Disoriented geographies: Undoing relations, encountering limits

• Published in: Transactions - Institute of British Geographers (1965) Vol. 44; no. 4; pp. 707 - 720
• Main Authors: Bissell, David, Gorman‐Murray, Andrew
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01-12-2019
• Subjects: Confusion; disintegration; embodiment; Geography; Households; incomprehension; loss; mobilities; Mobility; Portraits
• ISSN: 0020-2754; 1475-5661
• DOI: 10.1111/tran.12307

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.
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. The paper argues that disorientation acknowledges how, at times, bodies can lose their orienting relations to other bodies, to actions, and to situations. It explores these dimensions through the themes of incomprehension, confusion, and disintegration.