Is a House a Home?

“If a house is encountered by three women, a child, a dog, and a crow in the same moment, each of these perceptions will have a very different character. And given a purely relational definition of what objects are, it would seem impossible to call all of them relations to the `same' house. The house itself vanishes into a mob of house-perceptions. Nor would this disaster happen only to houses: for if I take the stage in a crowded auditorium and am witnessed by hundreds of spectators, I would also dissolve into a manifold of perceptions of me, each unconnected with the rest. While it is already dubious to link all of the house-perceptions by external ‘family resemblances,’ the same maneuver is clearly impossible when we are speaking of the views that spectators have of me. For I am something real, here and now, not a tapestry of perceptions woven together from the outside.” - Harman, G., 2011. The Quadruple Object, Alresford, Hants: Zero Books., p. 13