1,721,155 research outputs found
Italian Studies, Italian Theory and the politics of trans-lation
No full textItalian Theory has emerged as the result of the search for new conceptual frameworks in the face of a series of international political events concerning not only the proliferation of states of exception but also of new forms of politicization of life related to biomedical science and the biosecurization of spaces. In this essay, I consider how Italian Theory has come into existence in<br/>Western academia and beyond through its productive travels among area studies, the humanities, and the social sciences. In particular, I reflect on how US-based Italian Studies—joining forces with scholars in other fields on the two sides of the Atlantic—engage in practices of trans-lation that fundamentally contribute to the ‘‘packing’’ of contemporary Italian political philosophy as ‘‘Italian Theory’’. Such practices have significantly impacted on Human Geography and the social sciences in general, and influenced how highly theoretical work originated outside the Anglophone ‘‘academic core’’ is (re)produced, legitimated, and circulated internationally
Claude Raffestin's Italian travels
No full textThis paper is focused on the contribution that French Swiss geographer Claude Raffestin has made to Italian geography studies and, more generally, on his role in linking Italian geography to social theory and philosophy. It also explores the adoption of, and the engagement with, his ideas by a select group of Italian geographers during the last three decades or so. The first part of this paper claims that one reason for such an influence is Raffestin’s capacity to be often conceptually ‘ahead of time’ and to his extraordinary capacity to present his theoretical approach in a very accessible way. While reflecting on how his concepts of ‘territory’ and ‘territoriality’, together with his speculation on the relationship between semiotics, power, and space, left a deep mark on the ways in which the discipline is practised in Italy today, the paper also shows how and why other aspects of Raffestin’s work were less received. The second part of this paper is thus focused on four key ‘intersections’ of people, concepts, events, etc in which Raffestin’s specific contribution to the Italian intellectual scene became particularly remarkable. The conclusion, while restating that any clear cultural mapping of Raffestin’s ‘Italian travels’ is, perhaps, an operation doomed to failure (if anything, because of the complexity of his diverse interventions), at the same time highlights how his work has been and continues today to be of extraordinary relevance for Italian geographers and for their practic
The Cultural Geographies of Landscape.
Full text linkThe concept of cultural landscape has been at the core of the scientifi c concerns of generations of geographers and geographical understandings of landscape have also infl uenced the ways in which modern landscape has been conceived in cognate disciplines. This paper, a modifi ed version of the author’s Inaugural Lecture as Professor of Cultural Geography at Wageningen University, will briefl y refl ect, with the help of some biographical hints, on the nature of Geography and in particular on the 'power of landscape' for spatial theory and spatial analysis. In the fi nal part of the paper a particular att ention is given to therelationship between the cultural landscape and tourism and travel, envisioned as key expressions of the spatialities of the ‘Modern’
The Island: Work, Tourism and the Biopolitical
No full textThis paper reflects on the biopolitical implications for tourists and workers of enclavic tourist resorts. I contend that the concept of ‘the Island’ captures very well the metaphorical, but also the functional proximity between many tourist ‘islands’ and other past and contemporary forms of encampment and seclusion. I will thus explore the relationship between the idea of ‘the Island’ in tourism and the production and reproduction of what are supposedly docile bodies and minds. I will suggest that in the island-like resort, the docile bodies of the tourist and of the worker come into contact and interact in very particular ways, marked by the distinct nature of the context that hosts their encounter. The space of that encounter is a very interesting haptic contact zone in the production of the tourist experience, a zone where ideas about life, class, habitus, gender, sexuality, the body, etc. are negotiated and where the very concept of work is questioned and may take unpredictable expressions. This is a space that the capitalist production of leisure tries to manage, tame and possibly reduce to a minimum but, paradoxically, this is also a space without which the endless re-enactment of the tourist performance in that place (a re-enactment that constitutes the very foundation of any tourist resort) would simply be impossibl
Italian cultural geography, or the history of a prolific absence
No full textPerhaps there is no such thing as an ‘Italian cultural geography’. Although it would be more correct to say that within Italian academic geography, there is no clearly identifiable sub-discipline that could possibly correspond to this label. There is nothing in the Italian geographical tradition that matches, for instance, the body of reflection that emerged in British geography in the 1980s and 1990s, following the pioneering work of scholars such as Denis Cosgrove, Stephen Daniels and Peter Jackson. There are no Chairs in Cultural Geography, and few university courses of that name. Several years ago, Venetian geographer Fabio Lando (1995: 495) would remark, indeed, on the invisibility of cultural geography in the various disciplinary histories produced in recent times (e.g. Corna Pellegrini 1987; Corna Pellegrini and Brusa 1990)
(Im)mobile Geographies
Full text linkThe growing tendency to evaluate – sometimes even ''measure'' – the ''productivity'' of academics is seriously affecting what we consider to be relevant geographical output. This tendency is also significantly reshaping the actual geographies of the disciplinary debate, by introducing important debates about the relationship between one English speaking mainstream international literature and the different national schools. However, the related discussion on the Anglo-American hegemony in geography seems to be strongly influenced by the growing request on the part of university management to identify ways of ''ranking'' good research and how to respond to the increasing internationalization of academic work. This paper will discuss the effects of neoliberal agendas on how geographical work is promoted, produced and circulated in Europe, with different results in different contexts; in some cases originating perverse impacts on the quality of geographical work; in others, creating the opportunity for innovative agendas and for more transparent ways of managing academic careers
Giorgio Agamben and the new biopolitical nomos
No full textIn this paper I reflect on the progressive normalization of a series of geographies of exception within Western democracies and, in particular, the relation of these to the new biopolitical power that is progressively affirming itself in our everyday lives - and that appears to be imposing itself as the new, secret, ontology of the political. I do so by engaging with the work of Giorgio Agamben and, specifically, interrogating the spatial architecture that underpins his theory of sovereign power. Starting from Agamben's spatial conceptualizations, I explore his attempt to trace the contours and the secret coordinates of the contemporary biopolitical nomos, a nomos rooted firmly in the crisis and progressive demolition of that which Carl Schmitt described as the ius publicum Europaeum. I note, moreover, how the definitive dissolution of the geographical nomos that had dominated the two centuries preceding the First World War, and the lack of a new, alternative, geographical nomos in the century which followed, can also be grasped by critically rereading some key episodes in the history of European geography; in particular, the contested legacy of the work of Friedrich Ratzel's grand geographical project and the Geopolitik experiment. What I suggest is that to understand the deep nature of the geographies of exception that arm the global war on terror, it is vital that we think in terms of a theory of space in order to try to unveil the Arcanum, the secret enigma of the empty centre around which turn the wheels of a new, macabre, geo-biopolitical machine
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