Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, No. 14 (2024)

Małgorzata Hołda, Ramsey Eric Ramsey

Issue 14 (2024) of Text Matters centers on the intertwined concepts of dwelling and belonging, exploring their complexities and dimensions within literature and culture. The editors, Małgorzata Hołda and Ramsey Eric Ramsey, introduce these themes as fundamental to the human experience of being-in-the-world, encompassing a vast array of human concerns and historical situatedness. The nineteen essays, grouped in five broad sections, examine topics as varied as disputes between Arendt and Heidegger, the intertwined nature of "belonging and longing" in the philosophies of Renaud Barbaras and Jean-Luc Marion, the intricate relationships between dwelling and identity, particularly within urban and environmentally stressed contexts, the retrieval of memories and the redefinition of personal identity in relation to urban space and altered surroundings, dwelling in urban and environmentally endangered areas, the entanglement of urban subjectivity with non-human elements, and seeking models of collective memory and dwelling that move beyond anthropocentric concepts. The main section also covers various modes of belonging, including the concept of home for digital objects and their interactions within online environments, regional identity in poetry, the experience of hate crime and reclaiming belonging, and the use of art and literature to analyze memory, absence, and socio-political critique. What follows is the "(More-Than-Human) Intersections, (More-Than-Generic) Liminalities" section that gathers seven scholarly texts discussing the representation of animal revolts in literature, transgression(s) in Sheri S. Tepper's The Gate to Women's Country, depiction of post-apartheid white identity in Die Antwoord's music videos, the horror elements in Robert Eggers's The Lighthouse, the ecocritical reading of Thomas Hardy's The Woodlanders, the concepts of disnarration and denarration in Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, and innovation in the poetry by Charles Bernstein and Andrzej Sosnowski.