Resituating post‐phenomenological geographies: Deleuze, relations and the limits of objects

Post‐phenomenology has emerged as a diverse and conceptually challenging movement within human geography, one that is now positioned at the forefront of debates concerning the more‐than‐human constitution of social and cultural life. In recent years, these conversations have been further energised through the influence of various “object‐oriented ontologies” on post‐phenomenological thinking. By questioning the ontological primacy of the intentional subject, object‐oriented approaches have enabled geographers to problematise the anthropocentricism of phenomenology's Husserlian tradition. While sympathetic to the overall spirit of these endeavours, this paper takes issue with a significant and often unacknowledged constraint placed on post‐phenomenology by object‐oriented approaches: the reduction of reality to a collection of individuated terms. By merely replacing one kind of individual (subject) with another (object), object‐oriented ontology inherits an image of thought that remains profoundly phenomenological in its privileging of individuals over relations. Turning to the work of Gilles Deleuze, this paper strives to resituate geography's post‐phenomenological critique upstream of either subject or object, focusing instead on the distinction between relations and terms. For Deleuze, to think beyond phenomenological coordinates is to affirm the irreducibility of relations to individuated terms, whatever form these terms might take. Returning to his early work on Hume, the paper explores how Deleuze's invocation to think relations as such raises important questions in terms of how geographers situate the problem of post‐phenomenology within contemporary social research. I conclude by reflecting on the practical implications of these questions for thinking beyond objects, paying particular attention to three key themes within human geography: relationality, materiality and empiricism. This paper explores the relevance of Deleuze's philosophy for broadening post‐phenomenological geographies beyond the current interest in objects. Turning to Deleuze's early writings on the philosophy of David Hume, the paper suggests the need for a more thoroughgoing critique of the phenomenological tradition, one that is no longer based on the ontological primacy of the individual. This has important implications for how geographers make sense of the world, which the paper addresses through the themes of relationality, materiality and empiricism.