Abstract
In this article that opens and introduces the special issue Conceptualizing the North, we present our theoretical rationale behind the conceptualization(s) of the north presented both in our article and in the issue as a whole, as well as our approach to the co-creative peer review. Through new material feminist understanding of the north, we acknowledge our kin both past and present, and unfold a spectrum of possible understandings by looking at, reading through, hearing, experiencing, and sensing the north. Ultimately, the issue unites, rather than divides, scholarly and artistic approaches that simultaneously conceptualize and analyse the north.
Highlights
Enquiring into and simultaneously challenging our perceptions of and relations with the north is at the heart of this special issue of Nordlit
As Dolly Jørgensen and Virginia Langum have put it, ‘Rather than one thing, North is a space imagined by people, part of an identity, or state of mind, held not just by individuals and by institutions, organizations and society’ (2018, 4)
What all the contributions have in common is not just the analytical and creative lenses through which the north is represented, experienced, sensed, and conceptualized, and a sense of the increasing recognition that the north is something different from what it used to be. Whereas the north both in Western European premodern writing and contemporary scholarly work tends to be conceptualized as a mythical as well as geographical frontier, Jørgensen and Langum remind us that the north has never been a singular direction or conception (2018, 2)
Summary
It is those inhabiting the north, but the relations between those within, outside, and in between that create and transform meaning in an ongoing process of encounters Such encounters – Maxwell, Mittner, and Stien described as occurring at the connection between people, animals, things, nature, technologies, arts and more – result in vibrant matters (Bennett 2010), and in these we hear voices that say, ‘the north is cold’, ‘the north is endangered’, ‘the north is full of daylight’, ‘the north is music’, ‘the north is inspiration’, ‘the north is here’, ‘the north is at stake’. With his subtitle of ‘Kinship?’ (7), Borgdorff in a sense foreshadows
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