Cartographies of Intiimacy

MONICA SZURMUK

Carmbridge

Seminario; Drclas Seminari; 2021

Harvard University

A Cartography of Intimacy proposes a long-duration reading of a suburb of Buenos Aires as a multiethnic and multilingual contactzone where different peoples came together in negotiation with state institutions but also with each other. I explore intimatespaces created by immigrant communities in which desires for new belonging kept getting interrupted by nostalgic memories ofhome, the intimacies of violence during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship, and the new intimacies of illegality in the present.Intimacy is understood as both a dominant narrative of gender and also as a methodological stance. The intimacies of desire,sexuality, home and family are read alongside discourses of government, institutional building, state violence and racialdiscrimination in order to create cartographic renderings that decenter the nation-state and illuminate transnational cultural andaffective connections. Sources include literary texts, maps, films, legal documents, and sites of memory.