Progress in historical geography II: Desperately seeking connections (again) – The mendacious, the micrological, and the mercurial

Historical geography’s core concern with connections between the past and present is currently expressed in an age marked by a desperate search for connections. The report considers how historical geography is linked to this scene through various ‘return of history’ ripostes and via the travails of what is described as its ‘pluriverse’. Three problematics are then identified: ‘the mendacious’ (about the truth of history); ‘the micrological’ (concern with biography and ‘small things’); and ‘the mercurial’ (regarding structural problems of violence and hope). Much for the subdiscipline now hinges on how the words freedom, truth, violence, and hope are treated.