A Place More Void

by Paul Kingsbury (Editor), Anna J. Secor (Editor)

A Place More Void takes its name from a scene in William Shakespeare’s "The Tragedy of Julius Caesar," wherein an elderly soothsayer has a final chance to warn Caesar about the Ides of March. Worried that he won’t be able to deliver his message because of the crowded alleyways, the soothsayer devises a plan to find and intercept Caesar in “a place more void.” It is precisely such an elusive place that this volume makes space for by theorizing and empirically exploring the many yet widely neglected ways in which the void permeates geographical thinking.

This collection presents geography’s most in-depth and sustained engagements with the void to date, demonstrating the extent to which related themes such as gaps, cracks, lacks, and emptiness perforate geography’s fundamental concepts, practices, and passions. Arranged in four parts around the themes of Holes, Absences, Edges, and Voids, the contributions demonstrate the fecundity of the void for thinking across a wide range of phenomena: from archives to alien abductions, caves to cryptids, and vortexes to vanishing points.

A Place More Void gathers established and emerging scholars who engage a wide range of geographical issues and who express themselves not only through archival, literary, and socio-scientific investigations, but also through social and spatial theory, political manifesto, poetry, and performance art.

342 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 1, 2021

Reviews

[Kai · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book is an edited volume of geographers concerned with holes, absences, edges, and voids - not just as spatial phenomenon but as that which conditions the very possibility of space. they include ruminations on matrixial art, sasquatch hunters, vortexes, a pit in paris, a tight rope walker, the hauntings of historic academic homophobia and ongoing coloniality. there are sixteen chapters (one of which is mine), making it a hefty volume - though they are a bit bite sized. organized by Kingsbury and Secor into a session at the AAG, the contributors are, variously, gently pushing back on the kind of 'metaphysics of presence' that has re-emerged in some forms of new materialism in the discipline. the authors take a variety of pathways in doing so, especially working through psychoanalysis, materialisms of the void, deconstruction, and queer theory, among others. i would always (and continue) to seek out these cultural geography sessions for their creativity. sometimes a bit wacky, they include art practice, poetry, weird installations, props--even snacks! the chapters i most enjoyed were that by John Wylie, whose work on landscape I hadn't read in years; and by Linz and Secor, who write about the aforementioned importance of snack breaks. it's possible that the concerns of this book are a bit disciplinary specific to geography - but that can be helpful, too!