Paper to be presented at the 'Nordic
Geographers Meeting' conference in
Roskilde 24-27 of May 2011
Fire, Walk With Me:
Towards a Geography of the Fourth Topology
Richard Ek
Department of Service Management, Lund University, Sweden
richard.ek@ism.lu.se
Abstract
The concept of topology has become a cornerstone in the project of widening the ontological
register in both ANT and human geography. The seminal starting point has for many years been
‘Regions, networks and fluids’ by Annemarie Mol and John Law from 1994, an article that for
instance influenced John Urry’s outline of a global complexity. In the article, two familiar
topologies, the region and the network is positioned against a third, the not so familiar topology,
fluidity. Then, in 2001, Law and Mol introduce a fourth topology, fire, in a reasoning that at least
in the first reading, borders to ontological mysticism. The reasoning in the later paper has thus
not been cited and used in the same extent as the 1994 paper. This is a bit surprising, since the
reasoning lay out a framework with a significant potential to substantially extend the relational
thinking – approach as it stresses the importance of the absent (taking the reasoning far away
from a simple topographical ontology) in practice, performativity, agency, and materiality of a
network. This paper is the first step to outline a geography of this fourth topology. It starts out
with a close reading of relevant work by Mol and Law and the articles that have tried to more
substantially develop ideas regarding complex topologies. It then continues with giving an idea of
how a geography of fire could look like, through an example taken from tourism: the bracelet
that is obligatory to wear inside a all-inclusive resort.
Through the darkness of future past
1
The magician longs to see
One chance out between two worlds:
Fire walk with me
(Bob)
1. Introduction
The concept of topology has become a cornerstone in the project of develop and enrich the
spatial imaginary in the contemporary social sciences. Within human geography, topology as a
concept is crucial in the attempts to crystallise a view on relational space and relational thinking
as something fundamentally different than traditional, absolute notions of space and place in
geographical thinking. Parallel with the project of establishing a relational spatiality we also have
the ambition within ANT to develop an ontological richness as a response towards critics of
ANT-approaches from the 1980’s and early 1990’s. This ambition has sometimes been labelled
ANT 2.0 or ‘ANT and After’ by the involved scholars. These two mainly conceptual projects,
‘relational space and relation thinking’ and ‘ANT 2.0’) should, I think, be seen as a collective
attempt to widening the ontological register. Several collaborations between ANT-scholars and
geographers on this and similar topics speaks for that. We can also see how this collaboration has
started to gain influence in the social sciences, as topology as an analytical concept has been
applied by prolific sociologists like John Urry and Bülent Diken. Simultaneously, Giorgio
Agamben’s impact in the social sciences and the humanities has resulted in an interest by some
geographers (as Claudio Minca) in seeing power as a topological spatiality.
I do not want to make a call for a “topological turn”, but, mainly due to personal curiosity, think
it is time to address the concept and different meanings of “topology” a bit more systematic. It is
a concept that is a bit bewildering for me, something of a blank figure that are given different or
unclear meanings depending on the context in contemporary human geography and in the social
sciences in general. I have nurtured this curiosity for some time now. Initially, I tried to contrast
the “topological” to the “topographical” in a binary framework, but I am not that certain that
that works analytically. Later on, I was attracted to the almost, in my reading, cryptic description
of fire as an ontology (laid out by Annemarie Mol and John Law [2001]). I have also for the last
years been interested in the work by Agamben (1998) on the camp as a topological figure that
increasingly outshines the topographical figure of the polis.
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This interest will probably shine through in this paper and in its structure. I will start out by
discussing the more general definitions of “topography” and “topology”, and relate back to the
two concepts etymological meanings. Thereafter, in the following section, I will recapitulate the
relational space – dialogue and how topology is framed there. Then, I will zero in on the work by
John Law, often in co-operation with Annemarie Mol, on the four topologies of region, network,
fluid, and fire (Mol and Law 1994, Law and Mol 2001, Law 2002, Law and Singleton 2005).
Especially the fourth topology is of interest here since it is by far the least commented upon. The
ambition here is thus to start to imagine how a geography of the fourth topology could look like.
