ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes that phenomenology is critical to any understanding and potential transformation of displacement as a lived experience. At a time when places emerge at the interstices of increased mobility and immobility, both real and virtual, it is imperative that a phenomenology of place considers the fundamentality of displacement in the constitution of the contemporary world. The phenomenology of place might have overlooked displacement to date, but phenomenology, more than any other philosophical tradition, also provides the theoretical tools to examine what it means to be displaced. One way to perform a critical phenomenology of displacement is to compare the role of the body in experiences of place and displacement. The reduction of the body from lived to merely existing presents problems for the phenomenology of place. Merleau-Ponty lays the ground for a phenomenology of displacement in Phenomenology of Perception.
