The aim of this essayistoexplorethe political and ethical potential of (re)birthing through Barad... more The aim of this essayistoexplorethe political and ethical potential of (re)birthing through Barad'sc onceptualisation of transmateriality. This article puts Barad'st hought on entanglement, emergence,and responsibility into conversation with other work in feminist philosophy and psychoanalysis that has grappled with questions of the maternal, birthing, and ethics. On the one hand,this encounter suggests that there are other ways of posing questionsofseparation,responsibility, and power through the maternal that might challenge aspects of Barad'stelling. But at the same time, by bringing Barad'sthought into these conversations, Is how how Barad'st ranspositions of (re)birthing havet he potential to radically reopen and trans*figurefeministethics and politics via amore dispersed, immoderate, and ultimately queer perspectiveonhow the ethics that inheres in the coming into (non)being of the world.
T he theme of this issue, “Gendered and Sexual Mobilities,” opens onto several possibilities rega... more T he theme of this issue, “Gendered and Sexual Mobilities,” opens onto several possibilities regarding the significance of mobility for our understanding of difference—gendered and sexual difference, to be sure, but also questions of race, class, religion, and ethnicity. Drawing on the articles in this issue, I will discuss three tacks one can take in approaching questions ofmobility and difference. This is not an exhaustive typology of approaches to mobility and difference, of course, but a heuristic for understanding the ways that these four articles contribute to this field. First, mobility can call subjects into question, canmark them as different and dangerous and therefore potential objects of surveillance and regulatory intervention. As Tim Cresswell (2006) argues, mobile peoples (such as nomads, Roma, Jews, traveling performers, migrants, and refugees) have historically been cast as threatening to the established social, economic, political, and moral orders of a place. In t...
This article argues for an understanding of material geographies as invested with an unconscious ... more This article argues for an understanding of material geographies as invested with an unconscious dimension. I put forward the notion of spacetimeunconscious not as an inverse, double, or 'other' to Karen Barad's concept of spacetimematter, but as a supplement. Manifesting the spacetimeunconscious through the technique of montage, I draw together a range of phenomena, from the icing of water and the flashing of lightning to the awakenings of traumatised and displaced subjects. Across these juxtaposed parts, I argue that the unfolding of space and time responds to the enigmatic, irreducible message of the unconscious in the real. Spacetimeunconscious arrives as the ambassador of an unknown knowledge remembered foror in the place ofa forgetful substance: water, dreamer, or electron. In an echo of the analytic method, I use montage to create generative connections, discontinuities, and instabilities between events, poetry, literature, and film, in the interstices of which the spacetimeunconscious may make an appearance.
The aim of this essayistoexplorethe political and ethical potential of (re)birthing through Barad... more The aim of this essayistoexplorethe political and ethical potential of (re)birthing through Barad'sc onceptualisation of transmateriality. This article puts Barad'st hought on entanglement, emergence,and responsibility into conversation with other work in feminist philosophy and psychoanalysis that has grappled with questions of the maternal, birthing, and ethics. On the one hand,this encounter suggests that there are other ways of posing questionsofseparation,responsibility, and power through the maternal that might challenge aspects of Barad'stelling. But at the same time, by bringing Barad'sthought into these conversations, Is how how Barad'st ranspositions of (re)birthing havet he potential to radically reopen and trans*figurefeministethics and politics via amore dispersed, immoderate, and ultimately queer perspectiveonhow the ethics that inheres in the coming into (non)being of the world.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
The concept of encounter has long been central to a cosmopolitan ethos in which coming together i... more The concept of encounter has long been central to a cosmopolitan ethos in which coming together in urban public space is expected to yield tolerance and pluralism. More recently scholars have reworked this concept to account for not only what is potentially transformative in encounters but also how encounters
Amidst the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 in the United States and United Kingdom, a fantasy... more Amidst the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 in the United States and United Kingdom, a fantasy took hold that life under lockdown was like living in a time loop. The time loop quickly became the genre of the moment. And yet, however ''timely'' they appeared, most of the time-loop films and series du jour had been conceived and produced before the pandemic. Why and how did they become retrofitted to the temporality of the pandemic? To answer this question, we delve into the split time of the time-loop film. We argue that, in its deferred arrival, the time loop became a fantastical solution to the problems of loneliness, stuckness, and the future that the pandemic stoked but did not originate. Keywords time loops Á lockdown Á trauma Á future Á separation Á alienation Introduction: ''Every Day is Groundhog Day during Lockdown'' In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, on March 23, 2020, the United Kingdom went into lockdown, closing all schools, non-essential businesses, and issuing stayat-home orders for all but ''key workers.'' Although there was no national lockdown in the United States, eight states had issued stay at home orders by March 24, and across the country schools closed and those who could began working from home. While degrees and practices of ''lockdown'' or ''quarantine'' have fluctuated over time, and have been differently and unevenly enacted across national contexts, two
Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2022
Trauma does not have a single definition. Within Western paradigms, across humanities and social ... more Trauma does not have a single definition. Within Western paradigms, across humanities and social sciences, it has largely been characterized through temporal and spatial dislocation. Critical studies of trauma, however, suggest that such framings of rupture, catastrophe, and mass displacement can obscure longer term and structural forms of violence, such as colonialism and gender-based violence. This article explores the displacement, emplacement, and transitivity of trauma through the process of refugee resettlement. It is part of a broader qualitative study that traces how trauma concepts and practices are mobilized in the process of refugee resettlement, specifically for Iraqis who are resettled in the United States. This article argues that trauma is neither a one-time event that is endlessly relived and reactivated in identical episodes nor does trauma emplace a singular geography. Rather, trauma can be understood as a set of serial emplacements and displacements across multiple sites, in our case transnationally. Apart from the distress and geopolitics of war, securitized migration policies produce trauma for people who have been displaced. This trauma of family separation, however, should not be regarded merely as an extension of war-making but as an additional manifestation produced by the global refugee regime.
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2022
This study takes a critical perspective on the making of sectarian difference and Alevi precarity... more This study takes a critical perspective on the making of sectarian difference and Alevi precarity in contemporary Turkey. Drawing on our research from 2013 to 2016, we present an analysis of stories and conversations that took place amongst Alevi and Sunni focus group participants, primarily in Istanbul. These conversations illustrate how sectarian difference can be made in the relations between neighbors as differences become coded as sectarian and taken up within systems of power and domination. At the same time, our research also shows how, in the entangled relations between neighbors, questions of ethics and mutual responsibility arise, though these relations sometimes become uneasy or even unbearable. Finally, we show how the question of "knowing" difference is taken up within a powerladen discourse of sectarianism, one that is tied to the history of Alevis (and others) in Turkey while also extending well beyond this context.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2022
The concept of encounter has long been central to a cosmopolitan ethos in which coming together i... more The concept of encounter has long been central to a cosmopolitan ethos in which coming together in urban public space is expected to yield tolerance and pluralism. More recently scholars have reworked this concept to account for not only what is potentially transformative in encounters but also how encounters
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2022
How do the lost futures of forced displacement converge with the impasse of being resettled to a ... more How do the lost futures of forced displacement converge with the impasse of being resettled to a "post-future" society such as the U.S.? Based on interviews conducted between 2016 and 2019 with resettlement agents, service providers and Iraqis resettled in the U.S., we argue that the condemnation of "expectations" (that is, realistic hope) coupled with the demand for refugees' gratitude means that Iraqis resettled to the U.S. are asked to sustain a "hope against hope" for the fullness of American futurity, even in the face of its collapse. We argue that this prescribed structure of feeling distorts the affective realities of those for whom resettlement has meant at once the loss of past futures (e.g. professional qualifications, career trajectories, social status, or intergenerational cycles of care) and the running aground of capacities for futurity-especially as these capacities are bound up with transnationally stretched and reconfigured familial relations. What is at stake is the recognition of the crisis of futurability in the spacetime of resettlement and the rightfulness of refugee expectations for a more humane and fulfilling resettlement.
In this brief editorial, we chart the past and future of the journal cultural geographies as we l... more In this brief editorial, we chart the past and future of the journal cultural geographies as we launch our 25th volume. On a daring course, we seek to publish the most creative cultural work, and here suggest what that may include.
Companions to Geography is a blue-chip, comprehensive series covering each major subdiscipline of... more Companions to Geography is a blue-chip, comprehensive series covering each major subdiscipline of human geography in detail. Edited and contributed by the disciplines' leading authorities each book provides the most up to date and authoritative syntheses available in its field. The overviews provided in each Companion will be an indispensable introduction to the field for students of all levels, while the cutting-edge, critical direction will engage students, teachers, and practitioners alike.
