Download Feminism, bodily difference and nonrepresentational geographies

Feminism, bodily difference and
non-representational geographies
Rachel Colls
Over the past 10 years, a body of work, collectively known as non-representational
geographies, has emerged within human geography. Broad in its empirical and theoretical emphasis, its main ethos is to develop a mode of engaging with and presenting the
world that emphasises the taking-place of practices and what humans and non-humans
do. However, there have been a number of critiques of this work. Some of these have
been made by feminist geographers who are particularly concerned with non-representational geographies’ reproduction of an undifferentiated body-subject. This article
engages explicitly with this critique by suggesting the possibility of useful engagements
between feminism and non-representational geographies. This is done first by suggesting that feminist geographers might adopt a ‘nomadic consciousness’ that both remains
critical of the gender-blindness of much poststructuralist theory while also being open
to the potential that it offers for feminist accounts of the subject. This is demonstrated
by drawing on feminist theoretical work that seeks to rethink corporeal specificity.
Second, the article presents an account of sexual difference as force in order to demonstrate how difference can be conceptualised drawing on some of the tenets and
theoretical underpinnings of non-representational geographies. The article concludes by
reflecting on how to harbour generous and generative relationships between feminist
geographies, sexual difference theories and non-representational geographies.
key words
feminism
non-representational geographies
the body
Elisabeth Grosz
sexual difference
Department of Geography, Durham University, Durham DH1 3LE
email: [email protected]
revised manuscript received 27 July 2011
Something gets under my skin. Something disturbs me,
makes me think in a direction that may not be altogether different from what I thought initially, but different all the same. (Disprose 2002, 125)
Introduction
This article begins with a quote from Rosalyn
Disprose’s (2002) book Corporeal generosity: on giving
with Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas. It begins
in this way because ‘something’ has got under my
skin. That something is ⁄ are non-representational
geographies1 and the ways in which some feminist
geographers and others have critically engaged
with this something (see Barnett 2008; Bondi 2005;
Houston and Pulido 2002; Jacobs and Nash 2003;
Nash 2000; Pain 2006; Sharp 2009). These critiques
have intentionally or otherwise made it difficult to
find affinities between feminist geographies2 and
this body of work. For example, Bondi at the risk
of speaking for ‘all’ suggests that
feminist geographers find research informed by
non-representational theory too abstract, too little
touched by how people make sense of their lives, and
therefore too ‘inhuman’, ungrounded, distancing,
detached and, ironically disembodied. (2005, 438)
Moreover, Jacobs and Nash express a concern
about the ways in which bodies in non-representational theory ‘are not figured through multiple
social categories of age, sex, ethnicity, race and
dis ⁄ ability’ (2003, 275). Whilst critical, they state
that there are reasons for deploying such a
body-subject. Specifically, they acknowledge
non-representational geographies’ commitment to
avoid accounts of bodies that reduce them to
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Feminism, bodily difference and non-representational geographies
meaning, value and signification because of the
inherent dangers of fixing and ranking bodies
according to a prescribed set of differences. However, it is their focus on the absence of differentiated bodies in non-representational geographies
whilst also considering the possibility of ‘anti-foundationalist and anti-essentialist accounts of embodiment that do not fall back on naturalised categories
of difference’ (Jacobs and Nash 2003, 275) that
informs the main arguments of this article. Specifically, I am interested in considering how non-representational geographies might contribute to a
feminist geography account of sexually differentiated bodies by exploring the affinities that exist
between non-representational geographies and sexual difference theory. In particular, I will posit an
understanding of sexual difference that is informed
by an understanding of difference that is not tied
to opposition, is not determined by identity, is not
subsumed by comparison, but is instead understood as an ‘ontological’ force (Grosz 2005, 172). In
short, this involves considering sexual difference
and thus the sexually differentiated subject as the
provisional coming together of a range of forces
that are material, affectual, temporal, social, political, economic, technological and so on. My intention is that this might provide an opportunity for
feminist geographers to interrogate and engage
with the ethos and theoretical content of non-representational geographies in ways that are conducive
to the production of new geographical (feminist)
knowledges about sexual difference.
In this article I will consider the work of three
specific feminist theorists: Elisabeth Grosz (1994
2005), Rosi Braidotti (1994 2003) and Luce Irigaray
(2004). I turn to these women, in particular, to
highlight first, feminist strategies for engaging with
(phallogocentric) philosophy and second, their
exploration of the feminist ‘problem’ of sexual difference understood
as a political strategy aimed at stating the specificity of
female subjectivity, sexuality, and experience while also
denouncing the logic of sexual indifferentiation of phallogocentric discourse. (Braidotti 1994, 131)
In utilising the work of these women, I do not
imply that their work is ‘non-representational’.
Instead I intend the desired effect of my engagement to be twofold. First, to provide feminist geographers with a way in to non-representational
geographical work that offers suggestions for critically engaging with its philosophical basis but that
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does not close down the potential for considering
the specificities of a female (embodied) subject. Second, to bring to non-representational geographies a
body of literature that has previously been overlooked or at best implied but not stated.3 For
Grosz, Braidotti and Irigaray, sexual difference
involves acknowledging the failure of the past to
provide a space and a time for women (see Irigaray
1985a 1985b) and providing other ways of knowing
that can transform our conceptions of the (sexed)
subject, a subject which is not yet known (Grosz
2005). I will argue that these other ways demonstrate the potential for a more careful engagement
between the concerns of feminist geography with
the assertion of difference and the ontology of nonrepresentational geographies.
In the next section of the article I will briefly
describe what I consider to be the main tenets of
non-representational geographies and how they
have been critiqued. I will then demonstrate how
Braidotti (1994 2006) and Grosz (1994 2005) employ
their own tactics for engaging with (phallogocentric) knowledges. These two women develop distinct yet connected approaches to theory that Grosz
names as an affirmative method; ‘a mode of assenting to rather than dissenting from those ‘‘primary’’
texts’ (2005, 3). My intention in this article is to
embody a similar approach with reference to nonrepresentational geographies. I will then go on to
consider the question of sexual difference through
a discussion of Elisabeth Grosz’s (1994 2005) notion
of the force of sexual difference inspired by Luce
Irigaray’s (1985a 1985b) early work on the future
possibilities for sexual difference. This work draws
explicitly, as does some non-representational geographical work, on Deleuze (1988a 1988b) and
Deleuze and Guattari (1987). It is proposed that
this ‘may provide a new direction for a more
abstract approach to feminism, the kind of abstraction that is needed to bring about new frames of
reference and new kinds of question’ (Grosz 2005,
173). In concluding, I offer a set of observations
that relate to the ways that feminist geographers
(and others) might develop relationships with
non-representational geographies.
Section 1: Critique and nonrepresentational geographies
. . . feminists have to tread a fine line wither between
intellectual rigour (as it has been defined in male terms)
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and political commitment (as feminists see it) – that is,
between the risks posed by patriarchal recuperation and
those of a conceptual sloppiness inadequate to the longterm needs of feminist struggles – or between acceptance in male terms and commitment to women’s terms.
