ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the scope of the author's collection extends beyond realistic portrayals of the diaspora to also consider the metaphorical aspects of migratory displacement and imminent return. Dis-exile exemplifies what Boym has termed "reflective nostalgia". Benedetti's novels and poetry have received attention for their portrayal of the nostalgic "geography" of exile, yet Geographies directly confronts the problematic future signaled by dis-exile. Reflective nostalgia overlaps with counternostalgia to the extent that the desired return does not signify an end to the journey, but is merely the transposition of desire onto a new ruptured past. A private topography, however, is not a historical response limited to nineteenth-century Latin America. Delia's private topography has not only become public through violation, this embodied territory has been stolen from her and is a physical space which no measure of mental games will allow her to reclaim.
