Mountains have been often places of colonial fracture and capitalist extractivism as well as of refuge and resistance. In times of necropolitics (Mbembe), the relations with them are frequently marked by death and destruction. This research looks for ways to ethically re-relating with the mountains and acknowledging their interactions with us, particularly as migrant bodies-territories. The project considers indigenous epistemologies of territory as a shared place in ontological relation with all related beings and a feeling-thinking understanding of the world. These concepts are expanded through the Aymara ch’ixi positionality, the ambivalent concurrence of fractured cultures, according to Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, that presents how beings are and are not simultaneously. These ideas and the resistance of the mountains’ inhabitants bring possibilities of existence in the apparently empty spaces between the mountains. The methodology develops a weaving in the wind of diverse mountain-beings precisely in those spaces. Through exercises of listening to our silences and strategies of poetical resistance, a chain of relational artworks is created that helps to relate to the mountains. These artworks were created in collaboration with several partners in four different phases (stations) in Germany, Mexico, and Colombia, aimed at understanding mountains as traveling the spirals of space-time. This understanding is based upon indigenous conceptualizations of time and belonging with the whole world as territory.

In relation to our research project about the memories of Al-Andalus and the narratives that youth with a Morrocan background in Spain construct about this shared past, we seek to theorize about travelling memories. In our cultural psychological view on memory, this means articulating the relation between individual (particularly, autobiographical) memory and collective memory, as a situated constructive process mediated by narratives. In this vein, in asking how changes in memory occur, we consider not only top-down transformations shaped by social frames of memory, but also bottom-up shifts emerging from individual experiences that extend beyond these frames. We will also reflect on and develop the notion of transcultural memory. This concept from the field of memory studies aims at capturing the dynamics of memory across perceived cultural borders, recognizing that both the narrative means for remembering and the remembering agents are not confined to one single nation, narrative and identity. What, or rather who, is, or rather is not, transcultural? To what degree is transcultural memory, articulating several narratives and perspectives, an activity allowing for a multiplication or transformation of our views on the past and, by extension, the present and future? Two tensions are important to take into account in answering this question: between socio-politically dominant narratives and alternative narratives, and between implicit versus explicit memories. Even though a great variety of alternative narratives is produced, they do not seem to have the same impact as master narratives, indeed they do not hold the same power. Moreover, dominant narratives, like national histories and their schematic narrative templates, operate on an implicit level. Only when made explicit they can be critically reflected upon. Whereas alternative narratives often arise in the explicit attempt to make other possible experiences visible and this does not guarantee their incorporation as implicit frames for looking at the past. How can generating alternative narratives that cross boundaries impact and change collective memories that are dominated by the very narratives establishing these boundaries? We think that addressing travelling memories can significantly contribute to theorizing as an act of sociopolitical transformation. Interviewing transcultural memory agents, our project might just shed some light on the ways in which this can be done.

Research project “Más allá de la narrativa maestra española: Memorias colectivas dominantes y alternativas entre jóvenes transculturales,” with reference number SI4/PJI/2024-00157, is funded by the Comunidad de Madrid through the agreement to foment and promote research and outreach at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.

In this paper, I will be exploring the Korean American experience of cultural categorization using a phenomenological theoretical lens following Benet-Martínez's Bicultural Identity Integration framework and Kipling Williams’ Need Threat Theory. Rather than fitting neatly into predefined categories of "first-generation immigrant" or "second-and-later-generation American," many Korean Americans navigate persistent cultural ambiguity that shapes their sense of self and belonging. I will focus on the stage where individuals first recognize they don't fit expected cultural categories, facets that make linguistic absence particularly harmful. The lack of terminology for "in-between" experiences transforms systemic categorization failures into self-blame, influencing one’s identity formation through experiences of otherness and disconnection from both mainstream and co-ethnic communities. I also plan to explore how embracing ambiguity rather than eliminating it through more sub-categories might reframe cultural identity beyond binary categorizations, offering new pathways for acceptance, understanding and solidarity. These lived narratives of ambiguity are acts of resistance, challenging dominant psychological theories made by Western, monocultural psychologists that assume stable, clear cut cultural categories.

This paper matters in the world because there is a lack of exploration, research, and vocabulary for complex multicultural experiences that resist categorization compared to established frameworks that assume clear cultural boundaries and expectations. Simplifying cultural archetypes when it is actually complex can be not only inaccurate but dangerous. In our current political climate, rigid categorization fragments minority communities precisely when solidarity is most needed for resistance against xenophobic and racist movements. This area of identity complexity, categorical perception, and ethnic minority in-group conflict needs to be further discussed and researched to improve both individual wellbeing and collective advocacy capacity within and across minority communities. This offers opportunities for clinicians to recognize how categorical cultural thinking may inadvertently perpetuate harm through identity questioning and denial. Clinicians can use this to develop therapeutic frameworks that validate ambiguous cultural experiences rather than forcing resolution into predetermined categories.

Politically dark times arise when the public realm is undermined “by speech that does not disclose what is but sweeps it under the carpet” (Arendt 1995, vii). How does it occur that political practices, even though they are experienced as democratic, can unintentionally nourish authoritarianism? Following this question, the contribution accesses social philosophy through an ethnography of contemporary dance education. Utilizing an approach of aesthetic practices (Hetzel 2021) combined with political theory (Arendt 1998) the ethnography concretizes political action within an art form and transfers the findings to a broader societal and political context.

The ethnographic methodology combines a practice theory informed approach developed in dance studies (Hardt 2023) and life-world-analytical ethnography based in sociological phenomenology (Hitzler and Honer 2015). Based on long-term ethnographic field work focussing dance improvisation in my own amateur and professional dance education I am analyzing differences between the performativity of practices (e.g. authority) and their experience (e.g. supportive, participatory). These contrasting results are being theoretically saturated with theories of practices (Schatzki 2002), phenomenology of the body (Merleau-Ponty 1966), sociology of the body (Gugutzer 2015) and Hannah Arendts political theory (Arendt 1998 and 1992).

The results show how experiences and performativity of practices within dance education can drift apart (1). Transferred to social philosophy it becomes understandable why and how experiences of political action are not always consistent with the their (bodily) performativity (2), providing a theoretical foundation for a self-critical evaluation of current political practices (3).

References

Arendt, Hannah 1998. The Human Condition. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press.

Arendt, Hannah 1995. Men in Dark Times. New York und London: Harcourt Brace & Company.

Arendt, Hannah and Ronald Beiner 1992. Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Gugutzer, Robert 2015. Soziologie des Körpers. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.

Hardt, Yvonne 2023. Tanz und kulturelle Bildung erforschen - Eine Einführung. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.

Hetzel, Andreas 2021. „Gehen als ästhetische Praxis“. In: Medienkultur als kritische Gesellschaftsanalyse – Festschrift für Rainer Winter, ed. Matthias Wieser und Elena Pilipets. Köln: Herbert von Halem Verlag.

Hitzler, Ronald und Anne Honer 2015. „Life-World-Analytical Ethnography: A Phenomenology-Based Research Approach“. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 44(5): 544–62.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 1966. Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co.

Schatzki, Theodore R. 2002. The Site of the Social – a philosophical account of the constitution of social life and change. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press.