Progressive Geographies

Good few days in Edinburgh, with a chance to catch up with old friends, though the rotten weather didn’t show the city at its finest.

The ‘Bodies in Movement’ seminar on Coriolanus went well, with some really excellent responses from Paul Ennis, Fionnuala O’Neill and Gavin MacDonald, and then questions from the audience. Lots for me to think about. If nothing else I think I convinced a few people to see the recent Ralph Fiennes film version – I showed a couple of clips. Paul has posted his very full, generous and thoughtful comments here (and more generally on his recent conference attendance here). I hope to have a chance to respond to these great comments and questions more fully at some point – they will certainly influence my ongoing work. Thanks to Kam, Karin and Lena for the invitation and hospitality.

The Eyal Weizman lecture for Society and Space was fascinating and well received. It was videoed and we plan to put this up on the open site soon. Much of the material in the talk drew on Eyal’s books Mengele’s Skull and The Least of All Possible Evils, but we are discussing a contribution from him for the print journal. Many thanks to Eyal for accepting the invitation and to Pion for their support of the event.

My Political Geography lecture was in the last slot of the last day of the conference. As with all sessions there were others running in parallel, but there was still a decent audience, and a lively discussion. (Two of my ex-PhD students were presenting at the same time as me, in different sessions, as well as Charlie Withers – three sessions I would have really like to have attended.) My sincere thanks to the journal’s editors for the invitation, Phil Steinberg for his kind introduction, and to Pete Adey and Gavin Bridge for their generous and thoughtful responses. The event was recorded and the plan is to sync it to the powerpoint slides – it was as image-heavy a talk as I’ve ever given. The text, Pete and Gavin’s responses, and a reply from me will all appear in the print journal. You can, in the meantime, see an earlier version of the talk in Kentucky on video, here.

Secure the Volume: Vertical Geopolitics and the Depth of Power from UK College of Arts & Sciences on Vimeo.