Laughing at northernness: postcolonialism and metafictive irony in the imaginative geography

This paper examines the role played by literature in constructing regional otherness focusing on a case study of Northern Finland. In the case of the Finnish North the direct connections between literary tradition, cultural imaginativeness and spatial otherness have been distinctive. Literary stereotypes concerning northern exoticism and the romantics have formed an imaginary contrast with the southern culture, a homogeneous region without any contradictions, imagined by the southern culture in a manner that meets its own hegemonic needs. The defining of the North exclusively in terms of a binary opposition between nature and culture has implied a multidimensional exercise of power in which culture and civilization have justified their own existence by excluding their opposites. In this article northern literature is perceived as a ‘tool’ not only for constructing otherness but also for deconstructing and decolonizing it. Northern imagination is viewed from a metafictional perspective, and the focus is on how the postmodern northern irony is self-consciously concerned about its own social discursiveness, i.e. northern marginality. In the present case the metafictive approach also stands for a methodological possibility for geographers to view literary discourses of otherness more from above. Attention is focused on the eccentrically obtrusive northern artist Rosa Liksom, the pseudonym of a novelist/visual artist who has transformed her northern irony into an emancipatory project.     

Reading,tourism, and geography consumption in literary places

Literature and geography are closely related in the worlds of consumption and mobility, and literature is often used as a resource for the tourism industry. The reading and consumption of literature, therefore, are related to visitation of a real place, and the roles of readers and tourists merge. The case of one literary tourism site, the San Mao Teahouse in the ancient town of Zhouzhuang in China, is selected to explain the complexity of reading and geography consumption in literary tourism. Observations and in-depth interviews were used to collect the data, and then the thematic analysis method was used. The study finds that tourists can also actively participate in the construction of literary places at destinations where relevant texts do not exist. In this kind of literary place, consumption occurs in multiple spaces as a result of tourists’ reading combined with geographical consumption. This study proposes a conceptual framework to analyze the geography consumption of literature in tourist destinations. The results show that the main geography consumption is reflected in three aspects, namely text, reality, and imagination. Based on their previous reading experiences, readers explore both the literary text and the reality. In this process, their imaginations always have an effect. Two distinguishing features have been found: first, through actively reading and decoding literary geography, the readers recreate a new fictionalized reality based on their imaginations. Second, the readers pursue the imaginative process from the real Zhouzhuang back to an imagined place that San Mao wrote about. The study contributes to the current literary geography research field, especially from the perspective of consumption. The study also provides a new perspective on literature in the modern world and practical implications for the design of literary tourist products and literary heritage conservation.     

Going beyond the grid: literary mapping as creative reading

Drawing from the importance of narrative inquiry in contemporary geographical reasoning and teaching, this paper focuses on some practices set around the relationship between maps and literature. Reader-generated maps, maps produced starting from the reading of a literary text, are at the core of a reflection on the potentialities of literary mapping in higher education; relating maps and literature in an educational environment, I suggest creative reading and creative mapping as co-constructive practices that are able to guide students in addressing and internalising the complexity of spatial categories. Reflecting on the students’ literary mappings, I focus on the various ways that the literary map contributes to mobilising the space of the text, guiding students in approaching spatial issues from a different (and creative) perspective. Time, point of view and literary trans-scalarity are the key narrative concepts that guide and inform possible inductive ruminations on literary mapping as a learning strategy. Following the core question of “what literary mapping might be and do in the digital age”, I aim to resituate contemporary discussions on literary mapping in an educational environment.     

“They have the right to throw us out”: Élisée Reclus'New Universal Geography

Abstract: The anarchist and geographer Élisée Reclus (1830–1905) argued for the idea of universal brotherhood for all the peoples of the world in his encyclopaedic work the Nouvelle Géographie Universelle (NGU) (1876–1894). The nature of Reclus' argument and its representations of Europe, otherness and colonialism, however, are contested today, and it is unclear what insights it might offer to contemporary students of colonialism and post‐colonialism. In this paper I engage with two emblematic cases—British rule over India and French occupation of Algeria—as they are presented in the NGU, considering Reclus' analysis of imperialism and his novel critique of colonial power. In doing so I wish to demonstrate that far from being conventional, the NGU is a radical and interesting resource for those struggling to construct a critical discourse on Europe, otherness and colonialism.     

Recognizing and undisciplining feminist geography in the Caribbean

Abstract

The aim of this piece is to provide an overview of the state of feminist geography in the Anglo-Caribbean. In doing so via the metaphor of a gayap, we provide a précis of work that has been completed by feminist geographers across the region; offer an analysis of the historical, structural, and institutional obstacles of why it is not more robust; and propose that it can be seen across the region via an undisciplined and anti-orthodox standpoint. In addition, we review how Caribbean feminist scholarship and praxis contributes to feminist geographies through analyses of how people in the region, particularly women, are contesting, negotiating, disrupting, and responding to prevailing heteropatriarchal ideologies across differing social contexts and political arrangements within the Caribbean.     

