Sola(no)stalgic Suburbs: Transcorporeality of Narrated Dwelling

The article draws on personal narratives as a substantial source for the study of subjective emotionalities involved in the experience of dwelling. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the neighborhoods bordering the Port of Riga, this study situates oral eco-narratives at the intersection of perspectives derived from posthumanism, post-phenomenology, and affective ecocriticism. It focuses on the centrality of sensory impressions–sounds, smells, and sights–to human–environment relations as manifested in the stories people tell. Inhabiting suburbs that shelter both housing and industry, the residents of the studied localities have been subjected to displacement, territorial restrictions, landscape transformation, and repeated ecological accidents. Oscillating between strong place attachment and a sense of being expelled, they report their dwelling experience in narratives of nostalgia, solastalgia, and environmental concern. By addressing the transcorporeality of these narrated states, the article contributes to research on ecological affects originating from the embodiment and embeddedness of human existence.