On the agencement of the academic geographer

Abstract

This commentary draws a contrast between assemblage as Deleuzian agencement, orientated towards the possibilities for re-ordering and the emergence of new orders, and the forms of assemblage emphasized by actor-network theory, which focuses on the question of how orders are practised/performed. It is suggested that while focusing on agencement offers a means of opening up ‘naturalized’ social and spatial orders and placing their entrenched political and ethical values in question, it is also important to recognize that ‘assemblage thinking’ within an academic context is always also a form of intervention. This has two key implications: (1) we need to take into account geographers’ perceptual capacities and limited empirical skills, questions of how our own inherent biases, our abilities to sense and relate to others, and the structures and conventions of academic labour shape the assemblages which emerge through our work; (2) we need to acknowledge that research is a political and ethical act, for it constitutes an inevitable transformation of the assemblage under investigation. This in turn raises a question of how we respond to this responsibility; do we draw on our assemblage thinking to say this is important (make strategic cuts) or to say things are indeterminate, but watch this space because something interesting might happen?