Visceral Geographies: Mattering, Relating, and Defying

Abstract

This study explores the task of doing ‘visceral geographies,’ enrolling many areas of body-centered scholarship in the task of better understanding the visceral realm including geographies of affect and emotion, non-representational theory, sensuous and haptic geographies, health and disability studies, and scholarship on performance and movement. The authors desire to open lines of connection and communication between and beyond the current bounds of this scholarship. In doing so, the authors attempt to clarify the goals of visceral geography, particularly in terms of political action and social change. Three goals stand out: first, visceral geographies advance understandings of the agency of physical matter, both within and between bodies. Second, visceral geographies move beyond static notions of the individual body and toward more contextualized and interactive versions of the self and other. And third, visceral geographies encourage a skepticism of boundaries by insisting on the imagining and practicing of our (political) lives in, through, and beyond dualistic tensions.