Derek Ruez
Biographic Data
| ID | 1521658 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Derek Ruez |
| GIVEN NAMES | Derek |
| FAMILY NAME | Ruez |
| SIGNATURE | RUEZ D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Tampere University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0591-371X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 149 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
International Academics as Agents of Transformation: Lived and Managed Internationalization in a Finnish University
This article explores internationalization processes as an ongoing transformation of higher education institutions by examining a case of internationalization efforts at Tampere University (TAU) in Finland. Against the prevailing policy discourse of international “talent” which tends to instrumentalize international academics, we explore how the experiences of international academics provide a window into complicated dynamics of lived and managed…
Inconvenience, ambivalence, and abolition: A politics of attachment and detachment in geography
In this commentary, we explore the idea of detachment that we see as central to Anderson's notion of attachment but that nevertheless does not take centre stage in the paper. We situate detachment not as attachment's antithesis, opposite, or negative, but as its structural condition and as irretrievably interwoven with attachment. Through Berlant's recent writing, we foreground the notion of ambivalence as a way to think about the complexity of a…
Encountering Berlant part two: Cruel and other optimisms
Part 2 of Encountering Berlant amplifies the promise of Lauren Berlant's influential concept of 'cruel optimism'. Cruel optimism names a double-bind in which attachment to an 'object' holds out the promise of sustaining/flourishing, whilst simultaneously harming. The lines between harming, sustaining, damaging and flourishing blur, sometimes collapsing entirely. By holding together opposites the concept exemplifies and performs the centrality of …
Intervention: Engaging post-foundational political theory requires an 'enmeshed' approach
This intervention argues for renewed engagements with post-foundational political theory (PFPT) within political geography. We feel that post-foundational political geography may be on the cusp of becoming consolidated as a distinct and expansive approach to political geographic scholarship, but we argue that reductionist and binary caricatures of its central distinction between ‘politics’ and ‘the political’ must be avoided for it to reach its f…
Ambivalent methods, geographical difference, and the politics of feeling-knowing
We offer an engagement with the generous responses to our article, ‘Feeling Otherwise’. We think with the authors who responded to our paper to sketch out an affirmative way to understand the concept of ambivalence. We clarify key points, reflect on the responses, and make suggestions for ways to explore this topic further
Speeding up to allow time: Launching the topical special issue concept in Space and Polity
We’re in Asia’: Worlding LGBTQI+ activism otherwise in Sydney
Building on recent work in postcolonial urban studies that has developed more genuinely plural approaches to urban theorising, this article poses the problem of ‘worlding’ in relation to urban LGBTQI+ activism in Sydney, Australia. Specifically, the article examines how Sydney is variously worlded as or against ‘Asia’ in public debate around LGBTQI+ politics and in the imaginaries of activists living in Sydney. These worldings are shown to be an …
Feeling otherwise: Ambivalent affects and the politics of critique in geography
Scholars across the social sciences and humanities have increasingly questioned the meaning and purpose of critique. Contributing to those conversations, some geographers have advocated for affirmative or reparative practices such as reading for difference or experimentation that seek to provoke more joyful, hopeful, or enchanting affects, as alternatives to what they perceive as a prevailing forms of ‘negative’ critique. In response, others have…
There is no political agenda’: Governing and contesting the compassionate city in Louisville
This paper examines the emerging trend for city governments to declare themselves compassionate. Opening up the ‘compassionate city’ as an object of critical scrutiny, we outline some of the key ways that compassion has been approached in critical scholarship before turning our attention to the politics of these urban commitments to compassion as they are enacted in practice. Focusing on the city of Louisville, where the ‘compassionate city’ imag…
Thinking space differently: Deleuze's Möbius topology for a theorisation of the encounter
The relation between difference and space has long been and continues to be an animating problem in theoretical and political conversations across the discipline of geography, including in much recent work on encounter. In this paper, we make the case for the value of a less explored angle on space in Deleuze's work, which we call the topologies of space‐as‐difference. We highlight the Möbius strip as a central figure in his ontological system, a…
“I never felt targeted as an Asian … until I went to a gay pub”: Sexual racism and the aesthetic geographies of the bad encounter
Encounters across difference—in city spaces marked by diverse migration trajectories, cultural differences, and racialized hierarchies—have captured the attention of urban scholars concerned with both the challenge of “living with difference” and the promise of multicultural conviviality that inhere in the super-diversity of many cities. Expanding on approaches that focus on analyzing the conditions of a good or “meaningful” encounter that can re…
