ways [through] combinations of different art
forms (White 1998: np).
The future trajectory of any given society, community, or group is not for the academic to decide,
but rather for the relevant constituency to decide through their ongoing collective action, a process that
is never devoid of theory. Yet theory is not a carte blanche to imposition. I absolutely will not play the
part of one who prescribes solutions, Foucault (157, 159) declared,
the role of the intellectual today is not that of establishing laws or proposing solutions or prophesying,
since by doing that one can only contribute to the functioning of a determinate situation of power that to
my mind must be criticized. ... I carefully guard against making the law. Rather, I concern myself with
determining problems, unleashing them, revealing them within the frameworks of such complexity as to
shut the mouths of prophets and legislators: all those who speakforothers and aboveothers.
Thus, for geographers to adopt the flawed logic of expert and position their earth writing in ways that
make it appear incontrovertible is to assume a position no different than the arrogance of politicians,
municipal planners, international financial institutions, and the entire project of colonialism, which all
presume to know whats best for people, instead of the people speaking, thinking, and acting for
themselves. In the end, we each have a deeply political choice to make. We can advocate for a reformist
geography that makes incremental changes by repeatedly shuffling the deck and rearranging the
furniture, yet ultimately reinforces existing power relations through a blinkered focus on pragmatism.
Or, in contrast, we can demand the impossible by fearlessly embracing a more visionary perspective
that encourages the collective exploration of the earth as the center of experience, liberated from
established ontologies, familiar epistemologies, and predetermined methods. The former continues to
discipline geography through a logic of separation that erects evermore boundaries around earth
writing, casting dark shadows of enclosure on a planet that is already being strangled by fences and
walls. The latter is an embrace of geopoetics, where integrality becomes our guide towards a more
inclusive and beautiful geography filled with energy and light (Reclus 1876-94). Let earth writing be a
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metaphor for possibility and an aesthetic of immanence. What goes on in geography is, after all, up to
us.
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