Deconstruction on the Move: From Libidinal Economy to Liminal Materialism

M A Doel
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M A Doel: School of Social Science, Liverpool John Moores University, Trueman Building, 15-21 Webster Street, Liverpool L3 2ET, England

Environment and Planning A, 1994, vol. 26, issue 7, 1041-1059

Abstract: In the wake of the Möbius spiralling of relativism and reflexivity, much of the theoretically inclined literature within human geography has turned to the motifs of difference and otherness as a possible basis for fostering a coming together and rapprochement of previously incommensurate theoretical-practices. Much of this effort has been undertaken in an explicit attempt to maintain political, moral, and ethical responsibility in the face of a dangerous slide into passive nihilism and indifference. In the first half of the paper I argue that the attempt to forge a universal currency which would enable difference to circulate freely within contemporary human geography is flawed for three interrelated reasons. First, by working through a libidinal economy of negation it forces difference to conform to the Same. Specifically, difference is captured as so-many standard deviations from the Norm. Second, this apparatus of capture is predestined to yield a state of confusion, imprecision, and indistinction which can only be contained within a quotation market. Third, by dwelling upon negation and appropriation, and through capturing difference within a normalized economy of the Same, the forging of a universal currency within a quotation market deprives itself of the ability to effectively affirm difference, otherness, alterity, and singularity in and of themselves. Such an affirmation would require an act of ex-appropriation, rather than one of appropriation. Consequently, by drawing upon the liminal materialism of a deconstructive experience, in the second half of the paper I explore four movements of ex-appropriation: radical passivity, destabilization on the move, telephony, and picnolepsy. The paper concludes with a discussion of the ethics of the event.

Date: 1994
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:26:y:1994:i:7:p:1041-1059

DOI: 10.1068/a261041

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