Disorientation: An Introduction

Abstract

This collection of essays analyses the concept of disorientation. It does so by questioning orientation as norm and disorientation as resistance. This exploration of disorientation does not interpret the disoriented subject as the privileged site of new knowledge, dissident pleasure or social critique. Nor does it propose to embrace disorientation as the invisible norm revealed by the study of supposedly exceptional subjects. Contemplating the concept of disorientation does not mean becoming disoriented, nor does it mean adopting a position of condescending mastery or blind admiration vis-à-vis the disoriented other. We argue that only when it becomes possible to imagine, simultaneously, many incompatible or at least discrepant possible forms of powerful, powerless, desirable and undesirable forms of disorientation, does disorientation become a political tool. We can then imagine disorientation as the name of the constantly evolving relationality between a subject and a conscious or unconscious cultural and political grid. Disorientation is the moment during which a world is produced by the acknowledgment of its dependency on the grid. It is also the moment when some subjects are enab led or disenabled by their relationship to the grid and the world in the absence of others who function as the guardians of the norm. What matters here is the subject's positioning vis-à-vis his or her awareness of dis-reorientation. The question is not who is lost or who is foreign, who is comfortable or who has colonised, who decides where maps stop and start, but rather what kind of relationality explains who feels dis-or reoriented. This introduction to a collection of essays on 'disorientation' is already struggling with the kind of disorientation with which it wishes to engage. Should an introduction to a volume on disorientation at least try to disorient? But then could it still be an introduction? We seem faced with an uncomfortable alternative: either give up on the ambition to perform at least some disorienting effect in this text, or accept that there is something paradoxical about our gesture. Like programme coordinators who organise 'orientation weeks', the writers of an introduction are expected to provide a map: the cognitive grid that will allow readers to have a sense of direction and purpose, itself readable because we assume that they have acquired the method or practice necessary to find their way towards their objective or destination. A successful

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“…The grid may lead to disorientation on the urban scale because it is endless and all nodes spatially resemble one another [51]. Therefore, the New York gridiron's orientation becomes familiar only when it is accompanied by architectural elements or street signs and directions.…”

Disorientations: The Political Ecology of “Displacing” Floating Communities from Cambodia's Tonle Sap Lake

“…Within geography, “disorientation” has been subject to recent critical analysis (e.g. Harbin 2016; Martin and Rosello 2016). For Bissell and Gorman‐Murray (2019:707–708), “disorientation is a productive geographical concept”, associated with feelings of confusion and disintegration, often in response to “embodied encounters with unfamiliar others or experiences in unfamiliar places”.…”

For a new weird geography

“…Disorientation has been subject to recent critical analysis (e.g. Harbin, 2016;Martin and Rosello, 2016). For Bissell and Gorman-Murray (2019; 707), 'disorientation is a productive geographical concept'.…”

“…We do not, therefore, position ‘the disoriented subject as the privileged site of new knowledge, dissident pleasure or social critique’ (Martin and Rosello, 2016; 1). Nevertheless, dis/orientation may be fruitful for social enquiry (Bissell and Gorman-Murray, 2019).…”