“How Shall I Say it … ?†Relating the Nonrelational

Paul Harrison
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Paul Harrison: Department of Geography, University of Durham, Science Laboratories, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, England

Environment and Planning A, 2007, vol. 39, issue 3, 590-608

Abstract: As the ideas of the relational and relationality become part of the everyday conceptual make-up of human geography, in this paper I seek to recall the insistent and incessant importance of the nonrelational. In dialogue with nonrepresentational theory, as well as its critics, I suggest that any thought or theory of relationality must have as its acknowledged occasion the incessant proximity of the nonrelational. The occasion for this discussion is a consideration of the relationship between suffering, pain, or passion and the thematising actions of representation, communication, narrativisation, and theorisation. Such affections, it is claimed, present social science with a particular problem, a problem which revolves around an irreducible nonthematisability within these dimensions of corporeal existence. Drawing on the writings of Butler, Derrida, and Levinas I offer an account of how this problem or impasse allows for a rethinking of the ethical within social analysis and of the nature of representation, corporeality, and intersubjectivity.

Date: 2007
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:39:y:2007:i:3:p:590-608

DOI: 10.1068/a3825

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