Between roots and rhizomes: Towards a post‐phenomenology of home

0506790 - SOÚ 2020 RIV GB eng J - Journal Article
Gibas, Petr
Between roots and rhizomes: Towards a post‐phenomenology of home.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. Roč. 44, č. 3 (2019), s. 602-615. ISSN 0020-2754. E-ISSN 1475-5661
R&D Projects: GA ČR GA16-06077S; GA ČR GA16-06335S
Institutional support: RVO:68378025
Keywords : at-homeness * Czech Republic * home * post-phenomenology * territorialisation
OECD category: Sociology
Impact factor: 4.320, year: 2019
Method of publishing: Limited access
https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/tran.12304

Humanistic and phenomenological scholarship has long tended to regard home as a fundamental place of existential and experiential stability. In recent times, the notion of home has been critically re‐examined, however, and home is now regarded as a more complex and multi‐faceted phenomenon. Drawing on interviews with prospective buyers in two cities of the Czech Republic, I explore the complexity of home and pay particular attention to the internal tensions and paradoxes of home as imagined by people buying a flat in which to make their home. I specifically attempt at opening home as a theme and field for post‐phenomenological inquiry which has so far relatively neglected it despite the rich phenomenological tradition. In analysing the complex and seemingly contradictory imaginary home‐to‐be expressed in the interviews, I employ a Deleuzian notion of territorialisation and argue that it can be used to productively account for the inner paradox of home as both a stable and secure place to put down roots and a rhizomatic place of temporary and transplantable instance of being at home. The paper proposes to infuse phenomenological understanding of home with Deleuzian insights and as such represents an answer to the calls for instilling post‐phenomenological geography with post‐structuralist contributions. This I argue may help geographers to develop post‐phenomenological geography of home while overcoming the limitations of a phenomenological approach. At the same time, it can allow for bringing the emerging post‐phenomenology of home closer to the more established critical geographies of home on both a thematic and theoretical level and open up a space for potential cross‐fertilisation of concepts and ideas.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0297955