Feminist geography in the UK: the dialectics of women-gender-feminism-intersectionality and praxis

Abstract

Feminist praxis has always been about both the individual and the collective; one of the revolutionary and utopian promises of feminism is that of being, bringing, and working together. This piece provides a brief account of some of the significant scholarship and collective activities within British feminist geography over the last twenty five years, with a particular focus on the work of the Women and Geography Study Group/Gender and Feminist Geographies Research Group. We underscore the importance of intersectional approaches to scholarship and praxis in UK feminist geographies in this period, and in going forward, as well as signalling some of the dialectical opportunities and tensions arising from this approach.     

Placing Angola: Racialisation,Anthropocentrism, and Settler Colonialism at the Louisiana State Penitentiary's Angola Rodeo

The Louisiana State Penitentiary (Angola) is a site embedded with historical legacies of plantation slavery and settler colonialism; as the largest maximum security penitentiary in the United States, the prison also reflects the racial injustice of contemporary US mass incarceration. Situated on the site of an old plantation, the prison hosts the Angola Rodeo twice a year, an event that crystallises violent multispecies social relations in the merging of the US West and South as two distinct kinds of colonial projects. Whereas much scholarship and activism has worked against the wholesale dehumanisation inherent in chattel slavery, settler colonialism, and mass incarceration, this paper works to interrogate and disrupt the human–animal binary through which processes of dehumanisation are sustained. Drawing together postcolonial studies and animal studies, the paper centres empirical research on the Angola Rodeo to highlight how racialisation and anthropocentrism are intertwined logics of subordination and exclusion that carry forward into the present. Ultimately, the paper suggests the need for a mode of analysis and action that does not maintain the subordination of the animal, and instead, takes a de‐anthropocentric and decolonial approach to injustice.     

Arcangelo Ghisleri and the “Right to Barbarity”: Geography and Anti‐colonialism in Italy in the Age of Empire (1875–1914)

This paper addresses the work of early critics of colonialism and Eurocentrism within Italian geography in the Age of Empire. At that time, a minority but rather influential group of Italian scholars, influenced by the international debates promoted by the anarchist geographers Reclus, Kropotkin and Me?nikov, fumed publicly at Italy's colonial ambitions in Africa. Their positions assumed, at least in the case of Arcangelo Ghisleri, the character of a radical critique of both political and cultural European hegemony. These approaches were linked to a similar critique of “internal colonialism”, both Austrian in the Italian‐speaking regions of Trento and Trieste, and Piedmontese in southern Italy. Based on primary sources, and drawing on the international literature on imperial geography and colonial and postcolonial sciences, this paper conjures up the Italian example to discuss how some European geographers of the Age of Empire were also early critics of racism, colonialism and chauvinism, and how these historical experiences can serve current debates on critical, radical and anarchist geographies.     

The spatialities of intersectional thinking: fashioning feminist geographic futures

In this article, we highlight the inherent spatialities of intersectionality and its pivotal importance for feminist geographic thought. Intersectionality was, at its inception, already a deeply spatial theoretical concept, process and epistemology, particularly when read through careful and serious engagement with Black Feminist Thought and the writings of radical women of color. We do so here, revisiting Cooper, Crenshaw, Collins and other key scholars to demonstrate that the interlocking violence of racism, patriarchy, heteronormativity, and capitalism have always constituted a spatial formation. Drawing on feminist geographic thought from the 1990s onwards, we highlight the influence of intersectional thinking on our discipline particularly concerning how racial, gendered and classed power operates in place and through space. These pieces have inspired and driven our work, and we extend them here, recognizing newer scholarship that extends and enriches feminist geography through a postcolonial intersectionality. We close by arguing that intersectional thinking is indispensable to feminist geography. Working in solidarity, across and through the interrogation of difference, with agreement and discord, we encourage a deeper feminist geographic engagement with intersectional thinkers, contributing to more critical (and hopeful) futures for our scholarship.     

论鸦片战争前后中国边疆史地研究热潮中的史书编纂

中国边疆史地研究的史书编纂在鸦片战争前后出现了新的发展趋向 ,主要表现在 :由边疆史地研究引发对域外史地的研究 ;史地学者能够根据社会变动的需要 ,灵活变通地运用史书体裁、体例 ,撰述了一批具有个性色彩和时代特色的史地著作。这是对章学诚寻求史学变革之道的有力回应 ,反映了中国传统学术的重要变化。     

Transient dwelling: trains as places of identification for the floating population of China

China has experienced massive rural–urban migration, producing the huge so-called ‘floating population’ (liudong renkou). This article attends to what it means to be thus between places by focusing on the embodied and emotional experience of migrant travel. Each year sees the Spring Festival rush (Chun Yun) with the largest annual movement of people as millions of these rural migrant laborers (nongmingong) return to their homes for the holidays. The Spring Festival rush is marked by huge crowds queuing overnight for train tickets, with throngs of migrants carrying woven bags of belongings and gifts on their shoulders, who end up standing in the overcrowded ‘hard-seat’ carriages of trains. By closely reading some of the poems from the emerging genre of ‘Hired laborers literature,’ this article explores migrants' affective and emotional journeys. It argues that this transit experience is one of the key shared sites of common identification for a migrant population whose mode of inhabitation is through circulation and mobility. It also argues that mobility creates shared experiences characterized by specific corporealities, material cultures, and senses of social stratification.     

