Visual Methodologies and Geography's education in the pandemic time: notes on geopolitics of migration in the "Mediterranean Complex"

Abstract

The relationship between Geography and the Visual has always been strong intertwined. As it is true that Geography has always operates through images (in the form of pictures, creative representations and above all cartographies), in the last two years, with the distance learning due to the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, this phenomenon has not only increased, but it also became necessary. "The classroom as the most radical space", in the words of bell hooks, had to turn into a virtual space, where images have a fundamental role in the teaching/learning process. This paper wants to analyse the relationship between Geography and the Visual by analysing three images we used in the lessons of the course Geopolitics of Migration at the University of Palermo during the academic year 2020–2021, that speak about the "Mediterranean Complex". With this expression, inspired by Mirzoeff's work, I will briefly focus on the clash between dominant visuality and the counter-visualities emerging from the Mediterranean Sea, a particular sea-space where on the one hand, violent geopolitics daily act against migrants' crossing; on the other hand, new imaginative geographies emerge against coloniality devices of power and knowledge. A further reflection will be dedicated to the use of these images as a didactic tool. Why do we use these images? What do they tell us? Which one is the relationship between our increasingly digital classrooms and these images? If it is true that the pandemic phenomenon is acting as a laboratory of experimentation and acceleration, how is the visual nature of geography changing and participating to the construction of our knowledge? This contribution is a first attempt to reflect about those questions through the visuality and the counter-visualities of the "Mediterranean complex".