Postmodern Geography

Extreme human geography is a critique that celebrates odd juxtapositions; it is not to be confused with extreme physical geography, which has its own distinct cabinet of remarkable curiosities. Extreme geography as a recurring subversive idea in the history of geographic thought manifests as fantasy mapping, counterfactual geographies, science fiction spaces/places, and other imaginative social critiques. As an identifiable critical “tradition” in modern Western geographic thought, its convoluted heritage is cross-disciplinary and can be traced in fits and spurts from Homer, through Diogenes of Sinope, Saint Francis of Assisi, and Athanasias Kircher, to Guy Debord, Ursula K. Le Guin, and recently a conspiratorial core of radical cartographers at Pennsylvania State University, the founders of Globehead! Journal of Extreme Geography.

Note: WorldCat online reports that only three university libraries in the world own and lend copies of Globehead!  and that Penn State is the only university with the complete run of Globehead! (Volume 1, Things One and Two).

In this way the Heygate estate was ahead of the game, its maze of walkways and tunnels
create a mesh of weaving paths around the estate and under the Elephant and Castle roundabout.

They are playful and irrational, some curve gracefully up to the first floor level (see figure 3)
others jut out of the blocks over the street like exterior staircases. In the tunnels under the traffic, artwork has been scrawled crudely on the walls, with the dripping ceilings and the roar of traffic. They fit neatly into the Situationist’s Unitary Urbanism model. 
Constant wrote in Another City for Another Life- “we envisage covered cities in which
the layout of roads and separate buildings will be replaced by a continuous spatial construction elevated above the ground, including clusters of dwellings as well as public spaces” (Constant 1959). This is exactly what Tim Tinker had in mind when he designed the car parks, walkways and public spaces. He made the street obsolete, created unconventional elevated spaces connected by imaginative routes. I think Constant especially would have loved aspects of the Heygate estate (from certain angles it even looks like some of his designs for New Babylon).

These small innovations make the Heygate different from the French modernism of Le
Corbusier. Yes the blocks are built for household comfort, and the architecture is unbelievably ugly, but there is a sense of play here, and the galleries, walkways and tunnels should have set up lively social interactions. So where did it all go wrong?

In this chapter I present some findings of my master’s thesis titled: Queer Geography of Czechia: heteronormativity of space, conducted in 2011.1 It sought to uncover the spatiality of heteronormativity in Czechia from the perspective of the non-heterosexual population. Building on Foucault’s and Butler’s theories illuminating the heteronormativity of space I conducted an extensive internet survey drawing on mixed sampling methods with the final number of N=1589 nonheterosexual respondents. While being aware of the limits of the research method I tried to experimentally measure the heteronormativity of nineteen different ‘model’ spaces. Respondents were given a number of photographs and asked to guess their relative degree of ‘sexual comfort’ in these spaces. They were also asked to guess the degree of ‘sexual comfort’ of a ‘regular heterosexual’ in these spaces. A reference photograph of a forest was used to verify the sensitivity of measurement. According to the results, the most heteronormative spaces were pool areas and rural village areas. Interestingly, substantial differences in heteronormativity were found in otherwise similar spaces according to the time of day and the presence of the rainbow flag. Moreover, negative  heteronormativity was uncovered in so called queer spaces such as gay clubs or cafés. Therefore, it seems that sexual dissidents expect the heterosexuals to restrain themselves in queer spaces the same way the most of sexual dissidents do in a majority of heteronormative spaces. Outcomes of this research can benefit the understanding of spatiality of heteronormativity in geography and other social sciences. It can also contribute to the scarce pools of research in this area in Central Eastern Europe.

The pre-publication text of the introductory chapter to my book, Postcolonial Literary Geographies, which includes chapters on postcolonial mappae mundi, botany and botanical tropes, spice, postcolonial ecologies, representations of animals and therianthropes, and cities (London and Mumbai/Bombay).

A área de fronteira ao longo do rio Oiapoque, entre o atual estado brasileiro do Amapá e a Guiana Francesa, foi palco de uma longa disputa litigiosa entre os dois países. Este artigo analisa diferentes olhares sobre essa região que denotam formas de interpretações geográficas apropriadas para cada um dos discursos encontrados.

The boarding area by along Oiapock River, between nowadays Amapá Brazilian State and French Guyana, was the stage of a long content litigious amid both countries. This article analyses some geographical views over the region.

Le long de la rivière Oiapock, entre la region brésilienne appelé Amapá et la Guyane Française, a éte scène d’une longue dispute litigieuse entre les deux pays. Cet article analyse des diferents points de vue sur cette région et les interpretations géografiques correspondantes à chaqu’un de ces discours.

The images discussed in these two seminars look at how representations of campus space are carefully constructed in order to transmit specific message which may not be apparent on a cursory viewing. These messages appear in the form of signs which can be analysed in an effort to reveal the underlying ideology of the image. The first seminar will look at a historic moment in the University of Leeds campus development, the 1960s, while the second critiques a contemporary image in the form of a recent campus map. These seminars demonstrate the ideological orientation of spatial representations and show how they can be unpicked in order to reveal potential contradictions in the dominant discourse. The seminars will be presented in the form of an informal talk, with plenty of time for an open discussion and further examination of the concepts highlighted. The two seminars are related but you do not have to have attended the first one in order to attend the second.