Blood on our Soil: Antaeus, the earth, and homeland – speaker: Dan Bloom
In Greek mythology, the giant Antaeus was powerful only when his feet were in
contact with his mother, the earth. He was defeated when lifted from the ground
and crushed to death by Hercules. Unlike mythic Antaeus, the earth sustains us
even as we are thrown off our feet, exiled from our homes, and turned into
migrants and refugees. How is it possible for us to still experience the earth under
our feet — feet which shuffle through the debris of our present, past, and future?
How can we re-configure homelands out of the destruction of our personal
worlds? A gestalt phenomenological lens shows that contacting is unstoppable,
that we dwell alongside one another no matter where and no matter how we are.
To dwell is to live on the basis of the contact-boundary of a world that transcends
experience itself.