This is done by a close reading of a) the work by Law among others and b) the work by other
scholars who use the fire topology to make a case of their own. In the fifth section I will address
Agamben’s work as an example of not only the widening of the ontological register but also as an
example of widening of the register of critical inquiry in contemporary social sciences.
2. To be Topographical or Topological is that the Question?
In the beginning I saw the notion of “topology” as something different than “topography”, and
that the two concepts could be put towards each other in a binary relation. Either you could
regard the view from a topographical view of point or from a topological point of view.
Topography is here the ‘three-dimensional arrangement of physical attributes (such as shape,
height and depth) of a land surface in a place or a region’ and also ‘the detailed description or
drawing of the physical features of a place or a region’ (The American Heritage Science
Dictionary 2005). The word stems from topos (place) and graphein (to write). It implies a focus on
relief and the three-dimensional qualities of a delimited Euclidean space. This absolute notion of
space has been dominant in the Western metaphysical tradition, as kenon (void), chora (formless
container) and topos (Casey 2005: 202; Grosz 1995: 93). Space is here considered as empty,
indestructible and immobile, measured as distance (Curry 1996: 5) and filled with content
(whatever that may be, people, nature, society). A topographical view on the world comes
“naturally” because of the hegemony of vision in modernity. Actually, the scopic regime in which
the use of perspective in the visual practice dominates (Jay 1988, Levin 1993) inherently leads to a
topographical view on the organisation of human institutions. This is for instance evident in the
practice of traditional or mainstream cartography. A three dimensional world is abstracted into a
two dimensional map which implies a distance not only due to the representational regime per se
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but also a distance between the observing subject and the observed, inherently organised
object/geography (Cosgrove 1994, Harley 2001).
To David Michael Levin this means that the world view that the visual practice makes possible is
“frontal”: that is ‘…ontology of entities which, at least in the ideal situation, are to be held “front
and centre”: in the most ideal act of beholding, the object is to be held in place directly before the
eyes. This is the metaphysics of vision: a metaphysics that tends to overvalue constancy,
uniformity, permanence, unity, totality, and distinctness’ (Levin 1989: 31, original emphasis), that
is, a world-picture (Heidegger 1977, Gregory 1994: 34-37). The world-picture is a topographical
picture.
Topology is the study of the non-metric properties of spatial figurations as connectedness and
density. Topology is thus ‘the mathematical study of the geometric properties that are not
normally affected by changes in the size or shape of geometric figures’ (The American Heritage
Science Dictionary 2005). In the Dictionary of Human Geography (Gregory et al 2009: 762) it is
described as:
A field of mathematics studying the spatial properties of an object or network that remain
true when that object is stretched. These include connectivity and adjacency. Imagine
stretching a rubber band between two fingers. Likening the band to a vector line segment,
then the start node (the one end) remains connected to the other despite the stretching.
The word stems from topos (place) and logos (discourse). It implies a focus on functionality,
relations and the interactions between relations and, importantly, the processes of spatial
emergence below the (topographical) surface. The topographical approach suggests then that ‘any
spatial coherence that is achieved (on the surface) serves to disguise the relational complexities
that lie “underneath” spatial forms’ (Murdoch 2006: 12).
Initially I found the experiment of putting the topographical and the topological in a heuristic
framework intriguing – and in a way I still do – as two rivalling figurative ontologies or spatial
models. The spatial model or ontology that is compatible with the Euclidean notion of
topographical space is the inside/outside division, an ontology that permeate Western history of
thought (figured through the “/ - sign”. In the European imagination this spatial ontology is
manifested in the notion of a sharp boundary between inside and outside, in America imagination
in the notion of the frontier between civilisation and wilderness (Kornberger and Clegg 2003: 81).
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To Bruno Latour (1993) one of the most crucial implementations of this model is the first
dichotomy between human and non-humans, a purification process or practice that creates two
distinct and discreet ontological domains inherent in Modernity.
