Harvey D - On Fatal Flaws and Fatal Distractions

7/27/2019 Harvey D - On Fatal Flaws and Fatal Distractions

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On fatal flaws and fatal

distractionsDavid HarveyDepartment of Geography and Environmental Engineering, Johns Hopkins

University, 3400 North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA

Each generation cultivates its particular set of intellectual heroines and heroes. It wouldbe churlish of me to begrudge the younger generation their choice of such figures. DidI not construct Marx in such a role? And while there is a certain lemming-like fashion-ability these days in the rush to embrace the likes of Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze andGuattari, Butler, Lacan et al., it would be equally churlish of me to suggest that there isnothing to be gained from the study of such eminent thinkers.

Jones complains in his commentary on Justice, nature and the geography of difference(JNGD) that I have acquired only a superficial understanding of his preferred heroes(Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze and Guattari). In this he is quite correct. He then goes

on to suggest that if I had taken as much trouble as he has to understand them I wouldnot have written the book I did. Which in a way is also quite correct (though it doesinvite the riposte that if he had read this Marx more thoroughly he would not havewritten the piece he did either). But Jones takes it further. He purports to show that myframework for historical geographical materialism is fatally flawed and that I amunable to develop the flexible and creative concepts needed to interpret the world.And this because I have read the wrong rather than the right stuff. The only way to saveme from the fatal flaws and the inflexible and uncreative concepts that litter JNGD is, Iam told, to banish my Marx to the shadows and consult Joness icons instead (some ofwhom want to keep the spirit of Marxism alive while letting the material body go).

Now there is something odd about this rush to bury JNGD as fatally flawed and

there is something even odder about the manner of the interrment. The oddity lies inthis. To my undoubtedly superficial knowledge, the authors he cites would neverpresume to dismiss the works of others in such judgemental terms. I cannot recallDerrida ever using terms like fatally flawed. It would be quite uncharacteristic of himto exercise such startling judgements. Derridas technique, as I understand it, is to studya text carefully, exhume its innumerable traces and expose its presences and absences,and thereby provide a quite different reading of the text (even turning it against itself)from that which seems on the surface to be the authors intent. Jones insists that

Progress in Human Geography23,4 (1999) pp. 557566

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558 On fatal flaws and fatal distractions

Derrida, among others, has the answers. But he produces an essay that violatesDerridas method to advance a conclusion that Derrida could never come to.

Joness way of exposing my fatal flaws is interesting to behold. Not once does heactually substantiate his arguments. He merely asserts them in different contexts. He

builds a case that begins with words like problematic and insufficient and then shiftsgear into inadequate before delivering the final judgement of fatally flawed. This is

the genteel academic version of what is more vulgarly known as the big lie. Assert acalumny a sufficient number of times in enough places and someone somewhere willstart to believe it. And pretty soon it gets cited over and over as definitive proof (as

Jones (1999) shows . . .). And so it goes, as Vonnegut would say.But consider how he deals with my fatally flawed version of the dialectic. After a

somewhat lengthy summary of my argument (Derrida would never write this sort ofthing) he asserts its fatal flaws by invoking Derridas deconstruction of Hegel. ButDerridas way of turning Hegel against himself (which is quite different from sayingHegel is fatally flawed) can only apply to me if (a) Marx parroted Hegel and (b) I eitherparroted Marx or provided a strict Hegelian reading of Marx. Most serious scholars ofMarx would now agree with Althusser that Marx revolutionized the Hegelian dialectic

in which case Derridas deconstruction of Hegel would apply only if the trace of Hegelremained so strong in both Marx and myself to warrant carrying Derridas deconstruc-tion over. This requires that the trace of Hegel be exhumed fromJNGD for study. Jonesnowhere attempts this. Instead he merely asserts that Derridas thought underminesHarveys position because it calls into question the validity of dialectical thinking andthat Derridas deconstruction of Hegel has comparable force when applied to HarveysMarxist-based approach.

