Voluminous Vitality: Lessons from Kin

Keywords: volumes, relatedness, kinship, emotions, intergenerational
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 16

Abstract

On May 31, 2021, my 5-year-old Carmen took to crossing the bridge 100 feet over the Youghiogheny River doing cartwheels. Watching her, I thought of my father, whose passion for caving, surfing, and hang gliding makes him the quintessential “ardent spatial pluralist” (Chambliss 2020: 74). I looked at Carmen’s smile, and suppressed my urge to say, “Stop! Be careful!” Let her, I thought. Let others yield to her. I will be here to help her up if she falls. On that high bridge, Carmen exhibited what I call “voluminous vitality,” a quality that variously manifests itself in/emanating from a being that is constantly moving, experientially insatiable, untethered, unstoppable. It originates from the body and transcends it. Its expansive quality, with a clear point of origin, distinguishes it from “atmospheres,” although it can create/impact one. Voluminous vitality is both located in/and creator of a complex “psycho-social space” (McGinty 2014: 686) that—like a powerful gravitational field—can draw you in, willingly or not. What I am referring to evokes the “bodily intensities” and “theological senses of immersive and overwhelming presence” that Peter Adey suggests may open up our understanding of volumes (2013: 53). In this paper, I describe voluminous vitality’s power to simultaneously create and sever relations. My late godfather (also a cave explorer), my father, and my 5-year-old daughter are loci of this vitality. As such this paper reflects on this vitality’s familial, gendered, and intergenerational dimensions, and in particular, how we can think of voluminosity itself as a forger of relatedness.