Inclusive Uncanniness, Uncanny Inclusiveness: Gender and Forced Migration

Abstract

This presentation aims to approach a theoretical conceptualization and (re)mapping of gender in situations of forced migration. Pertaining to that, I probe the concept of societal inclusiveness along with the concept of uncanniness. Be it caused by a (post)war violence, political threat, or economic scarceness, forced mobility is often an unwelcoming ‘home’ to itself. Further, the resulting migratory situation is un unbearably heavy test of endurance and desire  – for the incoming population, and of the humanity/altruism within the prescribed security  – for the host mainstream cultures; however, on both sides involving a personal disposition, emotional judgement, critical consciousness, imaginative drive. It is such points of a personal inflection of these migratory encounters (where precarity and privilege lay bare each other’s randomness within a wider human and global condition) that enable the turn of the scale in recognizing and working through the uncanny undercurrents of the processes of inclusiveness, articulated in theory and literary production. 

Itself a sub – territory of this complex dynamics  – psychological, cultural, and societal, gender needs to be closely approached, interpreted, and/or (re)mapped. By connecting theories of nomadic affectivity (Deleuze, Guattari, Braidotti), creative borrowing (E. Said), relating narratives (A. Cavarero), and singularity (S. Weber), each stressing a different aspect and carrier of im – personality (as “We”, “I”, “You”, “It”), I will discuss how mutations of gender in the in – between spaces of migratory contacts can contribute to societal merging and worlding of literatures.