Being-at-Home

Agoraphobia is commonly considered to be a fear of outside, open, or crowded spaces, and is treated with therapies that work on acclimating the agoraphobic to external places she would otherwise avoid. I argue, however, that existential phenomenology provides the resources for an alternative interpretation and treatment of agoraphobia that locates the problem of the disorder not in something lying beyond home, but rather in a flawed relationship with home itself. More specifically, I demonstrate that agoraphobia is the lived body expression of a person who has developed an inward-turning tendency with respect to being-at-home, and who finds herself, as a result, vulnerable and even incapacitated when attempting to emerge into the public arena as a fully participatory agent. I consider this thesis in light of the fact that since World War I agoraphobia has been diagnosed significantly more in women than in men; indeed, one study found women to be 89% more likely than men to suffer from agoraphobia. I conclude that agoraphobia is a disorder that stands as an emblematic expression of the ongoing pathology of being a woman in contemporary society–a disorder that reflects that even today women belong to a political world in which they are not able to feel properly at-home.

The image of home has a central place in the thought of both Heidegger and Hegel. In Hegel, being at home (Beisichselbstsein) is central to Hegel’s reformulation of Kantian freedom. The notion of home and dwelling is also a central notion in Heidegger’s thought, especially his later thought. This paper examines their respective uses of the term and argues that the different ways they conceive the problem of home or dwelling reveals their different conceptions of modernity.

The paper discusses Derrida's concept of hospitality which perfectly describes the experience of loosing the sense of feeling at home and reveals the disintegrating entrance of the Otherness into a coherent home space. Jacques Derrida's theory makes it possible to deconstruct the familiar home space, which, however, does not constitute in any case its destruction. Revealing a complex and ambiguous nature of the challenge of hospitality, he perceives the sense of feeling at home as one of the necessary conditions of a stable subject. This is the subject that most fears the Otherness which could disrupt, unsettle their permanent structure and a sense of certainty. Therefore, the Author follows closely the fear of strangeness and the nostalgic longing for the sense of feeling at home as depicted by David Lynch and Michael Haneke in their films. Then he passes on to the field of contemporary art which not only reveals the fact that something has happened to the house we have known so far, but it also allows for creative deconstruction of the feeling at home. The artistic works selected by the Author break the binary oppositions: one’s own/someone else’s, familiar/strange (Jessica Sue Layton), close/distant (Shizuka Yokomizo) and finally the most important one: interior/exterior (Marja Pirilä, Eve Dent).

This study explains and critiques how discourse and related practices of stay-at-home fathering perpetuate, resist and/or potentially undo hegemonic gender relations of work and family. Changes in everyday micro-discourses of fathering can contribute to a feminist politics of macrostructural transformations in gender relations. First, masculinity in relation to historic cultural scripts of fathering is explored. Second, data collection and discourse analysis procedures employed in this study are described. Next, an analysis is presented of the various ways 45 at-home fathers’ use discourse to position themselves and their domestic labors in relation to hegemonic masculinity. Finally, three critical reflections are offered along with steps for future research and activism.

This article examines the material culture of migration, focusing on migrants’ house-making projects in their countries of birth. In particular, it examines the houses built or refurbished by Albanians in their home-country, which is no longer their place of permanent residence. This is a widespread phenomenon in Albania, but it is also a frequently appearing practice amongst other international migrants. Why do migrants living outside their home-countries build houses there even though they do not plan to return? I seek to answer this question in the case of Albania by focusing empirically on the process of constructing these houses, rather than merely on the material entity of the house
as such. I propose that such ‘house-making’ by Albanian migrants is not only a simple house-building process; it also ensures a constant dwelling and dynamic ‘proxy’ presence for
migrants in their community of origin. These ethnographic observations have further significance for the anthropological study of both houses and international migration.

I argue that, although we are inherently intersubjective beings, we are not first or most originally “public” beings. Rather, to become a public being, that is, a citizen—in other words, to act as an independent and self-controlled agent in a community of similarly independent and self-controlled agents and, specifically, to do so in a shared space in the public arena—is something that we can successfully do only by emerging from our familiar, personal territories—our homes. Finding support in texts from philosophy, psychology, and the social sciences, I construe the claim that citizenship is a developed stance as a spatial issue. I conclude that a state (or, for that matter, a philosophy) that takes the human being to begin as an isolated individual agent fails to recognize the essential spatial relationships on which we depend— namely, those arising through our way of being-at-home in the world; and, as a result, such a stance not only misconstrues the parameters on which citizenship is itself possible but also risks developing a social situation that encourages behaviors we see in the agoraphobic—namely, the behaviors of alienated and fundamentally homeless human beings.sjp_29 219..245

Though "dwelling" is more commonly associated with Heidegger's philosophy than with that of Merleau-Ponty, "being-at-home" is in fact integral to Merleau-Ponty's thinking. I consider the notion of home as it relates to Merleau-Ponty's more familiar notions of the "lived body" and the "level," and, in particular, I consider how the unique intertwining of activity and passivity that characterizes our being-at-home is essential to our nature as free beings. I argue that while being-at-home is essentially an experience of passivity—i.e., one that rests in the background of our experience and provides a support and structure for our life that goes largely unnoticed and that is significantly beyond our "conscious" control—being-at-home is also a way of being to which we attain. This analysis of home reveals important psychological insights into the nature of our freedom as well as into the nature of the development of our adult ways of coping and behaving.

