The Dwelling Question: A Critical Theory of the Bourgeois Home

Key findings from this study

This research indicates that:

• Dwelling operates as a site of subjectivation fundamentally shaping contemporary responses to ecological, social, and digital crises rather than as a neutral functional category.
• The 19th-century bourgeois home paradigm structures persistent patterns of isolation, surveillance vulnerability, and ecological indifference that continue organizing residential life.
• Reimagining dwelling toward ecosophical relationality and shared spatial practices offers analytical and practical leverage for addressing habitability collapse and social fragmentation.

Overview

Contemporary societal crises—including ecological habitability collapse, digital surveillance, social isolation, and public sphere erosion—manifest fundamentally through the organization of dwelling spaces. A critical theory of dwelling is necessary to address these interconnected threats, grounded in the recognition that 19th-century bourgeois home paradigms continue to structure and reinforce contemporary social dysfunction. The article synthesizes Frankfurt School critique, post-structuralist spatial theory, and aesthetic philosophy to interrogate how dwelling operates as a site of subjectivation within historical, social, and technological matrices.

Methods and approach

The analysis draws on Benjamin's critique of bourgeois interior commodification, Guattari's ecosophical and machinic frameworks, Foucault's genealogy of spatial biopower, Béguin's historiography of the domestic world, and Klee's dialectical aesthetics of home. These theoretical resources are mobilized to deconstruct hegemonic dwelling models while sketching alternative conceptualizations attuned to existential and ecological urgency.

Results

The article establishes that dwelling constitutes a fundamental existential and political category rather than merely a pragmatic housing question. The bourgeois home paradigm, originating in the 19th century, reproduces specific subject formations through its spatial, technological, and affective architectures. This model perpetuates conditions of isolation, surveillance susceptibility, and ecological indifference while fragmenting collective life and public engagement.

The theoretical synthesis reveals dwelling as intrinsically bound to processes of subjectivation—the formation and regulation of subjects through spatial arrangements, technological mediation, and social practices. Ecological threats, digital exploitation infrastructure, and mass surveillance represent not external hazards but symptomatic expressions of the bourgeois dwelling paradigm's structural incapacity to sustain habitability, social solidarity, and environmental coexistence.

The article proposes reimagining dwelling through frameworks that prioritize ecosophical relationality, machinic heterogeneity, and spatial contestation. This reimagination requires abandoning the privatized, individualized home model in favor of dwelling practices that acknowledge interdependence with non-human systems, cultivate shared material spaces, and resist embedded surveillance architectures.

Implications

Rethinking dwelling has direct bearing on policy frameworks governing housing, urban planning, and domestic technology design. Current approaches that reproduce bourgeois spatial paradigms inadvertently reinforce ecological destruction, social atomization, and vulnerability to digital control. Institutional interventions—from housing typologies to technological infrastructure—must be reformed to support alternative dwelling configurations.

The framework enables critical analysis of how contemporary crises operate through and within intimate spatial domains rather than solely through abstract systemic mechanisms. This perspective situates dwelling as an essential site for theoretical and practical intervention in addressing habitability collapse and social fragmentation. Academic work on housing, digital studies, and environmental humanities must integrate spatial subjectivation as a central analytical dimension.

Future dwelling imaginaries require collaboration across architecture, social theory, ecology, and technology studies. The proposed approach suggests that solutions to contemporary existential threats cannot be achieved through technical fixes or policy adjustments alone but demand fundamental reconceptualization of how humans inhabit and organize shared worlds.

Scope and limitations

This summary is based on the study abstract and available metadata. It does not include a full analysis of the complete paper, supplementary materials, or underlying datasets unless explicitly stated. Findings should be interpreted in the context of the original publication.