Encountering Berlant part one: Concepts otherwise

Tools

Anderson, Ben; Aitken, Stuart; Bacevic, Jana; Callard, Felicity; Chung, Kwang Dae (Mitsy); Coleman, Kathryn S.; Hayden, Robert F.; Healy, Sarah; Irwin, Rita L.; Jellis, Thomas; Jukes, Joe; Khan, Salman; Marotta, Steve; Seitz, David K.; Snepvangers, Kim; Staples, Adam; Turner, Chloe; Tse, Justin; Watson, Marthy and Wilkinson, Eleanor. 2023. Encountering Berlant part one: Concepts otherwise. The Geographical Journal, 189(1), pp. 117-142. ISSN 0016-7398 [Article]

Preview

Text
Geographical Journal - 2022 - Anderson - Encountering Berlant part one Concepts otherwise.pdf - Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial.
Download (689kB) | Preview

Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/geoj.12494

Abstract or Description

In Part 1 of ‘Encountering Berlant’, we encounter the promise and provocation of Lauren Berlant's work. In 1000-word contributions, geographers and others stay with what Berlant's thought offers contemporary human geography. They amplify an encounter with their work, demonstrating how a concept, idea, or style disrupts something, opens up a new possibility, or simply invites thinking otherwise. The encounters range across the incredible body of work Berlant left us with, from the ‘national sentimentality’ trilogy through to recent work on negativity. Varying in form and tone, the encounters exemplify and enact the inexhaustible plenitude of Berlant's thought: fantasy, the case, love, impasse, feel tanks, slow death, ellipses, gesture, attrition, intimate public, ambivalence, style. Part 2 of ‘Encountering Berlant’ focuses on Berlant's most influential concept: ‘cruel optimism’. Across these heterogeneous encounters, Berlant's enduring concern with the tensions and possibilities of relationality and how to enact better forms of common life shine through. These enduring concerns and Berlant's commitment to the incoherence and overdetermination of phenomena are summarised in the Introduction, which also explores how Berlant's work has been engaged with in geography. The result is a repository of what an encounter with Berlant's thought makes possible.

Short Abstract
Part 1 of ‘Encountering Berlant’ explores the promise and provocation of Lauren Berlant's work. Contributors amplify an encounter with Berlant's concepts, tones, and styles, drawing out their implications for understanding relationality and how to invent and live better ways of being in common. The result is a repository of what Berlant's thinking offers geographers.

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1111/geoj.12494

Data Access Statement:

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.

Keywords:

Berlant, feminism, geography, Marxism, queer theory, relations

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Media, Communications and Cultural Studies

Dates: