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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Angela MazzettiORCiD
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I was born in Northern Ireland in 1966, three years before the start of the region’s violent and protracted civil conflict euphemistically referred to as “The Troubles”. When I was 22, I left the region quickly and unexpectedly due to a conflict related incident. I have always referred to Northern Ireland as my ‘home’ despite having lived most of my life, seemingly in ‘exile’ (Jackson 1995: 6), in England. Rapport and Dawson (1998) position ‘exile’ as a resource that enables one to come to know oneself. They posit that this is why people find the absence of ‘home’ so emotionally powerful. Baldassar (2008) notes that feelings of ‘longing’ for home are mediated by various types of ‘copresence’ which she classifies as: virtually, physically, by proxy, and through imagination. During my time in ‘exile’, I had a recurring dream of a childhood walk through my town. The ‘Dream Walk’ gave me significant comfort and an imagined copresence with my ‘home’. However, when waking from the dream, I often felt distressed, lonely and homesick. I always longed for a home coming, hoping that one day, the conditions would be right in the region for me to return. In 2014, I embarked on an extended ethnographic study in Northern Ireland. This gave me the opportunity to spend extended periods of time in the region on a regular basis over the course of 4 years. In many ways I conceptualised the “to-ings and fro-ings” associated with this ethnographic study as my “pilot-trips” (Rapport 1998: 73) to test out how my relocation back ‘home’ might go. During my visits I regularly walked my ‘dream walk’ in real time. However, over time, I started to develop an ambivalent relationship with ‘home’. Although I felt a strong emotional connection to the region, I was increasingly cognisant of the lack of political progress. Paradoxically, I simultaneously experienced feelings of closeness and warmth for the region with feelings of frustration and disappointment. I found myself reexperiencing my loss all over again, as my long-awaited homecoming seemed to be slipping further and further out of my grasp. In this symposium, I share my “Dream Walk” through poetry and imagery. I share the romanticised memories of my childhood walk, juxtaposed with the reality of my more recent real time walks. I explore the complex and contradictory relationship one has with home. I have come to realise that not only is ‘going home’ an emotional journey (Rapport 2007), but also that I can never really go home again as I can never reverse time, retrace my steps, or expect to find myself as I once was (Jackson 1995: 6). I therefore find myself “longing for what is lacking in a changed present […] yearning for what is now not attainable, simply because of the irreversibility of time” (Pickering and Keightley 2006: 920). I have come to experience the bittersweet nature of nostalgia (Bryant 2008). [ 482 words] References Baldassar, L. (2008) ‘Missing Kin and Longing to be Together: Emotions and the Construction of Copresence in Transnational Relationships’, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 29(3), pp. 247-266. Bryant, R. (2008) ‘Writing the catastrophe: nostalgia and its histories in Cyprus’, Journal of Greek Modern Studies, 26, pp. 399-422. Jackson, M. J. (1995) At home in the world. Durham: Duke University Press. Pickering, M. and Keightley, E. (2006) ‘The modalities of nostalgia’, Current Sociology, 54, pp. 919-941. Rapport, N. (2007) ‘Rachel’s emotional life: movement and identity’, in Wulff, H. (ed.) The emotions: a cultural reader. Oxford, Berg, pp.379-396. Rapport, N. (1998) ‘Coming home to a dream: a study of the immigrant discourse of ‘Anglo-Saxons’ in Israel’, in Rapport, N. and Dawson, A. (eds.) Migrants of identity: perceptions of home in a world of movement. Oxford: Berg, pp. 61-84. Rapport, N. and Dawson, A. (1998) Migrants of identity: perceptions of home in a world of movement. Oxford: Berg.
Author(s): Mazzetti AS
Publication type: Conference Proceedings (inc. Abstract)
Publication status: Published
Conference Name: 2025 International Symposium on Autoethnography and Narrative
Year of Conference: 2025
Acceptance date: 01/11/2024
Publisher: International Association of Autoethnography and Narrative Inquiry
