Landscape and non-representational theories

Abstract

Landscape research has recently seen a burgeoning of interest around notions of ‘affect’, ‘emotion’, ‘embodiment’, ‘performance’ and ‘practice’. Although these notions can be parcelled together in a variety of ways, in this chapter I want to situate them within the still developing range of work dealing with what has come to be termed non-representational theory. As a style of thinking, non-representational theory emerged in the mid-1990s. Though originally coined by Nigel Thrift, it is today associated with Ben Anderson, John-David Dewsbury, Paul Harrison, Hayden Lorimer, Derek McComack, Mitch Rose and John Wylie, all of whom, like Thrift, are geographers based in the UK. The term ‘theory’ is perhaps a little disingenuous here as it implies something in the singular; non-representational theories may be more useful a term (see Anderson 2009), as it denotes something of a catchall rather than a strict or prescriptive theoretical framework. With this in mind, Hayden Lorimer (2005: 83) has proposed the phrase ‘more-than-representational’, which seems to adequately sum up attempts ‘ … to cope with our self-evidently more-than-human, more-than-textual, multisensual worlds’. Irrespective of the terminology used or the particular shading of non-representational theoryadopted, we can be sure of one thing: an impressive pedigree. Indeed, much of the recent theorisations in this area were presaged within the work of an extensive list of critical thinkers that includes Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and Michel de Certeau. These scholars, along with their approaches to embodiment and practice, are regularly referenced alongside the work of more recent thinkers such as Sara Ahmed, Judith Butler, Elizabeth Grosz and Bruno Latour within the non-representational literature. Although most often associated with the field of geography, non-representational theories have entered a wide range of disciplines, including performance studies, feminist studies, anthropology, science and technology studies, archaeology and tourism, where they have triggered richly varied attempts to tap into issues of race, music, ethics, asylum seeking, gardening, walking, travelling and so forth (McCormack 2003; Tolia-Kelly 2004; Waitt and Lane 2007; McHugh 2009; Nesbitt and Tolia-Kelly 2009; Darling 2010; Simpson 2011. See also Chapters 4, 7, 10 and 25). In common across this breadth of research is an acknowledgement that our understandings of the world are lived, embodied and tangled up with how we do things, our doings and our enactments in the moment (Carolan 2008: 410). In addition to revivifying an emphasis of everyday life, this style of thinking has also drawn attention to the corporeality of our bodies, notions of affect andcontext, and an acknowledgement of the multi-sensuous landscapes in which we find ourselves (Thrift and Dewsbury 2000; Larsen 2008). Researchers who align themselves with non-representational theories thus simultaneously signal an intent to take very seriously the ways in which our bodies participate in the world that surrounds us. In order to mobilize an understanding of how this all figures within landscape studies, thecurrent chapter sketches out an overview of recent offerings from humanities and social sciences literature that touch upon ‘non-representational theory’, before moving on to account for what such an approach to landscape may involve. Following this, I offer some examples of how these theoretical approaches have been applied, noting in particular innovative methods that have emerged, before finishing with a nod to future directions.