This inside/outside ontology also precede Western Modernity, for instance in Aristotle’s notion
of polis as the highest good and the community of Man as a political animal (bios) in contrast to
zoē, the simple life of being, or natural life (Agamben 1998: 1). The perhaps most rooted city
myth, the story of Remus and Romulus (Diken and Laustsen 2006) is also based on the
inside/outside ontology in which the demarcation, the “/” constitutes the differentiation between
civilisation and barbarism, between Hobbe’s distinction between the state of nature and a
commonwealth, Leviathan (Diken and Laustsen 2005: 24). In the continuation of this, the
principle of territoriality chisels out territories that occupy absolute space and politically arranges
societies into institutionalised containers of society (Agnew 1994, Häkli 2001, Sassen 2006,
Walker 1992). Also the principle of private property, especially regarding land, is founded on the
spatial ontology of inside/outside (Berger 1972, Cosgrove 1985).
Schematically, it is impossible to be both inside and outside at the same time, it is an “either or”
situation that applies, with dichotomies, generically hierarchical, as nature-culture, male-female,
mind-matter, reality-representation, etc. (Haraway 1991). The distinction, per se, is the element in
the ontology that makes the difference; it is the walls that make Rome (Diken & Laustsen 2006)
and the barbed wire that makes the enclosed space (Netz 2004).
The topological approach on the other hand harmonises with a relational notion on or dimension
of space rather than the absolute dimension, and as a spatial model it can be signified or
expressed as the “↔ - sign”. Relational takes on spatiality implies a paradigmatic departure from
the Cartesian understanding of space since it dissolves the boundaries and borders between
objects and space. Processes, objects and events take an ontological precedence over space.
Actually, space is the product of processes and events rather than that processes and events takes
place in space (Smith 2003: 12). As space is a process, space is also produced (Lefebvre 1991) in
flux and emergence, that is, relational space is based on a Heraclitean ontology of becoming
rather than a Parmenidean ontology of being (Chia 2003: 114-115).
Schematically, it is possible to be both inside and outside at the same time, it is an “and –
situation” that applies. A topological view on the world, consequently, does not concur with the
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scopic regime of modernity and the principle of realistic representation, the “mirror of nature”
(Rorty 1979). The Baroque, for instance, rejected the Cartesian tradition’s monolithic geometry in
favour of the distorted and the tactile (Jay 1993: 48).
This dichotomy between two incompatible models, the topographical and the topological,
expresses a normative position in favour of a call for other conceptualisations of space than the
traditional one – space as quite much equal to distance and place as a demarcated coherent area
of space. Thus I am in favour of the relational approach towards space and spatial thinking.
3. Relational Space
‘Space is a treacherous philosophical word’, James M. Blaut (1961: 1) once wrote, as the concept
and its different categorisations constitute a matter of constant dispute. Developments in
mathematics and physics have had consequences for the philosophical concern with the nature of
space. Non-Euclidean geometry and Einstein’s relativistic revision of the concept has become a
matter of scientific and philosophical controversy (Sklar 1974: 1). For instance in Newton’s
cosmology (Burgin 1989: 28, Harvey 1973: 13-14) space contains all objects, has an absolute
quality (Harvey 1969: 195-196). But at the same time, space also has a quality among different
objects, a quality that varies depending on the objects’ positions in relation to each other. Space
also has a relative quality (Harvey 1969: 195-196). For Newton, it was necessary to separate
absolute and relative space in order to be able to observe and measure movement (Curry 1996b:
92, Casey 1997: 142). To Neil Smith (1984: 67-77), the division between absolute and relative
space made it intellectually possible to define space as separated, for instance in “social space”
and “natural space”. Absolute space came to be related to an external and primary world, first
nature, and relative space to a human secondary world, second nature. Nature was separated
from culture in the philosophical tradition.
