Lost in Hanoi: Disorientation, Travel, and Urban Space

Abstract

Using a 2010 trip to Hanoi, Vietnam, this article looks at the ways that disorientation is used as a trope within the urban environment and to create the traveling subject. Suggesting that travel is a form of deliberate disorientation/ orientation, the article focuses on ideas of disorientation within the urban environment and the ways they have been portrayed in Western cultural forms (the flâneur; the derive ) while suggesting these forms are not sufficient to understand the dynamics of travel. Moreover, the article focuses on two forms of travel as disorientation derived from John Zilcosky—the trope of being “lost and found” and that of “the return.” Finally, the article suggests that Marcus Auge’s idea of non-place is not only a sufficient way of conceptualizing contemporary notions of travel, but is also an indicator of something beyond its scope—that of globalization.