A cinematic jurisprudence of homemaking in his house (2020)

Purpose Remi Weekes’ horror film His House (2020) engages with the messy, unsettled and confronting materiality of both the physical and conceptual space of the home, revealing a spatio-temporality marked by delay, disorder and disrepair. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to provide a new lens through which to consider the subversive act of homemaking in the asylum process, to reflect upon the broader complex spatio-temporality of the home. Design/methodology/approach This paper adopts a multidisciplinary approach drawing from film, law and critical legal geography to engage in a cinematic jurisprudence of homemaking in asylum (Sherwin 2009). The critical reading of a scene within the film is conducted through a chronotopic viewing informed by Freud’s (1919) writing on “the uncanny” and Valverde’s (2015, 2016) work on manifestations of the chronotope in law. This research has also engaged with the legal framework and relevant case law around the provision of accommodation in the administration of asylum as a way of examining the legislative production of home for those subject to migration control. Findings This research has revealed the ways in which the spatiotemporal experience of homemaking is subject to unsettlement and haunting. A focus on the legal chronotope of the home as it is experienced at a particular point in the asylum process, through a chronotopic viewing, reveals the ways in which the home in this context is predicated on the uncontainable uncanny: indeed, it is argued that this critical reading suggests that the homely is inextricably linked with its own haunting. Originality/value My work has developed a critical methodology for adapting a law-as-film approach to examine the concept of the home. The author has explored the use of cinema as a way of reading the law of asylum and the practice of homemaking in the context of a system predicated on dispersal and unsettlement. It expands upon previous work on spatiotemporality by engaging with the legal chronotope of the home, and provides theoretical insights into the ways in which inhabitation is practised in asylum through a reading of the film as a form of cinematic jurisprudence.