Trans Inst Br Geogr. 2021;00:1–5. | 1 wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/tran
Lioba Hirsch: Naya, I would like to start by expressing how grateful I am that we got to work on this intervention
together! I have learnt so much from you and the other contributors throughout the last few months and our discus-
sions have nourished me and left me with a sense of joy and calm that I don’t often feel in academia. This interven-
tion challenges how geography as a (post)colonial discipline and one shaped by whiteness sees, understands, and
relates to Black geographies, but certainly for me it turned into a far greater gift: of working and sharing a space with
Black geographers (remotely) for close to a year; an intervention into our relative isolation, a prolonged ‘meeting of
minds’ (hooks, & hall, 2017). This editorial builds on similar trans-Atlantic dialogues between US-American and
Black British/European writers and thinkers, such as the conversation between hooks and Hall or Audre Lorde’s work
with Afro-German women in the 80s and 90s. As in hooks and Hall’s dialogue, this editorial reflects how we learned
from and with one another and similarly centred a Black multi-dimensional and polyvalent narrative.
Naya Jones: Lioba, sharing your gratitude back to you! In the process of co-editing, we’ve reimagined academic writing
together as co-editors and with contributors. Our periodic virtual meetings with everyone from the Intervention felt
more like healing circles as we read and reflected on each other’s works-in-progress. In the spirit of healing justice,
I mean they offered spaces for us to not only share our work but also to be explicit about how our work involves our
everyday lives as Black scholars. This is also why opening the Intervention with dialogue feels aligned. I appreciate
how dialogue allows us to witness each other and theorize together. As you and I are in dialogue, those reading this,
become part of this witnessing and theorizing, too. There is something intimate about us being in dialogue that
resonates with the intimate geographies reflected in this Intervention. And how timely. How necessary! I’m based
in Santa Cruz, California, and you are based in London. We started the Intervention just as more Black Lives Matter
protests took root in the United States following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many more, and
as protests and marches against anti-blackness and police brutality emerged worldwide. The coronavirus pandemic
Received: 24 November 2020
|
Revised: 18 May 2021
|
Accepted: 26 July 2021
DOI: 10.1111/tran.12488
THEMED INTERVENTION
Incontestable: Imagining possibilities through intimate
Black geographies
Lioba A. Hirsch
1
|
Naya Jones
2
The information, practices and views in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG).
© 2021 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)
1
Department of Geography and
Planning, University of Liverpool,
Liverpool, UK
2
Sociology, University of California
Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, California,
USA
Correspondence
Lioba A. Hirsch, Department of
Geography and Planning, University of
Liverpool, Liverpool, UK.
Email: lioba.hirsch@liverpool.ac.uk
Funding information
There are no funders to report for this
submission.
Abstract
This editorial takes the form of a dialogue between the editors of this Themed
Intervention on Black intimate geographies. It frames the voices of the Black
geographers from the USA and the UK assembled here as speaking to both the
incontournability of anti-blackness as a political reality and to Black ways of
knowing, imagining, and dreaming our presents and our futures against and be-
yond resistance to anti-blackness. The editorial celebrates the diasporic collabo-
ration on which this Intervention is grounded and points to the possibilities of
Black life and knowledge production.
KEYWORDS
Black diaspora, intimate geographies, resistance, antiblackness, Black Geographies