Homelessness, citizenship, and identity: the uncanniness of late modernity

Homelessness, Citizenship, and

Identity

The Uncanniness of Late Modernity

K A T H L E E N

R.

A R N O L D

HOMELESSNESS, CITIZENSHIP, AND IDENTITY

SUNY series in National Identities Thomas M. Wilson, editor

Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity The Uncanniness of Late Modernity

KATHLEEN R. ARNOLD

STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF NEW YORK

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2004 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, address State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207 Production by Marilyn P. Semerad Marketing by Jennifer Giovani and Susan M. Petrie Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Arnold, Kathleen R., 1966– Homelessness, citizenship, and identity : the uncanniness of late modernity / Kathleen R. Arnold. p. cm. — (SUNY series in national identities) Includes index. ISBN 0-7914-6111-4 (alk. paper) 1. Homelessness. 2. Homelessness—Government policy. 3. Homeless persons. I. Title. II. Series. HV4493.A76 2004 305.5'692—dc21 2003059086 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For my mother

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

1. Introduction

1

2. Citizenship and Political Identity Introduction Citizenship and Property in the Liberal Tradition: Political Power and Economic Independence versus Dependence Juridical Conceptions of Citizenship Social Dimensions of Citizenship Conclusion

17 17

3. Das Unheimliche Introduction Home/Homeless Power Dynamics of Home/Homeless: The Uncanny Political Manifestations of the Uncanny

51 52 57 73 77

21 27 36 43

4. Homelessness and Panopticism Introduction History and Background Homelessness and Panopticism Conclusion

87 87 89 106 122

5. Homeland, Homelessness, and Cosmopolitanism Introduction

129 129

vii




viii

Contents

Self/Other State Power, Identity, and the Nation-State Capitalism and Globalization Identity and Cosmopolitanism: A Politics of Homelessness Cosmopolitan Citizenship

133 135 141 146 157

6. Debt, Guilt, and Responsibility: Schuld

163

Notes

173

Index

205

Acknowledgments

This book is the culmination of work begun my first year of graduate school at UCLA. In the early stages of this project, Victor Wolfenstein and Ray Rocco were very encouraging and helpful. I am also indebted to the late Richard Ashcraft for his guidance and patience at this time. While he was clearly disinterested in poststructural theory, he admitted to me one day that if he were my age, he would be headed to Irvine for Jacques Derrida’s lectures, too. Indeed, Ashcraft’s rigorous thinking, consideration of methodological questions, attention to historical detail and context, and passionate belief in the reconcilability of Marxism and liberalism bridged any differences we had. There are few professors who live what they believe and allow students to pursue their individual paths—he was certainly one of them. Sam Weber gave me the opportunity to think about theories of identity and difference more deeply, as well as the chance to attend Derrida’s lectures in Paris. Sam has not only supported my project this entire time, but has been a significant intellectual influence. I am grateful for the care he has taken in critiquing my ideas as well as his own insights into homelessness. The debt I owe Nick Xenos is difficult to express. He has supported my work consistently since I was an undergraduate. During the first stages, he read nearly every draft of this book. He has been a wonderful critic and supporter of this work, not to mention an intellectual influence and good friend. Most recently, Glyn Morgan and Eugene Sheppard have been kind enough to read and comment on various parts of this book. I am also grateful to Harvard University for funding a wonderful research assistant, Lisa Schwartz, during my revisions. Last, I am appreciative of the support of friends and family, especially my mother and father, who each read every chapter. Cover photo by Thomas, a participant in the Language of Light Photovoice Workship, June 1997.

ix

Introduction

More often than not, homelessness is studied as a sociological problem and the dynamics of power on the part of the homeless on the one hand, and policy makers and full citizens on the other, are not examined. It is tempting to engage this subject at the policy level in order to respond to homeless studies, recommendations, and policies. However, the politics of homelessness is a larger problem that reflects upon our society and the status of democracy rather than being a mere policy issue. The forces that homeless people deal with are disenfranchisement and social “death”:1 degrading myths and stereotypes, punitive treatment by caseworkers, deficient school systems that perpetuate illiteracy and joblessness, and most importantly, the loss of rights as a citizen, and thus, as a human that these individuals suffer. Perhaps some people are responsible for their homelessness, but in this milieu, it is difficult to tell. And why should they suffer such dire consequences? When one can no longer inhabit public space, have one’s possessions and shanty towns (home, by some definitions) burned or bulldozed, be arrested for one’s status rather than a crime (hence signaling a loss of civil rights), and only exercise political power with extreme difficulty, one cannot be said to be a citizen.2 This is exacerbated by the disappearance of truly public space.3 Decisions are no longer the prerogative of the individual; rather, they are made for the homeless by communities in the form of NIMBYism (Not In My Back Yard), by the police in the form of sweeps, and by local officials in outlawing panhandling or busing the homeless to other towns, for example. Whether full citizens or politicians decide to help the homeless or not, their freedom to make choices exists in a very narrow manner. Moreover, the help received by the homeless can be authoritarian and punitive in nature. Homeless individuals are to

1

2




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

believe that they have become so through their moral failings and every day are reminded of this. Many shelters and agencies go beyond simple admonitions, however, and issue ultimatums. Some are contradictory and put the homeless in a double bind. Indeed, the system that helps them can often be erratic, disorganized, and pathological. Of course, these terms are often reserved for the homeless, not “us.” The fact that the homeless have less agency than full citizens in the modern nation-state is a political and not an individual problem. When certain individuals cannot occupy public space (or many private commercial spaces) because of their status and when decisions are made for them under the guise of protection (thus, protection as coercion), it is evident that homelessness is not a matter of bad luck or personal problems. Rather, it is an issue that affects hundreds of thousands of people, and yet it has been treated academically, culturally, and politically as an individual problem. Hence, although sociological or psychological studies, for example, may have value, it is worthwhile to explore the broader political and economic ramifications of homelessness. Homelessness, I will demonstrate, needs to be viewed in terms of economic identity on the one hand and national identity, on the other. It is a politicoeconomic problem that undermines the notion of universal citizenship domestically and challenges the adequacy of citizenship as an identity on an international level, given the permanent character of statelessness (refugees, exiles, and immigrants who are in camps, detainment, or other sites of legal limbo for example). In sum, I am questioning the notion of a unified subject in the political identity of citizenship and, correspondingly, the idea of a unified location for citizenship. In the first place, just as race and gender are ideological constructs built on political, economic and cultural norms, economic class can also be deconstructed as an identity that has been viewed as fixed and unitary. The notion of economic identity as a conceptual category has been questioned for several reasons. In Supreme Court decisions, it has been ruled that while gender and race are suspect classifications (to different degrees), class is not suspect because it is malleable (see chapter 2). Indeed, poverty is often viewed as a problem of individual responsibility and so wealth discrimination appears to be conceptually different from racism or sexism, for example. Alternatively, in policies such as affirmative action, economic class has been a secondary consideration. On the other hand, progressive theorists also hold (albeit for different reasons) that economic class is different from race, for example, because it

Introduction



3

is real where race is not (see Edna Bonacich, for example). Nevertheless, regardless of whether poverty is real, the poor and especially the homeless are subject to ideological constructs of their identity that make them Other in ways both similar to and different from race and gender (not to mention the intersection of race, gender, and class). Homelessness represents the extreme case of this economic marginalization and thus is worth exploring for what it tells us about political economic norms, the status of democracy, and the deployment of prerogative power in the modern nation-state. The second category under which the homeless should be considered is that of national identity and the logic of the modern nation-state. I contend that rather than simply being a problem of poverty, homelessness is symptomatic of the uprootedness (in the words of Simone Weil4) of the nation-state. The formation of national identity does not merely entail the construction of an ideal citizen, but normative criteria based on economic, gender, and racial status, allowing some to be “at home” and politically uprooting others. In this way, homelessness is analogous to international “homelessness” and both groups are subject to disenfranchisement, the exercise of prerogative power, and processes that either demand assimilation or attempt to extinguish their presence. The home represents the synthesis of the two rubrics of normative criteria defining citizenship: it signifies economic independence and is the precondition for any degree of citizenship and further, it symbolizes political identity. In an increasingly uprooted world, home and homeland are constructed as sites of retreat from anxiety and tension. Difference, political struggle, and economic problems are displaced onto the homeless and immigrants. The lack of a home signals an asymmetrical power dynamic: homeless individuals are not merely inconvenienced by their homelessness but culturally stigmatized and politically disenfranchised. In this way, those who have become homeless also experience exclusion from the modern nation-state. On the other hand, this is not to say that lack of a stable home should lead to disenfranchisement. Indeed, no home is truly stable. Rather, the politicization of home and homelessness signals a political splitting between normal/abnormal, rational/irrational, economically independent/dependent, and so on that is radically signified in the perception of home as the repository for positive attributes and homelessness, that of negative characteristics. It follows that while many studies focus on the homeless themselves, what also needs to be explored is the political self in the self-Other

4




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

relationship. This sort of exploration is not common in countries whose membership is defined by jus soli. As Colette Guillaumin notes, the tendency is to focus solely on the Other: there is an “occultation of the Self, of which people have no spontaneous awareness; there is no sense of belonging to a specific group, so the group itself always remains outside the frame of reference, is never referred to as a group.”5 In contrast, in countries that have based membership on jus sanguinis such as apartheid South Africa or Nazi Germany, the “self” part of the self-Other equation was firmly established. That is, national identity was a function of identifying and defining who was included as much as excluded. In the context of an analysis of homelessness, examining the political significance of home and homelessness in the modern nation-state illuminates facets of citizenship and political norms that have implications for us all that have not been sufficiently explored. In general, the present work could be viewed as a response to more conservative, empirical work and policies about the homeless (and some immigrants) that position the homeless as Other and fail to consider the concept of home sufficiently. This book explores the notion of home as a critique of political freedom in the modern nation-state. The home both represents and transcends the concept of citizenship and signifies autonomy, the ability to pursue long-term goals, maintain a social network, and have some privacy. Politically, it symbolizes a unitary subject, free of conflict and tension. Homelessness, in contrast, can signify a focus on shortterm pursuits, the absence of privacy, the breakdown of social networks and the loss of autonomy in both private and political realms, where, in the latter case even occupying public space becomes illegal. The basis of this space of otherness or political homelessness is poverty; poverty and dislocation are the nexuses around which political difference has been created in the modern nation-state. However, it is paradoxically citizenship as an idealized home that institutionalizes these politically polarized identities and thus, the political homelessness of certain groups. Accordingly, the homeless experience dislocation on the levels of both domicile and political community. In fact, citizenship as a status has taken precedence over humanity in the modern nation-state as one is only considered human and can occupy space when a citizen. If citizenship were indeed universal (and thus, “homeless”) in the modern nation-state, this rigid distinction would be the exception and not the rule. Accordingly, within this paradigm of home as a fundamental element of enfranchisement, I critique contemporary conceptions of citizenship.

