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RGS-IBG Annual Conference, Manchester: 26-28 August 2009 (www.rgs.org/AC2009) Call for Papers: Geography and Memory Co-sponsored by the The History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group and the Social & Cultural Geography Research Group Convened by Owain Jones (CCRI) PLEASE CIRCULTE TO ANYONE YOU FEEL MIGHT BE INTESRED!!! Session Abstract 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. Longer Version We are present creatures, always in place, always in the moment. Yet we are also creatures of spatial-temporal remains - made of memories, (forgettings), and other traces of one kind or another of past places and moments. Most of what we are, is what, where and how we have been. Memory is one of the fundamental processes of becoming and is intimately entwined with affect, emotion, imagination and identify. Damasio (1999) makes it clear that affective becoming (and the self /consciousness unfolding in that becoming) makes us transient entities of the moment; but he stresses that we are also at the same time 'a nontransient collection of unique facts and ways of being [ ] of systemised memory' which forms the 'autobiographical self'. Memory processes seem under-'represented' in the affective turn and non-representational approaches. Compare the attention given to affect and emotion in Thrift's fullest elaboration of non-representational theory (2008) with that given to memory. Personal memory is also absent, in certain ways, in recent, otherwise highly illuminating, writings about landscape and nature.(e.g. Macfarlane, 2007; Sebald, 1998; Wylie, 2003, 2005). The tendency seems to be to write about visits (walks, climbs, stays) where there is little evidence of past personal attachment to, or engagement with, the landscape in question. This distance - to travel as a stranger - may well be necessary for their projects. When Schama writes of Landscape and Memory, the memories are predominately historical and cultural rather than personal. How different understandings, feelings and practices become when there are depths of past time and practice and affective states (and memory thereof), enfolded into present becomings of landscape and place. (I suggest that notions of landscape and place are generally memory heavy - but can be otherwise). Memory is a hyper-complex, mostly unknown, and unknowable set of processes. (Dreams testify to the complexity and spatiality of memory).Thus far, perhaps because of this complexity and unknowableness, memory, in the way considered here, has been very much a minority interest in human geography. (Some notable examples of work in this area are:- Graham Rowles's work on geographies of aging (see on line cv) , Philo, 2003; Daniels and Nash, 2004; Lorimer 2006). Thrift (2008) does raise the importance of memory, citing Gell, and does so in a way that is very much in the spirit of what I am interested in exploring, seeing 'people as rather ill-defined constellations [ ] which "are 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 which can be attributed to a person"' (Thrift 2008, citing Gell, 1998). This messy scrambling of time, space, events, materiality and self is key to what we are, yet highly challenging to map. A clear distinction between community/cultural/popular memory and personal memory is probably untenable, but a lot of memory studies operate on, or within, large, grand (terrible) frames, notably holocaust studies and exile/displacement/postcolonial/migration experiences. There has been more sustained interest in geographies of popular memories in these kinds of terms, which focus upon contested politics of history, place, race, monuments, heritage and so on. Rather than 'collective', 'cultural' 'historical', 'popular' memory, I am interested in more specific, private memories, perhaps barely known/felt/sensed, fleeting, ghostly - of past everyday, lived geographies - personal histories of 'smaller' events/histories of self or others. As well as being a key theme of literature (e.g. Proust), explorations of the past geographies embedded in us all are to be found in a range of academic writing. In Theatre and Performance Studies Deirdre Heddon (2008) explores a number of autobiographical performances which delve into past-self-in-place. (Heddon coins the term 'autotopography' to label this work). There are other notable attempts to explore the stretched-out strange entanglements of embodied becoming over time and space: Benjamin, Berlin Childhood; Robinson, My Time in Space; Dillion, In a Dark Room; Kuhn and McAllister; Locating Memory, and in film, Maddin, My Winnipeg. I call for papers (or other forms) on any aspect of geography and memory which stress the personal (self or other) in terms of past experience and how it shapes the present. How memories are materialised - or entangled with the material is of particular interest. Abstract by 23 January 2009 (250 words) To [log in to unmask] Initial questions and expressions of interest are welcomed. Please include the following information when submitting your abstract: Name: Affiliation: Contact email: Title of proposed paper: Any technical requirements (video, data projector, sound, etc.): Dr Owain Jones Research Fellow Countryside & Community Research Institute Dunholme Villa, The Park Cheltenham, GL50 2RH Mobile: 07871 572969 office: 01242 715315 home: 01761 472908 Fax: 01242 714395