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

Abstract

Human geography has seen a vitalist renaissance over the past decade; however, geography’s concerns are mounting in relation to vitalism’s critical efficacy and political relevance. This article pushes back against these concerns. Drawing on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, we engage with vitalism as a critical pause and consequently as a vital aspiration in an intellectual climate that is growing increasingly enamoured of negativity as the barometer of serious thinking. In sum, we show how Deleuze’s ‘non-organic vitalism’ promotes a wilder sense of thinking and a more affirmative politics, without acquiescing to the problems of the present.

Atmospheric negations: Weaponising breathing, attuning irreducible bodies

“…While acknowledging that these aspects do not always travel together (see Mol, 2013; cf. Coole and Frost, 2010; Ojakangas, 2005) and that they do carry versatile, even opposing takes within (see Bridge, 2020; Pohl, 2021; Roberts, 2014; Roberts and Dewsbury, 2021: Saldanha, 2020; Shaw and Meehan, 2013), they nevertheless emerge, I show, less unproblematic in the light of the negative condition of sphere-dwelling.…”

“…Here the focus turns from what bodies are capable of to what they are incapable of, which further problematises the inherent vitalism and ontologisation of capacity that characterises much of the existing discussion on affect and materiality (e.g. Anderson, 2014;Bridge, 2020;Gallagher, 2016;Roberts, 2014;Roberts and Dewsbury, 2021). Atmospheric weaponisations create what Sara Ahmed (2006) aptly calls the 'spaces of I cannot' -spheres where bodies remain first disoriented, disrupted, prevented, incapacitated, violently negated, or even completely amputated from their ability to orientate towards the world.…”

Re‐arranging the urban: Forms, rhythms, politics

“…Our collective efforts owe a major debt to the work of Deleuzian geography, particularly to the ways its proponents have staged new conceptual openings, unique points of contestation, as well as unfamiliar modes of intersection among politics, media, economy, ethics, and ecology (Cockayne et al, 2017; Dewsbury, 2011; Doel & Clarke, 2007; Roberts & Dewsbury, 2021; Woodward & Jones III, 2005). The various strands of assemblage theory have opened up multiple possibilities of speaking about urbanisation processes in ways that exceed binary formulations and their structural absences.…”

Negativity: space, politics and affects

“…I admit that I'm still seduced by the lures of non-organic vitalism. Exposure to the 'vital force of difference' 23 means that there is always more in this shimmering world -who wouldn't be entranced by this promise for critical politics? Our habits of prioritising molar imaginations of finite beings can certainly risk overlooking vital ongoing molecular differentiation that takes place through different forms of expression.…”

“…For post-phenomenological thinkers of immanence, such concerns still likely represent a misguided obsession with finite organic beings. Roberts and Dewsbury, 24 for example, reject what they call a phenomenological 'micro-geographical' approach to thinking difference through the straightjacket of recognition, presenting us with a fundamental choice: either phenomenological transcendence or post-phenomenological immanence. And they stress that this is our choice to make.…”