Link to Session Platform

Chairs(s):

Natalie Koch, Syracuse University

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Description:

Authoritarianism is a political relationship defined by univocality and subordination of difference to a central authority or vision. Yet for all its orientation toward the singular, authoritarian political relations are astonishingly diverse. They cut across space, time, and scale in ways that are both unexpected and predictable. They can be just as persistent and durable as they are fleeting and ephemeral. They can draw their discursively strength from nostalgic longing for a space-time that was lost, or perhaps just a mythological space-time woven into the likes of nationalist historical dreams. Equally, authoritarian political relations are built and bolstered through future stories – utopian and dystopian alike. Starting from this mix of spaces, scales, presents, pasts, and futures in authoritarian politics, the goal of this session is to advance geographic scholarship on authoritarianism by investigating the idea of “authoritarian space-time” (Koch, forthcoming). Following from the Spring 2022 publication of Spatializing Authoritarianism (ed. N. Koch, Syracuse University Press), which has called for more geographers to seriously engage with the literature on authoritarianism, this paper session unites some of the book chapter authors with a broader group of geographers examining authoritarian geographies, past and present. Papers examine authoritarianism at any scale, place, region, time, or fictive landscape – collectively addressing the questions: what is authoritarian space-time? How is it expressed, experienced, and embodied? By theorizing authoritarian space-time, how can geographers move beyond the limits of existing scholarship on authoritarianism in other disciplines? And geography’s own disciplinary strictures?

Non-Presenting Participants Agenda