(Grosz 1989, 1)
Non-representational geographies, whilst presented
within intra-disciplinary critiques as a homogenous
target, are difficult to pin down. In fact, my fear in
defining ‘it’ is that I too contribute to the practice
of closing down opportunities for potential engagement and that the article becomes about ‘it’ rather
than the potential it offers.4 I have found it more
useful, therefore, to consider non-representational
geographies as a series of ‘tactical suggestions’
(Dewsbury et al. 2002) that are still emerging. The
premise of these suggestions is to avoid what has
been termed the ‘deadening effect’ of a ‘conservative categorical politics of identity and textual
meaning’ (Lorimer 2005, 83) and to, in Thrift and
Dewsbury’s terms, ‘unlock and animate new
(human and nonhuman) potentialities’ (2000, 411).
These potentialities are made possible by utilising
an irreducible ontology that develops relational5
rather than representational understandings of the
world. In short, this means that
we are not seeking as already developed individuals, to
discover what something is, but different possible ways
in which we might relate ourselves to our surroundings
– how to be different in ourselves, how to live in different
worlds. (Shotter 1995, 14, cited in Thrift 1999, 304)
Non-representational geographies are multiple,
anti-essentialist, pluralist in ethos and are by no
means internally coherent (see Anderson and
Harrison 2006); a fact that is often lost through the
homogenising effects of critique but needs to be
acknowledged. At the risk of generalising I can
identify the following tactical suggestions within
this body of work that can be contextualised within
a wider turn to practice and performativity in the
humanities and social sciences.6 There are those
geographies that are concerned with the affectual
and emotional potentialities of everyday life (see
for example Anderson (2004 2006) on boredom,
Bissell (2009) for an account of chronic pain and
Kraftl and Adey (2008) for a discussion of the relationships between affect and architecture); those
geographies that develop specific theoretical
accounts of ‘being in the world’ (see Harrison
(2008) for engagements with Levinas and vulnerability and Wylie (2005) for engagements with
Rachel Colls
Merleau Ponty and landscape); those geographies
that are premised upon relationality and ‘the
non-human’ (Roe 2006; Whatmore 2002); those
geographies that are attentive to the politics and
ethics that this way of thinking entails (see for
example McCormack 2003; Thrift 2004); and those
geographies that consider the methodological
implications of researching the pre-cognitive and
the non-cognitive (see Latham 2003; Morton 2005).
I present this description as purposely open to
serve as a counter point to the way in which specific non-representational geographies become
homogenised through the processes of critique.
This process often serves to ignore and suppress
the nuanced theoretical and empirical differences
between different authors’ work and conveniently
produce an object for critique. Particular critiques
of non-representational geographies and related
work on affect have focused upon its tendency to
be ‘void of political content and intent’ (Pain 2006,
225), ‘masculinist, technocratic and distancing’
(Thien 2005), ‘universalist’ (Tolia-Kelly 2006) and
‘fundamentally a representational practice that is
. . . unable to recognise itself as such’ (Pile 2010,
13). Deborah Thien (2005) concentrates on what she
sees as the disavowal of the personal through a
focus on the transhuman and affectual, which has
the effect of, in her words, ‘distancing emotion
from ‘‘reasonable scholarship’’‘ (2005, 450) and
devaluing emotion ‘as negatively positioned in
opposition to reason, as objectionably soft and
implicitly feminized’ (2005, 450). Jacobs and Nash
(2003), slightly differently, concentrate more on the
ways that non-representational geographies risk
reproducing bodies that are not differentiated, as
mentioned above. This is demonstrative of a wider
uneasiness of some feminist geographers with
poststructuralist theories’ emphases on deconstructing and re-orientating understandings of
difference (see Dias and Belcha 2007).
My engagement with these critiques is not necessarily with their content but is with the way in
which critique is deployed and what critique does.
In light of this there are three issues that I want to
highlight with reference to the effect of explicitly
feminist critiques of non-representational geographies.
First, the nature of the critiques made tend to
locate non-representational geographies in cultural
geography. The implication is, therefore, that in
its present form, we cannot and should not
find non-representational geographies in feminist
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geography. This is not simply a policing of the
disciplinary location of knowledge production
but, by placing the object of critique outside of
the sub-disciplinary concerns of feminist geographies, the distance between non-representational
geographies, affect and feminist geography can
be exaggerated.
Second, and relatedly, the distance between
bodies of work that is essential for the critique to
function means that there is little acknowledgement
of explicitly feminist work, geographical or otherwise, on affect (for example Patricia Clough 1994,
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Lauren Berlant 2008)
or geographical work that is based upon similar
tenets to that of non-representational geographies
(for example see Colls’ (2007) work on female
bodies and materiality and Falconer Al-Hindi and
Moss’ (2008) account of what a Deleuzian-inspired
feminist geography might look like). The sparse
reference to feminist theoretical work on affect or
the body across non-representational geographies
is indeed highly problematic and indicative of how
affect has not been utilised to explicitly engage
with bodily difference(s). Moreover, in a recent
review of feminist geographical research, Sharp
(2009) refers to Sara Ahmed’s (2004) work on hope
when considering how feminist geographers might
rethink the future of feminism. However, even this
citation is positioned with reticence by restating
Thien (2005) and Bondi’s (2005) own concerns with
the transhuman emphasis and loss of discourse
associated with affect. A repetition of previous critiques serves to build momentum behind particular
accounts of non-representational geographies and
cut off the possibility of other or different engagements.7 The danger of this, as Hemmings (2005)
argues, is that when telling stories about feminisms, the ways that pasts and presents become
fixed reproduce rather than increase political and
theoretical accountability.
Third, the danger is that critiques that dismiss
and distance reproduce a particular hierarchy surrounding the quality of knowledge and the capacity of feminist geographers to conduct theoretical
research. In one sense feminist geographers have
voiced a concern that non-representational geographies, in Nash’s words,
seems to imply a new (or maybe not) division of labour
separating academics who think (especially about not
thinking and the non-cognitive) and those ‘ordinary
people’ out there who just act. (2000, 662)
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Moreover, Hayden Lorimer, in one of a series of
review pieces (see also Lorimer 2007 2008) of
non-representational work, argues that he chooses
not to engage directly with the philosophies of
non-representational theory so as not to ‘likely bore
the most devoted and risk baffling the uninitiated’
(2005, 84). The first statement, whilst highlighting
tensions between the varied content and presentation of non-representational-inspired research, also
suggests that certain geographers do the theoretical
thinking work and others do not. The second statement seems to imply that the theoretical tenets of
non-representational geographies are simply too
hard, inaccessible and not worth bothering about
for those who are not ‘initiated’. Here, my concern
is that again, by implication, feminist geographers
are placed as unable or unwilling to work with the
theoretical work of non-representational geographies, not only because they do not want to, but
because they cannot. In short, critique has had the
effect of limiting the possibilities for any engagement between non-representational geographies
and feminist geographies.
