{"id":107,"date":"2025-08-12T16:29:01","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T14:29:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/userblogs.fu-berlin.de\/remoteness\/?page_id=107"},"modified":"2026-02-01T11:35:27","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T10:35:27","slug":"i-histories-of-distanced-relations","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/userblogs.fu-berlin.de\/remoteness\/i-histories-of-distanced-relations\/","title":{"rendered":"I. Histories of Distanced Relations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In Remoteness and Modernity<\/em> (2015), anthropologist Shafqat Hussain describes remoteness as a \u201csocial-spatial concept\u201d primarily tied to places identified as \u201cmarginal areas, frontiers, borderlands, and wilderness\u201d (2015, 4). Peoples inhabiting these places, writes Hussain, \u201cstand in contrast to the core cultural, economic, and political aspects of a society,\u201d and are by consequence marked by \u201cmultiple constructions of the \u2018other,\u2019 each invested with different meaning\u201d (2015, 4). In Remoteness Reconsidered<\/em> (2021), Arctic University of Norway international relations scholar Christopher Rossi identifies remoteness as both temporal and geographic, holding a central place in philosophy, law, international relations, and historiography. Rossi writes,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remoteness is the unredeemable, often unavoidable element of interaction. [\u2026] The distance between person and place, or subject and object, affects the image-building process of international relations and the construction of its geography and spatial order. Remoteness casts shadows over problems of historiography, or how scholars contextualize, sequence, and transmit readings of the past. <\/em>(2021, 26)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rossi\u2019s assessment treats remoteness less as a concept identifiable with certain decentralized zones, and more as a distanced relation that obscures images and muddles accounts and events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Studies in Remoteness<\/em> systematically investigates what it means to historicize these distanced relations. The project dedicates needed research attention precisely to the \u201cshadows\u201d Rossi describes, which complexify context[6] and transmission, endeavouring to address the interlapping aesthetic, political, and cultural contours of inaccessibility that shape coloniality, modernity, and globalization\u2019s distanced relations. Studies in Remoteness<\/em> thus examines places, peoples, practices, and knowledges cast as arcane or irrelevant within dominant historical narratives. The project is formulated around the initial hypothesis that, both despite and because of their perceived remoteness, so-called ‘inaccessible’ peoples, places, and ideas \u2013 often romanticized as harbours of the \u201cmysterious\u201d and \u201cunknown\u201d \u2013 have powerfully influenced and motivated global knowledge production and aesthetic experimentation.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continue to II. Social <\/a><\/strong>imaginaries and the history of <\/a><\/strong>aesthetics<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Remoteness and Modernity (2015), anthropologist Shafqat Hussain describes remoteness as a \u201csocial-spatial concept\u201d primarily tied to places identified as \u201cmarginal areas, frontiers, borderlands, and wilderness\u201d (2015, 4). Peoples inhabiting these places, writes Hussain, \u201cstand in contrast to the core cultural, economic, and political aspects of a society,\u201d and are by consequence marked by \u201cmultiple … Continue reading I. Histories of Distanced Relations<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5248,"featured_media":109,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-107","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.fu-berlin.de\/remoteness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.fu-berlin.de\/remoteness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.fu-berlin.de\/remoteness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.fu-berlin.de\/remoteness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5248"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.fu-berlin.de\/remoteness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.fu-berlin.de\/remoteness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.fu-berlin.de\/remoteness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/107\/revisions\/197"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.fu-berlin.de\/remoteness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.fu-berlin.de\/remoteness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}