‘We live to write, from our life, the best of stories’: exploring Colombian women’s embodied narratives of displacement through body mapping

Abstract

Drawing on research conducted in June 2019, this article explores the narratives produced by eight Colombian women to examine the embodied nature of their experiences of displacement and trauma. We frame this examination both through recent feminist geographic scholarship on displacement, trauma, and the body, as well as through the concept of territorio cuerpo-tierra, which has recently emerged from Latin American feminist communitarianism. These narratives used in this research were produced through the process of body mapping conducted as a part of an eight-day workshop in which research participants engaged in multiple arts-based methodologies. The results of this research underscore how the concept of territorio cuerpo-tierra is materialized in the experiences of displaced women through a sustained connection of self and place. They also highlight the ways that displacement and trauma connect the body/territory; refuse to be spatially or temporally contained; and provide the resources for healing, emplacement, and spatial repossession.