Abyssal geography^†

Abstract

Today, we are held to live in the Anthropocene, bringing to an end modern binary imaginaries, such as the separation between Human and Nature, and with them Western assumptions of progress, linear causality and human exceptionalism. Much Western critical theory, from new or vital materialism to post‐ and more‐than‐human thinking, unsurprisingly reflects this internal crisis of faith in Eurocentric or Enlightenment reasoning. At the same time, a radically different critique of modernity has gained prominence in recent years, emerging from critical Black studies, which places the Caribbean at the centre of the development of a new and distinct mode of critical thought. In attempting to grasp the ways in which Caribbean thought and practice have been seen to enable a distinctive alternative non‐Eurocentric imaginary, this paper heuristically sets out a paradigmatic framing of ‘abyssal geography’. We emphasize two key points. The first is that abyssal thought is not grounded in abstract and timeless philosophical assumptions but figuratively draws upon aspects of Caribbean practices of resistance and survival, for example, from the Middle Passage, Plantation, carnival, creolization, dance forms and speculative fiction. The second is that abyssal work engages the legacies of modernity and coloniality by explicitly seeking to question the lure of ontology: seeking to disrupt, suspend and to problematize the modern project of the human and the world.

Abyssal geographies: an ethnographic reply. A commentary on David Chandler and Jonathan Pugh's ‘Abyssal geography’.

“…‘[A]byssal sociality is non‐productive and non‐creative in terms of adding new and proliferating entities to the world’, so the lecture argues (Chandler & Pugh, 2023: 208). How then to account for creative processes of Caribbean world making?…”

“…In the spirit with which this collegial call and response invites my participation, I offer this reply to Chandler and Pugh's (2023) powerful provocation. † † I order my remarks as follows.…”

Including the Caribbean. A commentary on David Chandler and Jonathan Pugh's ‘Abyssal geography’.

“…The title change from ‘ Abyssal Geographies’ (version one, circulated before the conference presentation) to ‘ Abyssal geography’ (in the published paper: Chandler & Pugh, 2023) is interesting because the turn to the singular seems to close the possibilities of various geographies and multiplicities around the spaces, places and people of the Caribbean. However, there is some resolution here ‘At the same time, a radically different critique of modernity has also gained prominence in recent years, emerging from critical Black studies, which instead places the Caribbean at the epicentre of the development of a new mode of critical thought’ (quoted from version one).…”

Placing critical geographic thought. A commentary on David Chandler and Jonathan Pugh's ‘Abyssal geography’.

“…Chandler and Pugh's (2023) paper on ‘Abyssal Geographies’ poses a remarkably difficult geographic challenge to contemporary geographic thought. Their turn to the abyssal through engagement with the work of Caribbean and Caribbean‐inspired thinkers—notably, Glissant, Benítez‐Rojo, Moten and Sharpe—strives to ‘question the lure of ontology’ (Chandler and Pugh, 2023: 1), and it does so by foregrounding how, as Pugh (2020) has written elsewhere, ontologies are human creations. They are products of our affective, libidinal and practical engagements, and these engagements always ‘take place’ somewhere.…”