On Home
By John Berger
“Philosophy is really homesickness, it is the urge to be at home everywhere.”—Novalis
【1】The transition from a nomadic life to a settled one is said to mark the beginning of what was later called civilization. Soon all those who survived outside the city began to be considered uncivilized. But that is another story—to be told in the hills near the wolves.
【2】Perhaps during the last century and a half an equally important transformation has taken place. Never before our time have so many people been uprooted. Emigration, forced or chosen, across national frontiers or from village to metropolis, is the quintessential experience of our time. That industrialization and capitalism would require such a transport of men on an unprecedented scale and with a new kind of violence was already prophesied by the opening of the slave trade in the sixteenth century. The Western Front in the First World War with its conscripted massed armies was a later confirmation of the same practice of tearing up, assembling, transporting, and concentrating in a “no-man’s land.” Later, concentration camps, across the world, followed the logic of the same continuous practice.
【3】All the modern historians from Marx to Spengler have identified the contemporary phenomenon of emigration. Why add more words? To whisper for that which has been lost. Not out of nostalgia, but because it is on the site of loss that hopes are born.
【4】The term home (Old Norse Heimer, High German heim, Greek kōmi, meaning “village”) has, since a long time, been taken over by two kinds of moralists, both dear to those who wield power. The notion of home became the keystone for a code of domestic morality, safeguarding the property (which included the women) of the family. Simultaneously the notion of homeland supplied a first article of faith for patriotism, persuading men to die in wars which often served no other interest except that of a minority of their ruling class. Both usages have hidden the original meaning.
【5】Originally home meant the center of the world—not in a geographical, but in an ontological sense. MarceauElide has demonstrated how home was the place from which the world could be founded. A home was established, as he says, “at the heart of the real.” In traditional societies, everything that made sense of the world was real; the surrounding chaos existed and was threatening, but it was threatening because it was unreal. Without a home at the center of the real, one was not only shelterless, but also lost in nonbeing, in unreality. Without a home everything was fragmentation.
【6】Home was the center of the world because it was the place where a vertical line crossed with a horizontal one. The vertical line was a path leading upwards to the sky and downwards to the underworld. The horizontal line represented the traffic of the world, all the possible roads leading across the
earth to other places. Thus, at home, one was nearest to the gods in the sky and to the dead in the underworld. This nearness promised access to both. And at the same time, one was at the starting point and, hopefully, the returning point of all terrestrial journeys.
【7】The crossing of the two lines, the reassurance their intersection promises, was probably already there, in embryo, in the thinking and beliefs of nomadic people, but they carried the vertical line with them, as they might carry a tent pole. Perhaps at the end of this century of unprecedented transportation, vestiges of the reassurance still remain in the unarticulated feelings of many millions of displaced people.
【8】Emigration does not only involve leaving behind, crossing water, living amongst strangers, but also, undoing the very meaning of the world and—at its most extreme—abandoning oneself to the unreal which is the absurd.