Between ontology and representation: Locating Gilles Deleuze’s ‘difference-in-itself ’ in and for geographical thought
The concept of difference has long been integral to geographical thought. However, it is rare for geographers to consider precisely what difference is, or how it functions, and there are several contrasting traditions through which difference is understood. We argue that geographers could helpfully extend their theorizations of difference through Deleuze’s philosophy of ‘difference-in-itself’. We examine the value of a ‘difference-in-itself’ that…
Working to appear: The plural and uneven geographies of race, sexuality, and the local state in Sydney, Australia
This paper mobilizes an Arendtian understanding of politics emphasizing plurality and appearance in order to examine a series of projects convened by the City of Sydney council between 2010 and 2013 that were intended to address issues faced by queer people from "culturally and linguistically diverse" communities. Drawing on interviews with participants, as well as archival materials, I argue that these efforts carved out spaces in which racializ…
If memory serves: Gay men, Aids, and the promise of the queer past
Christopher Castiglia and Christopher Reed, Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnesota Press, 2012, 259 pp, $75.00 (hardback), ISBN 0-8166-7610-0, $25.00 (paperback), 0-8166-7611-8 In If Memory Serve
Partitioning the Sensible” at Park 51: Rancière, Islamophobia, and Common Politics
This paper uses Jacques Rancière's conception of the partition of the sensible to interrogate the aesthetic regimes and spatial coordinates that animated public debate about Park 51—the Islamic community center near the World Trade Center site in Manhattan. Understanding conflicts over mosques as potential struggles over the conditions of membership in a community, I suggest that many of the arguments in favor of Park 51 reinforced a partition of…
Violence , by Slavoj Žižek. New York: Picador, 2008
Slavoj Žižek's book, Violence, offers a critical account of violence in liberal, capitalist democracies by distinguishing between three kinds: the subjective (terrorism, crime); the symbolic (violence embedded in language); and the systemic (the violence perpetuated by capitalist political and economic arrangements). He argues that a focus on the subjective violence of terrorism has obscured the symbolic and systematic violence of everyday social…
Feeling otherwise: Ambivalent affects and the politics of critique in geography
Scholars across the social sciences and humanities have increasingly questioned the meaning and purpose of critique. Contributing to those conversations, some geographers have advocated for affirmative or reparative practices such as reading for difference or experimentation that seek to provoke more joyful, hopeful, or enchanting affects, as alternatives to what they perceive as a prevailing forms of ‘negative’ critique. In response, others have…
Between ontology and representation: Locating Gilles Deleuze’s ‘difference-in-itself ’ in and for geographical thought
The concept of difference has long been integral to geographical thought. However, it is rare for geographers to consider precisely what difference is, or how it functions, and there are several contrasting traditions through which difference is understood. We argue that geographers could helpfully extend their theorizations of difference through Deleuze’s philosophy of ‘difference-in-itself’. We examine the value of a ‘difference-in-itself’ that…
Thinking space differently: Deleuze's Möbius topology for a theorisation of the encounter
The relation between difference and space has long been and continues to be an animating problem in theoretical and political conversations across the discipline of geography, including in much recent work on encounter. In this paper, we make the case for the value of a less explored angle on space in Deleuze's work, which we call the topologies of space‐as‐difference. We highlight the Möbius strip as a central figure in his ontological system, a…
Encountering Berlant part two: Cruel and other optimisms
Part 2 of Encountering Berlant amplifies the promise of Lauren Berlant's influential concept of 'cruel optimism'. Cruel optimism names a double-bind in which attachment to an 'object' holds out the promise of sustaining/flourishing, whilst simultaneously harming. The lines between harming, sustaining, damaging and flourishing blur, sometimes collapsing entirely. By holding together opposites the concept exemplifies and performs the centrality of …
Working to appear: The plural and uneven geographies of race, sexuality, and the local state in Sydney, Australia
This paper mobilizes an Arendtian understanding of politics emphasizing plurality and appearance in order to examine a series of projects convened by the City of Sydney council between 2010 and 2013 that were intended to address issues faced by queer people from "culturally and linguistically diverse" communities. Drawing on interviews with participants, as well as archival materials, I argue that these efforts carved out spaces in which racializ…
Partitioning the Sensible” at Park 51: Rancière, Islamophobia, and Common Politics