This relational thinking about space and time originated with Leibniz’s work in non-Euclidean
geometry. To Leibniz, space, as time and matter, was dividable into atomic structures in which
monads are the only existing entities in the universe that are not dependent on human
consciousness. All other physical objects exist only if they are acknowledged by the senses as
phenomena. The objects are only phenomenological manifestations of the metaphysical
substance, the monads (Tonboe 1993: 78-79). In his correspondence with Newton’s proxy,
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Samuel Clarke (Alexander 1998), Leibniz argued that spatial aspects such as position, distance
and motion are nothing else but a system of relations among things, a system without any
metaphysical or ontological existence per se (Werlen 1993: 1, Harvey 1969: 195-196, 1973: 13-14
and 1996: 250-251).
Therefore, space is always in a process of becoming since it is the product of relations that are
materially embedded practices that must be carried out (Massey 1999b: 283). Here, space is
understood through what might be called, in Heidegger’s terms, a “dwelling” perspective
founded on the primacy of practices (Thrift 1999: 308). Space could therefore be seen as a verb
rather than a noun. Gillian Rose (1999: 293) argues that:
Space is also a doing, that it does not pre-exist its doing, and that its doing is the articulation
of relational performances…space is practised, a matrix of play, dynamic and iterative, its
forms and shapes produced through the citational performance of self-other relations.
Space is no longer reduced to particularity, passivity and contingency (Doel and Clarke 1998: 48)
and ‘space’ and ‘time’ are less important than the always unique acts of “timing” and “spacing”
(Bingham and Thrift 2000: 290). In his call for poststructuralist geographies, Marcus Doel (1999:
7) argues that:
Place is an event…neither situated nor contained within a particular location, but is instead
splayed out and unfolded across a myriad of vectors…vectors of disjointure and dislocation
[that] may conjugate and reverberate, but there is no necessity for them to converge on a
particular experiential or physical location.
In sum, there is no space, only spacing; that is ‘…the differential element within everything that
happens; the repetitious relay or protracted stringiness by which the fold of actuality opens in and
of itself onto the unfold of virtuality. Space is what reopens and dissimilates the givens’ (Doel
2000: 125).
It should be clear by now that Gilles Deleuze have influenced relational thinking about space. As
in the topological figure origami, ‘the world can be (un)folded in countless ways, with
innumerable folds over folds, and folds within folds’ (Doel 1999: 18, after Deleuze 1993). Folds
are everywhere (Deleuze 1995: 156) and space is folded in many ways into manifold (Doel 2000:
127-128). The folding and unfolding of space becomes an event, an actualisation of the virtual
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(Gren and Tesfahuney 2004: 65, following Deleuze 1994 and Deleuze and Guattari 1994). Placeevents are folded into existence (Bingham and Thrift 2000: 290), places are spatio-temporal
events (Massey 2005: 130).
The focus on becoming, (un)folding and events in relational thinking has also directed a focus on
the works of Michel Serres. In his attempt to construct a “philosophical geography” (together
with Bruno Latour), topology, as a ‘science of proximities and ongoing or interrupted
transformations’ (Serres with Latour 1995: 105) is highlighted (Bingham and Thrift 2000: 290).
Topology is not concerned with the distance variable per se, but with the properties of spaces that
are independent of metric measures and how relations are folded and unfolded (stretched,
compressed, stratified, etc.) while maintaining certain properties (Dainton 2001: 365, Latham
2002: 131). ‘Topology, in short, extends the possibilities of mathematics far beyond its original
Euclidean restrictions by articulating other spaces’ (Mol and Law 1994: 643, original emphasis).
Following this line of thought, (relational) time-space can be seen as actor-network topologies,
multiple pleats of relations stitched together, ‘such that nearness and distance measured in
absolute space are not in themselves important’ (Latham 2002: 131), but how spaces emerge as
ordered and hierarchical socio-material relations (Murdoch 1998: 358-359). Relational farness and
nearness are not only the product of distance but also the (dis)articulation of diverse (un)foldings
of actor networks (Law 1999: 6-7, Latham 2002: 131).
Following Serres’s topological thinking, human geographers have begun to see space, place and
time as co-constituted, folded together, situated, mobile and multiple. For Ash Amin (2002: 389),
this implies a notion of spatiality as non-linear and non-scalar as well as a:
Topological sense of space and place, a sense of geographies constituted through the folds,
undulations, and overlaps that natural and social practices normally assume, without any a
priori assumption of geographies of relations nested in territorial or geometric sense.
