Cross-temporal pedestrian mobility: walking-after Nietzsche in the Upper Engadine

The article introduces a method of practicing historically informed pedestrian mobilities called walking-after. The method involves engaging with past pedestrian mobilities by means of researcher's own walking. In discussing this cross-temporal mobility, the article blends methodological insights with an account of the author's walking-after Nietzsche in the Upper Engadine, foregrounding the affective plane of walking on which the past and the present meet. Methodologically anchored in new walking studies and the idea of molecular mobilities, the text argues for affect-oriented research into past walking practices as a means of energizing present pedestrian practices, as well as building emotional links with the past. What arises is not an account of Nietzsche's walks as they happened but a conversation of feelings across time unfolding as a creative, even experimental reenactment, presenting the affective complexity of the Upper Engadine when walked cross-temporally. Such an approach, it is argued, supplements traditional methodologies in histories of mobilities by construing the latter as inherently political embodied practices that bring together different temporalities demonstrating how the past can stimulate deeper and more responsible pedestrian experiences in the present.