'How shall I say it...?' Relating the nonrelational

Harrison, P.

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.

Citation

Harrison, P. (2007). 'How shall I say it...?' Relating the nonrelational. Environment and Planning A, 39(3), 590-608. https://doi.org/10.1068/a3825

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: 2007-02
• Deposit Date: Mar 5, 2007
• Journal: Environment and Planning A
• Print ISSN: 0308-518X
• Electronic ISSN: 1472-3409
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 39
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 590-608
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1068/a3825
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1596161
• Publisher URL: http://www.envplan.com/abstract.cgi?id=a3825