In this paper I offer reflections on Gunnar Olsson's 1991 text, Lines of Power/Limits of Language, concentrating particularly on its attempt to ‘write’ a new geometry of social thought which will enable the expression of a critique—itself almost impossible to formulate in human language—directed at the interweaving of taboos (boundaries to the unspoken) in Enlightenment Reason with operations of power in sociocultural life. The suggestion is that Olsson is striving to escape from what he regards as the ‘flatland’ in which much current social thought is entrenched, and is thereby seeking an altogether less-constraining ‘spaccland’ which will allow him to understand quite ‘other’ truths about the connections between the abstract (the immaterial) and the concrete (the material), I outline something of what Olsson's new conceptual geometry entails, but at the same time question the extent to which this geometry carries with it problems not so different from those that bedevilled ‘spatial science’. Furthermore, I argue that Olsson's will to think ever more abstractly—and in so doing to take his geometry into abstracted realms strangely removed from the contexts of everyday human life—separates him from precisely those everyday contexts in which people cannot help but be ‘philosophers’ dealing with the imponderables of taboos, power, truth, and morality in order simply to ‘get by’.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AbbottE A, 1952Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensionsseventh edition (Dover, New York) containing an ‘Introduction’ by B Hoffmann with no pagination
2.
BermanM, 1982All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (Verso, London)
3.
ClokePPhiloCSadlerD, 1991Approaching Human Geography: An Introduction to Contemporary Theoretical Debates (Paul Chapman, London)
4.
CosgroveD, 1985, “Prospect, perspective and the evolution of the landscape idea”Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers1045–62
5.
CresswellT, 1992, “The crucial ‘where’ of graffiti: A geographical analysis of reactions to graffiti in New York”Environment and Planning D: Society and Space10329–344
6.
DanielsS, 1985, “Arguments for a humanistic geography”, in The Future of Geography Ed. JohnstonR J (Methuen, London) pp 143–158
7.
de CerteauM, 1988The Practice of Everyday Life (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA)
8.
DoelM, 1993, “Proverbs for paranoids: Writing geography on hollowed ground”Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers18 forthcoming
9.
FarinelliFOlssonGReichertD (Eds), 1993Limits of Representation forthcoming
10.
FinnemoreR J, 1980, “James Joyce at the seaside”Geographical MagazineLII674–676
11.
FoucaultM, 1967Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (Tavistock, London)
12.
FoucaultM, 1977Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Allen Lane, London)
13.
GregoryD, 1985a, “People, places and practices: The future of human geography”, in Geographical Futures Ed. KingR (Geographical Association, Sheffield) pp 56–76
14.
GregoryD, 1985b, “Suspended animation: The stasis of diffusion theory”, in Social Relations and Spatial Structures Eds GregoryDUrryJ (Macmillan, London) pp 296–336
15.
GrenM, 1993, “The article lacks an appropriate title”Nordisk Samhällsgeografisk Tidskrift1678–90
16.
HarveyD, 1982The Limits to Capital (Basil Blackwell, Oxford)
17.
HarveyD, 1989The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Basil Blackwell, Oxford)
18.
JacksonP, 1988, “Definitions of the situation: Neighbourhood change and local politics in Chicago”, in Qualitative Methods in Human Geography Eds EylesJSmithD M (Polity Press, Cambridge) pp 49–74
19.
KandinskyW, 1947Concerning the Spiritual in Art (Wittenborn, Schultz, New York) translation, with additional materials: Containing a short paper on ‘The language of Kandinsky’ by HayterS W, pp 15–18
20.
MahoneyM, 1993, “Dear Dirty Dublin”, unpublished BA thesis, Department of Geography, St David's University College, Lampeter, Dyfed, Wales
21.
MeierV, 1993, “Do you think Columbus could have been a woman?”, in Limits of Representation Eds FarinelliFOlssonGReichertD, forthcoming
22.
MeinigD (Ed.), 1979The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays (Oxford University Press, New York)
23.
O'FarrellC, 1989Foucault: Historian or Philosopher? (Macmillan, London)
24.
OlssonD, 1981, “On yearning for home: An epistemological view of ontological transformations”, in Humanistic Geography and Literature Ed. PocockD C D (Croom Helm, London) pp 121–129
25.
OlssonG, 1978, “Of ambiguity or far cries from a memorialising mamafesta”, in Humanistic Geography: Prospects and Problems Eds LeyDSamuelsM S (Croom Helm, London) pp 109–120
26.
