Geoaesthetics redux

ft mentioned, seldom discussed: such is the status of aesthetic(s), adjective and noun, in much of human geography today. It is a term which beguiles; we like to think that we know what the term means. Koren’s (2010) light-hearted text, Which ‘Aesthetics’ Do you Mean, offers something of an antidote to such beguilement. Promising to address the “ostensible vacuity and confusion” surrounding aesthetics, Koren offers an origin of the term before listing no fewer than ten different definitions or versions: appearance, style, taste, philosophy of art, thesis or exegesis, artistic, beauty, beautification, cognitive mode, and language. These may all seem familiar to readers but point to the difficulty in outlining any coherent or straightforward notion of aesthetics. Indeed, for my own part, aesthetics was originally a term that featured in my thesis title but, by the end, had fallen away in large part due to my exasperation with it. Accordingly, two recently published books which undertake detailed conceptual work on the term, and how it relates to space and/or Geography, are to be warmly commended. The first, Mustafa Dikeç’s (2015) Space, Politics and Aesthetics examines a trio of thinkers – all of whom are indebted to Kant – and highlights how their political aesthetic is tethered to particular understandings of space and spatialisation. The second, Geographical Aesthetics, a volume edited by Harriet Hawkins and Elizabeth Straughan (2015), explores Geography’s uneasy relationship with aesthetics and seeks to renew and rework a geographical imaginary of the aesthetic.