Section 2: Engaging non-representational
geographies: nomads and negotiations
Frustration with the internal and often repetitive
referencing of critiques and their effects has led me
to consider how other models of feminist critique
and critical engagement might function (see also
Schurrman and Pratt 2002). My intention is to
embrace a mode of generous critique that involves
‘an openness to others that not only precedes and
establishes communal relations but constitutes the
self as open to otherness’ (Disprose 2002, 4). This
openness can be found in different ways in the
work of Rosi Braidotti (1994) and Elisabeth Grosz
(1994). Their relationship with theory is not based
upon an outright rejection or acceptance of particular poststructuralist philosophical work. Instead, in
Braidotti’s words a different approach is used ‘to
invent new frameworks, new images, new modes
of thought’ (1994, 1). For feminist geographers,
these engagements can provide a way into the
ideas of non-representational geographies that may
have been dismissed as abstract and exclusionary
to the ‘uninitiated’ whilst remaining committed to
theorising and researching with (sexually) differentiated subjects.
Rosi Braidotti’s approach to engaging with poststructuralist theory and for developing what she
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terms a ‘nomadic consciousness’ is based upon
considering ‘the process of thinking and rethinking
the subject differently, in ‘‘the nomadic mode’’‘
(1994, 29). First, this involves an understanding of
a subject who is simultaneously situated and differentiated according class, race, ethnicity, gender and
age. Second, this involves a form of feminist
nomadism that defends poststructuralist critiques
of the singularity of the subject whilst also critiquing their gender-blindness. What ensues is a nomadic (feminist) politics and consciousness that
combines coherence with mobility and yet still
resists ‘assimilation or homologation into dominant
ways of representing the self’ (1994, 25). In short,
in a nomadic perspective, the political is a form of intervention that acts simultaneously on the discursive and
material registers of subjectivity; thus it has to do with
the ability to draw multiple connections. What is political is precisely this awareness of the fractured, intrinsically power-based constitution of the subject, the active
quest for possibilities of resistance to hegemonic formations. (Braidotti 1994, 35)
Braidotti draws attention to the importance of making connections across the multiple differences that
constitute the subject and also across those theoretical frameworks that make thinking this type of
subject and politics possible. She is wary of what
she names as feminism’s customary role as the
dutiful daughter that remains faithful to particular
epistemologies and is also sceptical of the death of
the philosophical subject that is proffered by poststructuralist theory. Instead, she is only interested
in ‘systems of thought that can help me think
about change, transformation, ‘‘living transitions’’;
a creative, non-reactive project, emancipated from
the oppressive force of the traditional theoretical
approach’ (Braidotti 1994, 30). This description of
the task of thought and politics resonates with
Thrift’s (2004) articulation of the potential of a
non-representational politics as emphasising encounters and interactions that are practically invisible in
the dominant regime and are excluded from the
definition of what counts as knowledge. Undoubtedly Thrift (2004) does not make reference to the
form or content of Braidotti’s (1994) nomadic feminism, nor any similar work in feminist theory; an
oversight that can be identified in non-representational geographies more broadly. Nevertheless, her
project does illustrate a similar commitment to the
emergence of different knowledges that are productive of new ways of thinking about the world.
Rachel Colls
Non-representational geographies and its theoretical underpinnings might provide feminist geographers with some different theoretical tools
through which they can access new geographical
knowledges, specifically concerned with the female
subject. This would not mean remaining faithful to
non-representational geographies or indeed any
one account of the female subject. Indeed as Braidotti describes below, a feminist (geography)
nomad and their relationship with poststructuralist
theory
is only passing through; s ⁄ he makes those necessarily
situated connections that can help her ⁄ him to survive,
but s ⁄ he never take on fully the limits of one national
fixed identity. (1994, 33)
A nomadic feminism, therefore, is useful for first,
developing an account of a differentiated subject
that is multiple in its constitution and location and
second, for providing an orientation towards poststructuralist theory that provides a space both for
the development of productive relations and for
critique and refusal.
An example of what a nomadic form of engagement might look and sound like can be found in
Elisabeth Grosz’s book Volatile bodies: towards a
corporeal feminism. Grosz produces a theoretical
account of the female body by undertaking a set
of delicate negotiations with key philosophical
texts written by men ‘to challenge prevailing
philosophical beliefs about bodies, to develop
accounts which may serve feminist purposes’
(1994, iv). Among those she engages with is the
work of Deleuze (1988a 1988b) and Deleuze and
Guattari (1987) whose emphasis on reconceiving
the corporeal has resonance with her interest in
developing frameworks that avoid the impasse
posed by dichotomous accounts of the subject (for
a geographical discussion of the mind–body dualism see Longhurst 1995 1997). Grosz reads Deleuze’s work as being based upon a ‘radical
refiguring of ontology in term of planes, intensities, flows, becomings, linkages, rather than being,
objects, qualities, pairs and correlations’ (1994,
161–2). This ontology develops a particular way of
perceiving life whereby subject and object can no
longer be seen as discrete entities and instead all
things have the same ontological status, whether
human or non-human, animate or inanimate.8
Grosz (1994) engages with Deleuze (1988a 1988b)
as part of her project to rethink the female subject
whilst also acknowledging feminist critiques (see
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Feminism, bodily difference and non-representational geographies
Jardine 1985) of his work; critiques that are concerned with the ways that ‘women’ are subsumed9 under the neutrality of concepts such as
desire, machinic functioning, assemblage and connections. Reading his work, for Grosz (1994),
involves a trust and an awareness that the
rewards of an engagement may not be immediately evident and concrete. Therefore, she cautions
that she does not remain faithful to Deleuze but
that a selective reading may ‘manage to capture
and put to work valuable methodologies, questions, insights that may lead in directions that
Deleuze and Guattari may not go or even accept’
(1994, 180).
Not only does Grosz (1994) exemplify a different form of affirmative critical engagement, she
also draws out a number of differences that
Deleuzian problematics make to understanding
corporeality and sexed subjectivity. Central to this
is their alternative to dualistic accounts of the subject that is of interest for Grosz given her critiques
of Cartesianism and the ways in which it ‘participates in the social devaluing of the body that goes
hand in hand with the oppression of women’
(1994, 10). She argues that Deleuze’s flattening out
of the relations between the psychical and the
social means
that individuals, subjects, microintensities, blend with,
connect to neighbourhood, local, regional, social, cultural, aesthetic and economic relations, not through
mediations of systems of ideology or representation,
nor through the central organisation of an apparatus
like the state or economic order. (1994, 180)
Female bodies, therefore, are not understood as the
product of a patriarchal culture but are excessive to
hierarchical control and as a realm of affectivity
they are the
sites of multiple struggles, ambiguously positioned in
the reproduction of social habits, requirements, and regulations and in all sorts of production of unexpected
and unpredictable events. (1994, 181)
The potential of this understanding of female sexed
subjectivity is deliberately unstable and not fixed
and it is the forces or intensities in bodies that are
productive and not the unified ‘subject’. This does
not necessarily mean utilising a Deleuzian framework to produce an account of female sexed subjectivity but would instead involve looking at the
(Deleuzian) body to think differently as feminists.
