Between endings and beginnings: ‘Detachment’ and (non)relations in contemporary human geography

This paper offers a theory of detachment as a distinctive social-spatial (non)relation as a contribution to recent debates about relations and relationality in contemporary human geography. It argues that ‘detachment’ has thus far served as other to and problem for the literatures concerned with (non)relational geographies. As part of an approach to relationality that advocates for an orientation to multiple, different kinds of (non)relation, the paper proposes three complementary understandings of detachment: detachment as the absence of a promise; detachment as the imminent loosening of a promise; and detachment as the ending of a promise.