Gunnar Olsson's Transformers: The Art and Politics of Rendering the Co–Relation of Society and Space in Monochrome and Technicolor

Human geography is concerned with the co–relation of society and space. However, every device that has been used to express the co–relation of social space breaks down. Consequently, this paper engages with the fundamental difficulty of providing a consistent and effective rendering of relations. Specifically, the paper explores the poststructural work of Gunnar Olsson, a writer who has provided the most sustained and far–reaching engagement with co–relation to date. Consideration is given to Olsson's deconstruction of logic, dialectics, semiotics and the empty forms of co–relation (=, /, —, □, ?, ○, etc.). This deconstruction enables one to appreciate the ethical and political performativity of Olsson's surrealist and hyperrealist optical art: dematerialized points, torpedoes, ovoids, Moebius bands, and so on. In addition, the paper raises a peculiar but nonetheless vital question: what is the colour of co–relation and social space? In answering this question, the paper moves through two monochrome series (one rendered in black and white; the other in blue–grey) and one Technicolor series (rendered in ruby and gold). In the final showdown, however, the dyes leak in all directions. Social space is iridescent.     

Between capture and addition: The ontogenesis of cartographic calculation

This paper argues that cartographic calculation can be considered as a form of ‘capture’. It suggests that surveillance narratives, typically used to illustrate sovereign forms of power, can be augmented by other socio-technical approaches. Accordingly, the paper develops the idea of capture from media studies to reframe cartographic calculation in computational terms. In doing so, it engages with work in political and digital geography, arguing that the rise of digital devices, apps, platforms and services have led to the generation of huge volumes of event-based knowledges; with significant implications for the study of the calculation. It subsequently argues that cartographic calculation is not, however, solely composed of calculative practices that simply capture cartographic data, but also necessarily composed of calculative practices that add knowledge into, and proliferate renders of, the world. Two dynamics of this oscillating process – anticipation and correspondence – expose the ontogenetic tendencies of cartographic calculation. The paper draws on the use of a digital protest mapping app to exemplify these forces.     

Mapping coexistence in Italy: Reshaping the cartographic feelings of the plural nation

Rarely considered from the perspective of ordinary citizens as opposed to institutional actors, national maps have been primarily deconstructed as abstract tools of power that express nationalist agendas. This paper offers an alternative examination of the map as a performative tool of national pluralism. In tune with the most recent conceptualizations of everyday forms of nationhood, I explore multiple creative auto-cartographies of Italy as experiential images for investigating the coexistence of several senses of nationhood and cultural diversity. To this end, I combine an inductive visual content analysis of nearly three hundred remappings of Italy, uploaded online by readers of a popular national newspaper, La Repubblica, with a visual semiotic reading of six samples. Here, the playful idea of remapping the nation becomes a catalyst to produce or resist a sense of belonging to the nation, while eliciting a wider spectrum of feelings with regard to internal and external perceived meaningful others. This paper concludes that the different ways in which ordinary people map the nation have to be taken seriously, as they show evidence that these readers absorb and decode, but also resist or challenge, different mainstream discourses regarding the idea of nationality, coexistence, and cultural diversity.     

On anthropological epistemology: Praxis and critique

Fabian, Johannes. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983. xv + 205 pp. including notes, bibliography, and index. $28.00 cloth, $13.00 paper.

Ulin, Robert C. Understanding Cultures: Perspectives in Anthropology and Social Theory. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984. xvii + 200 pp. including notes, bibliography, and index. $19.95 cloth.     

The moral acceptability of nuclear deterrence: A critique

Theorists within the just war tradition of ethics differ in their conclusions about nuclear warfare and nuclear deterrence. This paper examines three arguments for the conditional moral acceptability of nuclear deterrence—those of the U.S. National Conference of Catholic Bishops in their pastoral letter, of J. Bryan Hehir, and of Michael Walzer—and argues that none of the three constitutes intellectually compelling and practically useful moral advice. The bishops fail to convince us that nuclear use can ever fulfil the requirements of proportionality, and therefore that the intention to use nuclear weapons can ever be justified. Hehir fails to convince us that nuclear deterrence policies in fact distinguish categorically between intention and use. Walzer's case that deterrence is bad but necessary is more convincing but it, like Hehir's, does not constitute coherent moral advice for the citizen, soldier or government official. I conclude that, given the inadequacy of attempts to justify nuclear deterrence, even conditionally, we have a strong moral obligation to pursue alternatives.