Colebrook argues that
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feminism might look to its bodily questions – of eating
disorders, abortion, beauty, care, rape, difference – and
realise that a philosophy of the body is less appropriate than
a bodily philosophy. (2000, 126; her emphasis)
She suggests that in using this approach to bodily
difference, the pregnant body, for example, ‘would
demand thinking a body beyond body-image and
body boundaries for the sense of pregnancy
exceeds the visible’ (2000, 126). An engagement
with Deleuze’s work, therefore, might offer feminists ⁄ geographers an opportunity to rethink the
ontological nature of ‘difference’ and the conditions, locations and methodologies through which
a subject is differentiated. An example of this will
be discussed shortly with reference to Elisabeth
Grosz’s (2005) understanding of sexual difference
as force.
The nomadic mode of engagement that Braidotti
(1994) and Grosz (1994) demonstrate is useful for
considering how feminist geographers might
encounter and begin to foster new relationships
with non-representational geographies. I would
now like to demonstrate how this form of engagement might function in practice by critically interrogating the place of an undifferentiated subject
that populates some non-representational geographical work. The deployment of a subject that is
not differentiated according to a set of pre-given
characteristics of meaning or form is done so in
order to draw out the ‘affective’ realm of subjectivities. Deleuze refuses to grant a notion of reflective
consciousness ‘centre stage’ and aligns with Spinoza in saying that ‘(T)here is no longer a subject,
but only individuating affective states of an anonymous force’ (Alliez 2004, 27, cited in Thrift 2008,
13). An example of the deployment of this idea in
non-representational geographies can be seen in
McCormack’s (2004) work on encountering Dance
Movement Therapy (DMT). In this piece he
describes various moments when his attempt to
‘capture’ the experience failed because of his inability to ‘represent’ what was essentially about movement, sensations, the non-representational, in short,
affect. He therefore justifies the description and
stick-figure drawings of those bodies involved in
his encounters as ‘simple abstract figures’,
precisely because abstraction is one way to draw out
some of the eventful force of an encounter with a practice like DMT, and, in doing so, preserve a commitment
to the vagueness of affect as a force that is never simply
human. (McCormack 2004, 502)
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McCormack’s (2004) article serves as an excellent
demonstration of how new practices of doing
methodology are required to fully capture the
affective forces that circulate between bodies. However, what is also significant in this paper is that
despite the deployment of abstract figures,
particular bodies are ‘sexed’ through language.
McCormack (2004) refers to his partner in the session
and the therapist as ‘she’. The curious identification
of sexually differentiated subjects through the
naming of ‘empirical’ bodies is also found in other
non-representational geographies that engage with
affect (see Anderson 2004; Bissell 2008).10 This slippage, whether accidental or not, indicates both the
unavoidable presence of difference, either through
language (naming) or physical proximity to the
researcher, and the accidental or otherwise neglect
to draw attention to the possibility of differentiated
affective forces produced through, between and
within ‘sexed’ bodies. That is not simply to say that
a sexed body ‘has’ particular affects but that ‘sex’
itself might be more than a singular anatomical formation or discursive construction. It might instead
be produced through the affective intensities of
Dance Movement Therapy, for example, as bodies
move together.
And so, as a feminist geography nomad I come
to non-representational geographies and perhaps
am sceptical and yet interested in the deployment
of how and what a subject constitutes and is constituted by. I read McCormack’s (2004) paper and
others and realise the potential in writing ‘the
encounter’ in a particular way in order to capture
the affective forces that both constitute and circulate between bodies. I am surprised by the subtle
placing of sexed figures in non-representational
geographical research. I begin to question why
those sexed figures are there and what potential
there might be for considering an account of sexual
difference if we begin from a subject that is, in
Dewsbury’s terms, composed ‘of biological flows of
energy, matter and stimulating chemical fluids
(adrenaline, pheromones, endorphins11) which are
in excess of being-in-the-world’ (2000, 485). Arising
from this nomadic form of engagement is the question how might non-representational geographies
allow us to think feminist geography differently?
This might mean considering the techniques we
utilise for engaging with such a body of work and
considering more carefully the effect that such a
critique has on the possibilities for dialogue and
engagement. It does not mean fully endorsing a set
Rachel Colls
of ideas or theories, as Grosz (1994) has demonstrated, but does ask that we take up a nomadic
form of engagement in order to explore that which
is new and that which we may not yet know. This
will mean inhabiting a mode of feminist geographical critique that is similarly orientated towards the
possibilities opened up by engagements with nonrepresentational geographies rather than reproducing a particularly repetitive and circular form of
critique, as I mentioned previously.
In the next section I turn to one of the questions
that is central to feminist (geographical) thinking
and to critiques that have been made of nonrepresentational geographies. That is the question
of sexual difference. I do this in order to exemplify
the ways through which feminist theorists provide
an account of difference that ‘might enable us to
think the body not as an explanadum, anteriority
or condition but as a form of positive difference’
(Colebrook 2000, 125). This involves asking more
than what sexual difference is or is not within a
given paradigm. Instead, I approach sexual difference as a specific problem or question in need of a
response. This can then lead to a practice of
responsiveness that heeds new possibilities.
Section 3: Theorising sexual difference
Has something been held in reserve within the silence
of a history in the feminine: an energy, a morphology, a
growth and flourishing still to come in the female
realm? (Irigaray 2004, 19)
The quote above is taken from Luce Irigaray’s
(2004) book An ethics of sexual difference. In the
chapter of the same name she details the ways that
sexual difference is one of the major philosophical
issues of our time and one that has not yet been
fully explored. This has been because of the denial
and sublimation of woman ⁄ the female ⁄ the feminine within phallocentric philosophy. For example,
she notes how traditionally woman comes to represent a place for man whereby she is delineated as a
thing, an envelope or container in order to mark
his own presence and limits. In short, ‘she remains
inseparable from the work or act of man, notably
insofar as he defines her and creates his identity
with her as his starting point’ (Irigaray 2004, 11).
Thus, as the quote above reveals, sexual difference
has been held in reserve and we do not yet know
what its full potential might be. It is not that sexual
difference or ‘woman’ has been excluded but that
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‘her’ existences have only ever been determined by
and through a relation with ‘him’ on his terms.
I therefore want to use Irigaray’s question as a
starting point for simultaneously acknowledging
the (non)place of sexual difference within non-representational geographies as well as presenting an
account of sexual difference that draws upon Elisabeth Grosz’s (2005) Deleuzian-inspired account of
sexual difference as ‘force’.
