Bodily Moods and Unhomely Environments
Bodily Moods and Unhomely Environments
The Hermeneutics of Agoraphobia and the Spirit of Place
This essay investigates the claims that the genius loci of a place is determined as much by the formal properties of a place as the “mood” that is carried into it and that the interpretation of an environment is primarily bodily rather than cognitive. This investigation is focuses on the phenomenology of agoraphobia. Spatial anxiety is demonstrative of how our experience of the world depends as much on the objective features of the world as it does the bodily mood with which we interpret these features. The epistemic advantage of agoraphobia is that it foregrounds themes that are otherwise tacit: the contingency of boundaries, the vulnerability of home, and the unfamiliarity of our experience of the world. The question raised through this investigation is the role of the body and bodily experience in defining the character of environments.
Keywords: Agoraphobia, Place, Body, Mood, Hermeneutics, Environment, Home, Environmental philosophy
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