The Limits to Mobility: Detours and the Space-Times of the Subject
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Keywords: space, subjectivity, detours, abstraction, mobilities
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract
Authors:
Key MacFarlane, University of California, Santa Cruz
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Abstract
From forced migrations and spaces of waiting for asylum seekers, to social distancing and the everyday disruptions of the Covid-19 pandemic, to related shifts in the rhythms and modes of travel and commuting – the last few years have been especially marked by detours, both as responses to and as reflections of an unfolding crisis. This paper unpacks some of the consequences that a serious engagement with detour has for understanding the co-production of space and subjectivity under capitalism. When viewed as a necessary component of crisis, rather than accidental, detours call into question the longstanding critique of capitalist abstract space as homogenous, rationalizing, and “compressed,” along with the productivist assumptions of more recent conceptions of mobility. Taking detour seriously, as Althusser once argued, is to attend to those aspects of social life that have been otherwise “neglected, rejected, censored, or abandoned.” It means locating the arrhythmia at the heart of abstract space: those refractions, contingencies, and obsolescences that structure the uneven totality that takes the form of mobilities. Mapping these detours, I argue, is bound up with the larger critical project of rethinking the spatiotemporality of the subject today. In both geography and philosophy, subject formation is often conceived against the backdrop of mobility and exchange, whether on the street (Althusser), within the city as a whole (Harvey), or in the course of maritime discovery and conquest (Sloterdijk). What happens when we locate the subject elsewhere, in moments of interruption, standstill, and detour – at the limits to mobility?
The Limits to Mobility: Detours and the Space-Times of the Subject
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Paper Abstract