This study takes a critical perspective on the making of sectarian difference and Alevi precarity... more This study takes a critical perspective on the making of sectarian difference and Alevi precarity in contemporary Turkey. Drawing on our research from 2013 to 2016, we present an analysis of stories and conversations that took place amongst Alevi and Sunni focus group participants, primarily in Istanbul. These conversations illustrate how sectarian difference can be made in the relations between neighbors as differences become coded as sectarian and taken up within systems of power and domination. At the same time, our research also shows how, in the entangled relations between neighbors, questions of ethics and mutual responsibility arise, though these relations sometimes become uneasy or even unbearable. Finally, we show how the question of “knowing” difference is taken up within a power-laden discourse of sectarianism, one that is tied to the history of Alevis (and others) in Turkey while also extending well beyond this context.
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2022
How do the lost futures of forced displacement converge with the impasse of being resettled to a ... more How do the lost futures of forced displacement converge with the impasse of being resettled to a “post-future” society such as the U.S.? Based on interviews conducted between 2016 and 2019 with resettlement agents, service providers and Iraqis resettled in the U.S., we argue that the condemnation of “expectations” (that is, realistic hope) coupled with the demand for refugees’ gratitude means that Iraqis resettled to the U.S. are asked to sustain a “hope against hope” for the fullness of American futurity, even in the face of its collapse. We argue that this prescribed structure of feeling distorts the affective realities of those for whom resettlement has meant at once the loss of past futures (e.g. professional qualifications, career trajectories, social status, or intergenerational cycles of care) and the running aground of capacities for futurity – especially as these capacities are bound up with transnationally stretched and reconfigured familial relations. What is at stake is ...
In this commentary, we respond to Derek Ruez and Daniel Cockayne’s article ‘Feeling Otherwise: Am... more In this commentary, we respond to Derek Ruez and Daniel Cockayne’s article ‘Feeling Otherwise: Ambivalent Affects and the Politics of Critique in Geography’. We do so by picking up ambivalence—or more precisely, ambivalence about ambivalence—as a tool with which Ruez and Cockayne leave us. We find this tool somewhat difficult to grasp, but we understand this as part of its design. Ambivalence undoes the subject’s mastery. In doing so, we find that an airing of ambivalence gives other kinds of entangled, indeterminate, and unknowing relations room to breathe.
The aim of this essayistoexplorethe political and ethical potential of (re)birthing through Barad... more The aim of this essayistoexplorethe political and ethical potential of (re)birthing through Barad'sc onceptualisation of transmateriality. This article puts Barad'st hought on entanglement, emergence,and responsibility into conversation with other work in feminist philosophy and psychoanalysis that has grappled with questions of the maternal, birthing, and ethics. On the one hand,this encounter suggests that there are other ways of posing questionsofseparation,responsibility, and power through the maternal that might challenge aspects of Barad'stelling. But at the same time, by bringing Barad'sthought into these conversations, Is how how Barad'st ranspositions of (re)birthing havet he potential to radically reopen and trans*figurefeministethics and politics via amore dispersed, immoderate, and ultimately queer perspectiveonhow the ethics that inheres in the coming into (non)being of the world.
T he theme of this issue, “Gendered and Sexual Mobilities,” opens onto several possibilities rega... more T he theme of this issue, “Gendered and Sexual Mobilities,” opens onto several possibilities regarding the significance of mobility for our understanding of difference—gendered and sexual difference, to be sure, but also questions of race, class, religion, and ethnicity. Drawing on the articles in this issue, I will discuss three tacks one can take in approaching questions ofmobility and difference. This is not an exhaustive typology of approaches to mobility and difference, of course, but a heuristic for understanding the ways that these four articles contribute to this field. First, mobility can call subjects into question, canmark them as different and dangerous and therefore potential objects of surveillance and regulatory intervention. As Tim Cresswell (2006) argues, mobile peoples (such as nomads, Roma, Jews, traveling performers, migrants, and refugees) have historically been cast as threatening to the established social, economic, political, and moral orders of a place. In t...
This article argues for an understanding of material geographies as invested with an unconscious ... more This article argues for an understanding of material geographies as invested with an unconscious dimension. I put forward the notion of spacetimeunconscious not as an inverse, double, or 'other' to Karen Barad's concept of spacetimematter, but as a supplement. Manifesting the spacetimeunconscious through the technique of montage, I draw together a range of phenomena, from the icing of water and the flashing of lightning to the awakenings of traumatised and displaced subjects. Across these juxtaposed parts, I argue that the unfolding of space and time responds to the enigmatic, irreducible message of the unconscious in the real. Spacetimeunconscious arrives as the ambassador of an unknown knowledge remembered foror in the place ofa forgetful substance: water, dreamer, or electron. In an echo of the analytic method, I use montage to create generative connections, discontinuities, and instabilities between events, poetry, literature, and film, in the interstices of which the spacetimeunconscious may make an appearance.
