Traditionally the home has been presented as a secure haven, a private space, a retreat from the pressures of the world. However both theoretical and political insights challenge this understanding of the home, suggesting for instance that the public/private divide is not clear cut, that ownership is not absolute, that past, present and future, inside and out, discipline and freedom, nature and artifice, work and rest, myth and reality all interrupt the stability that home claims. Moreover the confines of the home can be invaded, and the home can escape its confines. Perhaps most significantly home is the site of - and perhaps in itself generates - conflict and violence. The home can only be secure through the suppression of the contingencies it encloses.
Permeability affects even tenure that apparently secure method of organising occupational forms. As 'permeable' focuses on crossing through and over thresholds, and on recognising how leaky and blurred many boundaries are, housing forms which do not fit neatly into categories predicated on divisions such as public/private, owned/rented etc, become particularly interesting. Some sessions will focus on examining the extent to which co-operative housing schemes exemplify a more 'permeable' approach to thinking about, and practicing, 'home'. Utilizing such conceptual tools as Deleuze's 'fold', allows us to examine different patterns enfolding outside/inside in design features, in law, in lived experience etc, as well as examining how these dimensions are folded into each other, and with what affect (how contingent? how stable?). Can an examination of the experiences of co-operative housing, and the utilization of conceptual tools drawn from such theorists as Deleuze, help us to rethink what has so often been treated as axiomatic?
We are looking for papers which imagine the mobilities of home, theorise its permeabilities, and consider the pursuit of the illusion of home. We would also welcome other theoretical papers on housing and home.
All enquiries about the workshop should be sent to Helen Carr or Mark Vacher.
