Dialogues in Human Geography

This article argues for an understanding of material geographies as invested with an unconscious dimension. I put forward the notion of spacetimeunconscious not as an inverse, double, or ‘other’ to Karen Barad's concept of spacetimematter, but as a supplement. Manifesting the spacetimeunconscious through the technique of montage, I draw together a range of phenomena, from the icing of water and the flashing of lightning to the awakenings of traumatised and displaced subjects. Across these juxtaposed parts, I argue that the unfolding of space and time responds to the enigmatic, irreducible message of the unconscious in the real. Spacetimeunconscious arrives as the ambassador of an unknown knowledge remembered for – or in the place of – a forgetful substance: water, dreamer, or electron. In an echo of the analytic method, I use montage to create generative connections, discontinuities, and instabilities between events, poetry, literature, and film, in the interstices of which the spacetimeunconscious may make an appearance.

Engaging Derrida's logics of supplementarity, I bring forward the fact that spacetimemattering always already engages in all matter of re-memberings, and is always already inhabited by unconscious(ing), both of which are processes constitutive of spacetimemattering.

This commentary engages with Secor’s intriguing proposition of the spacetimeunconscious as a supplement to quantum physicist and philosopher Karen Barad’s spacetimematter, which puts forth a non-linear conception of time, irreducibly linked with a discontinuous notion of space, and a vibrant, multi-agential perspective onto matter. By interconnecting new feminist materialisms and psychoanalytic geographies, Secor nuances existing approaches in psychoanalytic geographies by placing emphasis on the elemental, material paradoxes of the unconscious – existing in/as/from the same fabric but also outside of themselves, in different aggregate states. With the aim to draw urban studies scholars and geographers closer to psychoanalytic thought, I make use of my own non-expert point of departure to first shed light on the offerings towards the academic politics of knowledge production that Secor's text holds. Second, I specify conceptual alignments between psychoanalytic and hydrofeminist geographical thought. Third, I mobilize the disjointed trope of hauntology to assist Secor's call for a more ambivalence-embracing and poetic approach to the production of geographical texts, knowledge and epistemologies.

Less a response, this commentary is a conversation with Anna Secor's ‘Spacetimeunconscious’, riffing off its offering. I trace one of the playful characters in Secor's article, the speck of dust that shapeshifts across the paper's 18 pages, folding and dispersing geographies and temporalities. I am wrestling with how to make sense of geographies that I care about, exactly at the same moment when these geographies are blown up into shards all over my screen. And I would like to think of Secor's paper as a companion for me, and for those who might be trying to figure a way to face the slow and fast breakdown of the surfaces of the present; a supplement, rather than an answer, to the question of where do we go from here, now?

Anna Secor’s ‘Spacetimeunconscious’ offers a groundbreaking intervention into the fields of material and psychoanalytic geographies. Following Karen Barad and Jacques Lacan, she develops a concept of the unconscious that takes place within matter itself. In this commentary, I add some questions, loose ends, and fragments to the theory-building patchwork of Secor's paper.

While work on solidarities forms a core element within geographical scholarship, especially as related to forms of shared connection to address forms of inequality, few studies from the geographies of sexualities literature have directly engaged with the concept. This article argues that there are two complementary logics as to why scholars working on sexuality may want to consider more forcibly the concept of solidarity. One of these logics suggests that a focus on solidarities can further pre-existing key interests within the geographies of sexualities literature, especially in parts of the world that have historically received relatively limited research attention. A second logic suggests that a focus on sexuality-based solidarities can help enable sexualities scholars to further critical engagement regarding broader discourses, and offer alternative framings, regarding a world in transition. This article presents a series of examples, drawn from across sub-Saharan Africa, related to both logics together with a series of potential future directions for research. Taken collectively, this article, by drawing on earlier work on solidarity from within the discipline of geography, contends that there are a number of key benefits for sexualities scholars to undertake a ‘pivot’ or choice to explore solidarity more directly in the current moment.

Responding to the parallel that Tucker draws between the divergent geopolitical accounts of the decline of British power from the late-nineteenth century and the focus he proposes for sexuality in accounts of the current decline of US power, this commentary reconsiders the geopolitics of the solidarities around sexuality that Tucker highlights. I find the geopolitics of aid too colonial in their intent and effects to be called a solidarity. I extend Tucker's focus on homonationalism to consider how conservative sexualities are complicit in the modern rise of autocracy and incipient fascism.