【9】Emigration, when it is not enforced at gunpoint, may of course be prompted by hope as well as desperation. For example, to the peasant son the father’s traditional authority may seem more oppressively absurd than any chaos. The poverty of the village may appear more absurd than the crimes of the metropolis. To live and die amongst foreigners may seem less absurd than to live persecuted or tortured by one’s fellow countrymen. All this can be true. But to emigrate is always to dismantle the center of the world, and so to move into a lost, disoriented one of fragments.
下载文档
热门试卷
- 2016年四川省内江市中考化学试卷
- 广西钦州市高新区2017届高三11月月考政治试卷
- 浙江省湖州市2016-2017学年高一上学期期中考试政治试卷
- 浙江省湖州市2016-2017学年高二上学期期中考试政治试卷
- 辽宁省铁岭市协作体2017届高三上学期第三次联考政治试卷
- 广西钦州市钦州港区2016-2017学年高二11月月考政治试卷
- 广西钦州市钦州港区2017届高三11月月考政治试卷
- 广西钦州市钦州港区2016-2017学年高一11月月考政治试卷
- 广西钦州市高新区2016-2017学年高二11月月考政治试卷
- 广西钦州市高新区2016-2017学年高一11月月考政治试卷
- 山东省滨州市三校2017届第一学期阶段测试初三英语试题
- 四川省成都七中2017届高三一诊模拟考试文科综合试卷
- 2017届普通高等学校招生全国统一考试模拟试题(附答案)
- 重庆市永川中学高2017级上期12月月考语文试题
- 江西宜春三中2017届高三第一学期第二次月考文科综合试题
- 内蒙古赤峰二中2017届高三上学期第三次月考英语试题
- 2017年六年级(上)数学期末考试卷
- 2017人教版小学英语三年级上期末笔试题
- 江苏省常州西藏民族中学2016-2017学年九年级思想品德第一学期第二次阶段测试试卷
- 重庆市九龙坡区七校2016-2017学年上期八年级素质测查(二)语文学科试题卷
- 江苏省无锡市钱桥中学2016年12月八年级语文阶段性测试卷
- 江苏省无锡市钱桥中学2016-2017学年七年级英语12月阶段检测试卷
- 山东省邹城市第八中学2016-2017学年八年级12月物理第4章试题(无答案)
- 【人教版】河北省2015-2016学年度九年级上期末语文试题卷(附答案)
- 四川省简阳市阳安中学2016年12月高二月考英语试卷
- 四川省成都龙泉中学高三上学期2016年12月月考试题文科综合能力测试
- 安徽省滁州中学2016—2017学年度第一学期12月月考高三英语试卷
- 山东省武城县第二中学2016.12高一年级上学期第二次月考历史试题(必修一第四、五单元)
- 福建省四地六校联考2016-2017学年上学期第三次月考高三化学试卷
- 甘肃省武威第二十三中学2016—2017学年度八年级第一学期12月月考生物试卷
网友关注
- 2.7 元素符号表示的量
- 2015年热点雾霾
- 初中常用相对分子质量及常用化学计算公式
- 现代家长的误区
- 八(上)科学第二章三节第二课时教案
- 老花镜DIY手工制作天文望远镜
- 社会主义核心价值观进校园实施方案
- 初三生物中考模拟试题三
- 科学小论文(水结冰的奥秘)
- 第2章粒子的模型与符号综合复习
- 八年级上册美术教学工作总结
- 2015年中考科学模拟试题及答案
- 浙教版科学八年级上第1章水和水的溶液
- 九年级科学第一章
- 力和运动纲要
- 七年级下科学第一章代代相传的生命知识点
- 微课程在信息技术教学中的有效应用
- 班级常规量化管理评分细则减分细则
- 清明节活动方案
- 蹲下来的教育
- 生物质能
- 河北省某县信息技术教师选调考试试题
- 浙教版七年级科学下册第三章1-3节测试题
- 电路复习题及答案
- 物理周考4.17
- 2010下期末考试
- 食品雕刻
- 决定孩子一生的
- 八年级科学碳和碳的氧化物
- 2013年淮北市中小学生运会报名表填报说明
网友关注视频
- 七年级英语下册 上海牛津版 Unit5
- 第4章 幂函数、指数函数和对数函数(下)_六 指数方程和对数方程_4.7 简单的指数方程_第一课时(沪教版高一下册)_T1566237
- 沪教版八年级下册数学练习册一次函数复习题B组(P11)
- 外研版英语三起5年级下册(14版)Module3 Unit1
- 三年级英语单词记忆下册(沪教版)第一二单元复习
- 19 爱护鸟类_第一课时(二等奖)(桂美版二年级下册)_T502436
- 冀教版小学数学二年级下册第二周第2课时《我们的测量》宝丰街小学庞志荣
- 人教版二年级下册数学
- 【获奖】科粤版初三九年级化学下册第七章7.3浓稀的表示
- 沪教版牛津小学英语(深圳用) 六年级下册 Unit 7
- 外研版英语七年级下册module3 unit2第一课时
- 沪教版牛津小学英语(深圳用) 四年级下册 Unit 3
- 【部编】人教版语文七年级下册《老山界》优质课教学视频+PPT课件+教案,安徽省
- 8.对剪花样_第一课时(二等奖)(冀美版二年级上册)_T515402
- 第8课 对称剪纸_第一课时(二等奖)(沪书画版二年级上册)_T3784187
- 冀教版英语三年级下册第二课
- 【部编】人教版语文七年级下册《逢入京使》优质课教学视频+PPT课件+教案,辽宁省
- 七年级英语下册 上海牛津版 Unit3
- 【部编】人教版语文七年级下册《泊秦淮》优质课教学视频+PPT课件+教案,广东省
- 沪教版牛津小学英语(深圳用) 五年级下册 Unit 12
- 二次函数求实际问题中的最值_第一课时(特等奖)(冀教版九年级下册)_T144339
- 【部编】人教版语文七年级下册《过松源晨炊漆公店(其五)》优质课教学视频+PPT课件+教案,辽宁省
- 沪教版牛津小学英语(深圳用)五年级下册 Unit 1
- 二年级下册数学第三课 搭一搭⚖⚖
- 沪教版八年级下册数学练习册20.4(2)一次函数的应用2P8
- 外研版英语七年级下册module1unit3名词性物主代词讲解
- 冀教版小学数学二年级下册第二单元《有余数除法的简单应用》
- 沪教版八年级下册数学练习册21.4(1)无理方程P18
- 沪教版牛津小学英语(深圳用) 五年级下册 Unit 7
- 小学英语单词
精品推荐
- 2016-2017学年高一语文人教版必修一+模块学业水平检测试题(含答案)
- 广西钦州市高新区2017届高三11月月考政治试卷
- 浙江省湖州市2016-2017学年高一上学期期中考试政治试卷
- 浙江省湖州市2016-2017学年高二上学期期中考试政治试卷
- 辽宁省铁岭市协作体2017届高三上学期第三次联考政治试卷
- 广西钦州市钦州港区2016-2017学年高二11月月考政治试卷
- 广西钦州市钦州港区2017届高三11月月考政治试卷
- 广西钦州市钦州港区2016-2017学年高一11月月考政治试卷
- 广西钦州市高新区2016-2017学年高二11月月考政治试卷
- 广西钦州市高新区2016-2017学年高一11月月考政治试卷
分类导航
- 互联网
- 电脑基础知识
- 计算机软件及应用
- 计算机硬件及网络
- 计算机应用/办公自动化
- .NET
- 数据结构与算法
- Java
- SEO
- C/C++资料
- linux/Unix相关
- 手机开发
- UML理论/建模
- 并行计算/云计算
- 嵌入式开发
- windows相关
- 软件工程
- 管理信息系统
- 开发文档
- 图形图像
- 网络与通信
- 网络信息安全
- 电子支付
- Labview
- matlab
- 网络资源
- Python
- Delphi/Perl
- 评测
- Flash/Flex
- CSS/Script
- 计算机原理
- PHP资料
- 数据挖掘与模式识别
- Web服务
- 数据库
- Visual Basic
- 电子商务
- 服务器
- 搜索引擎优化
- 存储
- 架构
- 行业软件
- 人工智能
- 计算机辅助设计
- 多媒体
- 软件测试
- 计算机硬件与维护
- 网站策划/UE
- 网页设计/UI
- 网吧管理