The tactile topologies of Contagion

The relation between difference and space has long been and continues to be an animating problem in theoretical and political conversations across the discipline of geography, including in much recent work on encounter. In this paper, we make the case for the value of a less explored angle on space in Deleuze's work, which we call the topologies of space‐as‐difference. We highlight the Möbius strip as a central figure in his ontological system, and we show the significance of this topological structure both for understanding key Deleuzian concepts, such as the virtual and actual, and for understanding space and difference in productive ways. We demonstrate this by showing how Deleuzian topologies of difference enable us to further theorise the encounter – a key theme in recent geographical scholarship – as spatial and embodied, connecting up with material feminism and work on the skin, touch, and breath. We suggest that Deleuze's concept of space‐as‐difference thus contributes to the intensification of relational and topological approaches to space that are currently shaping the discipline.

Section: Engaging Space and Difference Through The Encountermentioning

confidence: 90%

Thinking space differently: Deleuze's Möbius topology for a theorisation of the encounter

Cockayne

Ruez

Secor

2019

“…Understanding the immune system legacies of microbial absences requires a more protracted conception of the microbial geographies of health, where the focus is less on the intensities and immediate spatio‐temporalities of outbreak (cf. Dixon and Jones ), and more on intergenerational microbial inheritance, the accumulation of microbial exposure and immunomodulation over the life course, and the cascading effects of microbial absences. Emerging relational geographies of pathogenicity must also attend to the protracted and discordant temporalities of microbial colonisation and immune system calibration.…”

Section: Human–hookworm Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parasites, ghosts and mutualists: a relational geography of microbes for global health

Lorimer

2017

Scientific research on the microbiome offers an ecological model of the human, comprised of myriad forms of microbial life. The composition and dynamics of this human microbiome are increasingly implicated in discussions of health. Attention has focused on missing microbes and their links to a range of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. Pathological dysbiosis is understood to result from both the excessive presence and the absence of microbes. Microbial declines have been indexed to modern hygiene and healthcare practices and there is a growing interest in the therapeutic use of beneficial microbes. This reappraisal of the salutary potential of microbes challenges the negative associations prevalent in health geography and the field of global health. This paper develops relational and multispecies approaches to health geography to examine situations of microbial excess, absence and controlled reintroduction. The analysis focuses on human relations with hookworms. Hookworms are animal members of the microbiome. They co-evolved with humans, live in us and are understood to manage the human microbiome to enable immunological tolerance. Both the excessive presence and the absence of hookworms can be pathological. They are currently the subjects of concurrent, but spatially discrete, programmes to deworm and reworm a variegated world. Focusing on this seeming spatial paradox, the analysis examines three types of human-hookworm relation: the parasite, the ghost and the mutualist. The conclusion reflects on the implications of this analysis for the human and nonhuman subjects of global health and the microbiopolitics of prevalent forms of antibiotic and probiotic healthcare.

“…Congdon's reflection on what was happening within the container is, following Dixon and Jones, one that adheres to a “tactile topology,” which is “democratically inclusive” (, p. 9) in so far as it acknowledges the micro as a body with the capacity to touch and be touched (Hawkins & Straughan, ). That is, Congdon acknowledges the capacity of both the PBS and trypsin to affect cells when in contact with them.…”

Section: From Experimental Geographies To Geographies Of Touchmentioning

confidence: 99%

A touching experiment: Tissue culture, tacit knowledge, and the making of bioart

Straughan

2018

In this paper I present an experimental project carried out at The University of Western Australia's art and science organisation, SymbioticA. The paper looks to the embodied practice of learning to make bioart through consideration of the tools and protocols required in the making process. In so doing, the paper traces through the process of “making” by attending to the sense of touch in the laboratory. As an analytical guide, I work through Polanyi's concept of tacit knowledge, which I approach through a focus on the sense of touch, to consider the ways in which proximate knowledge is generated at SymbioticA between artist, objects and subjects. This is knowledge that not only emerges to enable the experimental project, but which also re‐works it. Such an approach provides mechanisms for close consideration of the various actants with which knowledge is generated. In so doing, I offer a post‐phenomenological account of embodied practice in the space of the laboratory to think through the roles of the somatic senses and non‐human others, as well as artists themselves, in the acquisition of knowledge at SymbioticA. Deploying an experimental project as research method is, I argue, a valid methodological manoeuvre for geographic studies into experimental spaces such as the laboratory as it enables unforeseen lines of inquiry to emerge through “doing.”