The aim of this essayistoexplorethe political and ethical potential of (re)birthing through Barad... more The aim of this essayistoexplorethe political and ethical potential of (re)birthing through Barad'sc onceptualisation of transmateriality. This article puts Barad'st hought on entanglement, emergence,and responsibility into conversation with other work in feminist philosophy and psychoanalysis that has grappled with questions of the maternal, birthing, and ethics. On the one hand,this encounter suggests that there are other ways of posing questionsofseparation,responsibility, and power through the maternal that might challenge aspects of Barad'stelling. But at the same time, by bringing Barad'sthought into these conversations, Is how how Barad'st ranspositions of (re)birthing havet he potential to radically reopen and trans*figurefeministethics and politics via amore dispersed, immoderate, and ultimately queer perspectiveonhow the ethics that inheres in the coming into (non)being of the world.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
The concept of encounter has long been central to a cosmopolitan ethos in which coming together i... more The concept of encounter has long been central to a cosmopolitan ethos in which coming together in urban public space is expected to yield tolerance and pluralism. More recently scholars have reworked this concept to account for not only what is potentially transformative in encounters but also how encounters
Amidst the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 in the United States and United Kingdom, a fantasy... more Amidst the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 in the United States and United Kingdom, a fantasy took hold that life under lockdown was like living in a time loop. The time loop quickly became the genre of the moment. And yet, however ''timely'' they appeared, most of the time-loop films and series du jour had been conceived and produced before the pandemic. Why and how did they become retrofitted to the temporality of the pandemic? To answer this question, we delve into the split time of the time-loop film. We argue that, in its deferred arrival, the time loop became a fantastical solution to the problems of loneliness, stuckness, and the future that the pandemic stoked but did not originate. Keywords time loops Á lockdown Á trauma Á future Á separation Á alienation Introduction: ''Every Day is Groundhog Day during Lockdown'' In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, on March 23, 2020, the United Kingdom went into lockdown, closing all schools, non-essential businesses, and issuing stayat-home orders for all but ''key workers.'' Although there was no national lockdown in the United States, eight states had issued stay at home orders by March 24, and across the country schools closed and those who could began working from home. While degrees and practices of ''lockdown'' or ''quarantine'' have fluctuated over time, and have been differently and unevenly enacted across national contexts, two
Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2022
Trauma does not have a single definition. Within Western paradigms, across humanities and social ... more Trauma does not have a single definition. Within Western paradigms, across humanities and social sciences, it has largely been characterized through temporal and spatial dislocation. Critical studies of trauma, however, suggest that such framings of rupture, catastrophe, and mass displacement can obscure longer term and structural forms of violence, such as colonialism and gender-based violence. This article explores the displacement, emplacement, and transitivity of trauma through the process of refugee resettlement. It is part of a broader qualitative study that traces how trauma concepts and practices are mobilized in the process of refugee resettlement, specifically for Iraqis who are resettled in the United States. This article argues that trauma is neither a one-time event that is endlessly relived and reactivated in identical episodes nor does trauma emplace a singular geography. Rather, trauma can be understood as a set of serial emplacements and displacements across multiple sites, in our case transnationally. Apart from the distress and geopolitics of war, securitized migration policies produce trauma for people who have been displaced. This trauma of family separation, however, should not be regarded merely as an extension of war-making but as an additional manifestation produced by the global refugee regime.
