| Oikophobia | |
|---|---|
| Other names | Domatophobia |
Oikophobia (Greek:oîkos, 'house,household' +phóbos, 'fear'; related todomatophobia andecophobia[1]) is an aversion to a home environment, or an abnormalfear (phobia) of one's home[2] and also a tendency to criticize or reject one's own culture and praise other cultures.[3]
Inpsychiatry, the term is also more narrowly used to indicate a phobia of the contents of a house: "fear ofhousehold appliances,equipment,bathtubs,household chemicals, and other common objects in the home."[4] In contrast,domatophobia specifically refers to the fear of a house itself.[4]
The term has been used inpolitical contexts to refer critically topolitical ideologies that are held to repudiate one's own culture and laud others. One prominent such usage was byRoger Scruton in his 2004 bookEngland and the Need for Nations.
In 1808,poet andessayistRobert Southey used the word to describe a desire (particularly by theEnglish) to leave home and travel.[5] Southey's usage as a synonym forwanderlust was picked up by other 19th-century writers.
Inpsychiatric usage,oikophobia may narrowly refer to fear of thephysical space of the home interior, where it is especially linked to the fear ofhousehold appliances,baths,electrical equipment, and other aspects of the home perceived to be potentially dangerous.[4] In this psychiatric context, the term is properly applied to fear of the objectswithin the house, whereas the fear of thehouse itself is referred to asdomatophobia.[4]
In thepost-World War II era, some commentators used the term to refer to a supposed "fear and loathing ofhousework" experienced by women who worked outside of the home and who were attracted to aconsumerist lifestyle.[6]
In his 2004 bookEngland and the Need for Nations, British philosopherRoger Scruton adapted 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 that it is a feature of some, typicallyleftist, political impulses and ideologies that espousexenophilia, i.e. preference for foreign cultures.[9]
Scruton uses the term as theantithesis ofxenophobia.[10] In his book,Roger Scruton: Philosopher on Dover Beach,Mark Dooley describesoikophobia as centered within the Westernacademic establishment on "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, andethnocentric."[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 U.S.political commentators to refer to what they see as a rejection of traditionalU.S. culture by theliberal elite. In August 2010,James Taranto wrote a column in theWall Street Journal entitled "Oikophobia: Why the liberal elite finds Americans revolting", in which he criticizes supporters of the proposedIslamic center in New York as oikophobes who were defendingMuslims and aimed to "exploit the9/11 atrocity."[12]
In theNetherlands, the termoikophobia has been adopted by politician and writerThierry Baudet, which he describes in his book,Oikophobia: 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 thehighlands of Scotland.[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, 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.
