On totalities and oppositions: Comments on a special issue

It can be useful to comprehend the papers in this special edition of the Norwegian Journal of Geography in terms of the paradoxical antithesis between dialectical oppositions and totalizing thinking, with its tendency to mythologize itself. The question of the truth of myth also applies to the totalizing narratives geographers apply to the understanding of their discipline. To construct a unified discipline one needs to produce disciplinary narratives that construct the image of a unified whole, a totality with a given 'nature'. To escape the totalitarian power of such frameworks, however, these images need to be counterpoised to the oppositions against which they are generated. The discipline is thus defined by the paradoxical tension between modes of thought that seek to define the nature of geography by seeking images of wholeness and unity, and those that emphasize difference and opposition.