\u201cThe body as home, but only if it is understood that bodies are never singular, but rather haunted, strengthened, underscored by countless other bodies\u201d (Clare 11).<\/b><\/p>\n
In \u201cExile & Pride,\u201d Eli Clare touches on the different ways our body can encapsulate contrasting parts of the self and its experience. The metaphor of \u201cthe body as home\u201d has many meanings, but the one that I think it offers a particularly powerful message is about the importance of personal and collective ownership and comfort in the body.<\/span><\/p>\n The word \u201chome\u201d has many connotations, and it is usually associated with words like warmth, family, belonging, and permanence. However, for those like Clare who had a very difficult and traumatic childhood, they can \u201cabandon that body\u201d (10). To me, this makes the body feel like a house, not a home. It\u2019s a place you\u2019re forced to live in, but it doesn\u2019t carry the same implications of belonging and happiness. This is why I find the word choice of \u201chome\u201d so important \u2014 it pushes the idea that to be truly happy, we have to find peace within our bodies, becoming intimately comfortable to a point where we feel like we can fully be ourselves in this safe haven.<\/span><\/p>\n Additionally, Clare goes on to say that a body isn\u2019t singular but plural in that it is defined, influenced, and underscored (or emphasized) by other bodies, aka other people. This idea of singular versus plural is interesting because it pushes the idea that we are not alone, even in our own body. One could argue that everything we are \u2014 what we think, do, believe \u2014 is influenced by our surroundings and the people around us. In this way, bodies are like an amalgamation of others, a complex and clashing combination of traits and beliefs that are pushed onto us, willingly or not. And this number is \u201ccountless\u201d \u2014 we don\u2019t know how many people have physically or metaphorically touched us. It makes me think of a reading from my Mythology course, where it explained that the brain is a thief, stealing ideas from myths and stories around it to build a \u201cpersonal narrative.\u201d In this way, the body also steals what\u2019s around it, for the better or worse.<\/span><\/p>\n The words Clare chooses to describe the house can be interpreted through the lens of a body or a home. \u201cHaunted\u201d makes me think of a haunted house, or a place of horrors that inspires fear. A person can also be haunted by their past or current anxieties. This double meaning of the word paints a very vivid connection between body and home. Similarly, a house can be structurally \u201cstrengthened\u201d and a person can be metaphorically or physically \u201cstrengthened.\u201d This word comes with connotations of energy and power, very positive emotions. The dichotomy of both of these existences living in one body adds to Clare\u2019s larger point about the body as \u201ccomplex, complicated, and contradictory.\u201d Our bodies house so much; they make up who we are and what we\u2019ve done. Clare hopes that by viewing our bodies as a home we can feel safe in, even if we don\u2019t fully understand it, we can strive towards an internal and external embrace of who we are.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cThe body as home, but only if it is understood that bodies are never singular, but rather haunted, strengthened, underscored by countless other bodies\u201d (Clare 11). In \u201cExile & Pride,\u201d Eli Clare touches on the different ways our body can encapsulate contrasting parts of the self and its experience. The metaphor of \u201cthe body as … Continue reading The Body as a Collective Home<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4989,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169404],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2022-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4989"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2014\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}