Response to Antonsich: The role of history

Abstract

This response to Marco Antonsich focuses on a few key issues. Contrary to the suggestion that I focus more on a term than an idea, or that my way of working is mere etymology or philology, I stress the importance of thinking the relation between words, concepts and practices. To look at any one alone is misleading and historically impoverished. I further underline the historical-conceptual question when thinking how to account for what Antonsich calls ‘territorial formations’ before territory. I suggest that to be faithful to these political-spatial arrangements we do need to be terminologically precise, and not import later words or conceptions into our understanding of them. Finally I discuss Antonsich’s proposed notion of ‘the territorial’ and my supposed neglect of the social: again I insist on the role of history in any adequate political theory of territory.