Mapping an Existential Territory

Abstract

This autoethnography explores how spaces of what we call home and ethnographic field shape subjectivity. From stories of growing up in Northwest China, studying in the humanities in the United States, and conducting ethnographic research in China's sound scene, I reflect on moments of shifts and ruptures, connections and disconnection that are brief but intense and transformative for fabricating subjectivity. Adaptation is an affective process; sensual elements including sound, smell, and taste underlie linguistic and cultural negotiations. An existential territory is ecological and processual. It is where one reinvents the self, achieves a self-feeling unicity and, most importantly, where one feels alive.