The Home as a Seat of Longing and Desire in Diaspora
What is a Home? On the one hand 'home' is a mythic place of desire in the diasporic imagination. In this sense it is a place of return, even if it is possible to visit the geographical territory that is seen as a place of 'origin'. On the other hand home is also a lived experience of a locality.Its sounds and smells,its heat and dust, balmy summer evenings, sombre grey skies in the middle of the day.... all this as mediated by the historically specific of every day social relations. In other words, the varying experience of pains and pleasures, the terrors and contentment or the higher and humdrums of everyday lived cultures that mark the how, "there is no place like home"
"Sometimes the house of the future is better built, lighter and larger than all the homes of the past, so that the image of the dream home is opposed to that of the childhood home... Maybe it is a good thing for us to keep a few dreams of the dream home that we shall live in... later, always later,... so much later in fact, that we shall not have time to achieve it. For a home that was final, one that stood in symmetrical relation to the home we were born in would lead to thoughts _ serious sad thoughts_ and not in dreams. It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality.
"Within the frame of contemporary diaspora the notion of 'home' and when a location becomes home are therefore linked when the issues related to inclusion or exclusion which tend to be subjectively experienced depending on circumstances. When does a location become home? How can one distinguish between "feeling at home" and taking a claim to a place as one's own?
The notion of the home is therefore very complex and is related to the subjective emotion of nostalgia The concept of home in the diaspora is intricate, complex and multifaceted characterising plurality of homes and plurality of belongings. The notion of diaspora can represent multiple, plurilocal thus avoiding the ideas of fixity, boundedness and nostalgic exclusivity traditionally implied with the term 'home' i.e, a constant apprehension arises between where you are from and where you are at which leads the diasporic subjects to form their own space.
What is a Home? On the one hand 'home' is a mythic place of desire in the diasporic imagination. In this sense it is a place of return, even if it is possible to visit the geographical territory that is seen as a place of 'origin'. On the other hand home is also a lived experience of a locality.Its sounds and smells,its heat and dust, balmy summer evenings, sombre grey skies in the middle of the day.... all this as mediated by the historically specific of every day social relations. In other words, the varying experience of pains and pleasures, the terrors and contentment or the higher and humdrums of everyday lived cultures that mark the how, "there is no place like home"
"Sometimes the house of the future is better built, lighter and larger than all the homes of the past, so that the image of the dream home is opposed to that of the childhood home... Maybe it is a good thing for us to keep a few dreams of the dream home that we shall live in... later, always later,... so much later in fact, that we shall not have time to achieve it. For a home that was final, one that stood in symmetrical relation to the home we were born in would lead to thoughts _ serious sad thoughts_ and not in dreams. It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality.
"Within the frame of contemporary diaspora the notion of 'home' and when a location becomes home are therefore linked when the issues related to inclusion or exclusion which tend to be subjectively experienced depending on circumstances. When does a location become home? How can one distinguish between "feeling at home" and taking a claim to a place as one's own?
The notion of the home is therefore very complex and is related to the subjective emotion of nostalgia The concept of home in the diaspora is intricate, complex and multifaceted characterising plurality of homes and plurality of belongings. The notion of diaspora can represent multiple, plurilocal thus avoiding the ideas of fixity, boundedness and nostalgic exclusivity traditionally implied with the term 'home' i.e, a constant apprehension arises between where you are from and where you are at which leads the diasporic subjects to form their own space.
