Prekäre Räume. Körper, Verletzbarkeit, Widerstände

Abstract

Recent events in the Mediterranean call up for a radical questioning of our categories and representations. Sinking boats and emergency landings, reception policies and detention centres, crossings, deviations and refoulements symbolize an era when mobility is fatally related to security policies and new biopolitical regimes. Migrant bodies crossing the Mediterranean address a demand and a challenge that cultural geography is urged to accomplish. The aim of this paper is therefore to rethink spatiality in an ethical sense. Drawing on the philosophy of Emmanuel Lévinas and Judith Butler, we will try to imagine a new spatiality starting from bodies, displacements, and the complex open weave produced and reproduced by them. A precarious space, where singular bodies expose themselves to the event of the other, revealing how vulnerability can lead to new forms of resistance and political action.