Old News: Representation and Academic Novelty

Abstract

The new outstrips the old—but only sometimes. This short paper identifies four forms of ‘novelty’ in Anglophone human geography. In taking the case of a nascent ‘nonrepresentational geography’ some concerns are raised about the seeming ennui with representation as a research issue and as a practical and political resource. Far from insisting that ‘old’ intellectual fashions are better than new ones, we simply caution against travelling forward minus some important baggage. By way of seven theses, we finesse critical geography's engagement with representation and argue that any nonrepresentational ‘alternative’ should not be seen as jettisoning the substantial power of representational acts.