Minima Relata: A reflection on negative geographic life

Read full text
Authors: Chris Lawer
Cited by: 0
References: 47

Abstract

This paper makes a conceptual intervention beside affirmationist and negative geographies. Deploying a novel linguistic-functional schema, it parses the latter's proliferating vocabularies, problematics, and conceptual formations. From this analysis, drawing on Adorno's negative dialectics and Minima Moralia , it introduces Minima Relata: empirically graspable constellations of attenuated socio-spatial life that persist without becoming otherwise in a post-affirmationist relational limit zone. To apprehend them, the paper advances attenuational lingering as a perceptual-critical-empirical geographic stance, alongside a grammar of registers and an aesthetics for differentiating these often obscured modalities of contemporary socio-spatial life.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Spatial and Cultural Studies Historical Geography and Geographical Thought Urban Planning and Governance

Publication details

Journal / source
Progress in Human Geography
Volume
50
Issue
5
Pages
696–713
Publication date
4 March 2026
Language
EN