The importance of history: A reply to Malpas

Abstract

Although Jeff Malpas is rather critical of my book Mapping the Present, he is simultaneously generous in acknowledging what he sees as its important aspects. Indeed, I hope that it is fair to say that his critique is based on the premise that the book is worth engaging with. Given Malpas’ own significance for thinking the relation between philosophy and geography I am extremely grateful for the time he has spent on this. I am equally appreciative of the chance to both accept his criticism and defend my work, and to offer some suggestions for how the project it outlines might be improved and continued in the future. Malpas is right to point out the importance of the argument concerning the relationship between Heidegger and Foucault, and he helpfully sets out how I go about making the argument for their close relation. Although he correctly suggests that it is not “historical and biographical in focus,” the reading of Heidegger is set up precisely in such a way as to allow us to see how key conceptual terminology, references and issues in Foucault could have emerged. And Malpas is correct to note that the book simultaneously seeks to stress the importance of the concepts of space and place, both in relation to their role in Heidegger and Foucault’s work, and in social theory more generally. This allows him to succinctly outline the “three elements” of my work. The attempt to do these three things is, I think, perhaps both a strength and a weakness to the book. While I hope it has added to the appeal of the book, it inevitably sets up limitations to the depth of argument—each of these issues could perhaps have been a book in themselves. This perhaps explains many of the criticisms leveled against the book by Malpas. Though I do not intend to be exhaustive in either my outlining of these criticisms or in my response to them, let me note and reply to those I think are most important and challenging. Several of Malpas’ criticisms are related to the Heidegger part of the book. His most substantial one seems to be that I do not “provide an account of the way in which the concepts of space and place are themselves articulated as part of Heidegger’s overall vision or the way in which they connect up with other key concepts.” Following from this, he contends that several key issues are neglected—the link between Augenblick and Ereignis; the relation between the historical and the temporal to place; between place and