How to build a theoretical framework on space and diaspora in poetry?”
I’m beginning dissertation research on space and diaspora in literature: how ordinary spaces are imagined and negotiated within diasporic experience. My primary source is poetry, and I’m trying to understand how spatial theory and diaspora theory can actually be applied to poetic texts in a concrete way.
My confusion is mainly methodological. If I’m starting with a chapter theorizing space, should I begin by reading foundational spatial theorists first (for example Lefebvre, Soja, Bachelard, de Certeau, etc.) and then move toward literary criticism applying those theories? Or is it better to begin with contemporary papers already working on space in diaspora studies and build outward from there?
Similarly, for diaspora theory, I’m unsure how to balance foundational theorists with more recent scholarship focused on everyday lived spaces, migration, spatial negotiation, memory, domesticity, borders, and emplacement/displacement.
One thing I’m trying to be careful about is that I do not want to approach diaspora primarily through the usual framework of identity, belonging, or cultural hybridity alone. I’m more interested in the spatial dimension, how diasporic subjectivities are produced, negotiated, or experienced through everyday spaces, movement, domestic environments, borders, cities and spatial practices.
What I’m struggling with most is how to translate these theories into actual textual analysis of poetry. For example, when analyzing poems, how do researchers move from abstract ideas like “socially produced space,” “third space,” or “diaspora space” into close reading? What kinds of spatial elements in poetry become analytically important, imagery, domestic settings, borders, movement, memory, language, embodiment, mapping, everyday routines, etc?
Since this is my first major research project, I’d really appreciate advice on how experienced researchers and academics approach building a theoretical framework without getting overwhelmed by secondary material, and how they practically connect theory to primary texts.
Thank you!