Spatial relations and the materialities of political conflict: the construction of entangled political identities in the London and Newcastle Port Strikes of 1768

Abstract

This paper engages with the material geographies of political conflict. It applies the concerns of actor-network theory around the entangled character of material/social relations to the geographies of subaltern politics. It explores how interconnected strikes of riverside labourers and sailors in the London and Newcastle Port Strikes of 1768 contested the terms on which materials were enrolled into mercantile capitalist networks. The dynamic geographies of these strikes are used to unsettle constructions of subaltern spaces of politics as bounded and localised. The paper then demonstrates how labourers crafted multiple antagonisms through negotiating their location in materially heterogeneous networks. It uses this concern with contested material geographies to engage with the entangled construction of political identities. The paper concludes that interrogating the materialities of political conflict does not just add a neglected technical dimension to the study of political activity; it provides considerable resources for engaging with the inventiveness of subaltern political activity and agency [Barry, A., Political Machines: Governing A Technological Society, Continuum Publications, London, 2001].