The stakes of abyssal geography. Response to commentaries on David Chandler and Jonathan Pugh's ‘Abyssal geography’.

Abstract

We thank Kevin Grove, Adom Philogene Heron, and Tracey Skelton for their generous and extremely useful commentaries on the abyssal analytic. We also thank James D. Sidaway, Nuraziah Aziz, and Chih Yuan Woon for facilitating the dynamic fl ow of discussion and debate — beginning with a draft paper, then the RGS-IBG conference plenary and discussion with the panel and audience, now concluding with the published paper (Chandler & Pugh, 2023) together with three commentaries. This process has certainly enabled us to develop and clarify our analytical framework. Throughout the process, we think it is probably fair to say, Grove has been the most interested in the potential of the project, Skelton has been tentatively sceptical, and Philogene Heron the most doubtful regarding what an abyssal analytic may have to offer. The three commentaries thus provide a range of approaches which, we think, re fl ects well where Geography as a discipline is at today. Work that seeks to question the ethical and political assumptions behind what might be called the relational or new materialist shifts to a less anthropocentric or ‘ more-than-human ’ analytic is generating growing interest in the discipline (we come back to this point at the end of our response). Before turning to the three commentaries and their signi fi cant points for discussion, we start by brie fl y re-emphasizing that the paper sets out to highlight the importance of an emergent ‘ abyssal ’ or non-relational paradigm of critique which we contrast to the ‘ relational ’ and ‘ ontological ’ assumptions which drive much critical work today. We discuss how rearticulating the world as abyss foregrounds the foundational violence of Indigenous dispossession, chattel slavery and the Middle Passage via the assembling of a fi gurative position without ontological security —