Introduction



5

Although political equality in the liberal capitalist state has been guaranteed regardless of economic status, an examination of the power dynamics regarding the homeless demonstrates that this has not been achieved. Rather, citizenship is configured under the rubrics of national identity and economic independence. Regarding national identity, the development of nationalism in the modern nation-state has led to the construction of a homogeneous ideal that renders the seemingly universal quality of citizenship exclusive. The importance of national identity and nationalism in considerations of citizenship is at least threefold: there is an emphasis on identity over interest or practical utility,6 a consequent emotive element to national identity and citizenship, and the growth of state power and bureaucracy in which the primary values are stability and order. Although I want to avoid “conceptual inflation,”7 the deployment of national identities brings to the forefront the complex interweaving of gender, race, and class with regard to citizenship. Thus, although each of these rubrics is conceptually separate and has its own history of exclusion, their point of commonality lies in the construction of a natural separation of peoples along gender, race, and class lines just as the nation-state is conceived of as a naturally bounded linguistic and political community. Consequently, although conceptually distinct, the naturalization of the above categories works in ways that have an “elective affinity” (Max Weber’s term8) with nationalism. Moreover, I will argue that there has often been a material basis for the hierarchy created by national identity in its present manifestations. (Nevertheless, this is not always the case, as is evident in the treatment of Arab Americans). Second, citizenship is also defined by employment and economic independence and there are varying degrees of citizenship based on these unexpressed norms. The exclusive character of the latter norm can be tied to certain presuppositions of capitalism: that from its inception, there has been equality of conditions; differences in class will be mitigated by the money or help that “trickles down”; and the poor receive help and subsidies whereas the rich are self-made. These presuppositions not only inform legislation regarding the poor and homeless but also create a norm of economic independence, autonomy, and self-sufficiency. If the home is the precondition for and symbol of this economic self-sufficiency, then homelessness and dislocation indicate partial or full disenfranchisement. This would mean that the poor have only a partial citizenship and the homeless and some immigrants lose their citizenship

6




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

entirely. Hence, I will demonstrate, there is little tolerance for economic difference—and the other categories of identity that intersect with poverty—on political economic levels. The normative criteria that form the ideal type of citizen do not allow for difference; rather, difference is displaced onto noncitizens. For this reason, the homeless are subject to the deployment of prerogative (that is, nondemocratic) power. Related to this political disaffiliation, immigrants, too, are homeless, in ways both similar to and different from the “real” homeless. Immigrants can be conceived of in two ways: in an abstract sense, they are politically homeless and often treated as such by the “native” population and second, on an empirical level, poorer immigrants share certain problems and situations with the homeless.9 While prerogative power is often manifest in international relations, the study of immigration evidences that state power is not clearly distinct from the exercise of liberal power at the domestic level. Rather, prerogative power in modernity is defined by the common good, whether national or international. Prerogative power is the “legitimate arbitrary power in policy making and legitimate monopolies of internal and external violence in the police and military. As the overt power-political dimension of the state, prerogative includes expressions of national purpose and national security as well as the whole range of legitimate arbitrary state action from fiscal regulation to incarceration procedures.”10 Indeed, it springs from the same conceptual well in the writings of the early liberals and those who helped build modern nation-states. For example, it is evident in the work of Machiavelli, Hobbes, the prerogative power of Locke, and later, Carl Schmitt, that prerogative power, on the one hand, and liberal or liberal-capitalist power, on the other, have been significant in building the modern nationstate. In fact, in times of crisis, these thinkers believed that absolute (prerogative) power supersedes democratic power. In contemporary terms, sovereign power is conceived of as the precondition for liberal or democratic power; stability and order are the primary values of the state in order to achieve the secondary values of liberalism and democracy. Michel Foucault’s notion of biopower—a normative power that has historically developed as populations and territories have grown larger— captures the dual notion of these power dynamics in the liberal capitalist nation-state. He argues that through attempts to manage and discipline populations, “biological existence” is “reflected in political existence” and “law operates more as a norm; less a show of naked power than molding, redistribution. . . .”11 In considering the dual nature of power

Introduction



7

in the liberal capitalist state, a comparison of immigrants with the actual homeless allows for a more profound study of political inclusion and national identity. Regarding the homeless, it is often heard that welfare has created an “ethic that subsidizes idleness,” (Newt Gingrich); that all homeless must be mentally ill, drug addicts, or alcoholics; that staying in a welfare hotel is like a paid vacation; that poor unwed mothers want to be pregnant and on welfare and are solely responsible for their “condition”; and that if these people just tried harder, they would somehow succeed. In other words, the homeless are often seen as untrustworthy, dirty, lazy, pathological, and dangerous. Their condition is viewed as natural rather than political or economic. These attitudes, as manifested in various sites of political power, take the individual as the unit of analysis and structural factors are ignored. Consequently, the problem is depoliticized and reduced to a binary mode of self/other, clean/dirty, responsible/ irresponsible, and independent/dependent. This binary mode exposes an authoritarian power structure that has created an asymmetrical relation between the mainstream and the homeless and thus, citizen and noncitizen. In effect, they are a familiar Other: a dirty, uncontrollable, brokendown phantasm of the average mainstream citizen. Poor immigrants could be described as a more radical Other, because of cultural and religious differences, among other things. Indigent, darker-skinned immigrants are often viewed as taking jobs away from other Americans, usurping welfare benefits that they do not deserve, and dividing society by creating linguistically and culturally separate enclaves. The public response to this is to try to enforce English only policies in schools and on road signs, for example, or to create citizens’ watch groups in California and Texas that will harass anyone who appears to be foreign and non-European. Immigrants are often viewed as a threat to our cultural and racial integrity and the concept of multiculturalism is interpreted as encouraging these divisions. This threat is perceived as one to both national security and domestic unity, exacerbated after the events of September 11, 2001. As these political Others fail to embody political economic norms of identity, they face two similar reactions: either demands for assimilation or criminalization. In the case of the homeless, they are either integrated into the welfare system in order to become rehabilitated (an attempt to subsume the Other into the Same) or subjected to arrests or police harassment. When this does not work, they are bused to another city, forced

8




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

out to urban campgrounds or simply compelled to move on. Similarly, immigrants are expected to assimilate or become the object of suspicion. Deportation looms behind either choice. Thus, the power matrix that these homeless people fall into is no longer democratic. Rather, it reflects the exercise of prerogative power in that it is punitive and disciplinary and ultimately treats these people not as citizens (the political recognition of an individual as a human being) but as subhumans deprived of political status. A narrow political identity and a conception of justice as order are the motivating factors behind these punitive reactions and manifestations of power. In this way, the state of exception—the exercise of prerogative power only in times of a national emergency—becomes the rule.12 Capitalist logic and norms of identity determine these power relations and exclusions. As Samuel Weber notes, “Capitalism, like the Hegelian Dialectic, depends on the horizon of appropriability, and hence, on the proper, the propriable (the realization of surplus-value as profit). Hence, there is built-into Capitalism, and to Liberalism insofar as it is tied to Capitalism . . . a tendency to reduce or construe the Other in terms of the Same or the Identical. But this argument works only if one realizes that the other is not necessarily human: the realization of profit involves the reduction of exchange and substitution to a circulation with a determinate goal. . . . The reduction of the other to the same is implied in the capitalist-economical logic of profitability, hence of efficiency, and the treatment of others . . . whether as immigrants or homeless is inseparable from this historically predominant (empirical) context.”13 In this way, both types of homelessness suggest an undecidability in the political realm that cannot be accounted for in empirical studies. My approach, which looks at homelessness as a political and economic circumstance, is founded on a political-theoretical treatment that allows for the unmasking of these power relations. Given this critique and the economic context described, I explore the link between political identity (varying degrees of citizenship) and certain contemporary philosophical approaches to identity. In ways that are similar to this critique of capitalism (in that they developed together), the rise of the modern nationstate has involved the consolidation of disperse areas of land, peoples, and languages and thus, fundamental notions of national homogeneity, a bounded territory, and the supreme importance of national sovereignty. The establishment of these much more permanent boundaries separating and defining nation-states (especially since WWI) presupposes a notion of the proper, property, and a constitution of the political self.

Introduction



9

In these processes, as nations become more exclusive about who crosses their borders and who is considered a citizen, a fundamental violence is revealed. Rather than being an outside incursion, this violence is instead a constitutive element. In this way, nationalism and capitalism (within the nation-state) are complementary forces that construct the paradigms of self and other (even as economic globalization and nationalism are antagonistic forces). The first four chapters of this book outline the development of citizenship as a political identity and the political Other, the substantialized nature of both identities that illuminates an emotional dynamic to political relations, and the failure of many people to conform to either norm. Thus, the ideal of a truly universal (empty) citizenship is just that—an ideal. The final chapters locate the homeless in this idealized citizenry and examine the potential for acceptance of heterogeneity of the Other. Grounded in the notion of home as both a tangible and political entity, this analysis provides new perspectives on homelessness, revealing the intricacies of the unique political status of the homeless. The second chapter sets out the political problems to be discussed. In this chapter, I will critically examine what citizenship is de facto and de jure. I demonstrate that citizenship is not merely a political status from which one can withdraw; rather, if one allows for an expanded notion of citizenship, it is evident that political membership affects daily life from questions of bodily integrity to the occupation of public space. Those who are excluded have not merely slipped through the cracks but are subject to prerogative power. This is due to the fact that individuals who do not meet national and economic criteria are posited as enemies, potential threats to domestic unity and national security. In this way, citizenship in the modern nation-state is not only externally exclusive, creating the foreign Other, but also (more covertly) internally exclusive, creating domestic Others. This political exclusion has been set against a homogeneous ideal shaped by the economic criteria of the past and nationalistic policies in more recent times. With the broadening of the franchise in the past century, the concepts of race and gender have rendered political exclusion even more complex. That exclusions are based on status undermines the goal of early liberals to have political equality in spite of economic difference. Nevertheless, the economic criterion has its origins in the works of the early liberals, who believed that those who labor and contribute to the economy are rational and capable of handling political power.

