Belonging: Cultural Topographies of Identity

If, in the first decades of the twenty first century, belonging is firmly ‘back on the agenda’ (Antonsich: 2010, 652) then this is not only due to increased mobility, in both its territorialized and deterritorialized aspects, but also the growing need for a more semantically complex way of understanding and exploring who, what and where we are. As Vikki Bell puts it, ‘[…] one does not simply or ontologically belong to the world or any group within it. Belonging is an achievement at several levels of abstraction.’ (1999: 3). Incorporating at once notions of citizenship, emotional and psychological attachment, emplacement and deterritorialization, the legal-material and the imaginary-symbolic, the concept of belonging suggests a fruitful point of departure for understanding the complexities of space, place and identity in the twenty-first century.

This two-day conference will focus on the ways in which belonging is produced, maintained and transposed across a wide range of cultural and intellectual discourses and creative modes. This includes but is not limited to, architecture, archaeology and anthropology, visual art, literature and life-writing, intellectual history and critical theory and discourse analysis.