Embodied Domestics,Embodied Politics: Women,Home, and Agoraphobia |
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Authors: | Kirsten Jacobson |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Philosophy, The University of Maine, 5776 The Maples, Orono, ME 04469-5776, USA |
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Abstract: | Agoraphobia is commonly considered to be a fear of outside, open, or crowded spaces, and is treated with therapies that work
on acclimating the agoraphobic to external places she would otherwise avoid. I argue, however, that existential phenomenology
provides the resources for an alternative interpretation and treatment of agoraphobia that locates the problem of the disorder
not in something lying beyond home, but rather in a flawed relationship with home itself. More specifically, I demonstrate
that agoraphobia is the lived body expression of a person who has developed an inward-turning tendency with respect to being-at-home,
and who finds herself, as a result, vulnerable and even incapacitated when attempting to emerge into the public arena as a
fully participatory agent. I consider this thesis in light of the fact that since World War I agoraphobia has been diagnosed
significantly more in women than in men; indeed, one study found women to be 89% more likely than men to suffer from agoraphobia.
I conclude that agoraphobia is a disorder that stands as an emblematic expression of the ongoing pathology of being a woman
in contemporary society–a disorder that reflects that even today women belong to a political world in which they are not able
to feel properly at-home. |
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