But the oddity gets even odder because my own reading of Marxs dialectic is, at leaston the surface, very un-Hegelian. As Jones acknowledges, in addition to Marx, figuressuch as Ollman, Bohm, and Levins and Lewontin have a prominent place in myversion. For some reason Jones ignores the significance of Leibniz (from whom the

theory of internal relations largely derives) and Whitehead, probably because theydont quite fit with his desire to put everything into the post mode (or maybe it has todo with Deleuzes admiration for Leibniz). In any case, Hegel is scarcely to be found inmy account. Whitehead, whom I frequently rely upon for clarification, confessed hecould never read more than four pages of Hegel without laying him aside (I tend tosympathize). Most of the other authors pay little mind to Hegel. They link theirthinking to a more process-based philosophy. My conception of the dialectic is ratherfar from that of Hegel. It has to be, because Hegel could not be dialectical about spacein the ways that Leibniz and Whitehead could. Derridas deconstruction of Hegel (evenpresuming its cogency) bears little or no relation to the arguments I advanced. It mostcertainly cannot be used to prove my version of the dialectic is fatally flawed.

The only way in which it could be so construed is if all forms of the dialectic (andthese are many and multiple as Jones admits) are brought under Derridas specificdeconstruction of Hegal (interpreted in terms of fatal flaws). Jones actually seems tomake this extraordinary claim which would eradicate as fatally flawed the thought ofKierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Husserl and the whole tradition of continentalphilosophy including that of Derrida himself. For Derrida is a dialectician of the highestorder. So are (were) Deleuze and Guattari. While we may enjoy the paradox of Derridadeconstructing himself through Hegel, I doubt that this is what is intended (though if


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deconstruction is understood as learning from rather than demolition then thiswould indeed be a way for Derrida to learn from his indebtedness to Hegel).

What is actually being attacked here is a particular kind of dialectic based in aparticular way of handling binaries. Now it is fashionable these days to decry thepower of binary thinking (even though it still remains fundamental to most forms ofscientific inquiry). And, plainly, it has its limitations even though I would make the

strong argument that it is both impossible and unwise to try to abandon it (Jonessarticle is littered with binaries if anyone cares to look very hard, including the binaryimplied in the phrase fatally flawed and in the title against). The intent of myprocess-based account of the dialectic is to avoid too many oversimplifying binaries(with the exception of the processthing distinction which is quite crucial and which Iwould avidly defend). The savvy reader will note, however, the crude transition Jonesmakes from my argument (cited by him) that the way to think differently is to rubtogether conceptual blocks in such a way that they catch fire to his representation of myargument that it is the interaction between two categories or concepts in some form of

binarily opposed relationship that constitutes the core of dialectical approaches to newconcept formation. Very odd, is it not, that someone so dedicated on the surface to anti-

reductionism can reduce my dialectics (indeed, all dialectics as it turns out) to a matterof simply binary oppositions? Even odder, when we get to the end, where the wholeMarxist tradition gets reduced to a binary opposition between two Marxisms that ofthe radical spirit which Jones (pace Derrida) wishes to preserve and that of dialecticalmaterialism which Jones (pace Derrida) wishes to abandon.

In American academic circles we call this kind of thing sophomoric argument and Iam quite amazed that the geographical luminaries who apparently read this piece withapproval (Thrift, McDowell, Kearns, Corbridge, four referees who sensibly guard theiranonymity and the whole editorial board ofPIHG) did not care to save Jones from it.

But there are more sophistries to come. Jones, having argued along with Derrida thatthere is nothing outside the text and that it is only possible to criticize existing insti-

tutions from within an inherited language (his emphasis) suggests my dialecticalmaterialism fails because it remains firmly within the western tradition of thought (myemphasis). Of course he adds that it is only that western tradition which Derridacriticizes which counts (Derrida necessarily being within the tradition too). And again,it is that tradition in which concepts have been produced through a historical processof binary synthesis that is singled out for criticism. That is the tradition within which Iam supposedly exclusively situated.

