Nothing-much geographies, or towards micrological investigations

Philo, C. (2021) Nothing-much geographies, or towards micrological investigations. Geographische Zeitschrift, 109(2-3), pp. 73-95. (doi: 10.25162/gz-2021-0006)

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Abstract

As part of a wider ‘geographical’ reading of writings by Theodor W. Adorno, the Frankfurt School critical theorist, energised by a wish to discern possible lineaments of an ‘anti-fascist geographical imagination’, this paper engages in detail with Adorno’s aphoristic ruminations gathered together as Minima Moralia (2005 [1951]). With its close-grained attention to ‘minimal’ or ‘minor’ things – a bewildering diversity of objects, practices and events that might normally be reckoned of little account – this text exemplifies what Adorno elsewhere frames as a concern for the ‘micrological’, as well as signposting many dimensions of what he will later present more systematically as ‘negative dialectics’ (Adorno 1973 [1966]). This paper reconstructs the multiple geographies integral to many passages in Minima Moralia, working towards an exegesis of what is claimed there about ‘distant nearness’ and ‘space enough between them’, at the same time inspecting Adorno’s austere opposition to ‘affirmationism’ but also readiness to be a phenomenologist – even one with occasional leanings towards a more ‘romantic’ celebration of objects, however unpleasant – of the nothing-much.

Item Type:Articles
Keywords:Earth-Surface Processes, geography, planning and development.
Status:Published
Refereed:Yes
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Philo, Professor Christopher
Authors: Philo, C.
College/School:College of Science and Engineering > School of Geographical and Earth Sciences
Journal Name:Geographische Zeitschrift
Publisher:Franz Steiner Verlag GmbH
ISSN:0016-7479
ISSN (Online):2365-3124
Copyright Holders:Copyright © Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2021
First Published:First published in Geographische Zeitschrift 109(2-3):73-95
Publisher Policy:Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy

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