In this commentary on Andrew Tucker's ( 2025) article, ‘A Sexuality Pivot,’ I discuss both the exciting possibilities and some caveats to consider as we engage critically in solidarity-oriented research. In the main, I am interested in what kinds of considerations we as researchers must engage if we are to effectively pivot toward solidarity. Here, I engage the rich history of solidarity from Abolitionist and Black feminist traditions to think through how contributions from Black studies, expansively defined, might enrich the conversation on solidarity as a research method. In particular, I examine the fruitful possibilities drawn from D. Soyini Madison, Audre Lorde, and the strategy of witnessing (developed from Frederick Douglass by way of Dwight Conquergood) as a way of thinking through contemporary solidaristic scholarship on the geographies of sexuality.

This commentary on Andrew Tucker's ‘A Sexuality Pivot’ highlights the relevance of his call in the face of violent backlashes against equalities experienced by queer people – especially trans. Solidarity through difference and beyond scale, I argue, is key for imagining and building queer utopias that exceed the boundaries of the violent present.

Research on the urban process of capital accumulation has typically examined the state and capital as separate actors. This distinction is problematized by a long-standing, increasingly prominent but largely overlooked attempt by state institutions to drive urban development through venture capital (VC) investments. Conceptualized as urban state venturism in this paper, state-driven VC investments reflect at once a riskier extension of urban entrepreneurialism (through their speculative construction of place) and a transposition of state institutions into firm-level drivers of capitalist urbanization (through their roles as profit-oriented investors). To advance research on the urban process of capital accumulation through examining these imbricated state roles, this paper presents a new research agenda that comprises three dimensions, namely (i) the rationale of urban state venturism, (ii) the distribution of profits and risks, and (iii) the extent to which urban state venturism reflects state institutions’ intrinsic commitment to a ‘developmentalist’ ideology. In turn, the agenda foregrounds the value of assessing ‘new’ state capitalism through urban state venturism.

To sharpen the conversation between urban studies and ‘new state capitalism’, I argue that studies of the state's role as a venture capitalist in the urban process may be developed along four lines: (1) expounding where logics of state-backed venture capitalism fit within shifting repertoires of urban entrepreneurialism; (2) specifying how the injection of state-owned capital in start-ups facilitates processes of both real and financial valorisation, thereby altering urban relations of production; (3) analysing state-backed venture capitalism in light of emerging forms of ‘derisking developmentalism’; and (4) foregrounding geopolitically infused techno-nationalism as a potentially significant driver of state-backed venture capital.

While appreciating the novelty of conceptualizing urban state venturism, this commentary proposes that the state's role as capital can be clearly evidenced by the urbanization of state capital, which involves the active deployment of state-owned corporations in the global East amid the region's pursuit of condensed and developmental urbanization and industrialization.

Structured around the questions posed by Su and Lim's research agenda, this commentary looks at the why of state-led venture capital (SVC) through state theory, the how of SVC through changes in the Business Development Bank of Canada, and the what of SVC through dynamics of capitalist public ownership.

This commentary traces the longer history of what Su and Lim refer to as urban state venturism as a means of posing questions about the distribution of benefits and risks which result from this model of state investment. Drawing upon the history of the Hudson Bay Company's role in both securing profits and building the British settler colonial empire, we ask how these state projects shape political economic processes beyond regional economic competitiveness. Specifically, we focus on how political projects of stigmatization and marginalization may interact with the geographies unleashed by urban state venturism and how they articulate with other priorities of the state. Through this generative critique we hope to build upon the potential of Su and Lim's work to contribute to debates in economic geography over state capitalism, the blurred lines between public/private finance, and questions of who benefits from these arrangements.

This commentary on the ‘urban state venturism’, highlighting the state's pivotal role in driving large-scale urban investments, offers a nuanced reading with areas for a sympathetic critique. I advocate for a redefined starting point of analysis that centres on the emerging asset economy model. This prompts a consequential distinction between asset-based and commodity-based value/wealth creation, particularly in the context of public venture capital investments, which necessitates further empirical scrutiny. However, there is a risk that current and proposed future research falls into the ‘endogeneity trap’, underscoring the need to reinvigorate practice-oriented research to capture the evolving new modes of urban entrepreneurialism.