Sexual difference and feminist geographies
Within feminist geographies, sexual difference or
the differentiation of bodies according to their sexual organs has been implicated, but not always
overtly, in a number of ways. In particular, the
conceptual framing of geographical knowledge
within debates concerning the power of dualistic
frameworks such as mind–body, nature–culture
and sex–gender has been used to highlight problematic absences and oversights in the production
of geographical knowledge and to critique the
apparent universality and masculinism of the
knowledge that was produced (Rose 1993). For
example, Longhurst (2001) uses this argument
when explaining the past neglect of ‘the body’ in
geographical work and for presenting an empirical
and theoretical focus upon the fluidity and fluids
of bodies. However, the sex–gender dualism has
also been used to highlight, as much Anglophone
feminist work has done, the dangers of essentialism. This form of argumentation follows that
women’s association with the body has been centred upon the identification of so-called ‘naturally’
derived characteristics that have placed women
dangerously within a range of totalising and stereotypical assumptions according to their biological
make-up (for an extended discussion of these
debates see Grosz 1989). Gender, in many respects,
is deployed by feminist geographers to counter
those accounts that align sexual difference with a
notion of fixed biological difference through highlighting the cultural constructedness of the differences between men and women as it is implicated
in a range of geographical contexts (see Women
and Geography Study Group 1997). In a review of
this work, Bondi and Davidson12 state:
We would argue that, despite all its limitations, the sexgender distinction has encouraged an association
between gender and difference. To elaborate, whereas
‘sex’ is typically defined in terms of two mutually
exclusive categories, male and female, feminists deploy
‘gender’ in order to foster the possibility of multiple
437
versions of femininities and masculinities. (Bondi and
Davidson 2003, 333)
In short, gender within this context can be viewed
as ‘a flexible container for difference’ (Bondi and
Davidson 2001, 336) that feminist geographers use
to highlight the multiplicities of women’s oppression and resistance. However, this particular form
of engagement with gender implies that the sexed
body is a neutral and passive backdrop, or container, onto and into which a gendered identity can
be projected. Moreover, it also ignores the multiplicities of the category of ‘sex’, the elements of
what constitutes a sexed body and the potential
that these elements may also have for the production of alternative positions for a ‘female subject’.
Sexual difference theory, therefore, provides
feminist geographers another way into thinking
through the specificities of female embodied subjectivities. Indeed, there is already a small but significant body of work in feminist geography that
engages with this work (on Irigaray, see Browne
and Rose 2004; Rose 1996; Thien 2004; on Hélène
Cixous, see Shurmer Smith 2000). Utilising sexual
difference theory does not just involve ‘going
beyond’ dualistic thinking (sex ⁄ gender), but also
requires questioning the very nature of what dualisms do. In the words of Elisabeth Grosz, this provides a way of thinking that allows for ‘a notion of
corporeality, that avoids not only the dualism but
also the very problematic of dualism that makes
alternatives to it and criticisms of it possible’ (1994,
22). Sexual difference theory is not a homogenous
body of work and it is important to note from the
outset that there are a number of internal differences and critiques13 that exist within the writings
of a range of Anglo-American and French feminists, including Luce Irigaray,14 Hélène Cixous,
Michelle Le Doeuff, Moria Gatens, Vicki Kirby and
Rosi Braidotti. This diverse group of theorists tends
to be suspicious of the sex ⁄ gender distinction and
to be ‘less interested in the question of the cultural
construction of subjectivity than in the materials
out of which such a construction is forged’ (Grosz
1994, 18). In short, they are interested in understanding the conceptual, lived and embodied
existences of woman and her (non)place within
philosophical texts. Sex, therefore, is not considered
to be a brute passive bedrock but is the ‘untidy
and ambiguous invocation of the prestructuring of
being by irreducible difference’ (Grosz 2005, 171).
As Braidotti states,
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Sexual difference theory is not only a reactive or critical
kind of thought, but is also an affirmative one, in that it
expresses women’s ontological desire, women’s structural need to posit themselves as female subjects, that is
to say, not disembodied entities but rather as corporeal
and consequently sexed beings. (1994, 43–4)
Of particular importance to this work is asserting
how sexual difference has been excluded within
the history of western philosophy. It follows that
phallogocentric knowledge production has always
used Woman as a negative trope in opposition to
Man. In this sense, difference can only be two; the
other (Woman) is only understandable in an oppositional relation to the same (Man). Luce Irigaray
(1985a) highlights this exclusion and the ensuing
understanding of dualistic difference that prevails
in particular Western philosophy through an analysis of particular texts, including Freud, in her book
Speculum of the other woman.15 In this book it is concluded that ‘the othering of the feminine is the disavowed underbelly of philosophy’ (Deutscher 2002,
28). However, for Irigaray, an ‘exclusion’ of sexual
difference means that there has to have been something to exclude. Therefore, for Irigaray, Woman
has always been implicated in the production of
phallogocentric knowledge but her presence and
the potential of such a presencing has not been
acknowledged or indeed had the potential to be
actualised. Indeed, it is this final point that has resonance with how I intend to approach the place of
sexual difference and differentiated bodied more
generally within non-representational geographies.
I have already identified that sexually differentiated subjectivities are present but unacknowledged
within some non-representational geographies. By
this I mean that the differences that constitute
bodies are implicated in non-representational geographical research at the same time as work affirms
a more open, multiple, intangible and affective
understanding of subjectivities. Despite this ‘exclusion’, Irigaray, argues that ‘sexual difference’
should be considered to be an excluded possibility
precisely because of its simultaneous denial and
affirmation. It therefore should be considered to be
an inherently open term or as a ‘disruptive excess’,
in Deutscher’s (2002) words, whose existence is yet
to be known.
In the final section of this article I want to focus
on the existence of an account of sexual difference
that has not yet been actualised by discussing
Elisabeth Grosz’s (2005) Deleuzian-informed
account of sexual difference as ‘force’. In so doing,
I intend first to bring to non-representational geographies an account of sexual difference that aligns with
its own ontological commitments. Second, my intention is to contribute to feminist geographical work
that utilises sexual difference theory in order to
highlight the potential of engaging with an account
of ‘the (sexed) subject’ that has affinities with some
of the tenets of non-representational geographies.
The force of sexual difference
In her book Time travels, Elisabeth Grosz (2005)
develops an explicitly ‘abstract’16 approach to feminism that is interested in the potential and future
of feminist thought. This is done, in part, by bringing together Deleuze’s (1988a 1988b 1994) work on
the question of thought and what theory can do
and Irigaray’s work on the as yet unknown potentialities of the positivity of sexual difference. In particular, their deployment of a notion of becoming
and multiplicity is useful for feminists developing
an account of a sexually differentiated subject that
is not cast in binary terms.
Grosz develops a new mode of thinking about
sexual difference by focusing on the significance of
‘force’ in Deleuze and Irigaray’s work. In short, she
identifies in both theorists ‘(T)he preeminence they
give to difference as force, to the force of difference, to the force of differentiation and the differentiation of forces’ (2005, 172). Relatedly, the
unacknowledged presence of a sexually differentiated subject in some non-representational geographies also points to the endurance or ‘force’ of
sexual difference amongst other forms of corporeal
differentiation. As I have highlighted in section 3,
sexual difference theory considers sexual difference
to be a question whose potential is still yet to be
fully known. As Grosz states:
All the work of sexual difference, its labor of producing
alternative knowledges, methods and criteria, has yet to
come . . . it is an event yet to occur, an event strangely
out of time, for it does not yet have a time and its time
may never come, at least not without considerable risk
and effort. (2005, 176)
Indeed, posing sexual difference as a question produces a particular temporality that assumes sexual
difference as something that has not yet been possible to know. Therefore, it is as important to consider not what is present or absent but rather that
which is obscured or overlooked within non-representational geographical research. Locating the
potential ‘for’ sexual difference therefore provides
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us with an opportunity to think sexual difference
in new ways.
