Thinking natureas home: fromtranscendentalhomelessnessto oikeiosis

Abstract

In response to the outbreak of World War 1, GeorgLukács, one of the forerunners of the FrankfurtSchool, penned a work titled The Theory of theNovel, in which he claimed that the modern worldis characterised by “transcendental homelessness”and that this situation is reflected in the form of themodern novel, as opposed to the epic form of earlierages. The present paper takes up Lukács’s notion oftranscendental homelessness and applies it morewidely than literary theory to analyse the homelesscondition of modernity as manifest in the way natureis conceived and treated in strict parallel to the waycolonised peoples and territories are treated. Theanalysis of capitalism and colonialism in terms ofontological homelessness raises the question as tothe possibilities for homecoming beyond the stateof ontological homelessness. Can there, amid thecurrent justified wariness of sedentary and colonisingmetanarratives, be a non-naïve conception ofhomecoming? Can nature in contemporary thoughtnon-naïvely and non-reactively be symbolised interms of home and homecoming? In response tothese questions the paper concludes by consideringthe Stoic notion of oikeiosis and its implications forinteracting with nature as a kind of non-sedentaryhomecoming.