Reduced to mere binaries, of course, the whole western tradition (like Jonessconclusion) can easily be found wanting. But the western tradition is much more thanthat (read Leibniz and Whitehead). Furthermore, there are different ways to understand

binaries in dialectics. Kierkegaards rejection of Hegel focused on the latters insistence

upon a bothand transcendence (it is the transcendence that is largely the object ofDerridas critique) rather than the existential binary of eitheror choice which is justas dialectical (if rather more uncomfortably so). Of course, Derrida is well known for

being so fearful of eitheror that he produces reams of convoluted argument overmatters that in practice have all the simplicity of deciding whether or not to jump outof the way of an on-coming bus.

Derrida is quite right, however, to argue for some kind of internal distancing and Iam glad that some are now learning how to do that from him. I learned my version of

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it by a careful reading of Marxs deconstruction (if I dare to use that term) of classicalpolitical economy which is precisely such an exercise in internal distancing (Irecommend it to anyone who cares to take a careful look).

WhatJNGD seeks to do is to rework and perhaps revolutionize concepts from withina long tradition of thought. Internal distancing rather than spurious external critique isits method. By emphasizing thinkers such as Whitehead and Leibniz and reconnecting

a relational notion of dialectics to Marx, it permits, for example, a dialectical theoriza-tion of space-time (as opposed to the Hegelian pure temporality). Jones, of course,ignores this angle toJNGD altogether. He argues that there is a vague epistemologicalfetishization of space hovering over human geography in general and that my geo-graphical theory in particular is restricted by its spatial ontology that imposeslimitations by prioritizing the spatial in its conception of social life. When he returns tothis issue, however, it is Soja and not me who gets criticized. Two whole chapters on thetopic of the social construction of space-time inJNGD gets completely ignored. Had he

bothered to read them in even superficial fashion he would know that I in no wayprioritize the spatial (it is a contingent category along with time, as he correctly regur-gitates, apparently without thinking about it, in his account of my version of dialectics).

Furthermore, the arbitrariness of his own proposal to understand the world as incor-porating at least three ontological fields: space, time and social practice is hardly astirring example of any struggle to create flexible and creative categories. It is areassertion of the very traditional fetishizations he criticizes. It has a positivelyNewtonian ring (Leibniz would object). I would put my flexible and creative recon-ceptualizations of the internal relations between space, time and process up against hiswooden and old-fashioned ontology any day.

The tragi-comedy of Joness piece is the way it falls into the pit of its own binary-making. All modernism (including Marx) is depicted as rigid, stable and by implicationstultified compared to the fluidity and creativity of postmodernism (I actually thoughtmodernism was about everything solid always melting into air, but no matter).

Everything in JNGD is represented in binary terms in order to facilitate easy decon-struction of binary thinking. Everything gets reduced in order to sustain an anti-reduc-tionism. Everything gets essentialized (including something called post-Marxism) inorder to proclaim the virtues of anti-essentialism. The piece is itself so fatally flawed(not being a Derrida acolyte I can cheerfully venture such a judgement) that it becomesimpossible to discuss.

The best I can do in relation to it is to give some grand-daddy advice to the youngergeneration as they pursue their aims (since that is my reluctant positionality these days:I hereby declare: I am not a post-Marxist but I am post-sixty).

It is relatively easy in these times to introduce the thought of this or that great thinkerinto the loose amalgam of the discipline we call geography. This is so in part for the very

laudable reason that the kind of repressive apparatus that tried in the 1960s to preventPeter Haggett from presenting a regression coefficient at the RGS or Jim Blaut talkingof imperialism before the AAG no longer exists (though Joness loose talk of fatal flawsreminds me how easy it might be to resurrect it). But it is also so for the less laudablereason that no one knows enough about the thought of this or that great thinker to tellthe difference between serious and bowdlerized versions of the original. The fact that

Joness evocation of Derrida passed muster with Thrift, McDowell, Kearns, Corbridgeand four anonymous referees suggests that either lack even my superficial knowledge


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of Derridas work or that their understandings are of such extraordinary sophisticationas to be totally beyond my ken.

