En flyttande människa är inte rotlös

 Alla vet att en flyttande människa inte är rotlös – hon flyttar bara mellan olika hem.

Det finns en hisnande motsättning i de svenska myndigheternas tolkning av ordet "nomad". Eftersom nomader per definition är människor som flyttar, anses de kunna flyttas på.

Elin Anna Labba, Herrarna satte oss hit (Norstedts, 2020) p. 71

Ah, to depart!

Ah, to depart! By whatever means and to whatever place!
To set out across the waves, across unknown perils, across the sea!
To go Far, to go Wide, toward Abstract Distance,
Indefinitely, through deep and mysterious nights,
Carried like dust by the winds, by the gales!
To go, go, go once and for all!
All of my blood lusts for wings!
All of my body lurches forward!
I rush through my imagination in torrents!
I trample myself underfoot, I growl, I hurtle!
My yearnings bust into foam
And my flesh is a wave crashing into cliffs!

Alvaro de Campos, 'Maritime Ode', in Fernando Pessoa, A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe (Penguin Books, 2006) p. 174

All places are dis-places

All places, including homelands, are dis-places.

Ackbar Abbas 'Migration as spatial fantasy' in After the event: New perspectives on art history (Manchester University Press, 2010) p. 42

The field of freedom shrinks with speed

Speed allows for progress in space, only progress in space has been identified with progress in time, in history. And that is really an abuse of language. We know very well that progress in space is not necessarily progress in time. The fact of going faster from Paris to New York doesn't make the exchanges any better. It makes them shorter. But the shortest is not necessarily the best. There again it's the same illusory ideology that when the world is reduced to nothing and we have everything at hand, we'll be infinitely happy. I believe just the opposite – and this has already been proven – that we'll be infinitely unhappy because we will have lost the very place of freedom, which is expanse. All current technologies reduce expanse to nothing. They produce shorter and shorter distances – a shrinking fabric. Now, a territory without temporality is not a territory, but only the illusion of a territory. It is urgent that we become aware of the political repercussions of such a handling of space-time, for they are fearsome. The field of freedom shrinks with speed. And freedom needs a field. When there is no more field, our lives will be like a terminal, a machine with doors that open and close. A labyrinth for laboratory animals.

Paul Virilio, Pure War (Semiotext(e), 2008) pp. 82-83

Outrun its own collapse

The world would not be moving so fast if it didn't have to constantly outrun its own collapse.

The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection (semiotext(e), 2009) p. 60

Representation and difference

Representation fails to capture the affirmed world of difference. Representation has only a single centre, a unique and receding perspective, and in consequence a false depth. It mediates everything, but mobilises and moves nothing. Movement, for its part, implies a plurality of centres, a superposition of perspectives, a tangle of points of view, a coexistence of moments which essentially distort representation: paintings or sculptures are already such "distorters", forcing us to create movement – that is, to combine a superficial and a penetrating view, or to ascend and descend within the space as we move through it.

Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition (Continuum, 2004) p. 67

Idyllens rörelseproblem

Det finns en definitiv gräns för den mängd kulturstoff som en människa kan tillägna sig på ett aktivt, funktionellt sätt. [...] Och vad skulle behövas utöver detta? Vilken rörelse i vilken riktning skulle vara att föredra framför en fullständig rörelsefrihet inom den hittillsvarande mänskliga traditionen?
Den är tillräcklig.
Men vart tar människan vägen? Idyllens rörelseproblem innebär en paradox som kan formuleras så här. Meningsfull rörelse innebär att man är på väg någonstans. Idyllen, så som Schiller definierar den, avser att gestalta ett fulländningstillstånd. Vart skulle en människa i detta tillstånd bege sig? [...] Ett tillstånd utan meningsfull rörelse blir ett slags död. Det kan inte uppfattas som fulländat.

Sven Lindqvist, Myten om Wu Tao-tzu (Månpocket, 2013) pp. 85-86