ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book serves as a useful springboard for geographers seeking to launch their own interventions into ongoing debates. It presents a reprint of Nicky Gregson and Gillian Roses call to attend to the spatialities of Butler's conception of performativity. The book contributes, Carolin Schurrs, who brings together Butlerian performativity theory with Chantal Mouffes theorization of agonistic democracy to examine the politics of performative spaces. The performative is political any speech act or other form of bodily conduct is necessarily performed within a social space of potential, if not actual, contestation. Austin's theory of speech acts therefore naturalizes the social conventions and institutional assemblages that make a claim to authorizing legitimate uses of language. Gibson-Graham insists that academic scholarship is itself implicated in the performative reiteration and sedimentation of existing worlds and direct more of its energy toward the enactment of other worlds.