10




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

Accordingly, these individuals are not only the passive recipients of rights but can also be active politically. Later, the political significance of work, not to mention individualism, was reinforced with the development of capitalism. In this context, a relatively stable home (discussed below) has provided the possibility of making an economic contribution and is a symbol of this contribution. Home both allows for and represents an individual’s ability for self-preservation and thus, capacity for reason. In contrast, the homeless are considered to be at the other end of the political spectrum. The second principle derives from conceptualizing the national family in such a way that it does not reflect the complexity and diversity of the nation. Here, the immigrant suggests a type of homelessness (or radical Otherness) against which inclusion in the national family is conceived. As the national community has largely replaced the functions of smaller communities from the past, the political power invested in citizenship is crucial to survival. With regard to political homelessness, the loss of political power and protection in the modern nation-state is quite serious in that one is only considered human if a citizen. Thus, current citizenship as an identity is inadequate and establishes a norm that leads to internal exclusion. This analysis will illuminate the degree to which citizenship as an identity is substantialized and essentialized and in this process, represses alterity. Accordingly, the homeless are not simply an Other, cast aside, but rather a return of the repressed. In this way, only a truly universal political membership will allow all individuals to be “at home.” However, this is not a call to reform contemporary citizenship but to radically reconceptualize and change it. I will argue that political equality will only have meaning when the notion of political universalism is truly “empty,” in a Kantian sense. My use of the word “universal” is not the quality ascribed to liberal capitalism, which as Marx demonstrated in “On the Jewish Question,”14 ultimately reinforces particularity and difference. As Marx shows, in contemporary times, the primacy of the individual as historically developed has necessitated the denigration of an Other in constructing political identity in the liberal capitalist state. Rather, the qualification of universal would be “empty”: a positive transcendence of difference, particularity, and individualism. This would necessitate allowing others to be Other. In the third chapter, I explore the meaning of home. As it is, the home is conceived of as a site unmarked by difference, tension, or struggle. In

Introduction



11

contrast, homelessness represents the problems outside of the home: broken marriages, tension, poverty and squalor. It is as if one group is problem free and moral and the other epitomizes social problems and immorality. In challenging this polarized vision of home and homelessness, I suggest that a more fluid notion of home would unsettle fixed and bounded notions of home while allowing the homeless greater autonomy in certain respects. For example, a broader definition of home allows for the recognition that personal belongings and certain key relationships (such as family) are also part of home. Given this expanded definition, burning a homeless individual’s possessions would be no more acceptable than incinerating the belongings of a housed person. Nor would the advocacy by certain conservatives to open more orphanages for the children of noncompliant welfare recipients be viewed as a viable solution to any problem involving economic status. Furthermore, as will be discussed in chapter 4, it should be recognized that burning or bulldozing people’s possessions is not only removing cherished articles but could be taking away the means of someone’s survival. In essence, a reconceptualized or homeless notion of home will allow more people to be at home. Accordingly, even with a more fluid conception of the home, the homeless still need homes. What this means specifically is a relatively stable residence; that is, a home that is not idealized or free from tension or struggle but that is stable enough to live there for a decent amount of time. Those who live in abusive or violent situations or substandard housing, pay more than one third of their monthly income for rent, or are subject to the arbitrary whims of an unfair landlord are rightly described by housing advocates as “at risk” for homelessness. Further, temporary solutions such as fiberglass domes, tent cities and even cubicle or cage hotels do not fit the definition of relative stability. The latter solutions emanate from biopolitical norms that treat the homeless as objects to be filed away. Rather, the idea that a home must be relatively stable has the following minimum requirements: that it is affordable (one quarter to one third of one’s monthly income), has a fair landlord, and is located in an area with access to grocery stores and transportation, and no one residing under that roof is violent or abusive. Additionally, Iris Marion Young’s criteria for home15—safety, individuation, privacy,16 and preservation—provide not only for stability but individual development and intimacy. These norms of home would undermine the assumption that a welfare hotel or cubicles are sufficient solutions to homelessness. Instead, they suggest the importance of

12




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

personal space, which while a culturally relative notion, helps to conceive of home beyond biological needs. While this is a rather loose definition, the point is that relative stability is the necessary precondition for home. When the home is relatively stable, it can represent self-identity while homelessness entails a loss of the network of relations that makes up an individual’s identity. A stable home involves the relationships and sites that comprise one’s social life and work and thereby constitutes an identity that may overlap with citizenship but ultimately transcends it. Significantly, home can be the freedom to pursue one’s life. Homelessness, in contrast, is the disruption of these relationships, the loss of certain or all sites, and it involves shortterm rather than long-term needs and goals. Homelessness is thus permanent precariousness. Second, I explore the reaction of the housed to the homeless. That gated communities have become increasingly popular demonstrates the physical manifestation of the division between Self and Others. Alternatively, the fact that the homeless often cannot occupy public space is another example of this division. Stark oppositions have made up the political horizon that separates housed and homeless, responsible and irresponsible, citizen and noncitizen, and good and bad. This situation can be interpreted differently by referring to Freud’s “The Uncanny,”17 where it can be seen that tension between these opposites is uncanny and the homeless or political Other is the token of societal repression. Derrida uses this reading of Freud to deconstruct the simplicity of these oppositions and to suggest a more complex notion of difference that allows for both inner and exterior alterity. This notion does not replace one type of subjectivity for another, but rather calls into question the logic of the subject itself. Home is unheimlich/uncanny unless there is political freedom for all in the modern nation-state. On the other hand, a more abstract type of homelessness will allow for the possibility of home; that is, the type of homelessness that frees modern nation-states from territoriality, political exclusion, and the creation of political Others. In the fourth chapter, I will argue that most policy, research, and public attitudes towards the homeless have been based on a paradigm that does not account for the complexity of the situation nor the diversity of the homeless population. This construction of the Other invokes binary modes of operation (deserving/undeserving; responsible/irresponsible) and focuses on individual pathologies, which serve to classify individuals and turn them into bureaucratic cases. Furthermore, it could be

Introduction



13

argued that this constructed identity has been naturalized by drawing upon social Darwinian notions of a natural order. In other words, the dominant homeless paradigm is necessarily tied to portrayals of weakness, sloth, and insanity to convey a natural, rather than political or economic, failure to conform to the norm of citizenship. Related to this, I will explore the degree to which the excluded Other experiences nondemocratic power in the form of panopticism. Jeremy Bentham proposed the Panopticon as a new architectural form that could reform prisoners, inhabitants of the poorhouse, and schoolchildren alike. Michel Foucault notes that the power wielded in panoptic institutions would be productive, economic, and disciplinary: it would improve morals, ease the costs of social welfare, and produce industrious workers.18 Significantly, it would create a self-sustaining network of power, relying on a host of experts and documentation. The deployment of panoptic power is twofold. First, in its architectural form, it serves to enclose and subject to surveillance. Second, it is the exercise of disciplinary power that is subtle, coercive, and based on the establishment of norms. Panoptic power is based on hierarchy, assessment, control, and the molding of individuals.19 To paraphrase Foucault, while the contract was regarded as the foundation of political power, panopticism was the technique of coercion, ensuring the effective functioning of power in opposition to the formal framework. Thus, it may serve the needs of producing industrious workers for liberalism or capitalism, in addition to ensuring the docile citizens required by dictates of the nation-state, but it is certainly not democratic. Accordingly, the power exercised in the panoptic treatment of the homeless is, as discussed above, an exercise of state power that poses a challenge to the early liberals’ notion of justice and democracy, even as they accounted for its existence. In examining modern-day treatment of the poor and the unfreedom that the homeless experience, I conclude that the two reactions towards the political Other are demands for assimilation or criminalization. Specifically for the homeless, assimilation means entry into the welfare system, where they are treated in a punitive fashion in order to correct their moral lapses and become better citizens. I compare the homeless shelter to Michel Foucault’s conception of the panopticon and discipline in Discipline and Punish20 and refer to this in order to critique the welfare system, public policy, and conservative literature. The latter sites of power are “disciplines,” in Foucault’s words, that create an authoritative and punitive power structure. The institutions that mediate

14




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

homelessness and poverty are shaped by prerogative power and thus the political power that many homeless confront is bureaucratic rather than democratic. Alternatively, the homeless on the street, who are not necessarily welfare recipients, are treated as unassimilable and accordingly as criminals to be driven away or otherwise erased from the public view. This chapter highlights the degree to which unfreedom can exist in liberal democracies and challenges the liberal notion that there is political equality in spite of economic inequalities. In the fifth chapter, I explore philosophical approaches to the Other in order to develop the most adequate for contemporary identity politics. The attempt to impose allegedly universal values in a world of increasing travel and migration has really been hierarchical, thereby leading to exclusion and marginalization of difference. To have any type of political grouping, some type of universal values must be necessary but they must also allow for difference. The language of multiculturalism has been limited and has resulted in two related developments. The first is the ethnopluralist argument that stresses the right to difference. In this, identity is rigid and essential: inner alterity is not provided for and external alterity becomes substantial. This tension is thus manifested in a conception of self that is entirely divorced from political Others and can lead to anti-immigration sentiment or policy and other exclusions. The Heideggerian strain of poststructuralism found in the work of Derrida is the second alternative and takes up multiculturalism in a more complex way, allowing for both inner and exterior alterity. I conclude that this second alternative is a more appropriate way to view the political Other. In exploring these philosophical approaches to Otherness, I will argue that the homeless and stateless are subjected to similar political and economic processes, even if their situations are not precisely equivalent. This is, in part, because the modern nation-state treats home and homeland as extensions of national identity. In this way, the homeless and stateless defy the logic of the nation-state, on the one hand, and capitalism on the other. Last, a cosmopolitanism rooted in the city would reflect the values implied by poststructuralism and would challenge the essentialized identities and rigid boundaries issuing from the abstract grounding of the nationstate. The centrality of the nation-state could be displaced in favor of the more complex and realistic urban landscape. More specifically, I will argue for an agonistic notion of patriotism that is not a suspension from attachments but permits a multiplicity of attachments. The urban area provides a model of the coexistence of diversity as well as serving as the

