The strange thing is that the more one's own space becomes cramped, the
more it becomes encumbered with appliances and objects. It seems
necessary for this personal place to become denser, materially and
emotionally, in order to become the territory in which the familial
microcosm is rooted, the most private and dearest place, the one to
which one enjoys coming back at night, after work, at back-to-school
time after vacation, after a stay in a hospital or the military. When
the public sphere no longer offers a place for political investment, men
turn into 'hermits' in the grotto of the private living space. They
hibernate in their abode, seeking to limit themselves to tiny individual
pleasures. Perhaps certain ones are already dreaming in silence about
other spaces for action, invention, and movements. On a neighbourhood
wall in June 1968, an anonymous hand wrote these words: 'Order in the
streets makes for disorder in our minds.' Reciprocally, social despair
restores imagination to power within solitary dreams.
[Michel de Certeau, Luce Giard & Pierre Mayol, The Practice of Everyday Life Vol. 2, p. 147-148.]
