Encountering Gilles Deleuze in Another Place

Abstract

Inspired by Deleuze and Foucault, I develop a cartographic methodology of tracing as a new analytical frame with greater insight for spatial planning practice. Working with Foucauldian genealogy and Deleuzean pragmatics, investigation of materialities, in addition to expressivities, facilitates not only exploration of the force relations of power, knowledge and subjectivation, but also of the variable roles which the elements of an assemblage may play and the processes in which they become involved. A tracing methodology investigates how something came to be. Analysing the force relations between elements, the processes and conditions of possibility of the relations, associations and encounters between actants, structures and events affords greater insight into actuality. I apply the methodology to the empirical case of Antony Gormley's installation, Another Place, on Crosby beach, north-west England, investigating how the iron men became configured in a series of encounters between those who desired Another Place to remain and those who opposed it. I conclude that a tracing methodology offers greater understanding of the politics of power in connection with broader political, social and economic structures and conditions of possibility.