This paper uses Jacques Rancière's conception of the partition of the sensible to interrogate the aesthetic regimes and spatial coordinates that animated public debate about Park 51—the Islamic community center near the World Trade Center site in Manhattan. Understanding conflicts over mosques as potential struggles over the conditions of membership in a community, I suggest that many of the arguments in favor of Park 51 reinforced a partition of…
Intervention: Engaging post-foundational political theory requires an 'enmeshed' approach
This intervention argues for renewed engagements with post-foundational political theory (PFPT) within political geography. We feel that post-foundational political geography may be on the cusp of becoming consolidated as a distinct and expansive approach to political geographic scholarship, but we argue that reductionist and binary caricatures of its central distinction between ‘politics’ and ‘the political’ must be avoided for it to reach its f…
If memory serves: Gay men, Aids, and the promise of the queer past
Christopher Castiglia and Christopher Reed, Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnesota Press, 2012, 259 pp, $75.00 (hardback), ISBN 0-8166-7610-0, $25.00 (paperback), 0-8166-7611-8 In If Memory Serve
We’re in Asia’: Worlding LGBTQI+ activism otherwise in Sydney
Building on recent work in postcolonial urban studies that has developed more genuinely plural approaches to urban theorising, this article poses the problem of ‘worlding’ in relation to urban LGBTQI+ activism in Sydney, Australia. Specifically, the article examines how Sydney is variously worlded as or against ‘Asia’ in public debate around LGBTQI+ politics and in the imaginaries of activists living in Sydney. These worldings are shown to be an …
Inconvenience, ambivalence, and abolition: A politics of attachment and detachment in geography
In this commentary, we explore the idea of detachment that we see as central to Anderson's notion of attachment but that nevertheless does not take centre stage in the paper. We situate detachment not as attachment's antithesis, opposite, or negative, but as its structural condition and as irretrievably interwoven with attachment. Through Berlant's recent writing, we foreground the notion of ambivalence as a way to think about the complexity of a…
Ambivalent methods, geographical difference, and the politics of feeling-knowing
We offer an engagement with the generous responses to our article, ‘Feeling Otherwise’. We think with the authors who responded to our paper to sketch out an affirmative way to understand the concept of ambivalence. We clarify key points, reflect on the responses, and make suggestions for ways to explore this topic further
There is no political agenda’: Governing and contesting the compassionate city in Louisville
This paper examines the emerging trend for city governments to declare themselves compassionate. Opening up the ‘compassionate city’ as an object of critical scrutiny, we outline some of the key ways that compassion has been approached in critical scholarship before turning our attention to the politics of these urban commitments to compassion as they are enacted in practice. Focusing on the city of Louisville, where the ‘compassionate city’ imag…
Violence , by Slavoj Žižek. New York: Picador, 2008
Slavoj Žižek's book, Violence, offers a critical account of violence in liberal, capitalist democracies by distinguishing between three kinds: the subjective (terrorism, crime); the symbolic (violence embedded in language); and the systemic (the violence perpetuated by capitalist political and economic arrangements). He argues that a focus on the subjective violence of terrorism has obscured the symbolic and systematic violence of everyday social…
If memory serves: Gay men, Aids, and the promise of the queer past
Christopher Castiglia and Christopher Reed, Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnesota Press, 2012, 259 pp, $75.00 (hardback), ISBN 0-8166-7610-0, $25.00 (paperback), 0-8166-7611-8 In If Memory Serve
Partitioning the Sensible” at Park 51: Rancière, Islamophobia, and Common Politics
This paper uses Jacques Rancière's conception of the partition of the sensible to interrogate the aesthetic regimes and spatial coordinates that animated public debate about Park 51—the Islamic community center near the World Trade Center site in Manhattan. Understanding conflicts over mosques as potential struggles over the conditions of membership in a community, I suggest that many of the arguments in favor of Park 51 reinforced a partition of…
Between ontology and representation: Locating Gilles Deleuze’s ‘difference-in-itself ’ in and for geographical thought
The concept of difference has long been integral to geographical thought. However, it is rare for geographers to consider precisely what difference is, or how it functions, and there are several contrasting traditions through which difference is understood. We argue that geographers could helpfully extend their theorizations of difference through Deleuze’s philosophy of ‘difference-in-itself’. We examine the value of a ‘difference-in-itself’ that…
Working to appear: The plural and uneven geographies of race, sexuality, and the local state in Sydney, Australia
This paper mobilizes an Arendtian understanding of politics emphasizing plurality and appearance in order to examine a series of projects convened by the City of Sydney council between 2010 and 2013 that were intended to address issues faced by queer people from "culturally and linguistically diverse" communities. Drawing on interviews with participants, as well as archival materials, I argue that these efforts carved out spaces in which racializ…
