Geographies of ‘out-of-it-ness’: Navigating dementia amidst cognitive normativities and bodily dissociation as mechanism of trans endurance

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

In response to David Bissell's geography of being ‘out of it’, I examine two conditions that address underlying geographies involved in feeling, becoming, or being positioned as ‘out of it’. First, I examine my father's experience of Alzheimer's disease, his societal positioning as always-already ‘out of it’, and the lived consequences of this positioning. I then explore trans individuals’ experiences of bodily dissociation, a becoming ‘out of it’ often experienced as an innate or necessary mechanism of endurance that reduces bodily connection and disrupts the flow and sensation of everyday and hostile affect. I conclude with several provocations for geographers to take up, encouraging reflection on how cognitive normativities position people as ‘out of it'; on the more-than-binary nature of being ‘out of it’; and on the constant, embodied work of responding to ‘out-of-it-ness’.