Form, genre, voice, and authority in human geography: A speculative genealogy

This speculative genealogy of trends in the written forms geographical scholarship, 2020–2043, explores dramatic transformations discipline that came with a ‘neo-formalist’ turn towards critical reflection on and experiment formal aspects writing, including structure, genre, voice, style. At start 2020s, forms, genres, styles academic writing Anglophone research journals were still rather homogeneous form. Experiments form mostly restricted to sub-disciplinary silos. Following series important scholarly interventions, started reflect more earnestly different kinds authority are claimed through use particular authorial personas. Whereas early decades 21st century, personas confident, self-assured, decisive, expressing ‘mastery’ concepts, greater analysis geography's led proliferation personas, often rejecting associated instead exploring hesitation, anxiety, indecision, passivity, improvisation, unreliability, plurality, failure, humour, self-deprecation, as ways claiming different, egalitarian epistemic authority. concludes despite problem eclecticism, this methodological has greatly enriched from mid-2020s until today.