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journal of speculative philosophy, vol. 28, no. 3, 2014
Copyright © 2014 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA
Home Invasions: Phenomenological
and Psychoanalytic Reflections
on Embodiment Relations, Vulnerability,
and Breakdown
Laura McMahon
villanova university
abstract: Through an exploration of a home invasion scene in Ingmar Bergman’s
Shame, this article explores the ways in which it is not only our own bodies that are vul-
nerable to assault but also the meaningful objects through which we expressively engage
with the world, as well as the worldly context of these embodied engagements. First,
I draw primarily on the work of Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty in order
to explore the ways in which things come to be incorporated into our bodily experience
and how our vulnerability as embodied individuals is thus extended into the life of these
things. Second, I engage with phenomenological accounts of home and psychoanalytic
accounts of childhood development in order to argue that our extended bodily vulner-
ability is coextensive with our creative openness to the world. Finally, I offer some reflec-
tions on the role played by breakdown in phenomenological experience, at the level of
the things through which we are “at home” to expressively extend ourselves out into the
world and at the level of the sense of “homelessness” alive in the experience of anxiety.
keywords: Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, embodiment relations,
vulnerability, home