Encountering Berlant part one: Concepts otherwise

Ben Anderson, Stuart Aitken, Jana Bacevic, Felicity Callard, Kwang Dae (Mitsy) Chung, Kathryn S. Coleman, Robert F. Hayden, Sarah Healy, Rita L. Irwin, Thomas Jellis, Joe Jukes, Salman Khan, Steve Marotta, David K. Seitz, Kim Snepvangers, Adam Staples, Chloe Turner, Justin Tse, Marthy Watson, Eleanor Wilkinson

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

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.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)117-142
Number of pages26
JournalThe Geographical Journal
Volume189
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 25 Dec 2022

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
The information, practices and views in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). © 2022 The Authors. The Geographical Journal published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers).

Keywords

  • Berlant
  • Marxism
  • feminism
  • geography
  • queer theory
  • relations

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Encountering Berlant part one: Concepts otherwise'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this