OlssonG, 1980Birds in Egg: Eggs in Bird (Pion, London)
27.
OlssonG, 1984, “Marxism as a modernism: Review essay”Environment and Planning D: Society and Space2241–244
28.
OlssonG, 1991aLines of Power/Limits of Language (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN)
OlssonG, 1993, “Chiasm of thought-and-action”Environment and Planning D: Society and Space11279–294 [also included in Limits of Representation Eds FarinelliFOlssonGReichertD, forthcoming]
PhiloC, 1984, “Reflections on Gunnar Olsson's contribution to the discourse of contemporary human geography”Environment and Planning D; Society and Space2217–240
33.
PhiloC, 1991, “Brief thoughts on older words and older worlds”, in New Words, New Worlds: Reconceptualising Social and Cultural Geography Ed. PhiloC, Social and Cultural Geography Study Group of the IBG, St David's University College, Lampeter, Dyfed, Wales, pp 4–13
34.
PhiloC, 1994, “History, geography and the ‘still greater mystery’ of historical geography”, in Rethinking Human Geography: Society, Space and Social Science Eds GregoryDMartinR LSmithG E (Macmillan, London) forthcoming
35.
ReichertD, 1988, “On boundaries”, paper presented at the Anglo-Austrian Seminar in Geography and Social Theory, Zell am Moos, Austria, October 1988; copy available from Department of Geography, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Winterthurerstr 290, CH-8057, Zurich, Switzerland
36.
ReichertD, 1992, “On boundaries”Environment and Planning D: Society and Space1087–98 (published and slightly altered version of Reichert, 1988)
37.
ReichertD, 1993, “The woman as Utopia”, in Limits of Representation Eds FarinelliFOlssonGReichertD, forthcoming
38.
RoseG, 1991, “On being ambivalent: Women and feminisms in geography”, in New Words, New Worlds: Reconceptualising Social and Cultural GeographyCompiler C Philo, Social and Cultural Geography Study Group of the IBG, St David's University College, Lampeter, Dyfed, Wales, pp 156–163
39.
RoseG, 1992, “Geography as a science of observation: The landscape, the gaze and masculinity”, in Nature and Society: Essays in the History of Geographical Knowledge Eds DriverFRoseG, Historical Geography Research Group, Department of Geography, Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education, Shaftesbury Hall, St. George's Place, Cheltenham, pp 8–18
40.
RoseG, 1993Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge (Polity Press, Cambridge)
41.
SCGSG, 1991, “De-limiting human geography: New social and cultural perspectives”, in New Words, New Worlds: Reconceptualising Social and Cultural GeographyCompiler C Philo, Social and Cultural Geography Study Group of the IBG, St David's University College, Lampeter, Dyfed, Wales, pp 14–27
42.
SeamonD, 1979A Geography of the Lifeworld: Movement, Rest and Encounter (Croom Helm, London)
43.
SeamonD (Ed.), 1993Dwelling, Seeing and Designing: Toward a Phenomenological Ecology (State University of New York Press, Albany, NY)
44.
SibleyD, 1978, “Classification and control in local government: A case study of Gypsies in Hull”Town Planning Review49319–328
45.
SibleyD, 1981Outsiders in Urban Societies (Basil Blackwell, Oxford)
46.
SibleyD, 1988, “Purification of space”Environment and Planning D: Society and Space6409–421
47.
SibleyD, 1992, “Outsiders in society and space”, in Inventing Places: Studies in Cultural Geography Eds AndersonKGaleF (Longman Cheshire, Melbourne) pp 107–122
48.
SparkeM, 1994, “Escaping the herbarium: A critique of Gunnar Olsson's 'Chiasm of thought-and-action”Environment and Planning D: Society and Space12207–220
49.
TesfahuneyM, 1993, “Alteriry: Un canto purgatorio”Nordisk Samhällsgeografisk Tidskrift1666–77
50.
WattsM, 1993, “Heretical empiricism and the representation of limits”, paper presented at the Mapping Constellations seminar held in Miglieglia, Switzerland, June 1993 (no manuscript version available)
51.
WolinR, 1992The Terms of Cultural Criticism: The Frankfurt School, Existentialism and Poststructuralism (Columbia University Press, New York)
52.
WatsonWreford J, 1957, “The sociological aspects of geography”, in Geography in the Twentieth Century: A Study of Growth, Fields, Techniques, Aims and Trends Ed. TaylorG (Methuen, London) pp 463–499
