Filling the hole? On new geographies of the subsurface

Abstract

A proliferation of examinations of vertical, voluminous, subsurface, subterranean/subaqueous, geological, or underground relationships has emerged in the last few years of geographic thought. This article seeks to summarize four key themes in which the subsurface has gained prominence: geopolitics, natural resource extraction, cultural geographies, and epistemological politics. The article nonetheless critiques ahistorical, presentist, and/or Eurocentric tendencies in accounts of subsurface spaces, topographical verticalities, and the desire to “fill” a supposed “hole” of subsurface geographies. Altogether, I call for more precise, comparative, and historicized interpretations of the varieties of spatial relations above and below the surface of the earth.