ABSTRACT
Without question the advent of non-representational theory has introduced into the discipline an array of topics and concerns that, before now, were not seriously considered academic much less geography. Questions about movement (Dubow 2001; Wylie 2002; Dubow 2004; Wylie 2005; Spinney 2006), the emotional (Jones 2005; Patterson 2005; Saville 2008), the sensible and the material (Alexander 2008; Wilford 2008; Anderson and Wylie 2009) and the affective (McCormack 2003; Anderson 2005; Anderson and Harrison 2006) have not only broadened Human Geography’s purview, but have re-worked some of the discipline’s cherished concepts such as spatiality (as ecology) (see Bingham 1996; Thrift 1999; Whatmore 2002; Simpson 2008), practice (as sense, affect and becoming) (see Dewsbury 2000; McCormack 2003; McCormack 2005; Simpson forthcoming) and method (as witnessing and listening) (see Dewsbury 2003; Harrison 2007). Yet, despite this expansion of perspective and this dispersion of concerns, non-representational theory has nonetheless remained powerfully gravitated around the question of the political. No doubt non-representational theory has always been political. It has endeavoured, from its earliest articulations, to open Human Geography’s conception of what the political means – i.e., what counts as a proper political question – by supplementing the epistemological logic of traditional forms of social/political theory (Thrift 1983; Thrift 1997; Hinchliffe 2000; Thrift 2000; McCormack 2003; Thrift 2004; Amin and Thrift 2005; Anderson 2006; Anderson 2007; Hinchliffe 2008; Jones 2008). Given that non-representational theory has been around for over 10 years and that it promises so much more than new modalities of political practice, one wonders why the question of the political has remained so central (indeed restrictively so) to non-representational theory’s concerns (see Wylie this volume). I, for one, would like to see non-representational theory do more than justify its political potential or at least get on with the business of performing its political commitment in the creative ways it espouses. But I can also see why it has not yet managed to escape from a set of somewhat narrow political debates. Despite the unique and creative ways it has rearticulated how we think about ethical/political practice, there is something deeply unsatisfactory about its notion of political commitment. Indeed, while I myself have great sympathy with the
ontological positions of non-representational theory, and little sympathy with the social/theoretical reductionisms of structuralism in its various lefty guises, I cannot help but find myself aligned not with non-representational theory’s critics but with the sentiments their critiques often suggest. In other words, while I do not agree with what the critical banners say, I am sympathetic to why they were raised. Non-representational theory gives us a powerful sense of how much can be gained by looking beyond representational politics. But it does not acknowledge what has been lost, that is, what is necessarily forsaken once representational politics are abandoned.
