Not long ago, my brilliant colleague Trevor Barnes began a literature review by recounting the experience of quickly paging through a long-dead professor's papers in the archives, and having the fine dust of the old papers accumulate in his lap in the university archives. Dust to dust. Trevor titles his review, "Taking the Pulse of the Dead," and explains how many of the old and forgotten ideas of previous generations of geographers are now being remembered, re-invented, or re-incarnated. The metaphor is powerful and moving, and it makes me think about a lot of connections -- particularly in light of some of the themes that Don Mitchell explores in his obituary for the revolutionary Marxist geographer Neil Smith, and some of the other literatures I've been grappling with in a piece that I called, "Where is an Author?" The connections are everywhere, if we just pay attention. Here's a short brainstorm on some of these issues based on a quite brilliant quote on life, death, and authorship offered by Anita Thompson, in Alex Gibney's delightful "Gonzo" documentary.
Vancouver, BC, September 2015