Refrains for Moving Bodies

"Derek P. McCormack is interested in the lines of influence that bodies trace out and the ways that they produce scaffoldings and architectures which perform different possibilities differently. Such an art of experiment has rarely been articulated so clearly or so forcefully as in this book, which provides an agenda for a different way of doing geography, as movement but also trance, as prose but also rhyme, as maps that morph and dissimulate but also provide guidelines. The book is rich in the kind of cloudy inspiration that makes you want to think more about more. Brilliant."—Nigel Thrift, coauthor of Arts of the Political: New Openings for the Left
"In this precise, lyrical, inventive, and rigorous book, Derek P. McCormack rethinks how affective spaces are generated by and for moving bodies, creating new conceptions of spaces and our relationship to them. Clear and generative, Refrains for Moving Bodies is a significant contribution to cultural geography, philosophy, dance, and performance studies."—Erin Manning, author of Always More Than One: Individuation's Dance
"The book ends as it started, in a happy muddle of geography’s interactions with other disciplines, allowing for a string of example/experiences as a coda and refrain of earlier chapters, this time tying together choreography and GPS." -- Joe Grobelny * Itineration *
"McCormack’s adroit reworkings ought to signal new points of attachment, new senses of the possible and the compatible. In all these ways, however modest, Refrains for Moving Bodies is textually and practically a book of openings, and it should be read as such." -- Peter Ekman * Social & Cultural Geography *
“Refrains for Moving Bodies is a thought-provoking conceptual and empirical engagement with the relationship between bodies and space.... [It] provides an enlivened approach to doing geography through movement and thus has enormous potential to make a significant impact on scholarship on bodies, performance and practice.” -- Charlotte Veal * Cultural Geographies *
“McCormack undertakes a rigorous analysis of the potential of experimentation in space and affect, revealing Debord’s briefly articulated vision to be a rich area of research with implications for dance and performance studies, affect studies, urban studies, and geography, as well as their theoretical and practical intersections.” -- Laura D. Vriend * Dance Research Journal *
"The ability to weave between lengthy theoretical considerations and vivid recollections of relationally specific, embodied practices make this book a welcome contribution to existing literature in affect theory, cultural geography and theories of embodiment." -- Kallee Lins * Theatre Research International *