I work across urban, political, and socio-cultural geographies, and my research speaks to literatures on migration and citizenship, sexuality and space, and urban politics and governance. Supervisors: Patricia Ehrkamp
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2019
The relation between difference and space has long been and continues to be an animating problem ... more The relation between difference and space has long been and continues to be an animating problem in theoretical and political conversations across the discipline of geography, including in much recent work on encounter. In this paper, we make the case for the value of a less explored angle on space in Deleuze's work, which we call the topologies of space-as-difference. We highlight the Möbius strip as a central figure in his ontological system, and we show the significance of this topological structure both for understanding key Deleuzian concepts, such as the virtual and actual, and for understanding space and difference in productive ways. We demonstrate this by showing how Deleuzian topologies of difference enable us to further theorise the encounter-a key theme in recent geographical scholarship-as spatial and embodied, connecting up with material feminism and work on the skin, touch, and breath. We suggest that Deleuze's concept of space-as-difference thus contributes to the intensification of relational and topological approaches to space that are currently shaping the discipline. K E Y W O R D S body, Deleuze, difference, encounter, materialism, space, topology
This paper examines the emerging trend for city governments to declare themselves compassionate. ... more This paper examines the emerging trend for city governments to declare themselves compassionate. Opening up the ‘compassionate city’ as an object of critical scrutiny, we outline some of the key ways that compassion has been approached in critical scholarship before turning our attention to the politics of these urban commitments to compassion as they are enacted in practice. Focusing on the city of Louisville, where the ‘compassionate city’ imaginary has been taken on both by politicians and by economic, migrant and racial justice activists, we examine the potential of compassion as and in relation to other political grammars, and consider the polyvalent nature of the compassionate city as it has shaped public debate and political struggle in the city. We argue that this turn toward compassion should be evaluated and understood neither in terms of the good intentions of compassion proponents nor exclusively through analyses that reduce compassion to a single logic to be critiqued, but, instead, in terms of its contingent politics. In doing so, we respond to recent debates about the specificity of the political by emphasizing that the meaning of politics and the political grammars through which we understand urban problems are never the province of critical scholarship alone, and we highlight the value of approaches that can sensitize us to the ways that politics—and its meaning—can itself become a problem as the political nature of the compassionate city is called into question.
The concept of difference has long been integral to geographical thought. However, it is rare for... more The concept of difference has long been integral to geographical thought. However, it is rare for geographers to consider precisely what difference is, or how it functions, and there are several contrasting traditions through which difference is understood. We argue that geographers could helpfully extend their theoriza-tions of difference through Deleuze's philosophy of 'difference-in-itself'. We examine the value of a 'differ-ence-in-itself' that views difference as generative, originary, and primary, in productive tension with conceptions of difference that tend to, purposefully or otherwise, subordinate difference to presupposed identity-based, representational categories, or dialectical forms of contradiction and opposition.
Encounters across difference—in city spaces marked by diverse migration trajectories, cultural di... more Encounters across difference—in city spaces marked by diverse migration trajectories, cultural differences, and racialized hierarchies—have captured the attention of urban scholars concerned with both the challenge of ''living with difference'' and the promise of multicultural conviviality that inhere in the super-diversity of many cities. Expanding on approaches that focus on analyzing the conditions of a good or ''meaningful'' encounter that can reduce prejudice or promote intercultural understanding, this paper brings interviews with queer Asian men in Sydney, Australia into dialogue with Sara Ahmed's revaluation of the ''bad encounter.'' It shows how research on encounters can more productively engage with how negative encounters can become meaningful political occasions in their own right. Focusing on the problem of sexual racism as it emerges in accounts shared by participants, the paper highlights dating and sex as important moments through which the aesthetic orderings of race, gender, and sexuality shape the unevenly shared spaces of citizenship and urban life.
The concept of difference has long been integral to geographical thought. However, it is rare for... more The concept of difference has long been integral to geographical thought. However, it is rare for geographers to consider precisely what difference is, or how it functions, and there are several contrasting traditions through which difference is understood. We argue that geographers could helpfully extend their theorizations of difference through Deleuze's philosophy of 'difference-in-itself'. We examine the value of a 'difference-in-itself' that views difference as generative, originary, and primary, in productive tension with conceptions of difference that tend to, purposefully or otherwise, subordinate difference to presupposed identity-based, representational categories, or dialectical forms of contradiction and opposition.
