Thursday 4 December 2008

RGS CFP (9) Geographies of memory

Much is made of the (present) moment in recent non-representational geographies - that is the ever-moving front of becoming in actuation with all of its possibility, material, embodied, relational, affective, performative richness. This session seeks to fold (individual) memory more fully into this understanding of becoming. Damasio states that affective becoming does make us transient entities, and yet, at the same time, we have an ‘autobiographical self’- ‘a nontransient collection of unique facts and ways of being of systemised memory’. Memory is a fundamental aspect of becoming, intimately entwined with space, affect, emotion, imagination and identify yet also a hyper-complex, mostly unknown, and unknowable set of processes. ‘People [are] rather ill-defined constellations [ ] “not confined to particular spatio-temporal coordinates, but consist of a spread of biographical events and memories of events, and a dispersed category of material objects, traces, and leavings”’ (Thrift/Gell). This session seeks work (academic/literary/artistic/therapeutic) which explores memories of geographies and/or the geographies of memories, and how these (help) generate the present. Work is sought which focuses on personal, private memories rather than more frequently studied popular, collective memories, and which considers memory in relation to space, affect, emotion (love/loss), materiality, age, embodiment, displacement, belonging (nationality) and more besides.

SESSION ORGANISER DETAILS
Email address
ojones@glos.ac.uk

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