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Disoriented geographies: Undoing relations, encountering limits
Author(s) -
Bissell David,
GormanMurray Andrew
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
transactions of the institute of british geographers
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.196
H-Index - 107
eISSN - 1475-5661
pISSN - 0020-2754
DOI - 10.1111/tran.12307
Subject(s) - undoing , sociology , confusion , narrative , epistemology , relation (database) , space (punctuation) , dimension (graph theory) , focus (optics) , aesthetics , economic geography , psychology , psychoanalysis , geography , philosophy , linguistics , physics , mathematics , database , computer science , pure mathematics , optics
This paper develops the concept of disorientation as a constitutive but overlooked dimension of mobile life, and it explores the significance of disorientation for geographical thought. Conceptually, the paper argues that disorientation is a productive geographical concept for acknowledging how, at times, bodies can lose their orienting relations to other bodies, to actions, and to situations. These losses are explored through the themes of incomprehension, confusion, and disintegration, respectively. Substantively, through research with mobile worker households in Australia, the paper expands our understanding of geographies of mobility by interrogating non‐traditional but increasingly common living scenarios created by intensified mobility. Methodologically, the paper develops a narrative approach to presenting the richly complex experiences of “left behind” mobile worker partners through impressionistic interview portraits. Disciplinarily, contributing to ongoing debates in geography on relationality and encounter, the paper provides a counterbalance to the dominant focus on relation construction, and it opens up space for thinking differently about what, exactly, is being encountered in disorienting experiences.