Introduction



15

“real” basis of most citizens’ loyalties. In this way, the nation-state will no longer serve as the sole object of devotion. Further, I will argue for a more agonistic notion of democracy that will displace the pervasive and normative exercise of prerogative power and allow for political processes to function broadly. Bonnie Honig’s notion of “taking” is an example of demanding equality or the greater possibility of political agency and thus, agonistic democracy. Alternatively, proportional representation is one example of a policy that would deterritorialize the voting process, increase voter turnout, and allow for minority representation. More abstractly, agonistic patriotism and an agonistic conception of democracy would allow for difference, tension, and uncertainty. This is not only valuable in establishing a basis for truly democratic practices but also avoiding displacing difference onto others. Additionally, while the notion of work should be expanded, neither work nor the home should serve as the basis for citizenship. Rather, adopting the goal of an empty universal would eradicate racial, gendered, and class-based differences (among other), which have long been institutionalized and made normative. Finally, the question of borders must be addressed. First, allowing for dual nationality will help to decenter the nation-state. It will not only foster greater tolerance of difference within national boundaries but also acknowledge that there is some degree of responsibility in the bridges or linkages21 that highly developed nation-states have established in poorer countries. Second, this decentering of the nation-state could also occur with a more federated conception of cities as the loci of political activity. Alternatively, human rights accords and institutions should be given more power as a check on national power and to address the political void that has been created by the modern nation-state and the globalization of the economy. Third, as Étienne Balibar advocates,22 borders themselves must be democratized, thus displacing prerogative power through democratic action. In sum, I will argue for a politics of homelessness that allows for contingency and uncertainty while undermining the will to home that privileges the existence of some over others. In the sixth chapter, in order to sketch out the dynamics of a solution, I explore the idea of responsibility, given the moral claim of the early liberals. This moral claim was once thought to be constitutive of liberalism: that providing for all is a right and not a privilege. The modern welfare state has made this provision limited, exclusive, and punitive. The German word Schuld,23 meaning both debt and guilt, is indicative of the ethical dimensions of this problem. The modern bureaucratic structure has

16




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

made what we owe the homeless a business transaction. Moreover, we have even reversed this relationship, positing the homeless as the debtors, parasites on the system and thus, as undeserving. However, if one insists on this moral claim and the desire for equal political power for all, it is the state, a collective “we” who owe the homeless their existence and their dignity. The guilt we feel can be so overwhelming that it is either neutralized or turned back onto the homeless as contempt and rage. Whether this is the Schuld of guilt or debt, the hatred is the same. However Schuld is manifested, it does not erase the fact that through capitalism we have divided political space into debtors and collectors, thus privileging the survival of some and not all. There is no right to welfare, food, housing, medical care, or even an equal education in the United States, for example. Moreover, when these things are provided, they are not done so in a dignified manner. By virtue of a combination of factors, there is an asymmetry of power. The notion of responsibility has been foisted onto the individual despite the fact that so many important elements of life are societal or global in nature. In the meantime, collective responsibility and humanity have been forgotten. A return to the early liberals’ moral claims based on self-preservation and the preservation of all would not be contradictory to traditional definitions of democracy. However, these moral claims and a politics of homelessness where the polity becomes less rigidly bounded cannot coexist when market values determine the criteria for citizenship and thus for existence. Second, a political Other will perhaps always be created but this should not lead to demands for assimilation or annihilation. Rather, the Other should be allowed to exist as Other. This acceptance of heterogeneity and simultaneous call for community is suggested in a cosmopolitan politics and economics rooted in the urban area.

Chapter 2

Citizenship and Political Identity

Introduction In this chapter, I critically examine modern citizenship de facto and de jure, as well as the construction of the antithesis of the normative citizen. That is, I explore what citizenship is rather than what it ought to be in order to demonstrate how the homeless are, in fact, disenfranchised. At the end of this chapter, I will link my findings to the status of the homeless. Very generally, I argue that there are two underlying and not necessarily exclusive principles that shape contemporary citizenship: economic contribution, where only certain types of labor are considered socially important, and the homogeneous norm that has been created with the rise of nationalism and the nation-state. The first comes from the idea that those who labor (a specifically defined labor) contribute to the economy and are therefore rational and fit for political participation. Thus, these individuals not only are the passive recipients of rights but can also be active politically. In this context, the physical location of home represents the possibility of making an economic contribution and is a symbol of this contribution. In contrast, homelessness connotes the opposite end of the spectrum, signifying economic dependence and irrationality and hence unfitness for citizenship. The power dynamic that characterizes the dialectic between those who are considered economically independent and thus deserving of full (active) citizenship, and those perceived as economically dependent and therefore in need of guidance and protection (passive citizenship) can be found in the German word Schuld. The fiduciary nature of citizenship is a way to erase the guilt of creating a lower caste and allows for the political conviction that it is in fact the poor, as political and economic parasites, who are the debtors.

17

18




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

The second principle derives from the conceptualization of the national family in such a way that it does not reflect the complexity and diversity of the nation. Here, the figure of the immigrant suggests a type of homelessness (or radical alterity) against which inclusion in the national family is conceived.1 The rise of nationalism, along with the economic criteria demanded in the past and present, have served to create a norm of citizenship that, in their present manifestations, necessarily creates a political Other. Consequently, the emergence of the modern state has given rise to universal citizenship and made it our conceptual home while rendering others homeless in a far more radical way than in the past. Thus, while recognition (in a Hegelian sense) used to involve one’s community, family, and village in feudal times, it is now manifested in political relations with the state. As Simone Weil notes, the modern state has replaced the bonds one had in the premodern family, guilds, and villages, for example. In this way, “man has placed his most valuable possession in the world of temporal affairs, namely, his continuity in time, beyond the limits set by human existence in either direction . . . in the hands of the State.”2 The importance of citizenship, then, is no mere formality but a question of physical existence where statelessness becomes a logical consequence of the more rigid national boundaries and identities that developed after World War I. Hannah Arendt remarks on the novelty of this political situation: “[S]tatelessness [is] the newest phenomenon in contemporary history, and the existence of an ever-growing new people comprised of stateless persons, the most symptomatic group in contemporary politics.”3 Hence, the meaning of “homelessness” is not simply physical dislocation or cultural rejection but political exclusion, to varying levels. The significance of this modern identity, as well as its import for state sovereignty, is evidenced in Carl Schmitt’s definition of political membership, where one is either friend or enemy.4 The friend/enemy distinction suggests engagement with a political Other in defining political identity, as well as the negative implications of conceiving of the Other as enemy. This dynamic of power implies that the oppositional logic of identity in the modern state is never neutral. That is, the political identity of certain groups is still political but does not necessarily fall under the rubric of full citizenship. Consequently, in both this chapter and the next, I will argue that although identity in the modern state subscribes to a simple oppositional logic, political identity is much more complex (in this chapter, this is manifested in the discussion of citizenship, partial cit-

Citizenship and Political Identity



19

izenship and noncitizenship). The representation of the home as problem free and a site of withdrawal inevitably displaces tension, anxiety, and struggle onto the homeless, thus construing them as the opposite of citizens, normality, and humanness. Analogously, construing the homeland in monolithic terms polarizes difference in such a way that it is not merely strange but uncanny and dangerous. To put it differently, it is this process of identifying friend and enemy that makes homelessness— domestic or international—inevitable. Thus, I contend that citizenship is a crucial identity and without it, one has trouble surviving. On a formal level, citizenship generally excludes foreigners and is usually inclusive to those born in the country or with significant ties to the country or those willing to assimilate and fulfill certain obligations. However, citizenship is also internally exclusive and those who do not fit in do not fully enjoy the benefits conferred by national membership. In the past century, previously marginalized groups have gained the franchise and therefore, have seemingly moved from a passive type of citizenship to a more active citizenship. However, although previously excluded groups have been enfranchised, in many cases they are not full citizens. As T. H. Marshall and Tom Bottomore note, one can receive the benefits of citizenship (for example, state protection and civil rights) without being allowed political participation.5 A full citizen, I would argue, both receives the entitlements, protections, and rights of citizenship and can participate politically. I will explore citizenship through examining the idea of formal citizenship and then by looking at facets of citizenship that have not been made juridically explicit. I will argue, at the end of this chapter, that the homeless suffer the most in the wide range of exclusions and that home marks the distinction between access to democratic power and rights and the complete denial of this. Nevertheless, the deployment of nondemocratic power is not anomalous to liberal capitalism; rather, it is the exercise of prerogative power reserved for a state of emergency that has become normative. Ultimately, what I will contend is that these criteria and exclusions lead to nondemocratic results and that a truly free society would open its borders internally and externally. Thus, modern citizenship must be transcended for a more open type of political identity. However, citizenship and democracy will only be universal and thus provide a political home when exclusive criterion are no longer the standard for citizenship and thus, paradoxically, the nation becomes homeless.

20




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

The already complex task of examining democratic citizenship is made more difficult because it has not been defined explicitly in many cases (aside from the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment). However, in a very broad sense, it is the freedom to exist, make one’s own choices, and receive the protection of the state (through civil rights, police protection, or welfare, for example), as well as the possibility of exercising political rights such as voting and office holding. These freedoms would only be possible for all if citizenship were truly universal—that is, an “empty” universal—rather than a status dependent upon a vast array of normative criteria. This argument is in contrast to authors who have critiqued the notion of universal citizenship, arguing that because the concept of “universal” has really been defined narrowly, the notion of universality is itself without value. The notion of an “empty” universal is implied by Karl Marx in his early writings, where he maintains that political society will never be universal until it has transcended particularity. As Marx argues in “On the Jewish Question,” difference rather than equality characterizes citizenship in the liberal state. For example, even in the United States, where religious toleration was a fundamental value in its founding, Marx contends that this tolerance was still conceiving of political liberties in terms of particularity. As he states with regard to civil liberties, “[F]ar from abolishing these effective differences, [the state] only exists so far as they are presupposed; it is conscious of being a political state and it manifests its universality only in opposition to these elements.”6 In this way, the state reinforces what it aims to tolerate and therefore, does not really transcend particularity or private interest. Moreover, even if religion is no longer the basis of the state, it can still be “the spirit of civil society.” Christianity may no longer be the “essence of community, but the essence of differentiation” and viewed as “private whim.”7 Consequently, Marx writes, “political emancipation from religion leaves religion in existence, although this is no longer a privileged religion.”8 Similarly, property ownership once defined enfranchisement and distinctions based on class (and its intersection with race and gender) shaped political institutions and policies. The gradual abolishment of property qualifications, however, did not eradicate distinctions based on class but rather displaced and repressed them. For example, I will argue below that the property qualification has been replaced with the criteria of a specifically defined notion of work. Thus, as the franchise was broadened, economic categories (and their intersection with race and gender)

Citizenship and Political Identity



21

were perhaps changed but ultimately retained and accordingly, the state reinforced its particularity. Internationally, the implications of a less-than-universal nation-state are that while states may claim that they are countries of immigration and base their citizenship on jus soli, on the one hand, or make the claim that they are modern nation-states and thus, universal, neutral, and impartial on the other, anti-immigration sentiment and policies are rife in most modern nation-states. While there may be a material basis for anti-immigration sentiment, the placement of refugees and exiles in camps and the detainment of boat people in holding cells also derive from the fact that the integrity of the nation-state has its own particularist logic which does not allow for outside incursion. The “bridges”9 or linkages that the receiving countries have established with the countries of origin of displaced peoples are ignored or denied in favor of an inside-outside logic. For these reasons, it can be argued that only when the nation-state becomes more homeless—that is, when it no longer locates the national home in a world of particularities and divisions, reinforced by rigid national borders—will citizenship have the possibility of becoming universal in an “empty” (and therefore, positive) way. I will first examine economic prerequisites of citizenship. This will include a brief discussion of liberal democratic theory as it pertains to national membership. Then I will explore formal or legal criteria of citizenship. Last, I will consider the social substance of citizenship; that is, elements of citizenship that have not been formally codified.