But once you have written your piece showing your paces and your abilities to writean exegesis of the thought in question, what do you do with it? This is the difficult partas you seek to apply the new thinking to the traditional subject-matter of geographyand transform the latter in solid and meaningful ways. This is hard work. It took me

many years to get Marx aligned with geography and I still have to work hard at it (anddont always succeed). I have seen many magisterial readings of Foucault, Derrida,Butler, Bakhtin or whomever, followed by quite banal and traditional geographicalwork that could just as easily be done without nary a mention of such thinkers. In hisrewrite of the Hamlet North Carolina case Jones makes no use of Derrida, Foucault orDeleuze and Guattari though he did try to articulate a different positionality forexplication and political action (on which more anon). The general point, however, isthis: the acid test of importation of new thinking comes with the active transformationof geographical thought and practices. Since I do not underestimate the difficulty (Ihave lived it for far too long) I do not expect quick results. I do not therefore dismiss thecurrent wave of importations because they have not yet produced the necessary results.

But I do insist that judgement on their relevance must be withheld until such resultsmaterialize. Far more attention must be paid to this task than is currently the case (mostseriously committed students I know who have gone through this complain at howhard it is to make the link: they know only too well what I am talking about).

But then comes the most difficult step of all: to take the transformed geographicalthought back into the world from whence the new ideas come and try to transform thatintellectual world in the light of explorations on the terrain of geography. I have foundit far easier (intellectually) to bring Marxism into geography than to transformgeography into a kind of Marxism and far easier to do the latter than to take thetransformed geography back into Marxism in general (a struggle that I sometimesdespair of inspite of certain inroads). Feminist and postcolonial geographers will

doubtless empathize with the general problem.JNGD records an important moment (at least for me) in that process. It is, as I have

argued elsewhere (Harvey, 1998), a very traditional geographical book. It records howMarxism must be transformed to deal with questions of space, place and environment.This, rather than some answer to the postmodernists, is the core of its reasoning. It alsoattempts to project those transformations back into the world of Marxism in particularand social and literary theory more generally. It is a text that has its flaws (some of themquite charming but none of them particularly fatal) and open ends, a text of possibili-ties rather than of certainties. Its tentative qualities and lack of closure contrast withmany of my earlier works (and several reviewers have complained about that, whichmakes it peculiar that Jones wants to represent it as so closed). This lack of closure

occurs precisely because the geography is less restrained by the Marxism and the trans-formative possibilities of geographical thinking of Marxism (and social theory) aremore clearly articulated. A lot can be learned, I submit, about the potentialities and pos-sibilities for geographical thought in relation to social and literary theory as well as inrelation to the life world around us by careful study ofJNGD. It is, I insist, a very geo-graphical book.

It is, however, a sad commentary on the state of affairs within the field of geographyitself that hardly anyone cares to situate it so. Reviewers in geographical journals have

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generally ignored the issue, which says a lot about their situatedness. Progressivethinkers are, it seems, so fatally distracted with cultivating their imported thoughts thatthey can pay no mind to their geographical heritage. I take Linda McDowells (1998)

bizarre request that I write yet another book explaining what JNGD has to do withgeography as an indicator of the pathetic lows to which geographical sensibilities havenow drifted. Which is a pity, since, as I have argued elsewhere (Harvey, 1998), now is

the moment when geography has an incredible amount to offer to a world in the fullcourse of some pretty startling changes. We do need flexible and creative concepts as

Jones most laudably argues. We also need a better way to produce them within as wellas from without our own bailiwick. But we cannot do so out of nothing nor can we doso without engaging with political and intellectual commitments and passions thatspeak to the times.

