Читать книгу Fictions of Home - Martin Mühlheim - Страница 7

Abandoned by his loved ones and exiledexile from home, E.T. is arguably the most famous illegalized alien in motion picture history.1 At the beginning of Steven SpielbergSpielberg, Steven’s film, we see E.T. and others of his kind peacefully exploring their terrestrial surroundings – when suddenly a group of humans appears, aiming to capture the foreignforeigners ‘invaders.’ While the other aliens reach the safetysafety of their spaceship, thus managing to elude their human pursuers, E.T. is left behind, stranded on an unfamiliar planet. In panic, E. T. runs off and hides in a field behind a suburbansuburbia house, where he is later discovered by a ten-year-old boy named Elliott, whose own home was recently disrupted when the boy’s father left his mother, Mary, for a younger woman. Initially, E.T. and Elliott are afraid of each other, yet soon fear is replaced by fascination. Elliott smuggles his newfound friend to the safety of his room, where at one point the boy places his hand on a globe that stands on his desk. Looking at the alien, Elliott explains: “Earth. Home.”

In describing earth as home, Elliot’s point is evidently not that all humans feel perfectly at home in the world; the boy is not referring to profound feelings of belonging, but simply notes that earth is, for better or worse, the planet we humans inhabit, and where we must try to live our lives. And yet, it would be misleading to suggest that Elliott uses the word home merely as a spatial marker, for he is in fact interested in learning more about E. T.’s history. More precisely, Elliott tries to explain the meaning of the word home because he wants to find out what kind of being E.T. is: where he comes from, and how he got here (Kath WoodwardWoodward, Kath 48). Home, in other words, also raises questions about origins and the journeys we make, and therefore has a temporal as well as a spatial dimension (Agnes HellerHeller, Anges 7; Cecile SandtenSandten, Cecile and Kathy-AnnTan, Kathy-Ann Tan 3). Moreover, home involves our relations with others: those with whom we share our places of sheltershelter; those with whom we feel we belong but from whom we may at present be separated; and those with whom we are forced to struggle and engage because we simply have no other place to go (Jan Willem DuyvendakDuyvendak, Jan Willem 120). Finally, even if we limit ourselves to the meaning of home as merely a kind of habitat – the place where we happen to reside – the concept’s range remains nothing short of astonishing. Home, as we try to explain it to others, can denote small-scale places of shelter – a house, for instance, or a tent – but also neighborhoods, nationsnations and nationalism, entire planets: “Earth. Home” (FIGURE 1).2

FIGURE 1:

The idea of home ranges across various scales (diagram adapted from FoxFox, Michael Allen 19).

This conceptual range is far from a critical disadvantage. Rather, home is a powerful tool for literary and cultural analysis precisely because it is a multi-scalar and open concept that allows us effortlessly to relate our smallest and most intimate concerns to matters of truly globalglobal and globalization importance. Indeed, it is by focusing on the manifold dimensions of home – as a place of residenceresidence or sheltershelter; as a network of given as well as of chosen relationships; as a repository of both individual and collective ideals (Alyson BluntBlunt, Alyson and Robyn Dowling 100; FoxFox 6); as a story of origins, waypoints, and destinations; or as a site of violenceviolence and exclusionexclusion (Rose MarangolyGeorge, Rose Marangoly George 9; SandtenSandten, Cecile and TanTan, Kathy-Ann 8) – that we can develop critical questions, especially in situations where the term’s multiple meanings are difficult, or indeed impossible, to reconcile. As a theoretical concept, in short, home allows us to explore a dialecticdialectic movement of alienationalienation and belonging that, in turn, is able to generate extraordinary passion, in all the senses of that word: desiredesire and yearning; fervor, agony, and rage; but also feelings very much like lovelove.