Citizenship and Property in the Liberal Tradition: Political Power and Economic Independence versus Dependence At the foundation of early liberal thought was a radical moral claim that many contemporary theorists have neglected or misunderstood: this was the idea that every individual of the commonwealth should be provided for, thus accounting for the survival of the entire community (whether full citizen or not). This claim was framed in terms of the right to self-preservation and the preservation of all, as God’s children. All moral obligations to the early liberals, spanning from helping the poor or one’s neighbor to opposing the abuses of an absolute monarch, were rooted in natural law. The implication was that political power should no longer serve the interests of the few, but rather the general public.

22




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

That is, political power would embody and protect rights, of which property was included but not the axis. Rather, it should be constituted by rights such as free speech, freedom of religion, and free press. Thus, the idea of political power was conceived of as a moral claim.10 In this context, Richard Ashcraft states about John Locke, “[T]he truly radical claim advanced by Locke . . . is that poor relief is a socially constitutive and necessary feature of any legitimate society, since societies are only legitimate to the extent that they realize the purposes and objectives of natural law.”11 In this way, subsistence was conceptualized as a right and not a privilege and communal responsibility superseded that of the individual. Both of these values, however, became irrelevant with the rise of a capitalist ethos. Accordingly, the Levellers,12 Hobbes,13 and Locke argued for political equality and denied any connection between political power and property.14 Hence, they called for equal political power regardless of economic status. Further, they argued for socially meaningful labor as the prerequisite for political power; the focus on labor was a moral justification for property (at first) and political power in opposition to political power through birthright. The home or property signified the fruit of this labor as well as providing the possibility of working.15 In this way, the protection of private property called for in liberal writings stemmed from the notion that private property was necessary for self-preservation and a manifestation of industriousness. This reformulation of the meaning of property potentially broadened political membership, as well as laying a moral foundation for political rights. Nevertheless, the consequence of the emphasis on socially meaningful labor was the disenfranchisement of the poor and anyone else not making an economic contribution (for example, women and slaves).15 The poor were in a bind where they were allegedly equal in a society with preexisting inequalities (holdings) and could not labor in a society where labor presupposed property rights.16 To put it differently, early liberal writers established a dual conception of citizenship in that the guarantee of one’s preservation laid a basis for passive (or protective) citizenship, while the provision for equal political power among economic independents constituted active citizenship. Consequently, the significance of labor first, excluded the unemployed (and others) from active citizenship and provided the eventual defense for unequal holdings, and second, placed emphasis on the individual over the community in terms of full political membership. Moreover, given these tensions, aid

Citizenship and Political Identity



23

(a form of economic dependence) could by no means make the recipient a participant in the market, nor the economic or political equal of others. In this way, the category of work (specifically defined work) had become a central criterion of political power and the criterion of economic independence led to internal exclusion. In sum, while creating broader freedoms, the emphasis on labor created exclusions, too. What has been required to participate politically since the transition from feudalism has been first, economic independence (for example, not being a welfare recipient, dependent upon another person, or a part-time worker) and second, making a social contribution through one’s participation in the labor market (this distinction has been formulated in negative terms as the opposite of household or subsistence labor).18 Further, the idea of equality in liberal thought was and is inextricably linked to the notion of self-responsibility which, in turn is premised on economic independence. As Locke implied, if God gave the earth to the industrious, what place did the poor have? With the development of capitalism a century later, the value of work was profoundly reinforced. From the incipience of modern government, economic criteria such as property holding have involved both an exclusive and inclusive character, presumably based on notions of merit and a moral valuation of industriousness. Second, as will be shown below and in chapter 4, communal responsibility in the form of aid precluded rather than granted political power. Thus, while the Levellers, Hobbes, and Locke wanted equal distribution of political power in spite of economic differences, this has never been achieved. Rather, one must meet the criteria for membership with economic contribution marking the distinction between partial and total enfranchisement, political incorporation, and complete disenfranchisement. While today’s definition of what counts as work19 is influenced by the industrial age, not to mention racial and gender changes in the workforce, the evaluative criteria of economic independence and making a social contribution have remained. The work of T. H. Marshall evidences that the notion of economic independence has remained significant in the liberal capitalist state. Marshall holds that a country cannot have political equality without some level of economic independence. Thus, he is not critical of citizenship in the modern state but rather, feels that it could become truly universal through welfare. He divides political membership into three categories: the political, civil, and social economic.20 In general, he believes that citizenship has included the “compression . . . of the scale of income

24




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

distribution,” common culture, and experience and the adjustment of certain differences in status in order to have universal citizenship. To Marshall, citizenship is both individual and collective: “[U]niversality ensures some services as part of everyone’s experience; selectivity ensures that particular needs are met in a flexible way.”21 In feudal times, citizenship rights were not distinct as they are now. Therefore, the evolution of citizenship has involved “geographical amalgamation” and the separation of feudal ties and power.22 In addition, it has involved transferring power from the feudal hierarchy to institutions administering the Poor Law. During the feudal era, social rights were offered as an alternative to political rights, which meant that the poor were not considered citizens. Consequently, internment in the poorhouse translated into a loss of political freedom. A similar division was seen later with workers and the factory acts, in that citizens and workers were considered two distinct groups.23 Likewise, women and children were included in this logic: if they wanted citizenship, they had to forfeit protection. Thus, what Marshall demonstrates is that civil rights preceded political rights and that social rights were virtually nonexistent in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Conceptions of economic dependence or independence shaped these distinctions. In contemporary times, Marshall argues that because of inherent inequalities of capitalism, social life must exist to a minimum to be a true citizen. He does not advocate economic equality but feels a minimum of welfare would aid democracy and allow citizens to exercise rights. However, it is in Marshall’s claims that one can be the recipient of certain rights without being able to exercise individual political power24 that he demonstrates that it is possible to have only partial citizenship rights. Civil rights may have broadened the notion of citizenship but partial citizens can only benefit from them in a passive manner (de facto, if not de jure). As Marshall argues, in the past, the poor have not always been citizens and their status has worsened with the increasing stigmatization of poverty. Rather, “‘the pauper was a person deprived of rights, not invested with them.’”25 Therefore, it does not follow, as he concludes, that welfare will somehow bring political equality and broaden citizenship. Indeed, Marshall contradicts this by stating that with the focus on the individual, in modern times, one could be denied social protection based on the idea of the liberal/capitalist conception of responsibility. To Marshall, the significance of the notion of responsibility derives from the idea that the social contract is conceived of as consent between those who are

Citizenship and Political Identity



25

free and equal. In this context, according to Marshall, welfare would lessen social inequality and facilitate a broader citizenship.26 However, welfare signifies a dependent status, thus undermining the notion of individual responsibility. This idea of personal responsibility is clearly linked to the withdrawal of social protection. Therefore, once one has fallen under the rubric of economically dependent/irresponsible, one cedes political rights. Nevertheless, the contribution that Marshall has made to this argument is the claim that welfare recipients, or others who are not economically independent, do not enjoy full citizenship. Marshall’s explication of the historical development of citizenship demonstrates that economic factors are clearly important but that other factors, such as gender, overlap (which he implies but does not explore). But perhaps more importantly, he shows that it is a society’s view of poverty and thus the system’s structure that either allows the very poor to exist as autonomous individuals and possibly have their situation alleviated or allows society to treat them punitively thus diminishing social dignity and mobility. However, as it is now, the implicit demand for economic independence of full citizens subordinates collective welfare to the category of individual responsibility. The homeless are an example of this loss of rights, while the working poor, or those who are on welfare but housed, enjoy citizenship rights only partially (discussed below). The consequences of economic criteria in determining citizenship can be further examined through Marx’s critique of liberal capitalism in “On the Jewish Question.” Indeed, his arguments are perhaps more interesting in relation to poverty, race, or gender than religion. For example, if the state originally excluded women politically and gradually allowed their enfranchisement, the fact that the state had been originally structured to exclude women (and others) has not been changed in any radical way. Rather, women are integrated within the existing framework, with institutional inequalities and gender (or race) distinctions intact. As Marx suggests with regard to religion, the social emancipation of women from political society will only happen when political society is emancipated from the concept of gender as a reified political status. Similarly, economic status as a precondition of full citizenship may have been ameliorated through the abolition of property qualifications and later, literacy tests. Nevertheless, because there has been a denial that a) there is any discrimination against the poor that is worthy of civil rights protections (discussed below) and b) economic status is comparable to the categories of race or gender, for example (because, the argument goes,

26




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

economic status can be changed), political categories that differentiate economic classes are maintained. Second, the granting of civil rights to formerly excluded groups solves a societal problem in an individual way. The state grants rights in such a way that liberty is not based on human relations but on private interest. Hence, there are incentives to sustain differentiation over community and this “leads every man to see in other men, not the realization but rather the limitation of his own liberty.”27 For example, the gradual enfranchisement of racial minorities allowed for individual civil rights but the racial categories that had allowed for a distinction between black and white were not conceived of politically as a societal or community problem. Therefore, racial categories were not eliminated in political practices and policy; they did not need to be. Similarly, presuppositions about the poor that guided economic policy in the past—that they are irrational and economically dependent and need guidance—are retained. Consequently, today, racism can be viewed as an external problem to some European Americans instead of a social problem that we all share. Alternatively, sexism may be over for certain (privileged) groups of women because these matters are conceived of in individual terms, or, it is even argued by conservatives, that poverty has ended for the general population and that it is only the hard-core poor who remain indigent. In this way, civil rights are ghettoized and do not really transcend difference in a positive sense. The contemporary advocacy for a right to difference in Europe and multiculturalism in the United States (as it is manifested as a politics of difference) are then logical, if not problematic, responses to the problem of political inequality. On the other hand, normative criteria of citizenship are obscured by these individuating processes. This is particularly true of economic criteria, as economic discrimination does not exist as a legal category. However, it is significant that not only does economic discrimination exist but that economic status is an identity, just as much as race or gender. Even as all three categories have a certain basis in reality, all are subject to constructions that go far beyond their physical manifestations. Thus, for example, in the liberal capitalist state, the poor are not only in a difficult economic situation but treated politically as irrational, dependent, and irresponsible, for example. Second, as stated above, the predominance of a capitalist logic destroyed the most radical claim of early liberals: that all have the right to exist and this right trumps property rights. In this way, the fiduciary meaning of Schuld has determined polit-

Citizenship and Political Identity



27

ical inclusion and exclusion in spite of the liberal goal for political equality despite economic difference. That is, the poor are conceived of as debtors to society and hence noncitizens. Third, as liberal critics such as Carl Schmitt, Karl Polanyi, and Hannah Arendt28 have noted, the connection between work, economic logic and modern politics has subsumed the political in favor of private economic activity. In this way, economic activity is not only misconstrued as political activity but precludes what is truly political: public debate and dissent, the exercise of power divorced from economic imperatives, and a sense of political community. These ideas will be taken up again in chapter 5. Nevertheless, examining only economic criteria is insufficient in analyzing formal citizenship. This is true even where it will be found that other criteria such as jus soli or jus sanguinis can be linked to the idea of economic independence.

