What is it about?
This article about German thinking and writing about Heimat (homeland) starts by explaining how environmental concern contributed to a revival of the idea of the homeland in the 1970s and 80s, at a time when new, more open theories of spatial belonging and place identity were also emerging in America and Britain. It analyzes Jenny Erpenbeck’s novel Heimsuchung (Visitation, 2008), and argues that such literary representations of the homeland have promoted an alternative form of living-in-place, which includes a less exploitative relationship with nature.
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Why is it important?
The article breaks new ground in drawing the findings of recent studies of Heimat and research into place-belonging together with two ecocritical approaches: Gernot Böhme’s ecological nature aesthetics and the material ecocriticism of Jane Bennett and Iovino/ Oppermann. Their respective “new humanist” and “posthumanist” theoretical frameworks offer insights into Erpenbeck’s account of efforts to make the place described a home and of its function as homeland.
Perspectives
The article was written as part of a wider project exploring the similarities and differences between the tropes and cultural traditions, concepts and debates relating to nature and environment in Germany, Britain and North America.
Prof Axel H Goodbody
University of Bath
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Heimat and the Place of Humans in the World: Jenny Erpenbeck's Heimsuchung in Ecocritical Perspective , New German Critique, August 2016, Duke University Press,
DOI: 10.1215/0094033x-3511907.
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