Applied Guattari

Abstract

The commentary unpacks the claim that human geographers have been zealous consumers of an ever-expanding array of French thinkers (Louis Althusser, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan & Co.), and that they have been far too hasty in seeking to apply the resulting morass of ‘French Theory’ to the pressing concerns of human geography. It also considers the claim that the work of one notable French post-structuralist thinker – Félix Guattari – is unamenable to such immoderate consumption, hurried digestion and swift application: not only because the delirious Guattarian ‘jargon machine’ spews up a vast amount of always already obsolescent nonsense in the very place that is ordinarily reserved for an accumulation of sense (good, bad and obviously all too common) but also because this jargon machine is basically inexplicable and essentially inapplicable. Having grasped the virtue of theoretical indigestion, thoughtful impracticality and resolute inapplicability, the commentary makes a final splurge of ‘Applied Guattari’ by way of ‘Applied Derrida’.