“I never felt targeted as an Asian … until I went to a gay pub”: Sexual racism and the aesthetic geographies of the bad encounter
Encounters across difference—in city spaces marked by diverse migration trajectories, cultural differences, and racialized hierarchies—have captured the attention of urban scholars concerned with both the challenge of “living with difference” and the promise of multicultural conviviality that inhere in the super-diversity of many cities. Expanding on approaches that focus on analyzing the conditions of a good or “meaningful” encounter that can re…
There is no political agenda’: Governing and contesting the compassionate city in Louisville
This paper examines the emerging trend for city governments to declare themselves compassionate. Opening up the ‘compassionate city’ as an object of critical scrutiny, we outline some of the key ways that compassion has been approached in critical scholarship before turning our attention to the politics of these urban commitments to compassion as they are enacted in practice. Focusing on the city of Louisville, where the ‘compassionate city’ imag…
Thinking space differently: Deleuze's Möbius topology for a theorisation of the encounter
The relation between difference and space has long been and continues to be an animating problem in theoretical and political conversations across the discipline of geography, including in much recent work on encounter. In this paper, we make the case for the value of a less explored angle on space in Deleuze's work, which we call the topologies of space‐as‐difference. We highlight the Möbius strip as a central figure in his ontological system, a…
Ambivalent methods, geographical difference, and the politics of feeling-knowing
We offer an engagement with the generous responses to our article, ‘Feeling Otherwise’. We think with the authors who responded to our paper to sketch out an affirmative way to understand the concept of ambivalence. We clarify key points, reflect on the responses, and make suggestions for ways to explore this topic further
Speeding up to allow time: Launching the topical special issue concept in Space and Polity
We’re in Asia’: Worlding LGBTQI+ activism otherwise in Sydney
Building on recent work in postcolonial urban studies that has developed more genuinely plural approaches to urban theorising, this article poses the problem of ‘worlding’ in relation to urban LGBTQI+ activism in Sydney, Australia. Specifically, the article examines how Sydney is variously worlded as or against ‘Asia’ in public debate around LGBTQI+ politics and in the imaginaries of activists living in Sydney. These worldings are shown to be an …
Feeling otherwise: Ambivalent affects and the politics of critique in geography
Scholars across the social sciences and humanities have increasingly questioned the meaning and purpose of critique. Contributing to those conversations, some geographers have advocated for affirmative or reparative practices such as reading for difference or experimentation that seek to provoke more joyful, hopeful, or enchanting affects, as alternatives to what they perceive as a prevailing forms of ‘negative’ critique. In response, others have…
Intervention: Engaging post-foundational political theory requires an 'enmeshed' approach
This intervention argues for renewed engagements with post-foundational political theory (PFPT) within political geography. We feel that post-foundational political geography may be on the cusp of becoming consolidated as a distinct and expansive approach to political geographic scholarship, but we argue that reductionist and binary caricatures of its central distinction between ‘politics’ and ‘the political’ must be avoided for it to reach its f…
Inconvenience, ambivalence, and abolition: A politics of attachment and detachment in geography
In this commentary, we explore the idea of detachment that we see as central to Anderson's notion of attachment but that nevertheless does not take centre stage in the paper. We situate detachment not as attachment's antithesis, opposite, or negative, but as its structural condition and as irretrievably interwoven with attachment. Through Berlant's recent writing, we foreground the notion of ambivalence as a way to think about the complexity of a…
Encountering Berlant part two: Cruel and other optimisms
Part 2 of Encountering Berlant amplifies the promise of Lauren Berlant's influential concept of 'cruel optimism'. Cruel optimism names a double-bind in which attachment to an 'object' holds out the promise of sustaining/flourishing, whilst simultaneously harming. The lines between harming, sustaining, damaging and flourishing blur, sometimes collapsing entirely. By holding together opposites the concept exemplifies and performs the centrality of …
International Academics as Agents of Transformation: Lived and Managed Internationalization in a Finnish University
This article explores internationalization processes as an ongoing transformation of higher education institutions by examining a case of internationalization efforts at Tampere University (TAU) in Finland. Against the prevailing policy discourse of international “talent” which tends to instrumentalize international academics, we explore how the experiences of international academics provide a window into complicated dynamics of lived and managed…
Sociology (15 works) · Political science (13 works) · Law (12 works) · Politics (12 works) · Law (10 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Geographies of human-animal interactions (7 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Aesthetics (5 works) · Gender Studies (5 works)