I wonder, then, about the kind of politics that lies behind the urge to bury JNGD asfatally flawed. Corbridge (1998), in his extended and seriously engaged review of

JNGD, at least made no bones about the fact that it was political perspective rather thanintellectual content that lay at the centre of his disagreements. Which in a way is fairenough. But there is always an odd dialogue between political and intellectual

reasoning (they are not simple binaries either!) and Jones evidently thought he hadfound a convenient intellectual way to wave JNGD judgementally away as fatallyflawed. This seems to have had sufficiently powerful political appeal to his geographi-cal mentors and luminaries to cloud their judgement. That this is so does not surpriseme. For I do have the impression from afar that there seems to be settling overprogressive British geography a sort of mildly guilt-ridden cloud of have your cakeand eat it Giddensian Blairism. It says, yes we must show compassion for all the poor(though Jones apparently needed Corbridge to remind him of the point) and yes wemust pursue institutional reforms but please no revolutionary or upsetting rhetorichere that goes after the fundamental structural forces that are blasting societies apartfrom Russia to Indonesia and from Baltimore to Bangkok. Give us contextual theories

that touch lightly on a world that is in the full flood of extraordinary change (soundslike a cover to go back to casual empiricism to me).

The traces of such distanced engagements are easy enough to exhume. Theinordinate amount of ink spilled in response to the ten pages in JNGD dealing withHamlet, North Carolina (to which Jones strives to add his supposedly alternative andredemptive thoughts) makes me think I hit a raw nerve of guilty feelings (methinksthey all protest a bit too much as I put in my Annals response). Jones provideswonderful examples of cake and eat it criticism too. He is against my dialectics (butthen that is not really quite true).JNGD is fatally flawed (but there is much that is goodand wonderful about it). My sensible and politically empowering recommendationswith respect to Hamlet are arrived at in spite of my ill-scrutinized concepts. And so it

goes.It is convenient and doubtless comforting, in the face of current economic turmoil(and in the light of the appalling information now emerging as to conditions of labourand environmental degradation around the world), to rule out old-time categories likecapital and labour as far too simplistic for our outrageously complicated theorizations.It goes down even better to fantasize that capitalism does not exist (except in ourminds). I only hope that as the postmodern band plays on, the Titanic does not doanything as inconsiderate as founder. Unsinkable and indestructible they called that


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fated ship. As late as the summer of 1997 that was what they were saying aboutcapitalism. But now look at the mess. Even postmodernist academics have pensions. Isincerely hope (in part out of naked self-interest) that no binaries erupt to stand in theway of their collection. But then maybe we can take comfort in the idea that our radicalspirit might live on long after our material bodies have been consumed by the sharks.

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References

Corbridge, S. 1998: Reading David Harvey:entries, voices, loyalties,Antipode 30, 4355.

Harvey, D. 1998: The Humboldt connexion.Annals of the Association of American Geographers88, 72330.

Jones, A. 1999: Dialectics and difference: againstHarveys dialectical post-Marxism. Progress in

Human Geography 23, 52955.

McDowell, L. 1998: Some academic and politicalimplications ofJustice, nature and the geographyof difference.Antipode 30, 35.

Notes from the deck of thepostmodern Titanic: a responseto David Harvey

Andrew Jones

The problem with David HarveysJustice, nature and the geography of difference (JNGD),as a number of its reviewers have expressed, is that it is not so much one book as many(cf. Eagleton, 1997; Fainstein, 1998; Young, 1998). It deals in a vast array of philosophi-cal, theoretical and politicized ideas to a degree that any critical engagement with itmust confront the necessity of limiting its scope. This fact is I think central to the flawsin both my original article critiquing Harveys dialectical historical-materialism, and

in his subsequent response.In his lengthy critical response to my article, Harvey raises a considerable number ofpoints, some more important than others. There are, I think, four major criticisms whichrequire an extended response, and I will turn to these shortly. However, there are alsoa range of points which I suggest are designed to dismiss my arguments out of hand,relying on turns of rhetoric to achieve their affect. For example, the response is litteredwith diminutive or trivializing comments arguing I am criticizing his approachbecause [he] has read the wrong rather than the right stuff, or that my implementation


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564 A response to David Harvey

ofsome of the insights produced from Derridas work means that I am some kind ofDerridean acolyte. These are clever textual devices which I cannot, as space is limited,address one by one.

