Abstract
The Introduction shows how this volume will build a study of the body as a mutable, expressive archive in which histories and experiences of mobility or migration are worked through, negotiated and rearticulated in turn. It defines the contours of the primary corpus as a range of stories written in Italian by people who have crossed national borders to transit through or reside in Italy, by people who are writing in a language other than their mother tongue, or people who have family heritage in contexts of migration or diaspora. It then sketches out the theoretical framework through which primary material will be analysed: namely, mobilities studies, phenomenology, body theory and affect theory. Finally, it sets up the hyphenated trans- prefix as an overarching interpretative key, through which wider issues of critical importance such as time, memory, race, gender and language will be explored.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
See, for example, Farnell (2012).
- 3.
Nail uses kinopolitics to explore this idea, and his key tropes of flow, junctions, and circulation are all processes which can also be used to powerfully evoke the natural instability of the bodily terrain, through conjuring the circulation of blood through the vital organs, the redirection of flow through joints and organs, and so on. See Nail (2015). Doreen Massey also employs the notion of articulation (and indeed double articulation) to denote those points of contact and intersection that hinge together to construct the identities of subjects and places. See Massey (1994, p. 118).
- 4.
On this point, see Tuan (1977) and Rodaway (1994). ‘Bodies are not fixed and given but involve performances especially to fold notions of movement, nature, taste and desire, into and through the body. Bodies navigate backwards and forwards between directly sensing the external world as they move bodily in and through it, and discursively mediated sensescapes that signify social taste and distinction, ideology and meaning. The body especially senses as it moves’ (Urry 2007, p. 48).
- 5.
- 6.
The term ‘thickening’ here is in reference to Avishai Margalit’s distinction between ‘thick’, ethical relations (with family and loved ones, for example), and ‘thin’ ones (with strangers). See Margalit (2002).
- 7.
Halberstam (2018, p. 88). Halberstam employs the asterisk in an analogous way, to hold open the meaning of ‘trans’, since: ‘the asterisk modifies the meaning of transitivity by refusing to situate a transition in relation to a destination, a final form, a specific shape, or an established configuration of desire and identity. The asterisk holds off the certainty of diagnosis; it keeps at bay any sense of knowing in advance what the meaning of this or that gender variant form may be, and perhaps most importantly, it makes trans* people the authors of their own categorizations’ (ibid., p. 4).
- 8.
Farnell (2012, p. 8, emphasis added). However, this holds obvious problematics for people who have mobility issues, people with disabilities, and other persons who might not benefit from full access to mobility structures.
- 9.
Beyond the comments relating to trans-gender identity that I have already made in this Introduction, gender categories are also important when considering the textual corpus I am analysing, since—as Rita Wilson writes—‘what is striking in the current literary production by language migrants in Italy is the massive presence of female writers’ (Wilson 2011, p. 125). See also Contarini (2010).
- 10.
My use of this term was inspired by watching Paul Lucas’ stage play of the same name, which is based on material assembled from interviews with people from around the world who identify as transgender. See www.transcripts.org. Accessed 5 March 2018.
- 11.
The importance of the ‘in-between’ in queer theories of time and space has been emphasized in Spurlin et al. (2010, p. 3).
- 12.
https://twitter.com/zunguzungu/status/628239649048145920. Accessed 1 March 2018.
- 13.
Romeo (2012, pp. 221–222). Indeed, the lack of debate is seen as triggering, at least partially, the often open racism in contemporary Italy towards public figures such as politician Cécile Kyenge, footballer Mario Balotelli, and even contributing to the possibility of, and responses to, racially motivated attacks such as the drive-by shooting in Macerata in February 2018 and the murder of Soumalia Sacko in Rosarno in June 2018.
- 14.
- 15.
- 16.
Halberstam (2018, p. 40). Halberstam further comments that the overlapping instability of gender identity and blackness ‘marks gender instability as part of the history of blackness itself’ (ibid., p. 36).
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Bond, E. (2018). Introduction: ‘Trans-Scripts’. In: Writing Migration through the Body. Studies in Mobilities, Literature, and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97695-2_1
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