The understated turn: Emerging interests and themes in Canadian posthumanist geography

Abstract

• Posthumanism is a broad, understated, yet strongly emerging tradition in Canadian geography. • Five key empirical fields are emerging, each demonstrating how posthumanism can be applied to Canadian empirical contexts. • Future research attention could be paid to a range of issues in Canadian geography and beyond, including the geographies of geographical knowledge production. Posthumanist geography is a broad tradition incorporating a range of intersecting theoretical approaches including assemblage theory, actor-network theory, new materialisms, affect theory, neo-vitalism, political ecology, postphenomenology, and non-representational theory-as well as contributions from a number of theoretically progressive subject fields such as new mobilities, relational thinking, sensory and performance studies, biosocial and biopolitics studies, and science and technology studies. The specificities of and differences between these traditions and fields aside, common to posthumanism is a scepticism of human exceptionalism. Here, the sovereign human subject is decentred, and in doing so, posthumanist work acknowledges the agencies of a full array of human and non-human actors and forces. Recognizing that there are important "geographies to (the discipline of) geography," this paper identifies and reviews some of the key posthumanist interests and themes that have emerged over recent years quietly and organically in Canadian geography, namely posthumanist (i) Indigenous geographies; (ii) animal and natures geographies; (iii) health, wellbeing, and disability geographies; (iv) affective and atmospheric geographies; and (v) non-representational and creative methodologies. The paper concludes with some thoughts on the nature and strengths of Canadian posthumanist geography, and on some possibilities for future advancement.

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