Julien Clin: Identity & Home

“Where is home for you?” The question can be laden with hidden meanings and, often, with assumptions about identity. In this episode, writer and doctoral researcher Julien Clin reflects on place as a source of community. Dismantling both identity and the nation as imagined, probing the concepts’ discourse-theoretical limitations, giving up identity in favour of embraced alterity, Julien seeks to move from backward-looking nostalgia to Being in place. From a topological point of view fed by sense-affect, he attempts to reimagine the concept of roots as a rhizomatic engagement that, ultimately, makes and constantly remakes the Home.Julien Clin is working on a creative nonfiction book as a topo-poiesis of Heimat in the gentrifying, global city (specifically London). The accompanying critical research, which he undertakes with Techne-AHRC funding at Kingston University, focuses on ‘writing the home’. His first degree was a Magister Artium in American and Romance Philology from the University of Tübingen (Germany), with a dissertation on “The Art of Montage in John Dos Passos’s Manhattan Transfer.” This explored the implicit political message conveyed by the technique and how it contributes to the representation of the city.After several years in broadcast journalism, during which Julien worked as a producer and foreign correspondent, he obtained a Master’s in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford (Somerville College). He continues to be interested in long-form radio and travel writing, as well as urbanism more widely. He tweets very infrequently @ClinJulien.The Technecast is funded by the Techne AHRC-DTP, and edited by Polly Hember, Julien Clin & Felix Clutson.Contact: [email protected] / @technecast / @pollyhember / @ClinJulien Royalty free music generously shared by Steve Oxen. FesliyanStudios.com