Indeed, much of Harveys response is concerned to point to the flaws which arisefrom misrepresentation, omissions and possible connotations within argument: some ofwhich are valid and some of which are unjustified. In particular, Harvey suggests that

in using Derrida I write something which he would never have written. This ismisplaced as I had no intention of doggedly adopting a Derridean stance which itselfhas been criticized at length as leaving little scope for the construction of politicallyengaged theory (cf. Norris, 1993; Beardsworth, 1996). Nor do I suggest that Harveyalone is problematically situated in the western tradition, or that there is only one wayto understand dialectics, or that I am in some way essentializing post-Marxism, orthat I am fitting everything into the post- mode . And so it goes, as Harvey mightsay.

Rather, I will concentrate here on the more developed and salient criticisms whichHarvey elaborates in amongst his persuasive writing. First and foremost of these, thereis Harveys vituperative response to my suggestion that his dialectical materialism

relies on the interaction of problematic black-box binarily opposed categories. Inconsidering this, I realized that my continuing discomfort with Harveys recurrent callfor a reconstructed, postmodernized Marxism rests not so much on the philosophicaldiscussion of Althusser or Whiteheads dialectical ontology, as with the practical imple-mentation of dialectical thinking in the way he constructs politicized theory. Harveyaccuses me of making an extraordinary claim which would irradicate as fatallyflawed the thought of a range of continental philosophy. Such a point requires aresponse, primarily because I have no such intention.

Now I am not in the business of beginning to argue that Harvey is somehowpervasively wrong, nor have I argued or will I argue that his work is fatally flawedin some universalizing fashion. My focus was much more specific than that. What I am

seeking to criticize, and indeed what I am arguing is fatally flawed (or at least anunproductive starting point for the production of politically-engaged theory), is theimplementation of Harveys specific brand of dialectical thought inJNGD. The articleis centrally concerned with the way in which Harveys desire for politically engagedtheory is produced through his interpretation of dialectical thinking. He complains thatI make a crude transition from his argument concerning the rubbing together ofconceptual blocks in such a way that they catch fire to a representation of his argumentas relying on a crude interaction of conceptual categories in some form of binarilyopposed relationship. This is fair comment to a degree, because the article fails toaccount for the differences between the way dialectics is discussed at the philosophicallevel, and the way it becomes implemented in the discussion of politically engaged

theory. But I think that in this implementation, for all the preceding discussion ofcontingent relations, the latter chapters of the book deal in the same, wooden, oftenbinarily opposed concepts.

Thus we confront the issue ofJNGDbeing a book of disjunctive elements. In fact, itrepresents an amalgamation of Harveys writing over some time, and as such I thinkcontains much which is contradictory and this is particularly true of his use ofdialectics. Whilst Harvey examines at length the fluidity of Whiteheads dialecticalframework, at the end of the day, when it comes to consider whichever case studies


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Harvey turns to, we are still confronted with familiar, binarily opposed concepts andcategories. And that is true as much as in the overanalysed Hamlet chicken-factory fireas in Harveys assertion that environmental theory requires a similar reinsertion of thedialectical relation between nature and society (Harvey, 1996: 184). In asserting thathuman beings, like all other organisms, are active subjects transforming natureaccording to its laws, Harvey remains firmly trapped in a naturesociety binary

division which is increasingly being lamented by a growing (and already substantial)literature (e.g., Haraway, 1991; Gare, 1995; Latour, 1995; 1996).

