Abstract

This paper re-examines the limits of the human in the wake of the cataclysmic destruction of built and living environments, along with their human and non-human inhabitants, by recent bushfires, floods, earthquakes, and tsunamis. The analysis involves reconceiving the human beyond notions of human agency assumed in disaster and risk theory. By examining the role of the built environment, things, the body, and community in what Heidegger calls the “plight of dwelling,” the analysis aims for a notion of the human that is suitably humble but responsible in the face of the plight of dwelling, not simply in the sense of accountable, but responsible for preserving for others, of dwelling as potentiality. And it aims for an ethics of rebuilding and recovery that can deal equally well with ruin by political forces and ruin by so-called natural forces. Building on Heidegger's idea of the “plight of dwelling,” the paper adapts Rancière's idea of the “distribution of the sensible” and Arendt's political ontology to reveal the political dimensions of dwelling and what is required to minimise its ruin. Then, with the help of Merleau-Ponty, the paper considers the ethical dimension of rebuilding after ruin either by totalising politics or by environmental hazards. The analysis demonstrates how the preservation of dwelling is not about controlling the unpredictable but is a collective endeavour of existing with built and living environments that leaves space for the “event” of dwelling, that is the unique and the arbitrary. Anne Michaels’ novel The Winter Vault (2009) peppers the analysis because her story exposes the political, intimate, and ethical elements of the plight of dwelling that the philosophers often understate.