First Lines:
Home refers to the universe – physical or intangible – strongly invested by a subject, whether the latter is an individual or a group. Endowed with its own social characteristics and atmosphere, this universe is inhabited by this subject in adequacy with him/itself, in a durable or temporary way.
An intangible home – such as a language or a collective history – is intimately associated by the subject with the mastery of the field of meanings and with the cultural, social, and ethical issues of this home, as well as with the identifications and attachments that the latter elicits in him. A subject’s ability to recognize himself in an intangible home is thus an event of his personal consciousness of inhabiting in his own way a shared heritage, affectively or by thought, in a way “from the inside”.
Home as a physical expanse covers a wide range of places whose meanings and scale can vary greatly, ranging from a house, a neighborhood, a city, a region, a country, or the Earth. It is, however, to the concrete house, situated in the world, that the notion of home is most commonly and closely associated, and often understood as a synonym.
