Negative Geographies

Distribution, dis-sumption and dis-appointment: The negative geographies of city logistics

“…[I]n the critical and existentialist traditions, the negative engenders and transacts …[i]n contrast, we do not see the negative as a modality of passage. On the contrary we see it as something that inhibits passage, obstructs relations, or cuts them short.Rose et al (2021): 11…”

“…As demonstrated by the contributions to Bissell et al's (2021) collection, the latter work is itself wide-ranging, engaging thinking on geographies of dislocation (Wylie), loss (Maddrell) exhaustion (Bissell), and ‘ugly’, ‘bad’ or ‘ambivalent’ feelings (Ngai, 2007; Zhang, in Dekeyser et al, 2022; Ruez and Cockayne, 2021). Critiquing vitalist, affirmationist and relational thinking, this literature speaks through a shared cognisance of the vulnerabilities and limits of bodies (human or otherwise) and spaces, and of the capacity to know them (Rose et al, 2021). Researched and researcher alike are fragile and subject to failures – mundane and severe – which are not necessarily capable of being overcome (Anderson, 2020; Horton, 2020).…”

“…While the above probes the value-laden qualities of negative spaces beyond the supply-chain, through more radical notions of negativity we might also disturb the affirmative, dialectical assumptions of circularity, for instance, training critical attention upon ‘circular economies’ which, in claiming to reabsorb or ‘offset’ wastage, are almost invariably narrated as benign, efficient and sustainable (Kębłowski et al, 2019). Reversal here takes on the quality of mobility-as-recurrence: the problem which keeps coming back, albeit in a different guise (see Rose et al, 2021: 7).…”

Postqualitative geographies

“…To summarise, postphenomenological and posthumanist geographies embrace experimental styles of research that defy proceduralism; they ‘hold off’ or ‘hold back’ from presenting participants or researchers as stable, unified subjects; they elevate objects and the nonhuman to the same status as the human while they attempt to describe lifeworlds that are emergent and circumstantial through their inventive styles of writing and presenting human geographies. Although recently subject to critique from within geography for their ‘totalising vitalism’ (see Rose et al., 2021) postphenomenological and posthumanist geographies do mount a significant challenge to ‘conventional’ qualitative geographies and share obvious features with postqualitative inquiry.…”

Creating the ‘Finding Home’ Exhibition

“…This overall affirmative message was also skewed between those who had chosen to stay and those who had chosen to return, thereby omitting the voices of young people who had chosen to leave and never return for negative reasons. As Rose et al (2021) argue, the 'problem' with affirmation is not what it does but what it leaves out, such as 'the dark, broken corners of geographical thought where failure, exhaustion, and frailty are real ' (p. 14). In sympathy with this idea, I sought not to negate or compromise the affirmative messages of the exhibition but instead do them justice by including other, less affirmative, ones.…”