Cudney, Z. 'A space-time of "precious fragments": Involuntary autobiographical memories and geographies at the edge of attention.' (Paper presented, Methods for the Extra-Ordinary, Royal Geographical Society, London, 2024).

Much geographic research on memory focuses on monuments, commemorative objects, and cultural landscapes. Memories of these kind may be volitional, constructed, intersubjective, historically-important, and place-based. Quite differently, involuntary autobiographical memories (IAM) are unbidden, seemingly spontaneous, individual, and fleeting. Called “precious fragments” by Marigold Linton, and often exemplified by Proust’s “madeleine moment,” involuntary autobiographical memories are windows into one’s past. IAMs are extra-ordinary, not because they are rare (IAMs are a frequent, everyday occurrence), and not because their contents are exceptional (IAMs are often of mundane moments and occur while engaging in mindless activities), but because they call for extra-ordinary modes of address and exemplify extra-ordinary spatialities and temporalities. Encounters with IAMs are encounters with a subsurface realm of images which flash briefly, disappear quickly, cannot be empirically sensed, and blend together the real, fictive, and dreamed. Perhaps due to all of these characteristics, IAMs are largely neglected in geography, and spatiality has been insufficiently studied in psychological research on them. I argue that increased attention to IAM is belated in spatial theory and in geographic understandings of memory. I outline a spatial understanding of IAMs, reflect on the methodological challenges and opportunities of researching them, and invite geographers to focus more on the edge of attention.