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Approaches to Human Geography Approaches to Human Geography 00_Aitken and Valentine_Prelims.indd 1 11/20/2014 4:39:21 PM 10 Poststructuralist Theories Paul Harrison Like all ‘isms’, ‘poststructuralism’ is an awkward term and one which continues to generate more confusion, frustration, argument and outright anger than most. One of the main reasons for this is that it is often very unclear quite to whom or what the term refers. Unlike the positivists of the Vienna Circle, for example (see Chapter 2), or indeed the vast majority of Marxists (Chapter 5), feminists (Chapter 4) and realists (Chapter 8), the figures, works and views gathered under the title ‘poststructuralism’ are for the most part not self-selecting; they did not and have not signed up to a manifesto and do not share a credo. Indeed – and as we shall see below – considered at its broadest, the term ‘poststructuralism’ simply describes the state of contemporary continental philosophy, a lineage of philosophical figures and texts stretching back approximately 220 years. In this context the term ‘poststructuralism’ refers to a more or less loosely grouped collection of texts and philosophers which came to prominence in France during the 1960s. Clearly 50 years of vibrant and challenging theory and thought cannot be summed up in a chapter such as this, nor should one rush to attribute one view to what is a diverse and still developing body of thought. Having said this, at the out- set of this chapter I want to suggest three things which give poststructuralism its unique place within the continental tradition. First, there has been a revival of ontological questioning; poststructuralism marks a return to and a revitalization of ‘first philosophy’ – of basic foundational questions of being – though more often than not by treating such foundational questions as contingent historical issues. Second, and following on, poststructuralism is radically anti-essentialist; for post- structuralism, meaning and identity are effects rather than causes. Third, and fol- lowing on again, it has become increasingly clear over the past two decades that poststructuralism has a major ethical aspect, particularly in its concern for radical otherness and difference. If these points sound somewhat obscure, hopefully this chapter will go some way to clarifying them; however, I cannot recommend strongly enough that anybody who is interested should engage with the primary literature itself. The chapter is divided into four main sections. The first of these gives a brief intro- duction to poststructuralism’s anti-essentialism via reflecting on the method of geneal- ogy. The second section moves on to give a somewhat schematic history of poststructuralism, situating it in the wider continental tradition. The third section looks briefly to the future and to the political and ethical demands on poststructuralism. 10_Aitken and Valentine_Ch 10.indd 132 11/20/2014 4:39:47 PM Poststructuralist Theories 133 The final section considers a number of further readings, and reviews two key poststructural geography works. Running throughout the chapter is a rather blunt cri- tique of positivist approaches and of the traditional philosophical and theoretical attempt to escape from history and situation – from the ‘original difficulty of life’, as the American philosopher John Caputo (2000) puts it – the main purpose of which is to simply raise questions concerning the nature of certain assumptions about verifica- tion, representation and truth. The Cold Truth of Genealogy Talking about the giving of definitions, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) claimed that only that which has never had a history can be defined with any certainty. What does this mean? Nietzsche is suggesting that if someone, a philo- sopher perhaps, thinks that all we need for understanding are clear definitions – that one can get to the essence, identity or meaning of something by summing it up in abstract or logical terms – they are badly mistaken: There is their lack of historical sense, their hatred even of the idea of becoming, their Egyptianism. They think they are doing a thing an honour when they dehistoricize it, sub specie aeterni [from the viewpoint of eter- nity] – when they make a mummy of it. All that philosophers have handled for millennia has been conceptual mummies; nothing actual has escaped from their hands alive. They kill, they stuff, they worship, these conceptual idolaters – they become a mortal danger to everything when they worship. (1990: 45) According to Nietzsche, when we think we are talking about essences, facts or things-in-themselves – anything that seems or should be simple, obvious, unproblematic or clear – we forget that everything has a history. Nietzsche is suggesting that those who believe Truth is something that, like money or salvation, can be gained or possessed, those who believe, ‘even to the point of despair, in that which is’ (1990: 45), fail to grasp the shifting, becoming, nature