To think antifascistically is necessarily to think geographically; to think geographically ought to be to think antifascistically. This aphorism sets the compass for this book's ambitious attempt to fold questions of fascism and antifascism into the remit of Geotheory (the focus of the host book series). Alert to fascism's pernicious haunting of our contemporary moment, it reaches for intellectual resources through which to fashion constellations of antifascist thought hinging on attentiveness to space, place, landscape and nature.
Specifically, the book offers the first attempt to systematically explore the 'geographies' integral to the thinking of Theodor W. Adorno, premier exponent of the Frankfurt School of critical theory whose writings
on philosophy and sociology, politics and culture, literature and music
were often framed precisely against the threat of fascistic regression. By disclosing Adorno's geographies, the shape of a geographical antifascism comes into view as a transformational restatement of critical geography's spirit and purpose.
By:
Chris Philo
Imprint: Edinburgh University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 234mm,
Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781399544672
ISBN 10: 1399544675
Series: Geotheory
Pages: 400
Publication Date: 07 October 2025
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming
Contents Figures, Tables and Textboxes Acknowledgements Prologue Chapter 1: Adorno, geography, fascism, antifascism Chapter 2: Nature, space and the geographies of unenlightenment Chapter 3: Love, hate and social geographies of the ‘vanquished’, ‘disinherited’ and ‘insignificant’ Chapter 4: Melancholic geographies of the fragmentary and nothing-much Chapter 5: Metaphysical geographies of the non-conceptual and non-identical Chapter 6: Actuality, interiority and beyond bourgeois existential geographies Chapter 7: Authenticity, rusticity and beyond fascist existential geographies Chapter 8: Aesthetics and artworks from culture industry to cultural landscapes Chapter 9: Physiognomy, geometry, jazz and the multiple spaces of/in musical material Chapter 10: Authoritarianism, astrology and the scaled spaces of fascism Epilogue Bibliography
Chris Philo is Professor of Geography at the University of Glasgow. He is editor of Theory and Methods: Critical Essays in Human Geography (Ashgate, 2008), co-editor of The International Encyclopedia of Human Geography (Elsevier, 2009) and of The Sage Handbook of Human Geography (Sage, 2014).
Reviews for Adorno and the Antifascist Geographical Imagination
A staggering work of urgent scholarship. Through rigorous, careful engagement with Adorno’s oeuvre, Philo affirms the value of critical thought as he uncovers and crafts a compelling ‘antifascist geographical imagination’. One of the most important geographical books of the 21st century, Adorno and the Antifascist Geographical Imagination is essential reading amid today’s fascistic tendencies. -- Ben Anderson, Durham University