Every locality becomes a site of intersection and juxtaposition of old and new spatiotemporalities embedded in complex, layered histories. Place is an open, hybrid meeting place
(Massey 1999c: 22). As a consequence, a global sense of place is needed (Massey 1991), where
places are imagined (Massey 1994: 154):
As articulated moments in networks of social relations and understandings, but where a large
proportion of those relations, experiences and understandings are constructed on a far larger
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scale that what we happen to define for that moment as the place itself, whether that be a
street, or a region or even a continent.
Finally, the practice of in a topographical vein regarding geographical scales as a rigid spatial
framework from the local, or even the body, through the regional, national, continental to the
global has been questioned. Arguing in a relational vein that all networks of social relations are
constantly in the process of ordering, Nigel Thrift states that ‘There is no such thing as a scale.
Rather, size is an uncertain effect generated by a network and its modes of interaction’ (Thrift
1995: 33). Almost ten years later, Thrift (2004: 59) emphasises even more strongly that ‘Space is
no longer seen as a nested hierarchy moving from “global” to “local”. This absurd scaledependent notion is replaced by the notion that what counts is connectivity…’
This verdict may sound strong, but it is indicative of the relational turn in Human Geography
(Jones 2010a and 2010b). In essence, topographical thinking is discouraged in favour of
topological imaginations about the characteristics of a relation-based spatiality. “Topological” in
this context refers to a high degree back to the two geo-philosophies of Deleuze and Serres, as
relational space can be twisted around, unfolded, expanded and compressed due to a societal
dynamics of practices and events in continuous flux. The question is if ANT-scholars are as
inspired by the geo-philosophical approach as the human geographers.
A Hand Full of Topologies
As sociologists or scientific practice the ANT-approach pivot on the interwoven characteristics
of humans, materiality and technological artefacts. ANT stresses the ontological symmetry within
a hybrid collective, between humans, non-humans (other living beings) and objects like texts,
materials and so on. It is the assemblages of humans and non-humans of different kinds that
really accomplish something like making social structures last and act at distance and in a way we
can say that “society” is durable and doable thanks to all the non-humans (Callon 1986 and 1991,
Latour 1986 and 1991). And since action of human-mobile assemblages is constructed within the
networks, space and place are made out of the relations as well, made out of the materials that are
brought together by the assemblage (Murdoch 2006: 69-70).
In the beginning of the 1990’s critique towards ANT was formulated. ANT had proclaimed and
regarded networks as an all-encompassing ontology and narrative and consequently erased all
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space for alterity and excluded all Otherness (Lee and Brown 1994). Sometimes under labels like
“ANT 2.0” and “ANT and after”, there has been an endeavour to open up to a spatial imaginary
more ontologically complex than “ANT 1.0” (Hetherington and Law 2000: 129, Gad and Jensen
2010). John Law and Annemarie Mol are the scholars that most consequently have investigated
the spatialities of several topological constellations beyond the Cartesian logic of Euclidean space.
The starting point is the preposition that objects are an effect of networks and further that the
enactment of objects is simultaneously an enactment of spatial conditions (Law 2002: 92). What
counts as a research object is up to the researcher. Usually, objects are something that is
physically constituted and thus takes up space or volume in absolute space, but an object may
also be alcoholic liver disease or something else that is seemingly non-graspable (Law and
Singleton 2005: 331-332). We can say that the project initiated by Law in different writing
constellations is an effort to stretch the ontological realm that traditionally have been dominated
by the topographical viewpoint based on the Cartesian imagination of space and place. The
topography of Euclidean space must loose its primacy in order to unfold a hidden ontological
complexity and heterogeneity.