By focusing on force, Grosz offers us an account
of the subject that is not based upon identification
with and recognition of others. Instead, she subscribes to a theory of the impersonal in which
inhuman forces, forces that are both living and non living, macroscopic and microscopic, above and below the
level of the human are acknowledged and allowed to
displace the centrality of both consciousness and unconsciousness. (2005, 189–90)
Forces therefore constitute and are constituted
through what we come to know as ‘a subject’. They
operate at a range of scales and intensities. They
can pass through and inhabit bodies (metabolism,
circulation, ovulation, ejaculation), they are intangible and unknowable and yet are sometimes felt by
the body and travel between bodies (fear, hope,
love, wonder, hate, confidence) and they are produced by and active in the constitution of wider
social, economic and political processes and structures, for example capitalism, democracy, deprivation, emancipation and discrimination. More
specifically, Grosz (2005) summarises the attributes
and qualities that forces have in the following
ways. Force(s) is both specific and multiple in so
far as ‘(F)orce is that which both establishes and
severs connections between (forces that compose)
things and relations’ (Grosz 2005, 188). Force is
always engaged in becoming. It has a history and
duration and ‘does not seek intentions, goals or
purposes, but simply its own magnification and
expansion’ (2005, 188). Force is always a ‘relation
of intensity’ (2005, 188), whereby it exists in a relation of magnitude of more or less. Force is always
contested by and contesting other forces that it
comes into contact with. Finally, force ‘not only
produces competition and struggle between forces
functioning in the same sphere and level, but it is
also that which produces alignment, cooperation
and tension between forces functioning at different
levels’ (2005, 188). Force, therefore, can be material
and in fact constitutes and is constituted through
social, political, economic and technological formations. Force is also ‘imperceptible’; it exists beyond
the field of human perception; it is affect. It is not
only the ‘nature’ of the ‘force’ that matters but
what is significant is what forces do with regards
to the constitution of always provisional, immanent
and as yet unknown subjectivities.17
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Grosz’s (2005) understanding of sexual difference as force ⁄ s provides feminism ⁄ s with an
opportunity to reconceptualise the terms that it
uses. This includes reconceptualising what is meant
by the subject and thus how ‘a’ subject is constituted. In short, this involves a shift from considering subjects to considering the forces that provide
the backdrop to and are active in producing what
comes to be understood as ‘a’ subject. The female
subject, therefore, comes to be understood not as
the aim or goal of struggles but as ‘a sieve or
cipher through which dynamic forces struggle to
emerge’ (2005, 167). This shift in understanding the
form and constitution of sexual difference and
more specifically a sexually differentiated body as
‘force’ leads to an understanding of a body that is
multiple and ‘multi-dimensional’ (Olkowski 2000,
107). A body is provisional; a ‘coming together’ of
a range of pre-personal and inhuman forces. Moreover, it is actualised by and is contingent upon the
nature and context through which forces emerge.
The future orientation of an account of feminism
and sexual difference as ‘force’ is aligned to both
Irigaray’s and Deleuze’s deployment of particular
forms of temporality and specifically the openness
of time to transformation. Irigaray like Grosz does
not provide a blueprint for what these feminist
futures or the future of sexual difference might look,
sound and feel like. As Irigaray’s puts it: ‘To concern oneself in the present about the future certainly
does not consist in programming it in advance but
in trying to bring it into existence’ (Irigaray cited in
Whitford 1991, 14). Therefore, there are difficulties
and perils in presenting an account of sexual difference that aligns with the tenets and theoretical
underpinnings of non-representational geographies
when the actualisation and possibilities of such an
encounter remain open. I therefore end this section
by making two points concerning what an account
of the force of sexual difference brings to feminist
geography. First, it should mean an interrogation
of what constitutes a subject and thus a sexually
or otherwise differentiated subject. For example,
Olkowski (2000) suggests that an engagement with
Deleuze focuses attention on the multiple sexual
forces and behaviours that offers a specific opportunity for feminists. Specifically she states that
through such an engagement
a logic and language of fluidity, all those words that are
so distasteful because they express the body of woman
– the uteral, the vulvar, the clitoral, the vaginal, the placental, or woman’s luminous body itself – may then
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enter, for the first time ever, into our knowledge.
(Olkowski 2000, 107)
This is a step beyond Longhurst’s (2001) important strategy of bringing particular ‘fleshy materialities’ to geography. An engagement with the ‘force’
of sexual difference would instead involve
acknowledging the presence of an as yet unknowable ‘sexual difference’ and thinking through what
this ‘unknowable’ subject ⁄ difference might be ⁄ be
capable of. Second, focusing on ‘force’ opens up
both theoretical and empirical possibilities for
rethinking the subjects and subjectivities of feminist
geographies. It would involve questioning how
forces operate differentially across a range of spatial scales and locations to produce contingent and
multiple subjectivities ⁄ differences. For example,
how do testosterone, reproductive medicine, masturbation, semen, a plastic sterile container, desire
and orgasm co-constitute a man’s sperm donating
body? How does capitalism, air travel, expectation,
violence, bruising and ejaculation bring into being
an illegally trafficked sex worker body? What kind
of suffragette body emerges from London, class,
democracy, law, marching, forced feeding, shouting and anger? And what kind of feminist geographer body is constituted through a British
education system, maternity leave, feminisms, fatness, reading, insecurity, inspiration, mothering,
hypothyroidism and friendship?
A focus on forces that operate on a range of
scales and the force of particular processes, formations and entities are central to understanding the
spatial contingencies of when, where and how a
sexually differentiated body emerges. There is no
deployment of sexual difference as an a priori category of difference. Instead, feminist geographers
could usefully seek to question not only what sexual difference ‘is’ but what it could be and thus
how it endures and depletes within any one empirical or theoretical setting. That does not mean a
retreat from ‘the subject’ or ‘the body’ (see Pile
2010) but instead signals a need to be as open as
possible to what constitutes sexual difference and
how it might become something that we have not
yet known.
