The Conflicting Desires of Mobility

Download or read book The Conflicting Desires of Mobility written by Maureen Alison Burns and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis examines the conflicting desires embedded within our contemporary metaphors of movement. To understand the politics of the current mobility paradigm and the reasons for its development and popularity across a wide range of fields and disciplines, this paper investigates the recent preoccupation and glorification of mobility, asking how and why specific metaphors have infused our conceptual use of movement. Because these metaphors are informed by representations that connect the symbolic experiences of figures of travel, like the nomad, exile, refugee, tourist, and migrant with physical movement itself, I examine how these figures have been treated and discursively developed within the literature. This paper presents a modern history of this development by focusing on the major scholarly work that has contributed greatly to our modern mobility metaphors. The thesis focuses on how and why the figure of travel was appropriated and increasingly abstracted to represent first, the figure of the theorist, then theory itself, and finally ways of thinking. Throughout my examinations, I also present evidence as to how all of these bodies of work not only interconnect but also present a continuous thread revealing a narrative as to why and how these figures began to embody a paradigm of glorified and subversive mobility. Although our metaphors have a long history and deep roots in Western philosophy and culture, I instead argue that the current mobility turn is fueled by a collectively unsatisfied review of the theoretical and conceptual concerns valued of the last century, in particular the linguistic turn and the crisis of the sign. The recent explosion of mobility as a conceptual focus for critical work was provoked and shaped significantly by the deep-seated insecurities inherent within a modern and postmodern metaphysics. Current critiques to these metaphors are based on objections to their ideological roots. However this thesis argues that scholarly hopes for mobility have made current conceptions of figures of travel much more complex, making it unhelpful and unrealistic to reduce the politics of these metaphors to their roots of origin. This thesis therefore examines the desire embedded in the ways scholars use ideas of movement for their own purposes. To do this, I approach it through an examination of scholars' desires to reveal a structure of needs and its generative processes. I conclude by offering my own personal experiences to suggest some of the possible political effects of these projections and desires.