Maps and Diaspora: Affect, Agency and Epistolary Praxis

Abstract

Following discussions, interactions and reflections during the 2024 Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) conference ‘Map Room Conversations’ sessions, this paper examines archival maps in relation to diaspora through an affective lens. Using an auto-ethnographic epistolary praxis of letter-writing and the therapeutic prompt ‘What came up for you?’, it aims to bring out marginalised narratives and enable diasporic subjects to reclaim agency over their histories and identities. As a medium for the performativity of memory, letter-writing enables affective engagement with maps of ‘Hindustan’ and ‘Himalaya’, facilitating access to suppressed emotions and genealogical narratives, shifting away from viewing maps as merely colonial artefacts and repositioning them as ‘mediators’ of diasporic affect and agency, thus animating them as sites of remembering, reconnecting and healing.