Progressive Geographies

Milton Santos, For a New Geography, translated by Archie Davis – University of Minnesota Press, November 2021

[Update there is a New Books Network discussion with the translator here]

Originally published in 1978 in Portuguese, For a New Geography is a milestone in the history of critical geography and it marked the emergence of its author, Milton Santos (1926–2001), as a major interpreter of geographical thought, a prominent Afro-Brazilian public intellectual, and one of the foremost global theorists of space.

Published in the midst of a crisis in geographical thought, For a New Geography functioned as a bridge between geography’s past and its future. In advancing his vision of a geography of action and liberation, Santos begins by turning to the roots of modern geography and its colonial legacies. Moving from a critique of the shortcomings of geography from the field’s foundations as a modern science to the outline of a new field of critical geography, he sets forth both an ontology of space and a methodology for geography. In so doing, he introduces novel theoretical categories to the analysis of space. It is, in short, both a critique of the Northern, Anglo-centric discipline from within and a systematic critique of its flaws and assumptions from outside.

Critical geography has developed in the past four decades into a heterogeneous and creative field of inquiry. Though accruing a set of theoretical touchstones in the process, it has become detached from a longer and broader history of geographical thought. For a New Geographyreconciles these divergent histories. Arriving in English at a time of renewed interest in alternative geographical traditions and the history of radical geography, it takes its place in the canonical works of critical geography.

Andrew Gamble, After Brexit and Other Essays & The Western Ideology and Other Essays – Bristol University Press, 2021

After Brexit and Other Essays brings together Gamble’s most influential writings on British politics and political economy from the last 40 years, reflecting on issues that animate British politics, from the decline of the economy and reshaping the welfare state to the transformation of political parties and devolution to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The Western Ideology and Other Essays illustrates the main themes of Gamble’s writing in intellectual history and the history of ideas, including economic liberalism and neoliberalism, and critiques from both social democratic and conservative perspectives.

More details here; each book’s description has a link to their introductions. DISCOUNT35 code to get the books at a reduced price (as of April 2021).

Sémir Badir, Magritte et les philosophes – Les Impressions Nouvelles, May 2021

” L’œuvre de René Magritte est extrêmement populaire, c’est sûr. Pourtant, parmi les spécialistes de l’histoire de la peinture, beaucoup affichent à son égard un certain dédain. Mauvaise peinture, ose-t-on dire. Images triviales, tours de passe-passe dispensables. Chacun pense ce qu’il veut mais je crois que ces critiques montrent qu’on n’a pas compris l’intention centrale attachée à cette œuvre. Car un travail de la pensée la traverse ; j’irais jusqu’à dire que l’œuvre de Magritte est cela même : l’exercice d’une pensée, d’une pensée en images. Le dédain vient de ce qu’on n’a pas véritablement envisagé ce que signifie « penser en images ».

Dans ce livre, je propose une enquête. En m’appuyant très largement sur les dits et écrits de Magritte recueillis après sa mort, et qui ont accompagné les tableaux tout au long de leur création, je tente de restituer la pensée en images de Magritte. En eux-mêmes les tableaux n’y donnent pas accès : on aurait beau chercher et commenter ce qu’ils signifient, on ne parviendrait pas encore à saisir en quoi ils sont nécessaires à la pensée. Alors je les mets en rapport avec des concepts philosophiques. Je montre, à partir de six études, que les tableaux de Magritte sont comparables à des concepts philosophiques et qu’ils réalisent, au sein de l’œuvre, un travail similaire aux concepts qu’emploient les philosophes pour écrire leur pensée.”

Alex Danchev, Magritte: A Life – Pantheon, November 2021

This is really welcome news – Danchev’s biographies of Georges Braque and Paul Cézanne were very interesting. This book was left incomplete at the time of his death, but has been completed by Sarah Whitfield ( a little more on this here).

The first major biography of the pathbreaking, perpetually influential surrealist artist René Magritte–from the celebrated biographer of Braque and Cézanne.

In this stimulating life of René Magritte (1898-1967), Alex Danchev makes a case for the artist as the single most significant purveyor of images to the modern world. His surreal sensibility, deadpan melodrama, and fine-tuned outrageousness have all become inescapably part of our visual landscape through legendary works such as The Treachery of Images (aka Ceci n’est pas une pipe), and his iterations of the man in a bowler hat, raining down in multiples from the sky or with an apple where his face should be. Danchev explores the path of this highly unconventional artist from his middle-class Belgian beginnings through the years in which he led a small, brilliant band of Belgian surrealists (and famously clashed with André Breton), through his first major retrospective which traveled the United States in 1965 and gave rise to his international reputation.

Using thirty-two pages of color inserts and black-and-white illustrations throughout the text, Danchev delves into a deep examination of Magritte’s artistic development and the profound questions he raised in his work about the very nature of authenticity. Here is a major biography for our time that plumbs the mystery of an iconoclast whose influence can be seen in everyone from Jasper Johns to Beyoncé.

ALEX DANCHEV, who died as he was finishing this biography, was educated at University College, Oxford; Trinity Hall, Cambridge; and King’s College, London. He was the author of the biographies Georges Braque and Cézanne, as well as a new translation of The Letters of Paul Cézanne. He also wrote the essay collections On Art and War and Terror, On Good and Evil and the Grey Zone, and 100 Artists’ Manifestos. For three years before his death, he was professor of international relations at the University of St Andrews, in Scotland.

SARAH WHITFIELD is an art historian, writer, and curator. She is coauthor of the René Magritte: Catalogue Raisonné, and serves on the authentication committee for the Estate of Francis Bacon.

Stéphane Castonguay, The Government of Natural Resources: Science, Territory, and State Power in Quebec, 1867–1939 – UBC Press, April 2021 (paperback due January 2022)

The Government of Natural Resources explores the development of scientific and technical activity in Quebec from Confederation until the eve of the Second World War. At the turn of the twentieth century, the provincial government created scientific services in geology, forestry, fishery, and agronomy, with the goal of exploiting natural resources and occupying territory. The new services sought to amass a corps of skilled employees to support this mission, readily supplied by universities that were producing their first graduates from recently established technical programs. 

Scientific and technical personnel are an often quiet presence within the state, but they play an integral role. By tracing the history of mining, logging, hunting, fishing, and agriculture in Quebec, Stéphane Castonguay reveals how territorial and environmental transformations through scientific activity became a tool of government. 

The production of knowledge about a territory and its natural resources is a key element in power relations, making an active contribution to state formation and the expansion of administrative capacity. The lessons that this thoughtful reconceptualization of resource development offers reach well beyond provincial borders, changing the way we think of science and state power.

Scholars and students of environmental history, the history of science, historical geography, Quebec studies, Canadian history, political science, and science and technology studies will be among the diverse readers for this important work.