of existence. While a concept seems to identify something certain and immutable, something common, like ‘good’ and ‘evil’ perhaps, or ‘human’ and ‘animal’, or ‘truth’ and ‘error’, or simply ‘positivism’ and ‘poststructuralism’, it is rather the sedimentation of a history of mutations and conflicts over definition, the strata of which outline attempts to wrestle control of the term’s meaning. A concept has all the unity of a mole’s burrow and, like the needle vibrating on a speedometer, a word or a sign marks an ongoing relationship between forces. Nietzsche is warning us to be particularly wary of transcendental claims, be they religious or philosophical–scientific: of claims which whisper the reassuring salvation of ‘now and forever’ – sub specie aeterni – under their breath; of claims which would direct you to Truth with a capital T, Reality with a capital R, the Good with a capital G. When you hear claims like this Nietzsche advises you to start sniffing around, as for all this sweetness something is rotten somewhere; a moral lesson is being instructed as identity is confirmed and contingency disavowed: ‘This workshop where ideals are manufactured seems to me to stink of so many lies’ (1998: 47). As Caputo writes: 10_Aitken and Valentine_Ch 10.indd 133 11/20/2014 4:39:47 PM 134 Philosophies Whatever is called ‘Truth’ and adorned with capital letters masks its own contingency and untruth, even as it masks the capacity for being-otherwise. For our being human spins off into an indefinite future about which we know little or nothing, which fills us with little hope and not a little anxiety, a future to come for which there is no program, no preparation, no prog- nostication. (2000: 36) This is the ‘cold truth’ of genealogy and of poststructuralism: its truth without Truth: its secret which is not a secret; its foundation which is an abyss. The French historian of ideas Michel Foucault (1926–1984), perhaps the most well known of poststructuralists, was deeply influenced by Nietzsche’s work and by the insights that could be gained by genealogy in particular. Foucault practised genealogy as a historical–philosophical method, producing studies of prisons and punishment (1977a) and of human sexuality and subjectivity (1978; 1988; 1990). These studies were detailed genealogies of the various ways in which bodies and minds were and are historically constituted. In his 1971 essay ‘Nietzsche, genealogy, history’ Foucault writes that: Genealogy is grey, meticulous, and patiently documentary. It operates on a field of entangled and confused parchments, on documents that have been scratched over and recopied many times. (1977b: 139) We tend to think that the purpose of historical investigation is to trace the development of a phenomenon, be it morality, sexuality or punishment, by working back towards its hidden source or origin in order to discern the underlying principle or cause – be it climate change, human nature, the civilizing urge of a people, a crisis in the mode of production, the will to power of an individual or their troubled relationship with their mother. And indeed this is how much historical research has been and is conducted. However, such research both assumes and sets out to discover some extrahistorical or transcendental structure or mechanism standing behind, guiding and shaping phenomena, some mechanism which allows words to keep their meaning, desires to always point in one direction and ideas to retain their logic. Genealogy does not seek to discover such a source or secret; rather ‘the genealogist needs history to dispel the chimeras of the origin’ (1977b: 144). The aim is not recovery or restitution but dispersion. The aim of genealogy is not to institute a despotic aspatial and ahistorical sub specie aeterni in our thought and methods but to catch a glimpse of life as it takes flight and to be obligated by this movement; to understand history as a productive, differential field. Thus for Foucault: it is no longer an identity that we need to recover … but a difference. It is no longer a positive ideal that needs to be restored but simply a certain capacity to resist identities that are imposed upon us just to set free our capacity to invent such new identities for ourselves as circumstances allow. (Caputo, 2000: 34) If Foucault refuses to posit transcendental or metaphysical causes to events, to give a simple narrative to history and an explanation to the present, how does he construct his accounts? Again Foucault follows Nietzsche, stepping back from reason and 10_Aitken and Valentine_Ch 10.indd 134 11/20/2014 4:39:48 PM Poststructuralist Theories 135 towards sensation, from theory to practice, from brain to nose. For Foucault, all we have to hold onto is the body in all its unforeseeable mutability: The body is the inscribed surface of events (traced by language and dis- solved by ideas), the locus of a dissociated Self (adopting the illusion of a substantial unity), and a volume in perpetual disintegration.
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