Response: the critic, the geographical imagination and the world

This commentary responds to the several points made by Kanishka Goonewardena and Neil Gray in their extended reviews of our book David Harvey: A Critical Introduction to His Thought. We address three general points, then a set of more specific objections and concerns expressed by the two authors. Overarching themes are the relationship between Marxist thinking and the world it seeks to understand; the relationship between acts of analysis and evaluation; and the forms of geographical knowledge that can both help and hinder a critique of capitalism as an ‘imperial’ mode of living. We’re grateful to Goonewardena and Gray for their careful evaluations of our book and the work of the remarkable man the book focuses on.