ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the question of orientation/disorientation has been treated within the philosophical debate about space. The notion of space therefore appears to be intrinsically bound up with that of orientation. At the same time, it is equally clear that scientific and philosophical enquiry on space, given its status as a phenomenon that is observed and experienced, predated the debate about orientation. The representation of space not only brings a cultural perspective to bear on the theme of disorientation but also leads to the use of spatial metaphors in science and everyday language as a mental operation of mapping between two or more domains of conceptualization of experience. In geography, the post-phenomenological approach started out from a critical re-elaboration of the thinking of Husserl, informed by "Continental" post-structural theories. The migrant's experience of disorientation and reorientation has been taken up in contemporary literature, film, and TV series in a continuous decomposition and recomposition of places and languages.
