Besides affirmationism? On geography and negativity

Abstract

This paper poses questions on the possibility of styles of working besides "affirmationism." The paper begins by defining negativity as a force or status of disunification, and traces how it remains closely associated with dialectics within Geography. The paper goes on to explore how the renunciation of dialectics has meant that negativity more generally has been rendered outside thought, with a concomitant uptake of an affirmationist ethos. Despite the promise of such work, there remains disquiet. What is omitted or elided in the uptake of affirmationism?Critiques, largely from outside the discipline, highlight how affirmationism privileges the lively and Life, novelty and experimentation, and the generous and generative in conjunction with a suspicion of negativity. We home in on and reflect on three ostensible limits of affirmationism: affirmationist vitalism, affirmationist politics, and affirmationist critique. We argue that renouncing dialectics does not entail, necessarily so, a concomitant abandonment of negativity. Indeed, we need to embrace attempts to think and act that elude, or dispense with, the propensity to affirm, making space for affects that are far from hopeful, for those becomings-otherwise that do not increase capacities to act, or for modes of critique that refuse; in other words, for that which is besides affirmationism or simply "unaffirmable." Crucially, however, we point towards the dangers of a simple (re)turn to negativity, preferring a steadfast refusal to settle these tensions.

Vital aspirations for geography in an era of negativity: Valuing life differently with Deleuze

“…But in these negational modes of argumentation, a reserve of the origin necessarily remains, a reserve of an original identity that sets us on the line of transcendence in both thought and life. Are there not privileges of thinking associated with this negational logic, where points, counterpoints and etymological markers are presented as the necessary grounds for argument (see Dekeyser and Jellis, 2020) and are there not questions then being refused entertainment when the set-up of thought is so constraining in its necessary architecture and brilliance (Foucault, 1970, 1991)?…”

For a new weird geography

“…They associate disorientation with feelings of incomprehension, confusion and disintegration, often as a response to 'embodied encounters with unfamiliar others or experiences in unfamiliar places' (Bissell and Gorman-Murray, 2019;708). These affects are in a different key to those more affirmative affects that have been the prevailing focus of vitalism-inspired cultural geographies (see Anderson and Harrison, 2010;Dekeyser and Jellis, 2021;Harrison, 2007Harrison, , 2011Romanillos, 2015). To be disoriented involves disruptions of a secure sense of place and belonging (Wylie, 2021).…”

Negativity: space, politics and affects

“…As Dekeyser and Jellis suggest, 64 there are a number of taken for granted associations with respect to negativity, including the presumption of its oppositional character with respect to active, life-affirming notions of vitalism. This can be drawn out with respect to the negative, which is indeed difficult not to understand in terms of an oppositional character.…”

“…12 Finally, a number of geographers have sought to trace the limits of translating affirmation into a politics, 13 ethics 14 and critique 15 of generosity or enchantment, instead turning their attention to silence, 16 stillness 17 and refusal. 18 Tracing and extending these threads, each contributor to this paper reflects on what negativity means to them. Through a comparison of two recent publications on negative geographies, Secor brings us into the necessity of 'negativity'.…”