Oikophobia (Ancient Greek:οἶκος,romanized: oîkos,lit. 'house,household' +φόβος,phóbos, 'fear'; related todomatophobia andecophobia[1]) is a tendency to criticise or reject one's own home or home society while praising others.[2] It has been used inpolitical contexts to refer critically topolitical ideologies that are held to repudiate one's own culture. A prominent such usage was byRoger Scruton in his 2004 bookEngland and the Need for Nations.
In 1808 theEnglish Romantic poet and essayistRobert Southey used it to describe a desire (particularly by the English people) to leave home and travel.[3] Southey's usage is a synonym forwanderlust.
It is not used inpsychiatry, and is not listed in theDSM-5. If it were, it would be used to narrowly indicate a type ofspecific phobia or fear of specific items contained in a house, (e.g. appliances, bathtubs and electric switches) but not the fear of a house itself, which isdomatophobia.[4] In thepost-Second World War era inWest Germany, some commentators used the term to refer to a "fear and loathing ofhousework" experienced by women who worked outside of the home and who were attracted to aconsumerist lifestyle.[5]
The English conservative philosopherRoger Scruton first wrote of oikophobia while atBoston University in 1993.[6] In his 2004 bookEngland and the Need for Nations, Scruton expanded usage of the word to mean "the repudiation of inheritance and home".[7] He argues that it is "a stage through which theadolescent mind normally passes",[8] but is also a feature of some, typicallyleftist, political impulses and ideologies which espousexenophilia, i.e. preference for foreign cultures.[9]
Scruton uses it as theantithesis ofxenophobia.[10] In his bookRoger Scruton: Philosopher on Dover Beach the Irish journalistMark Dooley describesoikophobia as centred within theacademic establishment of theWestern world as part of "both the commonculture of the West, and the old educationalcurriculum that sought to transmit its humane values." This disposition has grown out of, for example, the writings ofJacques Derrida and ofMichel Foucault's "assault on 'bourgeois' society result[ing] in an 'anti-culture' that took direct aim at holy andsacred things, condemning and repudiating them asoppressive and power-ridden."[11]: 78 He continues:[11]: 83
Derrida is a classic oikophobe in so far as he repudiates the longing for home that theWestern theological,legal, andliterary traditions satisfy ... Derrida'sdeconstruction seeks to block the path to this 'core experience' of membership, preferring instead a rootless existence founded 'upon nothing.'
An extreme aversion to the sacred, and the thwarting of the connection of the sacred to the culture of the West is described as the underlyingmotif of oikophobia; and not the substitution ofChristianity by another coherent system of belief. Theparadox of the oikophobe seems to be that any opposition directed at thetheological and culturaltradition of the West is to be encouraged even if it is "significantly moreparochial,exclusivist,patriarchal, orethnocentric."[11]: 78 Scruton describes "a chronic form of oikophobia [which] has spread through theAmerican universities, in the guise ofpolitical correctness."[7]: 37
Scruton's usage has been taken up by some Americanpolitical commentators to refer to what they see as a rejection of traditionalAmerican culture by theliberal elite. In August 2010James Taranto wrote a column in theWall Street Journal entitled "Oikophobia: Why the liberal elite finds Americans revolting", in which he criticises supporters of the proposedIslamic center in New York as oikophobes who were defending Muslims and aimed to "exploit the9/11 atrocity."[12]
In the Netherlandsoikophobia has been adopted by the politician and writerThierry Baudet, which he describes in his bookOikophobia: The Fear of Home.
In hisLetters from England (1808),Robert Southey describesoikophobia as a product of "a certain state ofcivilisation or luxury." referring to the habit among wealthy people to visitspa towns andseaside resorts in the summer months. He also mentions the fashion forpicturesque travel to wild landscapes, such as theScottish Highlands.[13]
Southey's link of oikophobia to wealth and the search for new experiences was taken up by other writers, and cited indictionaries.[14] A writer in 1829 published an essay about his experience witnessing the aftermath of theBattle of Waterloo, saying:[15]
[T]he love of locomotion is so natural to anEnglishman, that nothing can chain him home, but the absolute impossibility of living abroad. No such imperious necessity acting upon me, I gave way to myoiko-phobia, and the summer of 1815 found me in Brussels.
In 1959 the Anglo-Egyptian author Bothaina Abd el-Hamid Mohamed used Southey's concept in his bookOikophobia: or, A literary craze for education through travel.[16]
Oikophobia
