[News] CfP RGS-IBG 2023: Geographies of disappearance

[Jan S. Hutta]

This call might be of interest to some on this list.

Best, Jan


*Geographies of disappearance*

RGS-IBG Annual Conference, London, 29 August to 1 September 2023

Session organizer: Jan Simon Hutta (University of Bayreuth)

While the geographies of power have long scrutinized issues of visuality 
– the gaze, the spectacle, surveillance, cartographic knowledge, etc. – 
there is also growing interest in disappearance as a mode of power and 
governance. This includes for instance work on the annihilation and 
physical disappearance of subaltern groups and political dissidents in 
the context of state terror, border regimes and war (e. g. Gregory 2018; 
León 2015; Wright 2018); engagements with epistemic invisibilization 
born by colonialism, the plantation and the holocaust (e. g. Castleden 
2013; Sullivan/Tuana 2007; Trouillot 1995); geographies of ignorance 
produced in the context of agribusiness and resource extraction (e. g. 
Dev et al. 2022; Kleinman/Suryanarayanan 2023); studies of state secrecy 
and clandestine actor formations (e. g. Hutta 2022; Rappert/Balmer 
2023); as well works on landscapes of destruction and memorialization 
(e. g. Gordillo 2014; Schindel/Colombo 2014). Various authors also 
tackle the methodological challenges around researching and representing 
the annihilated, the ignored and the disappeared (e. g. Hartman 2019; 
Navaro 2020). At the same time, in queer and migration studies and in 
debates on the more-than-representational, becoming-imperceptible is 
approached as a tactic of subversion and resistance (Colls 2012; 
Papadopoulos/Tsianos 2007; Villiers 2012).

The aim of this session is to bring into conversation works that engage 
with disappearance as a mode of power, as a site of resistance, and as a 
methodological challenge. Contributions can engage, for instance:

*necropolitical regimes of disappearance

*obfuscated ecological devastation

*state secrecy

*white ignorance

*the politics of remembering and forgetting

*queer and resistant (in-)visibility

*traces and ephemeral archives

*ruins and rubble

*approaches to analysing gaps and silences

*embodied knowledge

*speculative methodologies

The session is intended to be in-person. If you are interested in 
participating, please send a short abstract (150-300 words) along with 
your name, e-mail address and affiliation to 
jan.hutta[at]uni-bayreuth.de by 10 March 2023.

References

Castleden, H; Daley, K; Sloan Morgan, V; Sylvestre, P (2013) /Settlers 
unsettled: Using field schools and digital stories to transform 
geographies of ignorance about Indigenous peoples in Canada/. /Journal 
of Geography in Higher Education /37 (4): 487–499.

Colls, R (2012) /Feminism, bodily difference and non-representational 
geographies/. /Trans Inst Br Geog /37 (3): 430–445.

Dev, L; Miller, K M; Lu, J; Withey, L S; Hruska, T (2022) /Ambiguous 
spaces, empirical traces: Accounting for ignorance when researching 
around the illicit/. /prog hum geogr /46 (2): 652–671.

Gordillo G R (2014) /Rubble: The Afterlife of Destruction/. Durham: Duke 
University Press.

Gregory, D (2018) /Eyes in the sky – bodies on the ground/. /Critical 
Studies on Security /6 (3): 347–358.

Hartman S V (2019) /Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate 
Histories of Social Upheaval/. First edition. New York, London: W.W. 
Norton et Company.

Hutta, J S (2022) /Necropolitics beyond the exception: Parapolicing, 
milícia urbanism, and the assassination of Marielle Franco in Rio de 
Janeiro/. /Antipode /54 (6): 1829–1858. DOI: 10.1111/anti.12866.

Kleinmann, D L; Suryanarayanan (2023) /Ignorance and industry: 
Agrochemicals and honey bee deaths/ In Groß M and McGoey L (eds) 
Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies. Second edition: 
201–210. London, New York, NY: Routledge.

León J de (2015) /The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the 
Migrant Trail/. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Papadopoulos, D; Tsianos, V (2007) /The autonomy of migration: The 
animals of undocumented mobility/ In Hickey-Moody A and Malins P (eds) 
Deleuzian Encounters: Studies in Contemporary Social Issues: 223–235. 
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Navaro, Y (2020) /The aftermath of mass violence: A negative 
methodology/. /Annu. Rev. Anthropol. /49 (1): 161–173.

Rappert, B; Balmer, B (2023) /Ignorance is strength? Intelligence, 
security, and national secrets/ In Groß M and McGoey L (eds) Routledge 
International Handbook of Ignorance Studies. Second edition: 345–353. 
London, New York, NY: Routledge.

Schindel E and Colombo P (2014) /Space and the Memories of Violence: 
Landscapes of Erasure, Disappearance and Exception/. Basingstoke: 
Palgrave Macmillan.

Sullivan S and Tuana N (eds) (2007) /Race and Epistemologies of 
Ignorance/. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press.

Trouillot M-R (1995) /Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of 
History/. Boston: Beacon Press.

Villiers N de (2012) /Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucault, 
Barthes, and Warhol/. Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press.

-- 
Dr. Jan Simon Hutta
Akad. Rat
Kulturgeographie
Universität Bayreuth
kulturgeo.uni-bayreuth.de/de/team/hutta

uni-bayreuth.academia.edu/JanSimonHutta
zeitschrift-suburban.de
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