I am, finally, ever so close to finishing my book, and sending the final manuscript away to the publisher. A couple more weeks of ‘research retreat’ would enable me to complete it, but I am well and truly back in the real world now, so it’s a matter of squeezing book-work in between all sorts of other things. This coming week I have a nice distraction from worrying about not working on the book, as I am attending the Annual Meeting of Finnish Geographers, in Tampere. I am giving a couple of talks, one on ‘Geography and the Priority of Injustice’. Last time I talked to this title, back in April, I only had a very long note-like draft of a book. This time, I have a written-out-in-prose final draft, going through final edits. It’s a real thing, not a pretend thing.

My working title for the book has become The Priority of Injustice, although the ‘geography’ bit is not actually central to the book. The talk is developing into the occasion where I try to say out loud why the grand theme of the priority of injustice might capture some of the difficulties covered over in much of the work in the burgeoning field of geographies of justice. So I’m thinking of the coming week as a final impetus to finishing the monster in the box, so that I might move on to other things.