ABSTRACT
The seeming loss of place in the contemporary world is a widespread theme in academic and popular writing, as well as a commonly observed phenomenon in ordinary experience. Frequently, the 'loss of place' is put in terms of a loss of authentic place, and this requires some direct comment in its own terms. The seeming trend towards both the genericization and homogenization of places and the removal – some would say the 'freeing' – of individuals from the specificity of place and locale is therefore a phenomenon of long-standing. Undoubtedly, there are those who take the phenomenon of 'placelessness', and the seeming loss of place to represent a real change in the formation of the world and of human life in the world. Any experience of the world, along with the appearing of things within the world, will thus always be from within the embrace of place.