Mol and Law starts out by declare that Cartesian topography is just one form of social topology
among others. They stress (rather than referring back to geophilosophical accounts) that topology
is a branch of mathematics that in theirs case has been adopted and used in a non-mathematical
way. In mathematics, topology is about the character of objects in space (Murdoch 2006: 100,
note 3), and to Law it is about the continuity of objects’ shape even if the object is stretched and
bended. Topology concern ‘the properties of geometric figures which remain invariant under
bending, stretching, or deforming transformations, that is, transformations which do not create
new points or fuse existing ones’ (Delanda 2002: 25-26). Topology is thus not limited in the same
way as topography, since it does not comply with Euclidean restrictions like, primarily, threedimensionality, even if it still is a geometric geographical imagination (Simonsen 2004: 1336). In
sum, Law and Mol (Mol and Law 1994, Law and Mol 2001) discuss four topologies. Initially, they
execute their reading by discussing three social topologies: regions, networks and fluidity (Mol
and Law 1994: 643):
“The social” doesn't exist as a single spatial type. Rather, it performs several kinds of space in
which different “operations” take place. First, there are regions in which objects are clustered
together and boundaries are drawn around each cluster. Second, there are networks in which
distance is a function of the relations between the elements and difference a matter of
relational variety. These are the two topologies with which social theory is familiar.
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The first social topology, the region, is a ‘striated, Cartesian geographical space with demarcated
zones and co-ordinates. It is the topography of the social in terms of differentiated regions, e.g.
structures, systems, or fields based on territorialized and non-transformable objects’ (Diken 2010:
96). The spatiality of this social topology is the Euclidean space of absolute and relative space.
The second social topology, the network, is the social topology that in ANT started out as a
critique of Euclidean space but according to the critique in the end got colonial ambitions
epistemologically (Lee and Brown 1994). Here, compared to the social topology of the region,
proximity is measured in how the elements of the network hang together, and not measured in
physical distance. This social topology thus harmonises with a view on space as relational,
discussed above.
To break up the dominance of these two social topologies, Mol and Law (1994: 643, 658) present
the third social topology – a fluid topology:
Sometimes, we suggest, neither boundaries [emphasised in the topology of the region] nor
relations [emphasised in the topology of networks] mark the difference between one place
and another. Instead, sometimes boundaries come and go, allow leakage or disappear
altogether, while relations transform themselves without fracture. Sometimes, then, social
space behaves like a fluid...We're looking at variation without boundaries and transformation
without discontinuity. We're looking at flows. The space with which we're dealing is fluid.
Fluidity signals the absence of clear definitions in the relations or in the shape of the enrolled
elements, since the spatial relations are relentlessly becoming, shifting and moving. The fluid
space of the third topology is a realm of mixtures, generated by robust objects themselves
changeable and not well defined, where there are not necessarily clear boundaries. The objects of
fluid space are fluid objects of a fluid spatiality that co-exists with the prior two topologies
outlined (Mol and Law 1994: 663). Mol and Law (1994: 664) finish their paper by concluding that
the study of fluids will be a study of the ‘relations, repulsions and attractions, which form a flow’.
In a following-up, Law suggests that in fluid space, no particular structure of relations or
particular boundary around an object is privileged (actually mobile boundaries are needed for
objects to exist in fluid space). He also concludes that change is necessary if homeomorphism is
to be achieved but change need to be continuous rather than radical (Law 2002: 99-100).
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To make a quick summary, the key to understand the multiplicity of space and place lies thus in a
multi-ontological approach towards the research object and not only ontology/social topology as
the “network”, for instance. Objects can thus be ontologically understood as intersections
between spatialities that in their turn enact different social topologies as Euclidean, network and
fluid topologies (Law 2002: 102).
But Mol and Law did not stop here. A fourth topology is outlined in some degree in contrast to
the flow topology (with its elemental affinity to water): fire space (Law and Mol 2001: 615). In the
fire topology, shape is achieved and maintained through the relation between different forms of
presence and absence. Object presence depends for instance on simultaneous absence, or rather
the simultaneous absence of multiple others. As a consequence it has three attributes (Law and
Mol 2001: 616):
...continuity as an effect of discontinuity, continuity as the presence and the absence of
Otherness; and...continuity as an effect of a star-like pattern in this simultaneous absence and
presence: this is what we imagine as the attributes of shape constancy in a topology of fire.
