Abstract

This paper contributes to debates about geographies of responsibility. In contrast to much of the previous literature in this field, which has concentrated on teasing out the intimate interconnections between different people, places and spaces, in this paper we highlight the limits to such connections, focusing on more unsettled versions of responsibility. Our critique draws on postcolonial readings to highlight two limitations of responsibility: its availability as an ethical gesture that can be ascribed even where it is not practised; and its imputed agency that makes it possible for responsible agency to be usurped by the global North. This starts to muddy the water of responsibility, showing how it may involve refusal, denial, withdrawal and contamination. More problematised enigmatic and risky versions of responsibility arise from these critiques. In particular, we argue that in considering responsibility as practice, a recognition of the provisional, contaminated and complex myriad of power relations involved may signal a move towards more ambivalent versions and visions that acknowledge the vulnerabilities and disconnections involved in geographies of responsibility.

Highlights

  • Responsibility is increasingly summoned as a route to living ethically in a postcolonial world

  • Geographical literature on responsibility to date has mostly focused on teasing out the intimate interconnections and relationalities between different people, places and spaces

  • More recent discussions have highlighted the ways in which the complex relationalities of a postcolonial world mean that relations of responsibility are not always cosy but are contested, complicated and productively unsettling (Raghuram et al 2009)

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Summary

Introduction

Responsibility is increasingly summoned as a route to living ethically in a postcolonial world. Following a brief discussion of the geographies of responsibility literature, in the second section we utilise the uncertainties that postcolonial critiques insert into discussions of responsibility to highlight two key limitations: the gap between ascription and action and the limitations surrounding the notion of agency.

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