A place that invites dwelling and reconciliation back : on the anthropology of a post-industrial place

Abstract

"What is a post-industrial place? By striving to take root, we do not wish to celebrate shapeless space; we are instead willing to identify it as a place and home, even if it seems to be evading our attempt at positioning. To focus on the post-industrial place, and not space, is to locate it in the context of oikology, a unique way of knowing that treats the oikos, home, as a task and commitment confronting a human being. This oikological knowledge allows us to think again in terms of the gravity and discipline behind the idea of a place as home without toying with the notion of dictatorship or ill-conceived familiarity. There would be no dwelling without the fissures and gaps that make home discontinuous and open. When Martin Heidegger in his 1951 lecture calls for the re-examination of the relationship between dwelling and building, he makes a case for a greater recognition of home: “To be a human being means to be on the earth as a mortal. It means to dwell. The old word bauen, which says that man is insofar as he dwells, this word bauen however also means at the same time to cherish and protect, to preserve and care for, specifically to till the soil, to cultivate the vine." (fragm.)