Abstract
This chapter interrogates the Heideggerian conception of soil through a queer phenomenological lens, proposing an alternative framework for understanding authenticity, origin, and alētheia. Drawing on Johannes Fritsche’s analysis of Heidegger’s Being and Time, the discussion examines the ideological entanglements of the term Bodenlosigkeit (groundlessness) and its historical alignment with Nationalist rhetoric. By tracing its linguistic and philosophical implications, this chapter challenges Heidegger’s ontology, revealing how his phenomenological framework privileges certain bodies—particularly white, cis-male, European identities—while subjugating others.
Through an engagement with the work of Hermann Nitsch, the chapter also explores how ritual, blood, and the numinous disrupt rigid phenomenological structures. Nitsch’s Das Orgien Mysterien Theater, while fraught with ethical complexities, queers traditional religious and philosophical dogmas through neopaganism, bodily endurance, and Dionysian ecstasy. This discussion situates Nitsch’s work as a site of tension—both reinforcing and unsettling hierarchical structures of being. Rather than positioning Nitsch as an uncritical inheritor of Heideggerian thought, this chapter reads his work as a potential intervention that complicates Heidegger’s essentialist underpinnings.
Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology offers a vital framework for reorienting phenomenology towards marginalised bodies and experiences. By considering orientation as a relational act, this chapter asserts that a queer phenomenology can reclaim and repurpose Heidegger’s notion of soil, resisting its nationalist and exclusionary tendencies. In doing so, Bacon calls for an expanded understanding of being-in-the-world that accounts for queer lived experiences, artistic practices, and political struggles.
Ultimately, this chapter provokes a reconsideration of phenomenology’s role in shaping ontological legitimacy, arguing for a radical queering of philosophical landscapes to create space for new modes of existence, resistance, and artistic expression.
Through an engagement with the work of Hermann Nitsch, the chapter also explores how ritual, blood, and the numinous disrupt rigid phenomenological structures. Nitsch’s Das Orgien Mysterien Theater, while fraught with ethical complexities, queers traditional religious and philosophical dogmas through neopaganism, bodily endurance, and Dionysian ecstasy. This discussion situates Nitsch’s work as a site of tension—both reinforcing and unsettling hierarchical structures of being. Rather than positioning Nitsch as an uncritical inheritor of Heideggerian thought, this chapter reads his work as a potential intervention that complicates Heidegger’s essentialist underpinnings.
Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology offers a vital framework for reorienting phenomenology towards marginalised bodies and experiences. By considering orientation as a relational act, this chapter asserts that a queer phenomenology can reclaim and repurpose Heidegger’s notion of soil, resisting its nationalist and exclusionary tendencies. In doing so, Bacon calls for an expanded understanding of being-in-the-world that accounts for queer lived experiences, artistic practices, and political struggles.
Ultimately, this chapter provokes a reconsideration of phenomenology’s role in shaping ontological legitimacy, arguing for a radical queering of philosophical landscapes to create space for new modes of existence, resistance, and artistic expression.
| Original language | English |
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| Publisher | Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 28 Feb 2025 |