White Mythologies and Anemic Geographies: A Review

Abstract

Robert Young's book White Mythologies raises some critical questions of importance to geography, Amongst these are the significant links between the critique of Western historicism and the increasing use of spatial names and metaphors in arguments about cultural politics. Young's sweeping criticisms of Marxism are powerful, but they loose sight of the value of work which attends to politico-economic processes while problematising the limits of marxism's meta-narrative. Young's writing is limited itself. It introduces work that breaks with Westem-centrism, but, as it does so, it sometimes falls prey to a form of ‘new’ Orientalism that manipulates and represents such work in the interests of ‘the West’, These limits to the book provide an example of anemic geography. This reified and reifying geography fails to deal adequately with the questions of geographical complexity opened up by the displacement of Western History. Instead, it clokes them beneath the use of a geographical vocabulary employed as a vehicle in the metaphorisation of political debate. Alternatives are possible.