Home Warsan Shire Claim

We often overlook it, but we are subjects of this modern eliding power, shaped by shopping malls and their claims on what food means, giant pharmaceutical interests and their investments in what health means or doesn't mean, and regimes of discursive power that elevate human interests over non-human becomings. Those severely affected by Trump's signature are harbingers of the very conditions we all now live in – they critique our complacency and doctrines of arrival.

This is about meeting the hauntings repressed by our modern claims to transcendence, staying with their ghostly moanings and stirrings long enough to know we are just as undone. This whole saga is about reworking our practices of being at 'home'. We are just as involved in this vast conspiracy about what home means, how power is distributed, how bodies are marked, and how stories become meaningful.

They shape the very fabric of who we are and how we live, determining what matters and what doesn't. This is not just about fostering a seasonal feeling of inclusiveness but rather reworking the boundaries that separate us from others. Borders are not mere lines marking where things end and others begin; they substantiate practices of identity-making and world-building.

This is not even about bringing more people in, as America erects nationalistic walls and 'America First' borders to 'save' those within from perceived monsters outside. Rather, it's about recognizing that our work should be driven by humility, acknowledging that this is not an effort to redeem those lingering at airports. In a game of sides, the greatest loss is the sacrifice of the other side.

I cannot fully account for myself if my account excludes others. You see, it's not just that those we label 'Muslims', 'refugees', and 'primitives' are like us in stunning ways – it's that they are the very condition that makes 'us' possible. Denying the significance of our entanglement with them is participating in the modern obscenity of total independence.

This colonial notion of enmity has its effects, failing to see fault lines that pressure us into assuming difference means separation and intimacy means sameness. I'm speaking to the heart of the modern project and its account of selves as independent entities in constant friction with 'not-selves'. I am not speaking of enmity as a state of being at odds with another but rather something more lasting, threatening, and monstrous – the abstract notion of enmity itself.

No one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear.

Home warsan shire claim