The level of citizen concern about the dangerous possibility of nuclear war has become greatly heightened in Europe and the United States in the 1980s. This is probably due to at least three factors: the significant technological developments in nuclear weaponry that have occurred during the last decade, the increased fear of Soviet military strength, and the concentration of recent U.S. administrations on developing and improving a nuclear war‐fighting capability. But even before the growth of the peace movement since 1980, a ‘new debate’ about the morality of nuclear weapons and deterrence policy had begun in academic and theological circles. In this paper, I will analyze three arguments of moral philosophers and theologians, all working within the ‘just war’ tradition, about whether nuclear deterrence, in any form, can be morally justified.     

A cartographic fade to black: mapping the destruction of urban Japan during World War II

In this paper we examine the history, production, and use – practical and rhetorical – of maps created by the United States government during World War II as related to the development and execution of aerial bombing policies against Japan. Drawing from a range of maps and primary documents culled from libraries and archives in the United States, we argue that maps provide an important, and hitherto neglected, means through which to trace the exploration and eventual embrace of the incendiary bombing of Japan’s cities. In particular, our aim is to show how maps, along with the men who made and used them, played a central role in the planning and prosecution of air raids on urban Japan. We also address the mobilization of American geographers into the war effort, the re-configuration of America’s spatial intelligence community during World War II, and the ways in which maps were constructed in the context of total war.     

East Asian ideas of regionalism: a normative critique

Little was done to challenge nationalist assumptions in the name of regionalism. Regarding nationalism as a sensitive matter best left to a later stage of regionalism, they [advocates of regionalism] did not focus on how nationalist outlooks in the media and elsewhere stand in the way of both regionalism and internationalism.

Gilbert Rozman (2000: 18)

With an increasing regional integration and development, there are many competing ideas of, and proposals for, regional development in Asia. This article examines the historical evolution of the idea of regionalism, the meanings of Asian regionalisms, variations of Asian regionalisms and their impact on regional cooperation in East Asia. It discusses Mahathir's idea of neo‐Asianism, Japanese new Asianism, Chinese ideas of regionalism, and variations of Korean ideas of regionalism. It also examines a normative basis of regionalism with special reference to the sovereignty question. The paper concludes that behind East Asian regionalism is nationalism which constitutes driving forces for regionalism; that two competing orders (Asia‐Pacific regionalism versus pan‐Asianism) create different expectations and visions of how East Asia region should evolve and they are in tensions and lead to different directions; and that East Asia lacks a convincing and acceptable normative framework.1     

Conceptions of Australian political thought: A methodological critique

This paper takes issue with a number of standard interpretations of Australian political thought and the methods of argument by which they have been reached. It confronts the substantive claims (a) that Australia has produced no significant indigenous political thought, ideology, or ideological conflict, and (b) that which passes for political thought is generally derivative, lacking in originality and inferior. It is argued that such claims are based upon unduly narrow conceptions of political thought and misplaced categories of evaluation. Finally, the paper demonstrates that by expanding our conceptions of political thought beyond that of ‘epic’ or universalist political philosophy, and applying methods of evaluation appropriate to the subject matter, more sensible conclusions can be drawn about the existence and quality of Australian political thought, as well as its place in political life.     

The ambiguity of reason

Levine, Donald N. The Flight from Ambiguity: Essays in Social and Cultural Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. x + 248 pp. including figures, appendix, references, and index. $25.00 cloth.

Overing, Joanna, ed. Reason and Morality. New York: Tavistock Publications, 1985. viii + 277 pp. including figures, chapter references and notes, name indèx, and subject index. $35.00 cloth, $15.95 paper.

Sperber, Dan. On Anthropological Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. viii + 107 pp. including notes, references, and index. $24.95 cloth; $8.95 paper.     

Hate-crimes as racial violence: a critique of the exceptional

Violence on the one hand is taken as something natural and normal. On the other hand, certain violent actions, such as hate-crimes, are portrayed as forms of exceptional violence, while systemic inequalities are rendered ordinary. In this paper, I de-naturalize the concept of violence through a critical evaluation of hate-crimes. I argue that the concept of hate-crimes has been, or is at risk, of being co-opted by a more sustained effort to ignore and downplay racial inequalities in society. Drawing on the philosophical distinction between ‘killing’ and ‘letting die’, I contend that an exclusive focus on individual-based hate-crimes deflects attention from the systemic, structural inequalities of society; and that a narrow conceptualization of violence (as direct, intentional action) conforms to a more expansive neoliberal promotion of a ‘race-blind’ or ‘colour-blind’ criminal justice system.