Emergent Errant Bodies

Abstract

This chapter explores some of the contemporary practices of errancy and nomadism in an era of increased digital navigation, mapping, and monitoring. Drawing upon exemplars from several disciplines, particular focus is given to the activities of Keri Smith, Will Self, and Robyn Davidson. Each of these errant bodies demonstrates an embrace of the contemporary reach of global cross-culturalization, but also employ getting lost as a means to recoil from the global and bring us to the particular placedness of the local. This last chapter deals with this very contradiction and tension—what is the role of errancy in a twenty-first-century technologically driven world that is dominated by being locatable and networked? As our travel and mobility becomes increasingly regulated, many of these emergent errant bodies offer hope that getting lost is still possible and that being out-of-place can still be used to resist dominant power formations.