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The Artifice of Conviction, or, An Internal Geography of Responsibility
Author(s) -
Hannah Matthew,
Strohmayer Ulf
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
geographical analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.773
H-Index - 65
eISSN - 1538-4632
pISSN - 0016-7363
DOI - 10.1111/j.1538-4632.1995.tb00915.x
Subject(s) - postmodernism , conviction , argumentative , materiality (auditing) , epistemology , creativity , sociology , narrative , aesthetics , environmental ethics , social science , philosophy , political science , law , linguistics
This essay addresses one of the defining characteristics of debates within human geography and across the social sciences during the last ten years: the encounter between traditional and postmodern discourses. It is argued that at least one issue has been unduly neglected: the material fact of groundless arguments. Alternatively portrayed as the father of all evils or celebrated as the liberation of scientific creativity, the groundlessness of arguments has to happen before it can be interpreted. The essay discusses examples of texts that accept the groundless happening of their claims head on. Through these examples, it is argued that possible lessons from the encounter with the so‐called “postmodern challenge” include reconsidered notions of both scientific responsibility and argumentative materiality.