Juridical Conceptions of Citizenship

Jus soli/Jus Sanguinis Formal citizenship involves not only economic independence, but also jus soli or jus sanguinis and the idea of national sovereignty and the nation. These considerations demonstrate how national identity informs citizenship and potentially allows for the exercise of prerogative power upon noncitizens. Although few modern nation-states have membership based solely on one or the other, the formation of citizenship in France and Germany demonstrates certain key differences between jus soli and jus sanguinis. Nevertheless, their immigration policies evidence criteria for naturalization that are not purely one or the other. Similarly, the United States and the United Kingdom, while claiming to have citizenship policies based on jus soli have had long histories of racial exclusion in immigration policy. Rogers Brubaker29 claims that the United States just employs jus soli while France draws upon both and up until recently, Germany was exclusively jus sanguinis.30 Therefore, the United Kingdom and the United States are closer to the French model than the German model, which is still an anomaly. What the United States and France have in common is that they each once viewed themselves as countries to which immigrants could flee. Alternatively, the United Kingdom and France have former colonial ties to many would-be immigrants, while the United States has more subtle ties, based on complex cultural, economic, and political

28




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

links that they have established abroad. These links to former colonies and spheres of influence give some hint as to why, in any of these cases, the distinction between jus sanguinis and jus soli is not as clear-cut as some would believe. In general, jus soli is viewed as more inclusive or democratic than jus sanguinis, even though the roots of the former were at first viewed as feudal, and therefore backwards, because of ties to the land.31 In France, the revolution was the obvious catalyst for the development of citizenship, a status with less emphasis on ethnicity and more on the nation. Thus, French citizenship has involved an “understanding of nationhood as state-centered and assimilationist.”32 In contrast, the German conception of the nation has been formed around the Volk and cultural, linguistic, and racial community. That is, the German state has been conceived of as ethnic and “differentialist.”33 While most modern nation-states claim to base their citizenship more on jus soli, jus sanguinis is not entirely absent, even in the most democratic of countries. Thus, on the one hand, France has been open to immigration, has a broad notion of citizenship, and is known as a protector of world liberty. However, the question of ethnicity has not been absent from the public consciousness, as exemplified by the Dreyfus Affair in the past, the more recent popularity of Jean-Marie Le Pen and the National Front,34 and anti-immigration sentiment in general. In contrast, jus sanguinis is a significant criterion for citizenship in Germany and nationality and citizenship have not been synonymous. In fact, citizenship did not develop there until much later than in France (after 1871). There are different terms for formal state membership [Staatsangehörigkeit], participatory citizenship [Staatsbürgerschaft], and ethnocultural nation membership [Nationalität or Volkszugehörigkeit]. Citizenship in this context is represented by Staatsangehörigkeit and does not imply civic obligation or sentiment. Germany’s more restrictive citizenship regarding immigrants reflects a more ethnocultural conception of membership in that “Staatsangehörigkeit presupposes Volkszugehörigkeit.” Thus while both countries’ membership has been exclusive, this exclusion has manifested itself differently. The outcome of this in Germany has been that since 1889, citizenship has been granted to most people born in the country but available only to those of German descent.35 Nonetheless, since the recruitment of guest workers in the postwar period, the subject of immigration has pushed the limits of citizenship in both countries and led to recent changes in Germany’s citizenship laws.36 The difference, however, is

Citizenship and Political Identity



29

that France has former colonial ties to these workers where Germany has none. Nevertheless, Germany, like the United States has simply formed economic, political, and cultural ties to certain groups and countries that are no less potent. Overall, in most Western, democratic countries, jus soli is said to be more dominant than jus sanguinis. Nevertheless, one could argue that making immigration more difficult for certain minorities or people of color in countries that are exclusively jus soli betrays an unacknowledged policy of jus sanguinis. For example, U.S. policy has been very different towards Haitians, Jamaicans, Mexicans, and Cape Verdeans than others trying to emigrate to its borders37 and this is true of Turks and Gypsies in Germany, as well as those of Arab descent in France. In the United Kingdom, immigration policy has also favored whites over people of color.38 In political rhetoric and on the streets, xenophobia and immigrant bashing have reared up in nearly every Western democratic country recently, and this is not new.39 This tests the tension between jus sanguinis and jus soli. The possible consequences of policies based on jus sanguinis are racial homogeneity, the exclusion of guest workers from political participation, and institutionalized racism. (In the United States, the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have only allowed for greater latitude in favoring certain groups over others.40) Alternatively, the ramification of jus soli could be that one has to reach a certain level economically to establish residency—a difficult thing for poor refugees and exiles. That is, jus soli presupposes some degree of economic well being and the possibility for a stable residence that may not be available to many poor refugees, exiles, and immigrants. This criterion betrays the paradox of the modern nation-state: to establish a home, one must have had a home first. Attachment to place is significant to the connections between nationality, jus soli and jus sanguinis. In the nineteenth century, the definition of the French word citoyen was “[un]habitant d’une cité, d’une ville, d’un pays libre; qui aime son pays” [a resident of a town, a city, a free country; one who loves his country].41 The term “nation” was defined as a “community of foreigners” and referred to a common place of birth, for example.42 Therefore, the definition of nation “places it in proximity to the German term Heimat, which connotes both home and native place, the other meaning being close to the English ‘hamlet.’”43 The meaning of the word “citizen” in medieval English was similar to its meaning now but in the sixteenth century, the word was still interchangeable with the idea

30




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

of denizen [denisein] in Middle English. Alternatively, citisein in Middle English derived from the French cité (city). In the 1700s, citizenship really meant inhabiting a city. The urban inhabitants were citizens while those outside the city were subjects.44 Lastly is the distinction made in Germany between Gemeinschaft (community) and Gesellschaft (society), which is the distinction between traditional organically linked community and “‘alienated’ society, which dissolves all organic links.”45 The historical development of these concepts demonstrates that formal citizenship has been conceived around the larger and more disparate urban area, breaking away from feudal and village ties. Thus, geopolitical space became less determinate (and yet, paradoxically, territorially bounded) and with modernity and increased urbanization, citizenship eventually transcended the notion of “subject” as the dominant political identity. Nevertheless, while the goal may have been to replace Gemeinschaft with Gesellschaft, the naturalist language and ideas of the former have been retained in nationalist ideologies in their contemporary manifestations (discussed below). The consequences of these historical developments are complex. First, jus sanguinis undermines liberal conceptions of equality and yet, has added substantive meaning to the liberal focus on work. That is, the exclusions of jus sanguinis contribute to a more national (rather than liberal) conception of the nation-state and yet can explain why the liberal focus on work was not merely economic but racial and gendered, too. Second, even the more apparently democratic criteria of jus soli demand assimilation and thus are intolerant of difference in ways similar to the manifestations of jus sanguinis. The third historical development, that of the nation-state, also hints at a process that has both had an elective affinity with liberal capitalism and yet cannot be said to be one and the same thing. Furthermore, as Elías José Palti argues in “The Nation as Problem,” the historical development of nationalism has not been necessarily or inevitably racial or conservative. Nor are the charges that the nation is entirely artificial or nationalism entirely irrational tenable.46 Nonetheless, the criteria of jus sanguinis and jus soli have certainly shaped how each nation-state and its particular manifestation of nationalism have developed. While Palti argues that if assimilation is possible, this demonstrates that nationalism and the modern nation-state are not inherently exclusive,47 the reality is more complex. The demand for assimilation has included a vast array of political and economic criteria that by no means signals an enlightened tolerance of racial or economic difference, for

Citizenship and Political Identity



31

example.48 Second, the transference of political institutions and allegiance from smaller, more local entities to larger and accordingly more abstract ones has its consequences. Even if claims to national independence are not irrational in the sense that Habermas believes them to be, the modern nation-state does posit “the existence of a natural division within the world’s population, a division between collectivities each with a distinct cultural profile and therefore a distinct capacity for constituting a self-governing nation state within a given geographical space.”49 The problem is not that one sort of nationalism (for example, as patriotism) is rational and the other (for example, as ethnic nationalism) is irrational. Rather, it is that the essentialization of identity, as either patriotism or nationalism, and the belief that national borders are natural, inevitably creates homelessness or statelessness in contemporary times. To argue that nationalism is in certain important ways constructed or imaginary is not to say that it is not real. Certainly, different languages and cultures do exist, as does the history of different peoples in different territories. However, as nationalism has historically developed with liberalism and capitalism, the power of this reality emanates from primitive emotions and thus is irrational in the Freudian sense. (This will be discussed in the next chapter). This is especially true when identity becomes essentialized; that is, rigid and exclusionary. Thus, it is possible, as Max Weber argued, to have a system characterized by rationalized irrationality.50 The consequences of this essentialized identity, on the one hand, and rigid territorial boundaries, on the other, will be discussed below.