His second key criticism is that my article falls into the pit of its own binary-making,and this is a significant issue which needs addressing. The point that I sought to make,in hindsight perhaps not sufficiently well developed in the article, was not that all

binaries are badper se in some form of ontological knee-jerk reaction, but that the actualepistemology/post-Marxian theory developed by Harvey is. Indeed binary oppositionsare pervasive in western thought, although there may be ways to address the growingnumber of limitations they present to creative thinking (Latour, 1995). Consequently, tocriticize the article for making use of binary terminology at the rhetorical level haslimited force. In retrospect, my primary concern should have been with the limitations

of the way dialectical thinking is implemented (or perhaps not sufficientlyimplemented) by Harvey in his form of post-Marxism. If Althusserian (andWhiteheads) dialectical thought is based around flexibility and fluidity in a way thatHegelian dialectics does not incorporate, then I would argue that Harveys actuallyexisting post-Marxist stance is not.

Thirdly, Harvey suggests that I merely assert the flaws of his dialectical thought,rather than substantiating it. This seems a remarkable response given that the articleworks through the argument, substantiating it through a discussion of the Hamlet case.As I have intimated in this response, a similar approach might have equally beenemployed in considering his arguments about the dialectics of naturesociety.

His fourth major point, however, indicates the limitations of my suggestion for a

move towards what I termed contextual theories. Whilst the criticism of an episte-mological fetishization of space would have been better directed at others rather thanHarvey, what remains is the inconsistent nature ofJNGD as a book. For as Demeritt(1998) suggests in his review, the philosophical aspects to the book remain distancedfrom the engaged theory. Whilst Harvey might be right to argue that an ontology ofthree fields (space, time and social practice) remains unstirring, in the end his ownconsiderations of space-time as contingent relations seem not to feed into discussions ofengaged theory where he continues to adhere to the same, familiar concepts. Forexample, in criticizing the contemporary emphasis on the local (Harvey, 1996: 353), hesuggests that this emphasis totally erases others and thereby truncates rather thanemancipates the field of political engagement and action (1996: 353). He goes on to

assert that we can never ever be purely local beings and that while membership in onesort of premanence defined at a given scale may be more important to each of us thanothers such identifications . . . are rarely so singular. There is no consideration of whatthe local means, how it is constructed, how this concept might or might not be useful.There is no sense here of the fluidity of space-time as discussed earlier in the book.

Clearly, both my critique and a contextual approach need to be developed toovercome the flaws of my earlier arguments. However, what Harveys response doesnot do is convince me that his dialectical materialism is all he purports it to be. It misses

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566 A response to David Harvey

the point of my critique to jibe that postmodernist might fantasize that capitalism doesnot exist. The whole issue is that I think there is a pressing need to produce morepractical theories of political action. Perhaps Althusserian dialectical fluidity doesenable much greater scope for the development of flexible concepts to provide the basisfor politically engaged theory, but my feeling is that this has more to do with the fluiditythan the dialectical element. If geographers are to be listened to at all (and presumably

this at least is an objective which David Harvey shares with me), then I would stillargue strongly that it is problematic to continue to implement a dialectical post-Marxism whose concepts seem increasingly old-fashioned and wooden when putthrough their paces in the real world.

References

Beardsworth, R. 1996: Derrida and the political.London: Routledge.

Demeritt, D. 1998: Review ofJustice, nature and

the geography of difference. Transactions, theInstitute of British Geographers 23, 28486.

Eagleton, T. 1997: Spaced out. London Review ofBooks 19, 2223.

Fainstein, S. 1998: Review ofJustice, nature and thegeography of difference. International Journal ofUrban and Regional Research 22, 33941.

Gare, A. 1995: Postmodernism and the environmen-tal crisis. London: Routledge.

Haraway, D. 1991: Simians, cyborgs and women: thereinvention of nature. London: Free AssociationBooks.

Harvey, D. 1996:Justice, nature and the geography of

difference. Oxford: Blackwell.

Latour, B. 1995: We have never been modern.London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

1996: Aramais, or the love of technology.London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

Norris, C. 1993: The truth about postmodernism.Oxford: Blackwell.

Young, I.M. 1998: Harveys complaint with raceand gender struggles.Antipode 30, 3642.

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