Towards an historical geography of nonrepresentation: making the countercultural subject in the 1960s
Social & Cultural Geography August 1, 2007 S. Rycroft 12 citations
Many nonrepresentational perspectives—those emphasizing practice, performance, and experience over fixed representation—first emerged in the 1960s counterculture through experiments in arts, media, politics, and everyday life. These experiments, including psychedelics and underground cinema, aimed to shape a new kind of countercultural subject. Although such nonrepresentational practices thrived in some countercultural enclaves, they struggled in others, partly because their success remained tied to how they were represented. In 1960s Los Angeles, for instance, these practices were more often represented than actually enacted. The text warns against treating representation as a static, deadening force, noting that postwar representational practices themselves evolved to evoke sensory and subconscious responses, creating nonrepresentational moments within representation.