Endings ⁄ beginnings
The expansion of feminist theory – beyond feminism’s
common focus on dealing with empirical women as its
objects and beyond its analysis of (the repression or
Rachel Colls
expression) of femininity and its representations within
the patriarchal order to raise new questions about materiality, cosmology, the natural order, about how we
know and what are the limits, cost and underside of
our knowledge – is necessary in order to develop new
ideals, new forms of representation, new types of
knowledge and new epistemological criteria. (Grosz
2005, 129)
In concluding this article I want to make three key
points that draw upon the ethos and content of my
engagement with non-representational geographies,
feminist theory and the question of sexual difference. I present these points not as a blueprint for
‘how’ feminist geographers, amongst others, might
develop relationships with non-representational
geographies and some of its associated theoretical
work. Instead, I present them as nodes of potential
that are generative of new, different but not necessarily faithful engagements with non-representational geographies. As the quote above suggests,
feminist theory and feminist geographies alike are
orientated around a number of interests and commitments, not all of which are compatible with
each other. Indeed, as Buchanan and Colebrook
have stated, ‘the questions feminists have directed
to theory have rarely, if ever, been those of one
secure body of thought relating to another’ (2000,
5). Indeed, I acknowledge that my own interests in
and arguments about non-representational geographies might not be palatable to all. However, what
I do offer, in the spirit of ‘generous critique’, is an
opportunity to consider another mode of engagement and an opportunity to make useful connections with and across bodies of feminist work.
First, I want to comment on the importance of
thinking through the nature of critique and what it
is capable of doing. In the first and second section
of this article I detailed some of the critiques that
have been made of non-representational geographies and the effects of doing so. My reading of
such critiques is that they hinder the possibility of
productive engagement with non-representational
geographies and reproduce a particular temporality
of critique that tends towards repetition rather than
the production of new knowledges. In Elisabeth
Grosz’s words, this is the type of critique that
tends to ‘generate defensive self-representations or
gestures of counter critique, which give the complacent reader a vague sense that one need not
bother further with a position once it has been adequately criticised’ (2005, 2–3). In this article, I have
deliberately chosen not to engage directly with the
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content of such critiques and instead my mode of
engagement has been to respond to them. Indeed,
it is possible to say that whilst I am concerned
about the effects of some of the critiques that have
been made of non-representational geographies,
they have indeed provoked and inspired me to
write this response as an attempt to further feminist work in this area. As Braidotti’s (1994) ‘nomadic
consciousness’ and Grosz’s (1994) ‘delicate negotiations’ have demonstrated, it has proven more productive to orient a position that holds the gender
blindness of poststructuralist thought in tension
whilst also considering the potential of such work
for rethinking ‘the subject’. To reiterate, this mode of
critique does not involve uncritically embracing the
tenets of non-representational geographies. It is closer to what Raghuram and Madge (2008) have called
‘destabilising theory’. For example, when it is argued
that the language of some non-representational
geographies are too dense and impenetrable, it
might be useful to consider the different levels and
scales through which theoretical abstraction could
operate. Raghuram and Madge suggest that this
‘requires holding open the meaning of concepts, recognizing that concepts cannot be wholly preconceived or predefined, and emphasizing their
instability, multi-dimensionality’ (2008, 225). Theorising as a feminist geography nomad, therefore,
would involve considering the potential offered by
non-representational geographies for rethinking the
nature of concepts that are important to the production of feminist geographical knowledge. This
includes sexual difference. However, this does not
have to be done in a way that denies or dismisses
the problems with particular bodies of work.
The second point I want to make is concerned
with my response to the critique of non-representational geographies that centres upon the absence of
a ‘differentiated’ subject (Jacobs and Nash 2003).
My intention has been to both question the place, if
any, of sexual difference within non-representational geographies and then to present an account
of sexual difference as ‘force’ (Grosz 2005) that has
resonance with some of the theoretical tenets of
non-representational geographies. Undoubtedly, in
general, non-representational geographies do not
deploy categories of difference as a way of prefiguring what a subject may constitute in any one
context. The list of identity descriptors that Jacobs
and Nash (2003) present in order to highlight the
absences in non-representational geographies and
Tolia Kelly’s call for an attentiveness to the ‘racial-
441
ized, gendered and sexualized markedness’ (2006,
3) of bodies do not sit easily with a theoretical and
empirical approach that is interested in how ‘a’
subject comes into being through processes of
becoming and emergence. However, in this article,
it has been interesting to note the unacknowledged
presence of difference in some non-representational
work (see Anderson 2006; Bissell 2009; McCormack
2003). This is significant because it demonstrates
the containment, denial or ‘sublation’ of difference
(Colebrook 2000, 110) within non-representational
geographies, as Luce Irigaray (2004) has argued
with reference to particular Western (phallocentric)
philosophy. Her ethos of engagement with such
work is not to ‘recover’ sexual difference but
instead to ‘provoke a transformation in masculine
knowledges and practices by bringing the feminine
into view within the space of the production of
masculine knowledges’ (Robinson 2000, 288). I propose that this strategy could work for a feminist
geography engagement with non-representational
geographies. In short, rather than dismissing nonrepresentational geographies for what they do or
do not ‘contain’, it might be more useful to reflect
instead on the liberation of ‘contained’ subjects by
questioning and rethinking the terms through
which we call for an attention to difference. Similarly, this also involves those geographers who are
engaged in the making of non-representational
geographies considering the presence and significance of sexual difference and the relevance of sexual difference theory to their own work.
This leads me onto the third and final point I
want to make that concerns the account of sexual
difference as ‘force’ I have presented in this article
(Grosz 2005). I have deployed this account of sexual difference because it has similarities to the theoretical tenets of non-representational geographies
and because it builds upon other feminist geographical work that utilises sexual difference theory. In developing what she calls a ‘politics of the
imperceptible’, Grosz (2005) uses force as a way of
opening up new possibilities for the constitution of
sexual difference. This means developing an
account of difference that is not pre-given, hierarchical or oppositional. It also means deploying an
understanding of ‘a’ subject that is constituted
through and by force(s) and that is always contingent on the context in which it emerges. Such
forces include those that operate inside and outside
of the body, those that are intangible, unknowable
and yet sometimes felt and exchanged with other
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bodies and those wider material forces or processes
(social, economic, political) that pass through,
around and between bodies. This approach
requires an openness to and recognition of the
multiplicities, contingencies and virtualities of sexual difference rather than assuming knowledge of
what constitutes the deployment of a sexually differentiated subject in advance.
I end by offering this article as an example of
what Moss and Falconer Al-Hindi (2008) have
termed a ‘positive ontology’ for feminist geography. In so doing, they advocate positivity as a way
of affirming what feminist geography is rather than
what it is not in relation to other ways of knowing
and doing. I therefore present this article as an
example of what feminist geographies of sexual
difference could be if, through a critical alignment
of sexual difference theory and non-representational geographies, we begin to question ‘how
might non-representational geographies allow us to
think feminist geography differently and to think
differently as feminist geographers?’
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank, J D Dewsbury, Bethan Evans,
Paul Harrison, Rachel Pain, Emma Roe, Gillian
Rose and Susan Smith for their conversation and
feedback on ideas contained within this article.
Thanks also to Alison Blunt and two anonymous
referees for their comments on earlier drafts of this
article. Finally, enormous gratitude to Ben Anderson for his constant encouragement over the last
five years to ‘just do it’!