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2022
This study takes a critical perspective on the making of sectarian difference and Alevi precarity... more This study takes a critical perspective on the making of sectarian difference and Alevi precarity in contemporary Turkey. Drawing on our research from 2013 to 2016, we present an analysis of stories and conversations that took place amongst Alevi and Sunni focus group participants, primarily in Istanbul. These conversations illustrate how sectarian difference can be made in the relations between neighbors as differences become coded as sectarian and taken up within systems of power and domination. At the same time, our research also shows how, in the entangled relations between neighbors, questions of ethics and mutual responsibility arise, though these relations sometimes become uneasy or even unbearable. Finally, we show how the question of "knowing" difference is taken up within a powerladen discourse of sectarianism, one that is tied to the history of Alevis (and others) in Turkey while also extending well beyond this context.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2022
The concept of encounter has long been central to a cosmopolitan ethos in which coming together i... more The concept of encounter has long been central to a cosmopolitan ethos in which coming together in urban public space is expected to yield tolerance and pluralism. More recently scholars have reworked this concept to account for not only what is potentially transformative in encounters but also how encounters
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2022
How do the lost futures of forced displacement converge with the impasse of being resettled to a ... more How do the lost futures of forced displacement converge with the impasse of being resettled to a "post-future" society such as the U.S.? Based on interviews conducted between 2016 and 2019 with resettlement agents, service providers and Iraqis resettled in the U.S., we argue that the condemnation of "expectations" (that is, realistic hope) coupled with the demand for refugees' gratitude means that Iraqis resettled to the U.S. are asked to sustain a "hope against hope" for the fullness of American futurity, even in the face of its collapse. We argue that this prescribed structure of feeling distorts the affective realities of those for whom resettlement has meant at once the loss of past futures (e.g. professional qualifications, career trajectories, social status, or intergenerational cycles of care) and the running aground of capacities for futurity-especially as these capacities are bound up with transnationally stretched and reconfigured familial relations. What is at stake is the recognition of the crisis of futurability in the spacetime of resettlement and the rightfulness of refugee expectations for a more humane and fulfilling resettlement.
In this brief editorial, we chart the past and future of the journal cultural geographies as we l... more In this brief editorial, we chart the past and future of the journal cultural geographies as we launch our 25th volume. On a daring course, we seek to publish the most creative cultural work, and here suggest what that may include.
Companions to Geography is a blue-chip, comprehensive series covering each major subdiscipline of... more Companions to Geography is a blue-chip, comprehensive series covering each major subdiscipline of human geography in detail. Edited and contributed by the disciplines' leading authorities each book provides the most up to date and authoritative syntheses available in its field. The overviews provided in each Companion will be an indispensable introduction to the field for students of all levels, while the cutting-edge, critical direction will engage students, teachers, and practitioners alike.
This study takes a critical perspective on the making of sectarian difference and Alevi precarity... more This study takes a critical perspective on the making of sectarian difference and Alevi precarity in contemporary Turkey. Drawing on our research from 2013 to 2016, we present an analysis of stories and conversations that took place amongst Alevi and Sunni focus group participants, primarily in Istanbul. These conversations illustrate how sectarian difference can be made in the relations between neighbors as differences become coded as sectarian and taken up within systems of power and domination. At the same time, our research also shows how, in the entangled relations between neighbors, questions of ethics and mutual responsibility arise, though these relations sometimes become uneasy or even unbearable. Finally, we show how the question of “knowing” difference is taken up within a power-laden discourse of sectarianism, one that is tied to the history of Alevis (and others) in Turkey while also extending well beyond this context.
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2022
How do the lost futures of forced displacement converge with the impasse of being resettled to a ... more How do the lost futures of forced displacement converge with the impasse of being resettled to a “post-future” society such as the U.S.? Based on interviews conducted between 2016 and 2019 with resettlement agents, service providers and Iraqis resettled in the U.S., we argue that the condemnation of “expectations” (that is, realistic hope) coupled with the demand for refugees’ gratitude means that Iraqis resettled to the U.S. are asked to sustain a “hope against hope” for the fullness of American futurity, even in the face of its collapse. We argue that this prescribed structure of feeling distorts the affective realities of those for whom resettlement has meant at once the loss of past futures (e.g. professional qualifications, career trajectories, social status, or intergenerational cycles of care) and the running aground of capacities for futurity – especially as these capacities are bound up with transnationally stretched and reconfigured familial relations. What is at stake is ...
In this commentary, we respond to Derek Ruez and Daniel Cockayne’s article ‘Feeling Otherwise: Am... more In this commentary, we respond to Derek Ruez and Daniel Cockayne’s article ‘Feeling Otherwise: Ambivalent Affects and the Politics of Critique in Geography’. We do so by picking up ambivalence—or more precisely, ambivalence about ambivalence—as a tool with which Ruez and Cockayne leave us. We find this tool somewhat difficult to grasp, but we understand this as part of its design. Ambivalence undoes the subject’s mastery. In doing so, we find that an airing of ambivalence gives other kinds of entangled, indeterminate, and unknowing relations room to breathe.
Uploads
Papers by Anna J Secor