And it still wasn’t enough

Posted on November 17, 2010 by stuartelden

Many people will be aware of the ‘what is it like to be a woman in philosophy’ blog, which makes for very depressing reading. Here’s an example from history – both in time (from 1954) and the discipline… From the preface to an edited book:-

Lastly I must thank my wife… for what amounts to collaboration with me in the production of the book. As a scholar in a field allied to my own, she has always offered valuable criticism of everything I produce before anyone else sees it. As an expert in styling and arranging of manuscripts, she has saved both me, my collaborators, and the publisher much. In addition, she has typed the manuscript and prepared the index.

And just the man’s name appears as editor.

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Gratton on the world and calculation

Posted on November 16, 2010 by stuartelden

Responding to my comments on the RPA, Peter Gratton offers his own thoughts on the conference and the notion of the world here; and then on the question of calculation here. He does the latter through some quotes from Dominique Janicaud’s book Powers of the Rational. I haven’t read it yet, but will do.

Peter mentions my comments at the RPA on bodycounts. I’d debated writing a paper a few years ago called ‘Should we do body counts?’ which I never did. The recent debates about the Wikileaks material made me think of it again, and I said a few things in my RPA talk about the violence of reducing a human life, with its past, family and connections to ‘one’, and seeing that as equivalent to another human life, which is also ‘one’, and the violence that is done in counting. Of course, there is another kind of violence first, but the point was whether the response to that should be a form of calculative violence, of demanding or undertaking body counts. I may come back to this argument sometime.

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Brenner and Elden on Lefebvre, now in Italian

Posted on November 16, 2010 by stuartelden

The piece Neil Brenner and I wrote on Lefebvre – “Henri Lefebvre on State, Space, Territory”, International Political Sociology, Vol 3 No 4, 2009, pp. 353–377 – has now been translated into Italian – “Stato, Spazio e Territorio”, translated by Pasquale Alferj, Dialoghi Internazionali, No 14, 2010, pp. 140-67. You can find the English original here. This issue of Dialoghi Internazionali also has a piece by Franco Farinelli that discusses Lefebvre, and also my Terror and Territory book. Many thanks to Pasquale for the effort of translation – the piece in question came out of the work Neil and I did translating Lefebvre, and I know just how much effort is involved.

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Pierre Macherey – Hegel or Spinoza

Posted on November 16, 2010 by stuartelden

Pierre Macherey‘s Hegel ou Spinoza is coming out in English translation in late 2011, with University of Minnesota Press. The translation is by Sue Ruddick of Department of Geography at University of Toronto. Really great to see this come to fruition – Sue has been working on it for some time – and very good to see geographers doing work of translation and editing.

The introduction and chapter one will be in issue 2 of Society and Space next year.

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Roundup – King Lear, David Harvey, Medieval Cartography

Posted on November 16, 2010 by stuartelden

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen has an interesting post on teaching King Lear here. Lear is part of Chapter Eight of my territory book, and I know the section on it is too long. It will be difficult to cut it. I can’t work out if the reading works as a standalone piece and, if so, where I might send it.

David Harvey’s The Enigma of Capital has been awarded the 2010 Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize (details here).

Interesting looking exhibition and conference on medieval and renaissance cartography in Oxford, June 23-25 2011. Details here.

Posted in Conferences, David Harvey, Medieval Studies | Leave a comment

Wendy Brown – Walled States, Waning Sovereignty

Posted on November 15, 2010 by stuartelden

Bit late on this – Wendy Brown’s book Walled States, Waning Sovereignty is now out. I saw some of the material for the book in advance of her lecture at the Open University last year, and it’s well worth a read. (The video of the lecture and subsequent discussion is here.)

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Sloterdijk – you must change your life!

Posted on November 14, 2010 by stuartelden

English discussion of Sloterdijk’s 2009 book Du mußt dein Leben ändern: Über Anthropotechnik here (via Sean Sturm here). Polity Press are planning a translation of this work.