Thus fire becomes a spatial formation alongside (and in interference with) Euclidean,
network, and fluid space. To say that there is a fire topology is to say that there are stable
shapes created in patterns of relations of conjoined alterity.
Together with Vicky Singleton, John Law a couple of years later clarified this reasoning. The fire
topology is just another topology (among other, not yet discussed topologies), since Otherness is
limitless, but is brought forward because it harmonizes with post-structuralist critique of the
metaphysics of presence that is a central point of critique in ANT. Not everything can be brought
to presence, and absence is a precondition for presence, and presence is a precondition for
absence (Law and Singleton 2005: 342). ‘An object is a pattern of presences and absences’ (Law
and Singleton 2005: 343). In the paper, alcoholic liver disease becomes three fire objects or
versions, each made differently with theirs own series of absent presences; in the hospital, in the
substance abuse centre and in the general practitioner’s surgery.
This approach is a bit similar to the hermeneutic interplay between the part and the whole, it
becomes the researcher’s task to crystallise what is absent but still something that makes a
difference regarding the shape and functionality of a specific research object. To Law (2002b), for
instance, in the accounts of aerodynamic formulas constructed and used to develop aeroplanes
with a capacity of fly faster than the sound, the human pilot (in the function of test pilots) as well
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as the density of the atmosphere are absent presences, invisible in the formalism but still
necessary for its actualisation. Clearly, which should come as no surprise, this approach from a
philosophy of science point of view falls within the camp of strong social constructivism, the
world is created through the empirical account rather than that the empirical account is a
declaration of an external reality.
To sum up, objects can be imagined in four ways (Law and Singleton 2005: 348):
…as volumes in Euclidean space; as stable networks of relations, as fluids that gently reshape
their configurations; and, finally, as generative links between presences and absences that are
both brought, and cannot conceivably be brought together…implicit here is a commitment
to a spatial ways of thinking. Objects are shapes that hold their shape, but they do so in four
radically different ways: as volumes, as stable networks configurations, as gentle relational
reorderings; and as patterns of absent presence.
In a progress report, Hayden Lorimer (2007: 94) question if these more porous imaginations of
sociality and spatiality (fluids, fire, mess etc.), as escapes from formalist notions of space, are
effective as tools for substantial analysis or rather ‘new motifs to better apprehend the complex
spatialities emerging between agentive technologies, skill-based interactions, scientific techniques
and mobile subject’. Perhaps this is too early to say, but nevertheless has these ideas about
different social topologies had a significant impact, primarily among geographers and sociologists.
Some geographers have discussed topology in relation to methodological considerations
(Woodward et al 2009) and topology in relation to poststructuralist thoughts more generally
(Kingsbury 2007). Others have addressed the notion of topology in relation to power and
politics, either in relation to Foucauldian or Deleuzian understandings of power (Allen 2003,
Leitner et al 2008, see also Collier 2009) or with references to Agamben’s ideas on the camp as a
topological space that unfolds and opens up through biopolitical machinations (Koopman 2008,
Giaccaria & Minca 2011). To Belcher et al (2008) the exception functions as an non-localisable
transformation process, the emerging and spatialising potentiality of the materialisation or nonmaterialisation of actual spaces. To these scholars, the challenge to geography is to catch these
ontological dynamic machinations rather than map out the geometric spaces of actualised camps
like Guantánamo Bay.
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Other topics that have been covered and highlighted through the social topology framework by
Mol and Law is climate change (Blok 2011), old-grown forests (Kortelainen 2010) fisheries
certification (Bear and Eden 2008), research on biodiversity (Ellis and Waterton 2005), surgical
interventions (Moreira 2004), sinks (Gabrys 2009), telecare service (López and Domènech 2008),
territorialization of a pedestrian precinct (Kärrholm 2008) and foot and mouth disease (Law and
Mol 2010). Among the more influential scholars John Urry has apprehended the ideas. In his
approach towards global complexity (Urry 2003 and 2004) the concepts of regions, flows and
fluids are discussed and the conclusion that the social sciences has failed to distinguished between
the three topologies’ spatial patterns (Urry 2003: 41). The fire topology is a bit marginalized but
nicely recapitulated (Urry 2003: 73):
Finally, these complex intersections between fluid spatialities suggest a further metaphor,
what Law and Mol term ‘fire’ (2000). By this they try to capture how a continuity of shape
can be the very effect of movement, even of abrupt and discontinuous movement (note the
previous description of gases). The term also emphasizes how there is a striking dependence
of presence upon what happens to be absent. Indeed, more generally social life often
depends upon peculiar combinations of the presence and the absence. ‘Fire’ also brings out
how the forms of absence that constitute a present are themselves patterned (they discuss a
star pattern but there are others). There is thus a complex oscillating pattern of presence and
absence, of contradictions, within social phenomena.
