I remember my encounter with nomadism vividly: while working for a PhD on Technologies of the Female Self, I went for my Sunday walk to Camden and my ritual visit to Compendium, the best philosophy bookshop ever, that closed down as soon as Camden lost its hippy ambience at the dawn of the new millennium. But it was still 1993 then, and as I was browsing the Compendium’s selves I found the book!
Rosi Braidotti’s figuration of ‘the nomadic subject’ has been a radical intervention in the way feminism has theorized subjectivity. it is a notion that has decisively influenced my overall project of Writing Feminist Genealogies , looking at the constitution of the female self in the public spheres of education, art, work and most recently science and mathematics.
The nomadic subject has also attracted a range of critiques that have problematised the use of travel metaphors in contemporary social and cultural studies, as well as in feminist theories. In introducing the second edition of Nomadic Subjects in 2011, Braidotti has noted that ‘what we need […] is higher degrees of accuracy in accounting for both the external factors and the internal complexity of nomadic subjectivity.’ (4)
Let us then embark on the adventure of revisiting the nomadic subject through digging and excavating the archives that have been assembled in the struggle for knowledge as a political praxis.