Notes
1 I use the term non-representational geographies
throughout the paper for consistency and as a way of
acknowledging the multiple and varied work that is
contained by this categorisation (see Anderson and
Harrison 2010; Lorimer 2005 2007 2008). In doing so, I
also acknowledge the problems that the ‘non’ in nonrepresentational geographies has posed for other geographers. These problems are based upon questioning
what exactly is removed through the ‘non’ of nonrepresentational. Lorimer (2005) suggests that using the
term of ‘more-than-representational’, more-than-textual
and multi-sensual worlds might resolve some of these
tensions and open up what constitutes, in McCormack’s words, attending ‘to and through processes that
are excessive of the representational thresholds of
geographical thinking’ (2004, 489). I also juxtapose the
2
3
4
5
6
7
words ‘non-representational’ and ‘geographies’ in
order to acknowledge the multiple ways this work has
been caricatured in geography; for example, in relation
to a critique of the use of particular (masculinist and
abstract) poststructural theoretical work, the lack of
engagement with notions of ‘difference’ and the ‘place’
of the political in its content and ethos.
In deploying a collective term ‘feminist geographies’
or indeed the representative figure of a single or
multiple feminist geographer(s), I am mindful that I
risk speaking on behalf of and risk ignoring the
nuanced, multiple and internally differentiated nature
of feminist geographical research (see Moss and
Falconer Al-Hindi 2008; Women and Geography
Study Group 1997). As Moss and Falconer Al-Hindi
argue it is ‘too simplistic to argue that feminist geography is an undifferentiated entity’ (2008, 2). I instead
use the terminology of feminist geographies and
geographer(s) as a way of reflecting the intra-disciplinary context within which critical engagements
with non-representational geographies have been
deployed whilst being mindful that not all feminist
geographers would identify with the argument I am
making or indeed distance themselves from the theoretical, empirical and political commitments of nonrepresentational geographies.
For example, Nigel Thrift (1999) outlines the theoretical ‘life-time-lines’ of a range of philosophical work
that have contributed towards the development of
non-representational theory. In the graph used to represent these influences (1999, 303), he illustrates that
the work of Luce Irigaray and Elisabeth Grosz has
been significant and yet does not return to the
specificities of their work nor comment on what the
influence of explicitly feminist theory may have on
non-representational theory.
See McCormack (2003) and Anderson and Harrison
(2010) for surveys of the development of non-representational geographies.
It is important to acknowledge here that non-representational geographies have also considered the significance of the non-relational dimensions of corporeal
existence; those dimensions that are ‘unthematisable’
(Harrison 2007a 2007b) and ⁄ or often involve a withdrawal from what we know as social life, for example
through sleep (Harrison 2009).
See Thrift (1999) and Thrift and Dewsbury (2000).
It is important to note here that many of the critiques
of non-representational geographies are reminiscent of
similar critiques that were made in relation to the
emergence of new cultural geographies in the 1990s.
For example, Domosh summarises feminist geographers’ concerns with the new cultural geography of
the late 1980s as ‘a perception concerning the cultural
turn’s practitioners (white men), their object of study
(elite cultural artefacts), and their underlying objectives (personal gain and pleasure at the expense of
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8
9
10
11
12
13
14
political goals)’ (2005, 38). This statement could
indeed be written about recent feminist geographers’
concerns about non-representational geographies.
The use of his conceptual interventions has been multiple in non-representational geographies. For example, work in geography on ‘affect’, a concept derived
from Deleuze’s (1988a) reworking of Spinoza,
‘acknowledges the importance to experience of the
non-human force of movement and sensation’
(McCormack 2003, 494). Moreover, research on biotechnology and the body has drawn upon Deleuze to
consider how bodies are ‘affected’ in visceral, sensual
and nonsensual ways by biotechnological innovation
(Greenhough and Roe 2006).
This acknowledgement builds upon the work of other
feminist theorists, such as Luce Irigaray’s (1985a) who
engages with the same Western philosophical traditions as Deleuze in order to denounce ‘the logic of sexual indifferentiation of phallogocentric discourses’
(Braidotti 1994, 131). Irigaray does this through a series
of textual strategies (for a discussion of Irigaray’s use of
critical mimesis as a means of engaging with phallogocentric discourse see Whitford 1991) or what Butler (in
Cheah and Grosz 1998, 19) calls ‘an amorous exchange
with philosophers whereby she was both enslaved to
and radically displaced from those texts with which she
chooses to talk’.
Within David Bissell’s (2008) work on chronic pain, a
first person ‘I’ is deployed when documenting and
discussing the affectivities and prepersonal forces of
the pained body. In so doing he sexes his body as
‘male’ through a process of first-person naming and
yet does not reflect on the ways in which pain is located in and through the corporeality of bodily differentiation. In Anderson’s (2004) work on boredom
participants in his research on practices of listening
recorded music are sexed as male and female through
the practice of naming and yet the significance of this
differentiation as produced through or as productive
of particular affective intensities is left unexplored.
I am indebted to a referee for also highlighting how
the sexual specificities of bodily substances, for example hormones such as testosterone and oestrogen, are
denied in Dewsbury’s description of how a ‘subject’ is
composed.
It is important to highlight that feminist geographers’
engagements and use of the concept gender is not
uniform in its empirical and theoretical application.
Bondi and Davidson (2003) provide a detailed review
of these differences.
For example see Bray (2001) for a critique of Luce
Irigaray’s account of ‘difference’ and egalitarian feminism and Cornell (1998) for a discussion of the dangers of privileging sexual difference over class and
racial difference.
Whitford (1991) notes Irigaray’s unease with the term
feminism because it has been designated by the social
443
system as the term to describe the struggle of women.
She states that feminism needs to be reclaimed and
redefined in order to be used successfully to capture
the multiple character of women’s experience. However, like Whitford (1991, 11), I label her work as feminist because of its commitment to women’s struggles
‘whatever its misuse and misapplications’.
15 Within feminist geography, this particular aspect of
Irigaray’s work can be witnessed in Rose’s (1996)
chapter in which she replicates and performs Irigaray’s strategy of staging conversations with philosophical texts about their phallocentric meanings and
logics in order to interrogate geography’s construction
and use of particular spatial tropes, i.e. real and nonreal space.
16 Within feminist geography ⁄ ies, Raghuram and Madge
(2008) have recently commented on the role of the
potentially divisive nature of theoretical work in feminist geography. They discuss how abstracted theories
can be alienating to those whose ‘language, scriptures
and sometimes experience do not resonate with it’
(2008, 222) and that when Northern-centric theorists
are drawn upon, they go on to ‘garner the authority
of theory but exclude those outside these circuits of
reproduction of such theoretical knowledges’ (2008,
222).
17 An example of the application of Grosz’s (2005)
understanding of force can be seen in Lim’s (2007) use
of affect to makes sense of lesbian sexuality. He
argues that Grosz’s (2005) manoeuvre away from an
understanding of a subject ‘as the main source of
knowledge and action’ (Lim 2007, 64) opens up new
spaces for sexuality to be explored. In focusing on the
affirmation of the vagueness of sexuality, he suggests
that ‘rather than being trapped by social norms, discursive definitions, and our sense of where our past
sexual experiences locate us on some pre-existing map
of sexual identities, we might instead explore an
autonomous sexuality that embraces the potentials
offered by events to come’ (2007, 64).
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