SoiferI VtP Collaboration Biography

I find two ideas from critical race theory to be particularly pertinent to the Design Group’s thinking and work: George Lipsitz’s “white spatial imaginary” and Katherine McKittrick’s interpretation of the poetics of landscape. Whereas Lipsitz’s notion assists with understanding social inequities as toxic space, McKittrick’s argument for the reconceptualization of space and place in order to discover more humanely workable geographies could help to both identify toxicities and inform alternatives to the toxicities we determine as we work through our projects. She argues for the re-presentation of human geography, as manifested by black women’s historical-contextual locations within geographic organizations. In her work, she seeks to rewrite national narratives, respatialize feminism, and develop new pathways across traditional geographic arrangements. Perhaps even as we identify and contend with the toxicities of our fieldsites/projects, we can begin to think through ways to push for ethical human-geographic formulations. McKittrick argues that Black women’s geographies and poetics challenge us to “stay human,” invoking how black spaces/places are integral to multiscalar geographic stories and how the question of seeable human differences put spatial and philosophical demands on geography.