Chapter 15 - Finding Place in the Conjuncture: A Dialogue With Doreen

Summary

In this chapter I explore a set of persistent questions about the practice of conjunctural analysis concerning the ways in which time and space are constitutive elements of a conjuncture. Although time seems the most obvious, if not foundational, element since the conjuncture is about the “present moment”, the spatial dimensions are equally critical, if harder to diagnose. Starting from a simple question – where does the conjuncture take place? – I consider how Doreen Massey’s profoundly relational view of space illuminates the question of the conjuncture by enabling us to think about the condensation of multiple spatial dynamics and relations.

In exploring some of these problems and possibilities of conjunctural analysis, this chapter carries on an unfinished conversation with Doreen Massey, following up on a promise to “talk more” about how to think about the conjuncture when we last met. The topic had been a running thread in both public and private conversations for some years: we were both convinced about the importance of thinking conjuncturally as a method of getting to grips with the present and its troubles. We shared with Stuart Hall and others a sense that conjunctural analysis was a way of avoiding the short-circuiting tendencies of reductionism by demanding attention to the multiple tendencies, forces and contradictions that made up the present moment. We had participated in a number of events, panels, and discussions considering both the current conjuncture and the way of thinking that conjunctural analysis represented. With a bitter sense of irony, I recall that the last of these encounters was in a panel on conjunctural analysis at a conference at Goldsmiths’ College celebrating the life and work of Stuart Hall (see Henriques & Morley 2017). The orientation – and the stakes – can be seen in this characteristic exchange between Stuart and Doreen in the pages of Soundings, discussing the importance of resisting the temptations to treat the current crisis as “economic”:

Massey: The other thing that’s really striking is the importance of thinking of things as complex moments, where different parts of the overall social formation may themselves, independently, be in crisis in various ways.