汉代对《左传》的发覆与研究

对汉代的经今古文之争。人们常常作出简单化、绝对化的评判。以《春秋》三传为例,所谓师法家法只是表面上的水火不容。实际上却互相渗透,《左氏》也并非绝对不用《公羊》、《谷梁》之义。由于受时代的政治要求和思维定势的支配,古文学派使用的观点方法仍没有离开今文学家深求圣人“微言大义”的传统。而对于《左传》开启中国历史文化和道德精神的深远意义。汉代学者并未给以更多注意。     

Colonialism Otherwise and the Poetics of Solidarity: A Methodological Intervention De-b/ordering Kashmir

This paper reflects deeply on possibilities for developing solidarity with Kashmiri freedom struggles by mobilising a memorialisation praxis informed by poetics. We coin the term “colonialism otherwise” to describe the particular instruments and effects of postcolonial colonialism as they appear in the intimate space of family narratives, memories, and feelings. Foregrounding the works of the Kashmiri poet, essayist, and filmmaker, Uzma Falak, we write our memorialisations to respond to the poet's demands to bear witness to Kashmiri people's abjection. Our memorialisation praxis is guided by the questions: how do we know Kashmir as a place, and relatedly, what are the political limitations of our articulated solidarity with the anti-colonial struggle for azaadi?     

A spatial analysis of human fertility in Scotland: Reappraisal and extension

In an earlier study of Scottish fertility (Jones, 1975) it was concluded that a substantial part of the areal variability in county and major city Crude Birth Rates could be attributed to variations in age structure and, to a lesser extent, socio‐economic composition. Because Crude Birth Rate levels are affected by population composition this study seeks to determine the extent to which areal variations in reproduction can be attributed to behavioural rather than structural effects. It is suggested that areal differences in Scottish reproductive behaviour reflect well defined, deeply ingrained and temporally persistent differences within Scottish society.     

Getting the Most out of Progress Files and Personal Development Planning

Global supply chains play an increasingly important role in the economy and should therefore be addressed within geography coursework, especially given concerns that geographers have not fully explored various angles of globalization. This article explores the use of an online case study on supply chains and their vulnerability to natural disasters in two entry-level, undergraduate courses. Results from a post-study survey suggest that students increasingly prefer online sources of information and that online case studies can foster a greater understanding of global economic processes such as supply chains and how these can be influenced by natural phenomena at different scales.     

Trans embodiment in carceral space: hypermasculinity and the US prison industrial complex

Queer geographers have recently begun to examine the lives of transgender persons, a heretofore gap in the literature. This article examines the experiences of incarcerated trans persons in the USA, thus extending this nascent trans geography work by considering a new population in a new space. As some scholarly and activist research has shown over the last decade or so, US trans persons are incarcerated at a disproportionately high rate and face harsh conditions while imprisoned. First-hand accounts of trans prisoners' experiences are, however, limited due to the difficulty of accessing this population for research purposes. Working in cooperation with a Montreal-based organization that facilitates pen-pal communications between queer persons inside and outside penitentiaries in the USA, we conducted qualitative research with 23 trans feminine individuals confined in facilities in several states. Our findings unfortunately corroborate the findings laid out in the small existing literature on trans prisoner issues, demonstrating that they endure harsh conditions of confinement. We detail these conditions here, while also pointing to informant responses that offer insight into the ways in which trans incarcerated persons cope with the hypermasculine and heteronormative environment of the US prison. These results are offered in the spirit of advancing a queer abolitionist politics that centers the knowledge and experiences of trans incarcerated persons.     

A sea of potential: The politics of global ocean observations

The Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) is creating a new understanding of the world ocean. With a vast and heterogeneous network of sensors, it converts the ocean's properties into flows of information, creating a “data double” of a dynamic sea. This view of the ocean underlies not only international geopolitics but also more broadly emergent modes of government. This paper analyzes changing strategies for governing global ocean observations to better understand the shifting coconstitution of nature, technology, and politics. In particular, I inquire into the GOOS's recent developments, which indicate a new conception of the ocean as a space of potentiality. I argue that this emergent understanding poses problems for our conventional political analytics, particularly that of biopolitics. To account for this shift, I draw on and extend Elizabeth Povinelli's offering of geontopolitics, which identifies a departure from the fundamental distinctions between life and nonlife made by biopolitics, seeing instead the potential for unpredictable changes not only in human subjects but also in geophysical systems and the contemporary planetary environmental conditions they shape. Emphasizing how geontopolitics both names a new mode of government and signifes its limits, Povinelli suggests three figures, following Foucault's four figures of biopolitics. I conclude by suggesting the world ocean as a fourth figure of geonotopolitics, as that which is so imbricated with life as to be indistinct from it. Throughout, I maintain that like Foucault's figures of biopolitics, the world ocean must be understood as inseparable from the knowledge relations that make it legible.