Abstract

The notion of the unhomely (Unheimlich) has become familiar to the point of being taken for granted. Philosophy should thus question the seemingly obvious meaning of this term, whose investigation shows it to be grounded upon a negation of a negation. The first negation is the negation of the primordial being (rav) by the economy, comprised of the Greek terms “house” (oikos) and “law” (nomos). The rav’s pre-economic being is exemplified by the figure of the mayfly in Rilke’s Eighth Elegy, which dwells within the world without any barrier in the form of an egg or a womb that could have separated it from the world. The phenomenon of the unhomely can thus be seen as a re-eruption of primordial being after it has been negated by the economy. This eruption should thus be considered as a negation of a negation, and hence as an event of hospitality in which what is most alien is hosted within the confines of the known and the familiar. This hospitality of the entirely Other is apparent in Israeli artist Sigalit Landau’s work “Shelter.” What reappears in this artwork is the negated Jewish extinction anxiety at the heart of a self-affirming Zionist existence.