Book review: Mitch Rose, Dreams of Presence: A Geographical Theory of Culture Dreams of Presence: A Geographical Theory of Culture. By RoseMitch. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press. 2025. 237 pp. $54.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9781487566173.

This book is a timely call to take seriously the theorisation of culture.In the wake of deconstruction and more recent 'process ontologies' (p.xii), scholars have sometimes shied away from this task.Rose situates this aim in our contemporary moment of danger in which, notwithstanding academic disinterest, the rest of the world continues as if culture really exists, while endless 'culture wars' (pp.3-7) are fiercely propagated by the far right, driving society into dysfunction and chaos.There may be multiple reasons to return to culture, one being to ward off these monstruous formations that are gaining strength.Rose theorises culture as a 'claim', one that emerges as a response to universal existential conditions of vulnerability.We are always vulnerable to the outside world; to our own bodies and in our relationships with others.These 'traumatic' (p.81) conditions exist in a 'pre-ontological' (pp.148, 163) realm and result in the innate desire for security.Claiming, then, is what we do with this desire to try and hold on to something stable.Through this lens, life is punctuated by intrusive events and precarious conditions, such as landslides, wind, hunger, hostage taking, woundedness, emotional pain, temper tantrums and haunting: self/other again spiral in and out of control (forever).Importantly, we never fully achieve what we claim, but we must claim.Claiming is necessary, and it is geographical, as 'earth writing' is one of the main ways we claim (pp.168, 186).However, as part of an emerging 'negative realism' (pp.141, 185), Rose is clear: claims remain empty, despite their representational manifestations and their impact on landscapes.An emptiness shapes space, one of the more challenging ideas at the heart of the book.This is an impressive, unique, precise and at times sweeping geographical theory of culture.Dreams of presence is a hopeful idea, as it seeks to explain culture without essentialism.This is important.However, Rose's proposal introduces other challenges.In moving culture into this pre-ontological realm, we lose essentialism only by instituting another set of universals to which all cultures respond (p.xii).Readers may be surprised that 'difference' is considered a 'dead end' (pp.xiii, 44) for theorising culture.Difference is claimed by people and groups (p.26) but itself cannot sustain the theorisation of culture because of it being 'unanswerable' (p.9).This may prove to be a sticking point for some readers, something Rose anticipates in the Introduction.Rose moves culture into the pre-ontological realm and guards it there diligently.One worry I have is that this pre-ontological realm is too tightly sealed off from the rest of the world that instigates its own trauma on the formation of subjectivity.By bracketing 'hegemonic social structures' (p.139), Rose too quickly forecloses other critical theories of subject formation.Dreams, after all, can also be 1413791C GJ0010.