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Throughout the past decade contemporary human geography has seen a decisive move away from structuralist analysis of the New Cultural era, to a more fluid, deconstructed and poststructuralist approach. However, throughout this performative turn there has never been so much as a fleeting glance towards the nonpresent. Invariably the lost, decayed and distorted have remained absent. This research responds to this abeyance as best as possible, aiming to rectify the absence of absence . The narrative begins with the development of landscape within social and cultural geography, contemplating the dominance of presence over absence and the recent emphasis upon doings, encounters and becomings. Via a sustained critique of this, themes are drawn out to consider how the problem of absence may be manipulated and incorporated into narrative form. A typology of absence develops, delineating absence in three broad dimensions; its capacity, temporality and affective resonances. Via this typology, entwined with creative methodologies, a hybrid form of auto-ethnographic montage narrative develops, offering creative encounters with the landscape of Blackpool.
About the author
This thesis was submitted for a Masters of Arts in the Department of Geography, University of Durham in 2008.