The fire topology is however more integrated in Bülent Diken’s call for a sociology with a
conceptual framework that makes it possible to address the contemporary postpolitical condition.
The fire topology is here a metaphor for objects that are mutable immobiles that contains not
only mobility through mutability through discontinuous movements but a dimension of
immobility as well.
Presence and Absence – Shaky Steps towards a Geography of the Fourth Topology
Donna: “If you were falling in space, do you think
you’d slow down after a while or go faster and faster?”
Laura: “Faster and faster. And for a long time you
wouldn’t feel anything. And then you’d burst into fire.”
14
Presence and absence are thus key concepts in the fire topology. The presence of an object, and
the shape and function of the object are depending on the absence of a plethora of multiple
others. Graspable objects is an effect of un-graspable objects, continuity is an effect of
discontinuity. At the same time is presence a precondition for absence, so the situation here is
characterised by total interdependence. But when the widening of the ontological register started
out with notifying not only humans but non-humans, and the networks operating beyond the
physical horizon, the introduction of absence as a crucial present component in the analytical
schedule is the central addition here. Meyer and Woodthorpe (2008) discuss the spatiality and
materiality of absence, and with reference to Law (2004) qualifications of absence. Manifest
absence is the first qualification, whatever is absent but is manifested in its absence while the
second qualification is whatever is absent and in a relation of Otherness towards what is present
simultaneously (Law 2004: 85, original emphasis):
Otherness, or absence that is not made manifest, also goes with presence. It too is necessary to
presence. But it disappears. Perhaps it disappears because it is not interesting while it goes on
routinely…Perhaps it disappears because it is not interesting, full stop…Perhaps…it
disappears because what is being brought to presence and manifest absence cannot be
sustained unless it is Othered…The implication is that Otherness takes a variety of forms.
Those above – routine, insignificance and repression – are no doubt only three of the possibilities.
To Meyer and Woodthorpe (2008) absence can be spatially located, have some kind of materiality
and have agency. A cemetery is a spatially located place in which the absence of people that
perhaps was very close to us is quite graspable. This relates to Hetherington’s (2003: 1941)
discussion about praesentia (presence of mind), something absent that can attain a presence
through materiality: a reminder of the present, a feel of a specifically located place and a sense of
being at peace. Finally, if objects have agency and do at least three things (bring space to life, take
their meaning from a context, its context) they can also make the absent present (Hetherington
2004: 159):
The absence can have just as much of an effect upon relations as recognisable forms of
presence can have. Social relations are performed not only around what is there but
sometimes also around the presence of what is not. Absence, I argue, is not just a philosophical
concept, it is also a distinctly sociological one. Indeed the category of absence can have a
significant presence in social relations and material culture.
15
So, in a fire topology worlds are closing in on each other, are intertwined through performativity
of absent and present objects, materialities and people. The world are an outcome of the word,
the word makes possible the actualised event of worlds, like in Killer Bobs chant to get out of the
black lodge. But, and this is the temporary conclusion of this on-going paper: the geography of
fire topology is not only revolving around the interplay and oscillation between presence and
absence, and the necessity of manifested absences and Otherness. There is need for more
dynamics here. Therefore, the geography of fire topology also revolves around the phenomena of
the appearance of the absent and the phenomena of the disappearance of the present. Space folds
and unfolds as the disappearance of appearance and the appearance of disappearance.
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