Feeling out of it: Displacement, disengagement and dispossession in experiences of brain fog

This article is an attempt to establish the significance of being ‘out of it’ for geographical thought that both troubles and broadens how we think about bodily experience, as well as an invitation to geographers to take this thinking forward in pluralistic ways. The first part situates being out of it in relation to three classic geographical concepts – place, practice, and power. It explains how experiences of being out of it create opportunities for rethinking displacement, disengagement, and dispossession as affective concerns, beyond their more familiar political economy purview. The second part explores one specific manifestation of being out of it by drawing on a literary account of brain fog to broaden geographical understandings of displacement, disengagement, and dispossession as specifically cognitive affective concerns. Attending to this overlooked form of embodiment complicates how we think about subjectivity in geography, it spurs ethical dilemmas about how to respond to those who are out of it, and it raises fundamental questions about what it is to participate in social, political and economic life.