Dissonant Heritages and Memories in Contemporary Europe by Tuuli Lähdesmäki & Luisa Passerini & Sigrid Kaasik-Krogerus & Iris van Huis

Author:Tuuli Lähdesmäki & Luisa Passerini & Sigrid Kaasik-Krogerus & Iris van Huis
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030114640
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Methodological Framework and Conceptual Approach

Space and Belonging

In this chapter, I ask how spatiality and belonging are negotiated at the airport and how they impact on identity formation. At the same time, in no way do I want to produce a unitary, simplified, or homogenous conceptualization of identity, or any conceptual category for that matter. In her chapter in this volume, Tuuli Lähdesmäki has noted that identity has become a rather weak analytical category, and instead proposes the concept of belonging, as that indicates a process rather than a fixed position. I join her in this approach, particularly drawing on Marco Antonisch’s (2010, 645) argument that any analysis of belonging should contain considerations both of personal feelings of being “at home” (or not) somewhere and of the broader discursive dimension that “constructs” belonging according to a particular social and spatial ordering , and in so doing produces a “politics of belonging ”. My analysis of Schiphol consists precisely of these two dimensions. My interviewee’s embodied experience of arriving at Schiphol and being detained represents the first set of empirical data and the starting point of my analysis. From there, I extend the analysis to a broader observation of Schiphol’s spatial ordering, which includes Schiphol’s camp-like detention centre and the “open ” space of the airport. With the latter, I pay particular attention to how certain objects, visuals, and discourses are disseminated, and what kind of politics of belonging is attached to them. I am informed by Benedict Anderson’s formulation of the nation as an imagined community that rests in the imagined union of its national subjects (2006, 7), as well as Anthony Easthope’s insistence that nations exist in their discursive dimensions (1999, iix). All of this suggests that cultural and national identities are performative rather than absolute, which also means that I am less interested in pinpointing what a national space may be and more in how it is brought into being, i.e. what cultural, organizational, and ideological practices are at the heart of these conceptualizations. That being said, in this analysis I do understand Schiphol Airport as a specifically European space according to a critical postcolonial /decolonial scholarly framework.

To think about spaces is to think about the kinds of bodies that can inhabit them. In other words, the question of spatiality is largely a question of bodily presence . In this chapter, I take a phenomenological approach in looking at the connection between spaces and bodies , which means that I am interested in actual bodily practices that make up somebody’s being-in-the-world and the inevitable affective experiences that accompany these. I agree with Sharon Macdonald when she says that:Giving attention to materialities not only recognizes the inevitably material nature of human existence but also opens up investigation of how the differential properties of particular materials, objects or technologies interact with human endeavour and understanding; in other words, what difference do the differences between things make? (2013, 84)

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.