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Arrogant Perceptors, World-Travelers, and World-Backpackers: Rethinking María Lugones’ Theoretical Framework Through Lukas Moodysson’s Mammoth

2015; Springer International Publishing; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-3-319-22494-7_3

2197-9642

Jenny Björklund,

Geographies of human-animal interactions

Addressing interrelations and boundaries between differently situated human bodies, this chapter brings out the spatial and material dimensions in María Lugones’ conceptual framework of world-travelling through a discussion of the narrative of Lukas Moodysson’s film Mammoth (2009). Adding to Lugones’ framework, the author introduces the concept of world-backpacking in order to capture how embodied subjects relate to each other in an increasingly globalized world characterized by gendered and racialized inequalities as well as ignorance and simplification of such inequalities. The chapter demonstrates that the striving of the characters in the film to transgress boundaries through physical movement and bodily bonds does not in most cases mean that they are engaged in what Lugones calls “world-travelling” since they do not travel to each other’s worlds in the spirit of “loving perception.” The economically and culturally privileged main characters try (in some ways) to change the world into a better place and to bridge the global and economic divides, but instead, their bodies wind up exploiting and violating other less privileged bodies as well as our planet and its resources. The notion of world-backpacking, introduced in the chapter, is intended to describe the processes by which privileged Westerners believe themselves to perceive the non-privileged other in loving ways and to create intimacy and bonds with her, but instead fails to perceive from the perspective and specific world of the other.