This paper mobilizes an Arendtian understanding of politics emphasizing plurality and appearance ... more This paper mobilizes an Arendtian understanding of politics emphasizing plurality and appearance in order to examine a series of projects convened by the City of Sydney council between 2010 and 2013 that were intended to address issues faced by queer people from “culturally and linguistically diverse” communities. Drawing on interviews with participants, as well as archival materials, I argue that these efforts carved out spaces in which racialized queer people in Sydney could appear politically and in which the uneven geographies produced by the mutually constitutive regimes of sexuality and race could become an object of differentially shared concern. Yet, these projects were themselves necessarily shaped by the very dynamics of racialization and normativity to which they responded, and the paper asks how we might differently live with and beyond the fantasy of multicultural queer inclusion at work in these efforts. In doing so, this paper suggests a different way of relating to the binaries (radical/assimilationist, disruption/recognition, state/non-state) that have informed many queer analyses and also contributes to literatures in critical urban and political geography that seek to develop contextually-sensitive understandings of politics that can account for more modest forms of political engagement with existing orders.
This paper uses Jacques Rancière's conception of the partition of the sensible to interrogate the... more This paper uses Jacques Rancière's conception of the partition of the sensible to interrogate the aesthetic regimes and spatial coordinates that animated public debate about Park 51—the Islamic community center near the World Trade Center site in Manhattan. Understanding conflicts over mosques as potential struggles over the conditions of membership in a community, I suggest that many of the arguments in favor of Park 51 reinforced a partition of the sensible in which Islamophobia could resonate. At stake in these debates—which turned on different understandings of the distance that separated the proposed center from the WTC site—is the relationship between American Muslims and the narratives of trauma constructed around the September 11th attacks. I conclude by exploring the projects proposed by Park 51 organizers as potential sites of everyday micropolitics that could subtly “jolt” existing orders in the interest of reconfiguring the “common sense” of a community.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2019
The relation between difference and space has long been and continues to be an animating problem ... more The relation between difference and space has long been and continues to be an animating problem in theoretical and political conversations across the discipline of geography, including in much recent work on encounter. In this paper, we make the case for the value of a less explored angle on space in Deleuze's work, which we call the topologies of space-as-difference. We highlight the Möbius strip as a central figure in his ontological system, and we show the significance of this topological structure both for understanding key Deleuzian concepts, such as the virtual and actual, and for understanding space and difference in productive ways. We demonstrate this by showing how Deleuzian topologies of difference enable us to further theorise the encounter-a key theme in recent geographical scholarship-as spatial and embodied, connecting up with material feminism and work on the skin, touch, and breath. We suggest that Deleuze's concept of space-as-difference thus contributes to the intensification of relational and topological approaches to space that are currently shaping the discipline. K E Y W O R D S body, Deleuze, difference, encounter, materialism, space, topology
This paper examines the emerging trend for city governments to declare themselves compassionate. ... more This paper examines the emerging trend for city governments to declare themselves compassionate. Opening up the ‘compassionate city’ as an object of critical scrutiny, we outline some of the key ways that compassion has been approached in critical scholarship before turning our attention to the politics of these urban commitments to compassion as they are enacted in practice. Focusing on the city of Louisville, where the ‘compassionate city’ imaginary has been taken on both by politicians and by economic, migrant and racial justice activists, we examine the potential of compassion as and in relation to other political grammars, and consider the polyvalent nature of the compassionate city as it has shaped public debate and political struggle in the city. We argue that this turn toward compassion should be evaluated and understood neither in terms of the good intentions of compassion proponents nor exclusively through analyses that reduce compassion to a single logic to be critiqued, but, instead, in terms of its contingent politics. In doing so, we respond to recent debates about the specificity of the political by emphasizing that the meaning of politics and the political grammars through which we understand urban problems are never the province of critical scholarship alone, and we highlight the value of approaches that can sensitize us to the ways that politics—and its meaning—can itself become a problem as the political nature of the compassionate city is called into question.
