Crystallising places: Towards geographies of ontogenesis and individuation

Building upon the current concern with relational, processual and assemblage approaches to place, this paper argues for a move away from ‘pointillist’ and constructivist accounts of the assembling of places because they reinforce binaries, reintroduce structures and highlight singular representational moments in the building, identification and dismantling of places. Drawing upon Deleuze’s philosophy of difference and Simondon’s writings on individuation, I suggest that places can more usefully be seen as events of crystallisation, distillation or folding characterised by multi-phased processes of individuation through which distinctive ‘individual-milieu coupling[s]’ emerge, refocusing attention on the open-ended, plural and eventful qualities of places-in-becoming.