Progressive Geographies

Eileen Joy replies to my earlier question on the relation between speculative realism and medieval studies, in some detail, and with some references to writers such as Graham Harman and Tim Morton, here.

There is a lot in this post, and much that I agree with. I do still think it’s an interesting tension in any use of arguments from speculative realism for historical work – not just medieval, but as far as I’m aware, that’s the historical period that has shown most interest in these arguments.

Eileen says that she doesn’t “see are a way around [or even a problem inherent in]” the more textual-centred approaches. I don’t disagree with this. As I said in my original post the textual analysis is one of the things I most admire in medieval scholarship. And Eileen is certainly correct in saying that people like Graham Harman and others within this loose movement are good, careful, interesting readers of texts. She gives plenty of examples of thinkers – some of whom were at the Speculative Medievalisms event – where textual analysis and engagement is integral to their work.

The question I’m trying to grapple with – and this is why it is an observation of what I see as a tension, and not a critique of this work – is this. While we can talk about “quasi-objects, which are part textual, part flesh, part mineral, part computer code, part cultural belief, part meteorological, part geographical, etc.”, both now and historically, when we do that at a historical distance even the non-textual is mediated through texts. So when Eileen writes,

Another way of putting this more succinctly in relation to Stuart’s question might be to say that, while there may be a more holistic “reality” of early modern “territories” outside of the maps, land surveys, law books, and the like that Stuart has read and surveyed and studied, that “reality” is itself a hybrid of many elements–environmental, atmospheric, agricultural, etc., but also including the textual. There is, I would argue, no “pure” territory, although there is a “real” one, and it is quasi-constructed over time, with stone as well as laws, with wheat fields as well as ideologies.

I broadly agree, although not perhaps with all the terminology. The hybrid nature and the blending of elements all makes sense. But it’s how we get access to the environmental, etc. without it being mediated by text in some form. Does that not mean that, in some way, the textual is, on one level, prioritised? I’m struggling to find the other modes of access to these quasi-objects. So it’s not just that the textual is always there.

The rejection of an either/or emphasis on texts or on things is of course fine, and it’s difficult to disagree with. I can much more comfortably see myself fitting within this way of operating than either of the alternatives. But I wonder if it is quite as radical a move as I understood the speculative turn to be making; and I think that historical work on these kinds of issues has to have a different way of operating.