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Embodied memory, temporality and adoptee connections
DOI link for Embodied memory, temporality and adoptee connections
Embodied memory, temporality and adoptee connections book
Embodied memory, temporality and adoptee connections
DOI link for Embodied memory, temporality and adoptee connections
Embodied memory, temporality and adoptee connections book
ABSTRACT
This chapter engages with temporal questions of connection through embodied memory. To explore different aspects of embodied memory, I describe sensuous memories prior to adoption and memories articulated in adoption papers or by birth family members that adoptees tried to re-enliven by living in Korea and/or through birth family search and reunion. This chapter addresses questions related to embodied memory and temporality: How do adoptees make sense of the disconnect between how they feel in the present and who they once were? What does it mean to try to embody memory that is “known” but not necessarily felt? Conversely, what does it mean to reconcile memories that are felt but not known or remembered? Finally, focusing on intensive fieldwork at KoRoot (an adoptee guesthouse in Seoul), I ask how adoptees create a “community of memory” through their shared and disparate experiences of being adopted. How does the historical consciousness of their shared memories as adoptees create a space that supports a shared sense of “adopteeness”?