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Oregon – geography talk and the RPA

Posted on November 14, 2010 by stuartelden

I gave a version of ‘The Birth of Territory’ talk to the dept of geography at the University of Oregon. Some good discussion and some very nice meetings with faculty and grad students. It’s a strong department with some interesting people. Alec Murphy was my host – we’d shared an office when we were both visitors at Queen Mary in London, and it was great to have some time with him and his colleagues.

The talk was arranged at this time becasue I was also attending the Radical Philosophy Association conference on ‘Violence‘. This was very patchy. Enrique Dussel was giving one of the keynotes but they moved this to the first evening because he had to leave early (apparently to pick up an award from Hugo Chavez), and as a consequence I missed it (I was out with the geography department). There was a good ‘author meets critics’ session on his Politics of Liberation book (first volume out in English very soon), so I did at least get to hear him talk. Some of the other sessions were case studies of how not to give academic talks – rambling, incoherent, poorly prepared, read as if the author had never read them before, no attempt at planning to the time slot or keeping to time, read at breakneck speed, etc. Not all papers were like that, of course, and some were very good.

The session I was in was with Peter Gratton and Marie-Eve Morin, who were both great. We felt the papers worked together well and it was really good to meet them and have some time to talk. My paper took a little bit of a detour through the ‘violence’ of the student protests in London last week. I wish I’d see this first though (via John Protevi on APPS).

I met a good number of interesting people, and it was great to see Bill Martin from DePaul again, especially since we just talked about cycling and music which was probably no bad thing at a conference like this.

Posted in Bill Martin, Conferences, Enrique Dussel, Marie-Eve Morin, Peter Gratton, The Birth of Territory, Travel | 1 Comment

The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Human Geography

Posted on November 13, 2010 by stuartelden

This collection now has a release date of April 2011. Details here and table of contents here. It’s edited by John Agnew and Jim Duncan. With each of the contemporary issues there are two chapters on the topic – I wrote the first one on ‘territory’, with Jacques Levy writing the second. I’ve not seen Jacques’s piece so it’s not a debate but rather two people approaching the same topic with likely very different perspectives – my take was very historical. The price is prohibitive, so it’s clearly designed for libraries. One side effect of being a contributor is that I’ll get a copy.

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Society and Space – call for new co-editors

Posted on November 12, 2010 by stuartelden

(Please spread the word)

Environment and Planning D: Society and Space is looking to appoint two new co-editors from early 2011 to replace Emily Brady and Eduardo Mendieta who are stepping down after four years of excellent service to the journal. You can find details of the journal here:

The editor and co-editors work collectively in the preliminary assessment of all submissions, discussion of referee reports, and the whole process of revision, rejection and acceptance of papers. They consult on all matters of policy and content, including editorials, translations and special issues. Often co-editors generate ideas and suggestions for the journal which are again discussed by the team.

We are looking for people with energy and enthusiasm, excellent organisational skills, lots of good ideas, part of diverse networks, and with wide-ranging research interests. The aim is to appoint people whose expertise enhances rather than duplicates those of the existing team: Stuart Elden (Geography, Durham); Deborah Cowen (Geography, Toronto) and Natalie Oswin (Geography, McGill).

We are keen to have a geographically diverse group of editors, so applications both from within and beyond North America and Europe would be very welcome. Applications can be from any discipline: we are looking for people who have an interest in the interrelation of society and space, broadly conceived.

We would particularly welcome co-editors with expertise in social/spatial theory as it relates to nature/environment, race, the postcolonial, and/or economy.

The editor and continuing co-editors will make the decision on appointment, in consultation with the current co-editors and the journal’s founding and honorary editors. Applications should consist of a 1-2 page expression of interest, along with a CV. Expressions of interest should cover why you would be good for the role and what you could bring to the journal. They should outline your interests, expertise and networks, and what you could enable. We would welcome ideas for taking the journal forward: these can be critical of the journal as it is at present.

Please send applications to stuart.elden@durham.ac.uk by 1st December 2010. Informal inquiries are also welcome to that same address.

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