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Post‐phenomenology and space: A geography of comprehension, form and power
Author(s) -
Ash James
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
transactions of the institute of british geographers
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.196
H-Index - 107
eISSN - 1475-5661
pISSN - 0020-2754
DOI - 10.1111/tran.12331
Subject(s) - phenomenology (philosophy) , epistemology , comprehension , space (punctuation) , sociology , inequality , power (physics) , being in the world , human geography , garcia , social science , linguistics , mathematics , philosophy , humanities , mathematical analysis , physics , quantum mechanics
Post‐phenomenological geographies have critiqued the idea that the world appears for humans alone. In turn, these geographies have begun to develop concepts to investigate the way entities appear to one another in ways that exceed or confound human sense, while recognising that these entities can only be investigated through human modes of access. Addressing the absence of explicit spatial theorisation in this literature, the paper develops a post‐phenomenological account of space. Building on relational and phenomenological geographies and expanding the work of Tristan Garcia, the paper analyses space in terms of the comprehension and form of entities. In doing so, it defines space as a dual process of differentiation and distanciation that produces different modes of nearness and farness that are specific to the intercomprehension of particular entities. Through this analysis the paper offers an account of power as tied to the spatiality of entities, where power is defined as the inequality of comprehensions between entities and how these inequalities are designed to provoke and encourage particular forms of engagement.