"This chapter provides one phenomenological interpretation of writer and director Alan Ball’s popular Home Box Office cable-television series, Six Feet Under, which completed its fifth and final season in 2005. The chapter considers how home and at-homeness are portrayed in the series, drawing on two contrasting phenomenological conceptions: First, Edmund Husserl’s homeworld/alienworld as interpreted by Anthony Steinbock in Home and Beyond (Steinbock 1995); and, second, Kristen Jacobson’s being-at-home (Jacobson 2009). The argument is made that an open sense of at-homeness, grounded in family and place, allows for personal and communal transformation partly impelled by unsettling moments when characters suddenly encounter, in their home lifeworld, compelling situations and understandings before out of sight—i.e., the uncanny.

Key words: home, at-homeness, dwelling, homeworld, alienworld, being-at-home, uncanny, place, phenomenology, phenomenology of home, Alan Ball, Six Feet Under
"

מִיפתׇח הדימיון היוצר מחולל בממשות ומאפשר חריגה אל מעבר לתחומי ההבנה המושכלת. מנגינת האקורדיון נפתחת ונסגרת, נעה בין נשימה לשאיפה, וממחישה בדרכה את עושר מנעד הצלילים. עם זאת, מותר מוסיקת הנשמה במנגינה שנובעת מהלב. לכן, רעיון הנשמה היתרה מוליך את תפקודי הדימיון היוצר ותומך בהתפתחות ההכרה. לפיכך מצוינות מעשה האמנות, שנוצר בנשמה היתרה, היא זו שמקבלת מעמד של מופת תרבותי.

The aim of this chapter is to explore the variety of ways in which the idea of ‘home’ is created amongst first generation migrant groups, especially those who are ageing in place in deprived urban neighbourhoods. This chapter draws upon approaches which aim to understand the experiental dimension of older people’s relationships with home and the environment (Chaudhury and Rowles, 2005; Rowles and Bernard, 2013). In this perspective, the concept of ‘home’ involves the development of emotional attachments and feelings of belonging to particular places that result in a sense of familiarity and comfort, and is closely related to well-being. Following this, the meaning of ‘home’ is not only related to the physical place but may involve symbolic constructions of Heimat (Huber and O’Reilly, 2004) – ‘spaces of belonging’ (and identity) at different geographical scales – the local, national or transnational communities in which people think of themselves of ‘feeling at home’ (Morley, 2001).

Though ‘‘dwelling’’ is more commonly associated with Heidegger’s
philosophy than with that of Merleau-Ponty, ‘‘being-at-home’’ is in fact integral to
Merleau-Ponty’s thinking. I consider the notion of home as it relates to Merleau-
Ponty’s more familiar notions of the ‘‘lived body’’ and the ‘‘level,’’ and, in particular,
I consider how the unique intertwining of activity and passivity that
characterizes our being-at-home is essential to our nature as free beings. I argue that
while being-at-home is essentially an experience of passivity—i.e., one that rests in
the background of our experience and provides a support and structure for our life
that goes largely unnoticed and that is significantly beyond our ‘‘conscious’’ control—
being-at-home is also a way of being to which we attain. This analysis of
home reveals important psychological insights into the nature of our freedom as
well as into the nature of the development of our adult ways of coping and behaving.

I argue that, although we are inherently intersubjective beings, we are not first or most originally “public” beings. Rather, to become a public being, that is, a citizen—in other words, to act as an independent and self-controlled agent in a community of similarly independent and self-controlled agents and, specifically, to do so in a shared space in the public arena—is something that we can successfully do only by emerging from our familiar, personal territories—our homes. Finding support in texts from philosophy, psychology, and the social sciences, I construe the claim that citizenship is a developed stance as a spatial issue. I conclude that a state (or, for that matter, a philosophy) that takes the human being to begin as an isolated individual agent fails to recognize the essential spatial relationships on which we depend—namely, those arising through our way of being-at-home in the world; and, as a result, such a stance not only misconstrues the parameters on which citizenship is itself possible but also risks developing a social situation that encourages behaviors we see in the agoraphobic—namely, the behaviors of alienated and fundamentally homeless human beings.

This paper examines the ways in which the lived experiences and the embodied practices of Bhutanese teenage women refugees are entangled with notions of ‘homeliness’, ‘being in place’ and discourses around mobility. For these women, constraints associated with cultural values can create a somewhat paradoxical ‘unhomeliness’ and feelings of ‘being out of place.’ The experience of being a refugee can heighten the importance of home as a refuge, and the desire to build a new home in a wider community. The results reaffirm the importance of investigating and theorising embodied practices in efforts to represent refugee lived experiences and the importance of home to structure notions of being a refugee in a new place.