ZHDSM Doreen Massey

Quotes

"There is a long history of the entanglement of the conceptualisation of space and place with the framing of political positions……………...this paper concerns the relationship between identity and responsibility, and the potential geographies of both." (p.5)

Changing identities:

"Thinking space relationally …has of course been bound up with a wider set of conceptualisations. In particular it has been bound up with a significant refiguring of the nature of identity……This is an argument which has its precise parallel in the reconceptualisation of spatial identities. An understandig of the relational nature of space has been accompanied by arguments about the relational construction of the identity of place. If space is a product of practices, trajectories, interrelations, if we make space through interactions at all levels.....These theoretical reformulations have gone alongside and been deeply entangled with political commitment." (p.5)

"….rethinking identity has been a crucial theoretical complement to a politics which is suspicious of foundational essentialims; a politics which, rather than claiming 'rights' for pregiven identities based on assumptions of authenticity, argues that it is as least as important to challange the identities themselves and thus - a fortiori - the relations through which those identities have been established. " (p.5)

"What I want to do in this paper is to push further this pondering over the space and times of identity and to enquire how they may be connected op with the question of political responsibility." (p.6)

The question:

"If we take seriously the relational construction of identity, then it poses, first, the question of the geography of those relations of construction: the geography through which the identity (of Londen) is established and reproduced. This in turn poses the question, of what is the nature of the social and political relationships to those geographies. What is, in a relational imagination and in light of the relational construction of identity, the geography of our social and political responsibility?" (p.6) (Zie ook Gibson-Graham; beschrijven hoe die er volgens hen uit kan zien. Andere taal, andere verhalen. En emoties. Voorbij verzet komen. Ervaren ook dat het anders kan. En dat je niet hetzelfde moet zijn om community gevoel te hebben)

"Such struggles over place, and the meaningfulness in and of place, return to the argument that in any even minimal recognition of the relational construction of space and identity, place must me a site of negotiation, and that often this will be conflictual negotiation." (p.7)

"Indeed, the process of what they call 'resubjectivation' is an essential tool in J.K. Gibson-Graham's attempt to work through an active politics of place in the context of globalisation." (p.7)

"One important dimension of the phenomenological position is that the meanigful relation to place is intimately bound up with the embodied nature of perception……place must be distuinguishable from simple locatedness. " (p. 8)

"If space is to be really thought relationally…..then global space is no more than the sum of relations, connections, embodimentsand practices. These things are utterly everyday and grounded at the same time as the maym when linked together, go around the world. ....How can that kind of groundedness be made meaningfull across distance? This is an issue beacause, centainly in Westerns societies, there is a hegemonic geography of care and responsibility which takes the form of a nested set of Russian dolls. First there is 'home' than perhaps place and locality, than nation, and so on." (p.9)

"Many reasons for that Russian doll geography…the still remainig impact of physical proximity. The persistant focus on parent-child relationships as the iconic reference point for questions of care and responsibility. There are all the rhetorics of territory, of nation and family, through which we are daily urged to construct our maps of loyalty and affect." (p.9) (Heel belangrijk dit. Andere verhalen tegenover stellen. Zie de verhalen van ouderen en slechte realties met familie. Dat is vaak, ook bij jongeren nog, een belangrijk referentiepunt)

Identity and responsibility:

"I believe this can be linked up with Gibson-Graham's writing in this area. Her argument is that one necessary component in the project of reimagining 'the power differential embedded in the binaries of global and local, space and place (p.29) is a reformulating of local identities. For her a central aspect of this 'resubjectivation' is an imaginative leap in which we can learn 'to think not about the world as subjected to globalization (and the global capitalist economy) but how we are subjected to the discourse of globalization and the identities (and narratives) it dictates to us." (p.10)

"The work of Gibson-Graham has been important in articulating an argument that 'the local' too, has agency. She also argues, crucially, that it is important both theoretically and politically to distuinguish between various contrasting formulations of this agency." (p. 10)

"Gibson-Graham….a form of re-imagination, of an alternative understanding, which she argues is an essential element in the redistribution of the potential for agency: an attempt to get out from under the position of thinking one's identity as simply 'subject to' globalisation: it is a process which goes hand in hand with inhabiting and reforming identity through engagement in embodied political practice." (p.11)

ZHDSM Doreen Massey

Formele omschrijving

Geographies of Responsibility (2004)

Schema: ZHDSM scheme, Context: ZHDSM context
Verwant: ZHDSM Ash Amin