Geographies of Emotions
This chapter opens with a theoretical argument on geography, narration, and representation based on reflections from the fields of cultural studies, border studies, philosophy, and history of emotions, following which the “geographies of emotions” will be
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Geographies of Emotions
In a previous work, I introduced the concept of a “geography of emotions,” which I then attempted to problematize (Proglio 2019). My aim was to “bestow upon intersubjectivity the specific transgressive, out-of- place, floored positionalities” of migrants in Italy (p. 250). These theoretical reflections are grounded in an expansive debate on “figurations,” beginning with important scholarly reflections on the subject’s positionality, such as those of Donna Haraway (1984), Gloria Anzaldua (1987), Teresa De Lauretis (1999), and, more generally, those emerging within feminist debates. Rather than attempting to synthesize different theorizations, my aim was to explore various ways of decentralizing the gaze on the subject and to re-invent the role of subjectivity from multiple standpoints. Thus, my aim was to propel a shift from a unique and uniformed conception of a human being to one that embraces the complexity of the subject grounded in a wider critique of Europe and the West. This critique draws attention to the production of discourses that endorse a fixed and linear geography of the entire world that coincides with divisions drawn between states and nations, continents, regions, North and South, centers and peripheries, and norms and differences. As the geographer, Chiara Giubilaro, has pointed out in her insightful book (Giubilaro 2016), it is possible to trace the inception of mobility and the cultural turn to Out of Place (Said 1999). In this autobiographical work, Edward Said, a Palestinian theorist, positioned himself within the diaspora. © The Author(s) 2020 G. Proglio, The Horn of Africa Diasporas in Italy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58326-2_5
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G. PROGLIO
It is within and alongside this story that Said builds a meticulous and composite affective geography, made of places and relationships but, above all, of dislocations: departures, arrivals, travels, farewells, and exile, experiences that more than any other would have left a mark on his life and his opera. Different dislocations are intertwined in the writing, scanning the narration and taking alive the tension between exile’s experience and sense of belonging, movement and roots, up to the last sentences of his tale. There, the reason of his dislocation is interiorized, insinuating to the body level and even deeper, into folds of subjectivity. (Giubilaro 2016, 9)
Following her discussion of Said’s affective geography, Giubilaro introduces different theories and perspectives that have been elaborated within the discipline of geography, proposing a genealogy of works. This genealogy encompasses John Urry’s Sociology beyond Societies (2000), the “new mobilities” paradigm that emerged within Lancaster University, and a myriad of contributions problematizing the role of space and mobility (e.g., Adey 2006; Hannam et al. 2006; Fortier 2006; Franquesa 2011; Faist 2013; Massey 1991; Cresswell 2006). However, this illuminating debate does not seem to have impacted history. In seems to me that while many contributio
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