Nihilism, Homelessness, and Place

One of the ways, in which a form of nihilism might be thought to be present in contemporary life and culture, in an especially pervasive and powerful fashion, is in the phenomenon of homelessness. Since homelessness is essentially a privative phenomenon, any serious engagement with it forces us also to engage with the ideas of home, and of place and belonging, from which homelessness derives—ideas that themselves take on a problematic character in the contemporary world. The paper addresses some of the arguments and claims that arise in relation to these ideas, and especially the critical arguments that are frequently directed at them and are taken to imply the need for their abandonment. The main claim of the paper is that such a conclusion is misconceived and misguided, and that home, place, and belonging require rethinking and retrieval rather than abandonment. The paper has three main elements: first, a brief survey of the lines of argument that are typically directed at the notions at issue here; second, an exploration of the reasons why those notions remain necessary; third, a discussion of the task of retrieval and the way the task of retrieval is itself central to the possibility of critique.