ABSTRACT
The interview on which the following text is based took place on the afternoon of 8 April 2009 in the Vice-Chancellor’s Office, University of Warwick, UK. We had two broad aims when planning the interview. First, to ask Professor Thrift about his intellectual biography in relation to non-representational theory; his initial influences and how his concerns and interests have shifted up to the present day. Second, to take the opportunity to ask about a number of issues within Professor Thrift’s work, such as the fate of the human subject, approaches to social difference and the relationship between his thought and contemporary politics and capitalism. More than an academic paper or book, an interview inevitably bears the trace of its context and moment. The editing process mitigates this to an extent and, in preparing the text, our aim has been both to preserve a sense of the improvised nature of the discussion while, at the same time, organising the material into distinct thematic sections. However the ‘momentary’ nature of interviews is also their strength. More than a paper or a book, they preserve a sense of being caught between past and future; of being on the ‘cusp’ where, for Professor Thrift, much of human life takes place. Hence, what emerged from our pre-planned structure was, in actuality, a wide-ranging discussion on the nature and place(s) of the human, one which demonstrates a profound scepticism about the centrality of the conscious human subject to the way the world is, or, rather, to the way that ‘natures’ go-on. However, this scepticism is not disabling or pessimistic; rather it is dedicated to engaging the diversity and complexity of life and, through this, opening up multiple new opportunities, spaces and registers for thought, action and intervention.1