International Law Certain cases in international law reflect the dynamics discussed above as well as helping to define formal citizenship. Decisions about citizenship, exemplified in the Nottebohm Case, indicate the importance of sovereignty and attachment to a territory in a general sense. In this trial, which is considered one of the most important citizenship cases,51 Nottebohm was a German national in 1881 by birth and in 1939, he was naturalized in Liechtenstein. However, he had also become a resident of Guatemala in 1905 and had business and family ties there. He visited all three countries after 1931 and had family and friends in all three places. In 1939, he completed naturalization requirements in Liechtenstein and then returned to Guatemala. However, in 1943, after World War II, Nottebohm was jailed by Guatemala and transferred to the United States as a dangerous enemy alien and his property was seized. He was incarcerated

32




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

until 1946, when he went to Liechtenstein. Liechtenstein then brought a suit against Guatemala because it believed that Guatemala had violated international law by imprisoning Nottebohm and seizing and retaining his property without compensation. In response, Guatemala argued that Liechtenstein could not file a suit on behalf of Nottebohm because he had fewer ties to the country. It was evident that Nottebohm had closer ties to Germany and Guatemala and, in fact, probably had more ties to Guatemala. Consequently, it was ruled that Liechtenstein could not make any real claim on behalf of Nottebohm. Nottebohm was simply using that citizenship to protect his interests elsewhere. So Guatemala had no obligation to recognize such a nationality, nor any claims attached to it.52 Thus, for those countries or people that are in the political and international mainstream, the laws on sovereignty and nationality conform to a sense of attachment to the territory and its people or economy. When disputes arise over nationality, this is the true test of what citizenship is. International courts have found that criteria for citizenship often include longtime residence, one’s interests, family or relatives, civic participation, and one’s loyalty or attachment to a certain country, which could be reflected in the family, among other things. However, differences in demographics, history, and culture make it impossible to have a singular conception of citizenship. On the other hand, very generally, the League of Nations and the United Nations have declared that citizenship shall be recognized by other states if the criteria are consistent with international custom and general principles of citizenship law. When disputes arise about nationality, the determining factors are often “social fact of attachment, genuine connection of existence, interests and sentiments, together with the existence of reciprocal rights and duties.”53 Hence, the individual is more attached to the population of one state than that of any other state.54 Connection to the territory, in general, in combination with interest can therefore be linked to sovereignty and the development of modern citizenship. Although these ties are not abstract, they are more generally conceived than were attachments and identities in premodern times. Citizenship thus comprises the above criteria—jus sanguinis and jus soli, family and business ties, and national identity—on a formal level and formulates an ideal citizen. The combination of these factors leads to a norm or ideal citizen to which inhabitants or hopeful immigrants must conform. T. H. Marshall states that “societies in which citizenship is a developing institution create an image of an ideal citizenship against

Citizenship and Political Identity



33

which achievement can be measured and towards which aspiration can be directed.”55 Brubaker notes, however, that it is not just a territorial status but also that of membership.56 Territory and membership are linked where the political territory often presupposes the membership. Lastly, citizenship is not just legal, but social and cultural. It is an “instrument of social closure” and this includes the territorial border, universal suffrage, universal military service, and naturalization. These criteria are important for noncitizens wanting to enter the country and especially those fleeing poverty or political repression. With increased global travel, the growth of transnational firms, political crises that cause exodus or deportation, and political economic arrangements such as the European Union, citizenship rights in one country affect other countries in numerous ways. Indeed, with increasingly transnational and global forces, states are reformulating citizenship and immigration policy as well as effecting changes in international law regarding individuals and businesses. Rather than necessarily weakening sovereignty, these governments still confer civil rights, regulate welfare and the labor market, and administer and guarantee political rights. In the European Union, the question of citizenship is arguably more important now as other forces within the Union (such as borders and even voting rights) become more fluid. In a different context, in the United States, the conclusion of one Supreme Court case, Trop v. Dulles, further supports the idea that citizenship is a significant identity. In this case, it was suggested that the defendant be stripped of his citizenship because of wartime desertion. However, the opinion was that “[t]he civilized nations of the world are in virtual unanimity that statelessness is not to be imposed as punishment for crime.” Therefore, “statelessness” fell under the rubric of cruelty where the death penalty did not.57 In the Nottebohm case, described above, the court remarked that “naturalization is not a matter to be taken lightly. To seek and to obtain it is not something that happens frequently in the life of a human being. It involves his breaking of a bond of allegiance and his establishment of a new bond of allegiance.”58 These two well-known cases evidence the importance that citizenship has had since World War II. It not only encompasses an individual’s ties to a certain country but also the privileges and protection of that country. Accordingly, citizenship on a formal level is significant to potential exiles or refugees and also affects internal state sovereignty and international relations of the host country. It provides the possibility for an abstract

34




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

notion of home and belonging, as well as the physical location of home. Alternatively, the uprooting of the nation-state inevitably brings about homelessness, as well. Statelessness—a subject I will discuss at length in chapter 5—is a growing phenomenon that only emphasizes the importance of citizenship. Hannah Arendt, in writing about the Jews and other victims of the Nazis losing their homes after World War II, believes that the phenomenon of homelessness itself has been nothing new. Rather, “what is unprecedented is not the loss of a home but the impossibility of finding a new one. Suddenly, there was no place on earth where migrants could go without the severest restrictions, no country where they would be assimilated, no territory where they could found a new community of their own.59 After World War II, there was mass displacement and the issue of refugees came to the forefront of politics. The radical statelessness Arendt describes can arise for a variety of reasons: for example, it can result from the internal exile of certain groups or individuals (for example, those fleeing from civil war or ethnic hatred, such as the Kosovars); the disenfranchised status of certain people or groups within a country (for example, the Roma or Gypsies60 in many European countries); or groups of people fleeing repression or other problems in one country and placed in camps by the target or host country (for example, Haitian boat people attempting to reach the United States or immigrants perceived to be criminal within the United States—in both cases, their countries of origin have been unwilling to take them back and the United States has resisted allowing them to assimilate into the population).61 Alternatively, sovereignty both internally and externally can only be established when the country has diplomatic ties to other countries or membership in the United Nations. Countries encountering problems with this in the past have been Andorra, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland. More modern examples would be the Palestinians (up until recently, perhaps) and some countries in Eastern Europe and Africa. Thus, members of polities that are not officially recognized are stateless in a formal sense. In current times, Giorgio Agamben claims that statelessness has become widely accepted as the norm, as evidenced by the existence of free zones in airports for those holding no passport or camps (refugee camps) for such people. As he remarks, what is normally a temporary suspension of order based on a factual state is “given a permanent spatial arrangement that nevertheless remains outside the normal order.”62 The result is that the state of exception is now permanent. Agamben con-

Citizenship and Political Identity



35

cludes that the political system doesn’t organize forms of life in determinate space but rather in dislocating localization (for example, in a refugee camp).63 Or, to put it differently, the political system gives a nonresponse to those without political membership. People without a country or refugees are simply held in limbo rather than being given an alternative political membership.64 This limbo cannot be characterized as democratic as its inhabitants have little freedom to decide how and where they want to live. Moreover, there is no recourse to justice without the support of some nation-state. In this way, individuals are treated as bare, biological life rather than political individuals (citizens) and are accordingly, subject to the prerogative power normally reserved for a state of emergency. The consequence of this is that these individuals are treated punitively simply because of their political status (just as, I will argue, the homeless are treated on a domestic level). Ironically, it is increased territorial boundedness and the notion that each person has a true homeland that gives rise to radical displacement. Therefore, on a formal level, recent citizenship has developed alongside the negative space of noncitizenship and democratic power alongside the normative deployment of prerogative power. In sum, the more formal dimensions of citizenship involve economic independence or contribution, some degree of jus soli or jus sanguinis, and the imprint of the nation and state sovereignty on citizenship. All of these criteria lead to the formulation of a norm imposed both internally and externally, which will allow some to be at home politically and others to be excluded, or homeless. These criteria reflect the far more stringent criteria of citizenship since the world wars, on the one hand, and the notion that territorial borders are natural rather than political constructions on the other. Accordingly, the logic of the nation-state as the sovereign unit is that each individual has a place: there is no room for refugees, exiles, and people without a passport; analogously, domestically, there is no place for the homeless given the fiduciary nature of citizenship. In this way, the natural division that is perceived between poor and wealthy articulates with the natural and biological distinctions made in contemporary nationalist ideologies. Nationality—how a nation-state defines itself and its people—is a separate issue in citizenship and yet closely linked to the interplay of economic independence (most notably in the United States), jus sanguinis, and jus soli. The processes of inclusion and exclusion are how the nation-state becomes the abstract home of the populace.

36




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

Social Dimensions of Citizenship

Nationalism in the Modern State and the Homogeneous Ideal There has been a transition from the concrete family and village in feudal times to the abstract national family that makes up national identity in Western countries in general and the United States specifically, in contemporary times. Within the nation-state, nationalism and national identity are highly abstract but important in determining citizenship and identity. The nation, as an artificially constructed community, replaced the old ties of feudalism, personal relations, and kinship. In transcending local particularities and what was perceived as the arbitrary nature of personal relations, national identity was necessarily conceived of as unitary (for example, one language, one culture, one territory) and abstract: as Benedict Anderson argues, “all communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact (and perhaps even these) are imagined.”65 However, to say that national identity is conceptual or imaginary is not to say that it is completely arbitrary or lacking in vitality. Rather, the problem lies in conceiving of national boundaries as natural and thus ignoring the historical development, not to mention human agency, that led to these borders. In this way, territory is conceived of as unitary and fixed in time and physical space. Accordingly, for example, Haitian boat people are thought to belong in Haiti in spite of political and economic connections that the United States has formed with Haiti. On the other hand, the centrality of the nation-state can also be seen when Haiti refuses to take refugees back and thus they remain in limbo. Alternatively, the Palestinians belong nowhere because notions of territorial integrity supersede considerations of humanity. The difference between lived experience and national identity is analogous to the distinction Nicholas Xenos has written about in Roman political thought in which two fatherlands were conceived “one by birth [nature] and one by law. . . . Two patriae: one of location and nature and one of citizenship; one encompassing the other; one to return to for leisure and reflection and one to die for.” The legal identity is no less real than the lived experience in that it has a history and language, for example. However, what the latter demands is that “individual identities [be] sublimated into common nationalities, heterogeneous experiences of home erased and rewritten as homogeneous myths of the homeland.”66 In contrast, “to be rooted involves a complex set of relationships that

Citizenship and Political Identity



37

make acting possible,” where Simone Weil’s term “’community’” characterizes this rootedness.67 To put it differently, the rather static view of the nation-state with regard to national identity or territorial boundaries in their current manifestations does not allow for a more agonistic, contingent, and ultimately, democratic politics or identity. Further, in contrast to the universality and neutrality valued by liberal thought (even if not perfectly practiced), contemporary nationalism has developed along a different trajectory. As Rogers Brubaker argues, political identity is inextricably linked to nationhood. He claims that it centers more on self-understanding (identity) than self-interest. That is, citizenship is not just functional but moral and symbolic. For example, the French talk of “will,” “value,” and “dignity” and the German national conception and identity often take precedence over economic interest68 (for example, denying Turkish guest workers political rights or naturalization even when they are important to the economy). This tension is also reflected in Eastern Europe in the treatment of refugees and the Roma. In this way, the construction of an essentialized national identity, whether intentional or not, forms a homogenous ideal of the population and citizens. This leads to both external and internal political and economic exclusion, not to mention a significant emotional dynamic that is conceptually absent in democratic processes. That nationalism does not have a necessary connection to democracy is evidenced in the fact that the statist version of nationalism can exist in any type of political regime. As Michael Walzer argues, nationalism “requires no political choices and no activity beyond ritual affirmation.”69 Nationalism serves to formulate political identity just as citizenship formulates political power, where the two can be united (as in the work of Carl Schmitt) even when contradictory. In the context of the modern state, this political identity—because particular, essential—necessarily formulates an Other, both internal and external. For example, if political power is defined in capitalistic terms of individual responsibility and socially meaningful labor, the Other is the welfare recipient, the poor or illegal immigrant, single mothers with part-time employment, and minorities who are discriminated against on the job market. In the United States, English is the defining language between included and excluded and Christianity the core religion.70 What is more, Others are identified in monolithic terms, even in the face of the myriad of possibilities of alterity. Some examples are the homeless, an incredibly diverse population that is nevertheless viewed from the vantage point of a few stereotypes; feminists

38




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

defined simply as “feminazis”; or the assumption that African Americans all have the same grievances or political viewpoint; and so on. The notion that there is one culture and one identity to be protected at the national level can be formulated negatively, for example as efforts to impose “English only” policies in government agencies and schools; strong reactions against multiculturalism, and the perception that immigrants somehow threaten our culture and national identity. The rise of multicultural, feminist, gay and lesbian, and ethnic movements and thought are a response to the imposition of a homogeneous ideal.71 Last, the rhetoric of “family values” arguably alienates gays and lesbians, single mothers, and others who do not fit this political and cultural norm. In essence, national identity in a liberal capitalist state may take on the substance of values in liberalism and capitalism, even as the processes and aims of power work differently at the national level.