The concept of difference has long been integral to geographical thought. However, it is rare for... more The concept of difference has long been integral to geographical thought. However, it is rare for geographers to consider precisely what difference is, or how it functions, and there are several contrasting traditions through which difference is understood. We argue that geographers could helpfully extend their theoriza-tions of difference through Deleuze's philosophy of 'difference-in-itself'. We examine the value of a 'differ-ence-in-itself' that views difference as generative, originary, and primary, in productive tension with conceptions of difference that tend to, purposefully or otherwise, subordinate difference to presupposed identity-based, representational categories, or dialectical forms of contradiction and opposition.
Encounters across difference—in city spaces marked by diverse migration trajectories, cultural di... more Encounters across difference—in city spaces marked by diverse migration trajectories, cultural differences, and racialized hierarchies—have captured the attention of urban scholars concerned with both the challenge of ''living with difference'' and the promise of multicultural conviviality that inhere in the super-diversity of many cities. Expanding on approaches that focus on analyzing the conditions of a good or ''meaningful'' encounter that can reduce prejudice or promote intercultural understanding, this paper brings interviews with queer Asian men in Sydney, Australia into dialogue with Sara Ahmed's revaluation of the ''bad encounter.'' It shows how research on encounters can more productively engage with how negative encounters can become meaningful political occasions in their own right. Focusing on the problem of sexual racism as it emerges in accounts shared by participants, the paper highlights dating and sex as important moments through which the aesthetic orderings of race, gender, and sexuality shape the unevenly shared spaces of citizenship and urban life.
The concept of difference has long been integral to geographical thought. However, it is rare for... more The concept of difference has long been integral to geographical thought. However, it is rare for geographers to consider precisely what difference is, or how it functions, and there are several contrasting traditions through which difference is understood. We argue that geographers could helpfully extend their theorizations of difference through Deleuze's philosophy of 'difference-in-itself'. We examine the value of a 'difference-in-itself' that views difference as generative, originary, and primary, in productive tension with conceptions of difference that tend to, purposefully or otherwise, subordinate difference to presupposed identity-based, representational categories, or dialectical forms of contradiction and opposition.
This paper mobilizes an Arendtian understanding of politics emphasizing plurality and appearance ... more This paper mobilizes an Arendtian understanding of politics emphasizing plurality and appearance in order to examine a series of projects convened by the City of Sydney council between 2010 and 2013 that were intended to address issues faced by queer people from “culturally and linguistically diverse” communities. Drawing on interviews with participants, as well as archival materials, I argue that these efforts carved out spaces in which racialized queer people in Sydney could appear politically and in which the uneven geographies produced by the mutually constitutive regimes of sexuality and race could become an object of differentially shared concern. Yet, these projects were themselves necessarily shaped by the very dynamics of racialization and normativity to which they responded, and the paper asks how we might differently live with and beyond the fantasy of multicultural queer inclusion at work in these efforts. In doing so, this paper suggests a different way of relating to the binaries (radical/assimilationist, disruption/recognition, state/non-state) that have informed many queer analyses and also contributes to literatures in critical urban and political geography that seek to develop contextually-sensitive understandings of politics that can account for more modest forms of political engagement with existing orders.
This paper uses Jacques Rancière's conception of the partition of the sensible to interrogate the... more This paper uses Jacques Rancière's conception of the partition of the sensible to interrogate the aesthetic regimes and spatial coordinates that animated public debate about Park 51—the Islamic community center near the World Trade Center site in Manhattan. Understanding conflicts over mosques as potential struggles over the conditions of membership in a community, I suggest that many of the arguments in favor of Park 51 reinforced a partition of the sensible in which Islamophobia could resonate. At stake in these debates—which turned on different understandings of the distance that separated the proposed center from the WTC site—is the relationship between American Muslims and the narratives of trauma constructed around the September 11th attacks. I conclude by exploring the projects proposed by Park 51 organizers as potential sites of everyday micropolitics that could subtly “jolt” existing orders in the interest of reconfiguring the “common sense” of a community.
Uploads
Papers by Derek Ruez