Experiment

In this chapter, I chart the notion and vocation of experiment in cultural geography. The chapter is in four parts. The first outlines how experiment has become a defining refrain for cultural geography, animating both new geographies of experimentation and an eclectic range of experimental geographies. The second examines where this preoccupation with experiment emerged from, pointing to contemporaneous efforts to re-think critique and to develop non-representational styles of thinking and working. The third considers how experiment continues to animate ongoing discussions in cultural geography today, with specific attention to questions of ethics, method, and failure. The fourth and final part asks, simply, to what end might geographers experiment? Here I suggest that experimenting can serve as an ethos for shifting the energies of cultural geography in productive ways.