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CHAPTER 12
Trans-Scapes Transitions in Transit
Irene J. Klaver
It is easy enough to turn to a dictionary or to an online etymology and
see that “transit” has its roots in Latin: trans (across) plus ire (to go;).
How though are we to think deeply about the subtleties of “trans” in
a world where people are in transit for fear of their lives; where prod-
ucts are routinely in trans-oceanic transit; where medications can be
delivered transdermally; we can use a website to plan when we can see
International Space Station lunar and solar transit events. How might
we think of states of change over time/space when they are immediately
obvious—driving away from a hurricane or a forest fire; and when they
are not so obvious—indigenous people attempting to do what they have
always done where they have always done it, only to find some other
governing body claims hegemony?
Here I lay out a small cluster of provocations that lay out a landscape
through which to meander, engaging here with insights, there with com-
plexities, eventually to have carved a pattern of understanding rather
than to have simply transitioned from one state to some predetermined
goal state.
Being in transit is predicated upon boundaries, that is, on demarca-
tions in space and time. How these demarcations take place, and how
© The Author(s) 2018
R. Scapp and B. Seitz (eds.), Philosophy, Travel, and Place,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98225-0_12
I. J. Klaver (*)
University of North Texas, Denton, TX, USA
e-mail: Irene.Klaver@unt.edu