Nationalism, Liberalism, and State Power In this context, the groups that have been disenfranchised and economically disempowered are not simply a contemporary phenomenon or somehow outside of the liberal context (or unanticipated by liberal writers). Rather, the status of women, people of color, and indigenous peoples, for example, was accounted for in at least three ways: 1) through the construction of rationality where these groups have been argued to be less capable of rational thought (even in the recent present, biological arguments such as those in The Bell Curve72 served as a justification to eliminate Affirmative Action in California, for example);73 2) the notion of economic independence where these groups were presupposed to be the support for white male economic independence through unpaid or cheap labor; and 3) the construct of each of these groups as representing the natural in different manifestations and of being naturally poor, irrational, and embodying sexuality in various ways. With regard to the last point, there are a variety of examples: the view of Native Americans as primitive; the portrayal of African American men as sexually predatory and bestial (for example, Rodney King, the “gorilla”74); women being defined by their capability to reproduce; and the homeless described as animalistic and foragers. Thus, these “outsiders” are viewed as embodying the biological and natural and as naturally unfit for active citizenship. Consequently, it could be argued that identity is an integral part of citizenship as much as economic concerns and the two are inextricably linked.

Citizenship and Political Identity



39

Accordingly, for example, women’s political identity is as women (irrational, economically dependent, representing the biological/ family/natural sphere); it is not conceived of in neutral or empty terms, but rather a paradigm of the feminine that signals women’s substantialized citizenship. As Marx noted in “On the Jewish Question,” citizenship in the liberal state is not really one of equality but of difference. “On the Jewish Question” poses a challenge to Marx’s later economic arguments because he believes that Jews are excluded from citizenship based on their religion rather than because they are poor. This implies that while work and its related attributes is perhaps a defining factor in determining citizenship, norms of citizenship have been tacitly established based on identity, too. In this, the historical development of citizenship does not necessarily break away from the liberal tradition as much as it illuminates prerogative power in the liberal capitalist state. That is, the contemporary norm of citizenship is both in the liberal tradition and yet antithetical to it—just as Locke’s beliefs about and exclusions of the poor, women, and criminals, for example, are consistent with his focus on paid, full-time work but contradict his notion that we are all God’s creatures and therefore should be politically equal. As discussed above, Locke guarded against extreme poverty and starvation, drawing upon his religious beliefs to interpret natural law: all should be provided for and slavery or extreme coercion should only be the result of a just war. Thus, he argued for a communal interpretation of passive citizenship rights as well as a protection against some forms of tyranny. Nevertheless, a conception of passive citizenship implies that coercion is acceptable. The poor, who were explicitly the Other would still be subjected to the coercion of poorhouses but this time, due to merit and individual pathology rather than the noble distinctions he rejected.75 As work was tied to rationality, those who performed unpaid or low paid work were then categorized as irrational and unfit for citizenship. This view was stated explicitly by Locke in his political exclusion of women, atheists, children, and “ideots.”76 Consequently, it could be argued that these groups were naturally unfit for active citizenship and that the protection of passive citizenship would entail guidance, discipline, and thus coercion. While poor men may change their circumstances, women’s role as naturally the caretakers, homemakers and child bearers was presupposed to support and provide for male independence.

40




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

Thus, women’s natural role has been inextricably linked to the construction of the autonomous male citizen. They are simultaneously given many responsibilities and yet labeled as irresponsible in the political realm. To put it differently, women and especially poor women were and are perhaps less superfluous economically, than poor men, on the one hand (or viewed as more malleable because of their alleged fragility). On the other, their political status is tied to a paradigm of passivity, they are “naturally” relegated to the home, and this is more profound with poverty. The hard work and execration of luxury of ascetic beliefs was perhaps applied to the whole population by thinkers like Locke. However it also reflected a desire to tame the natural and irrational elements. In the poorhouse, it was a more naked form of coercion. While Locke viewed coercion and limited political rights as acceptable to a certain level, he also safeguarded against its abuse on a widespread level by holding political leaders to the law and allowing for the right to revolution.77 He did not conceive of an internal political Other as enemy. Hobbes, in contrast, saw political equality (with similar exclusions and justifications as Locke) in the midst of absolute state power. Prerogative power and violence, then, were not simply designed to deal with an external enemy but also an internal enemy. The possible abuse of power was worth the risk in the face of internal instability. The work of Carl Schmitt evidences the dual strands of power—the legitimacy and will of the people (Locke) and the power of the state (Hobbes)—in liberalism as it developed in the modern nation-state. Where the two clash, the power of the state trumps the power of the people (in contrast to the Lockean model). Accordingly, questions of national security can be solved by means that are less than democratic, in the form of state power, because it is reasoned that only with national security can democracy be allowed to flourish. The extreme examples of this are the internment of the Japanese during World War II and the surveillance and detainment of Middle Easterners residing in the United States now. Arguably in the United States, governmental power was at first closer to the Lockean conception of governance and legitimacy. However, with the increasing control of the federal government during and after the Civil War, as well as the development of the United States into a modern nation-state, the tension between disperse local power and centralized, prerogative power became more pronounced.78 The increase in federal power had a more homogenizing effect and the idea of national identity became much more important.

Citizenship and Political Identity



41

This tension became more profound with a second wave of increased bureaucracy (with the beginnings of the welfare state) and federal power during the Great Depression.79 The dispersion and augmentation of bureaucratic power not only reflected this transformation from a country that had held states’ rights to be of supreme importance to a nationally defined conception of governance, thus marking the transition to a modern nation-state, it also gave rise to a branch of the government that is shaped by prerogative power rather than democratic power. It can be asserted that bureaucracy’s roots were democratic in principle: to establish an impartial authority that allows for equality before the law. Nevertheless, bureaucratic power is characterized by life tenure, appointed positions, hierarchical power, and inflexibility with regard to cases outside established rules. In effect, the deployment of bureaucratic power is characterized by Weber as “practically unshatterable” in comparison to mass or communal action. This is because the bureaucrat has no individual power and bureaucratic organization, while permanent in the modern state, can be manipulated to serve different interests.80 Thus, in contrast to the democratic safeguard of revolution provided by Locke, bureaucracy makes “’revolution,’ in the sense of the forceful creation of entirely new formations of authority, technically more and more impossible. . . .” Bureaucratic authority is difficult to challenge, either by the elected government or the populace, not only in the face of its expertise but also because of its proclivity for secrecy.81 Indeed, bureaucratic rationality, which is often based on efficiency rather than justice, works according to internal logic and self-perpetuating power. On a larger societal level, its administration may not be rational at all. Further, as Foucault remarks, bureaucracy creates a network of power that lacks any one source of responsibility.82 In this way, the logic of bureaucracy, preregative power, and nationalism are not at odds. The confluence of these forces can be seen in the policies and administration of the Poor Laws, for example, in that indigents could be deported to the colonies, whipped, or lose an ear. Consequently, prerogative power and nationalism have not been conceived as merely categories of political power reserved for international relations but inform citizenship. This strand of liberal thought justifies nondemocratic (coercive, hegemonic) power in the liberal context and presupposes an internal Other. The dual nature of this power has been deepened with the historical development of capitalism and the growth of bureaucracy. Internal stability and the justification of coercion become more important in this context. The growth

42




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

of the modern nation-state reinforces the priority of stability over justice or equality. National identity synthesizes the exclusions discussed above in constructing paradigms of Others. The power dynamic of the modern nation-state thus constitutes a political identity for those who are different against which citizenship is formulated. That we have a national identity that challenges the notion of a neutral, empty universal of citizenship has been disputed.83 However, national identity has been evident in 1) the internal friend/enemy antithesis conceived of by Machiavelli, Hobbes, and later Carl Schmitt; 2) the American history of slavery and racism that betrays the jus sanguinis element of citizenship; 3) the American history of nativism, for example, against the Irish, Catholics, German, Chinese, and so on; and 4) capitalism as a key part of national identity (why we attempt to export it, in that political and economic aims are viewed as one). The binarism of self and other in political identity and citizenship undermines the notion of a universal citizenship. In the modern nation-state, notions of self-determination and homeland, on the one hand, and citizenship and political identity on the other reflect a desire for order, control and stability and yet illuminate how this process is inherently unstable.

Passive Citizenship, Protection, and Bodily Integrity Thus, the political identity of certain groups is still political but does not necessarily fall under the rubric of full citizenship. Women, for example, as a class are a group to be protected on the one hand, and violable on the other. While protection is linked to the privilege of race and class, as Wendy Brown notes,84 protection and violation are mutually reinforcing tensions. Women are “protected” from military combat, for example, and yet still commonly excluded from public office or the presidency for the same reasons. In the meantime, their violation—for example, through domestic abuse and rape—is often viewed as a private matter or even the result of a woman “asking for it.” In fact, it has been argued that women who step out of the demure and passive role implied by protection are given their dues through acts of violation and violence. Overall, this tension signals a feeling of propriety marked by violence about women by the state and what is constructed as male power. This division between men and women has also manifested itself in other ways. It strongly determines who can become an officeholder and occupy important positions in the military,85 and moreover influences

Citizenship and Political Identity



43

laws that “protect” women and thus act as a moral guardian of women’s virtue.86 For example, when studying Supreme Court decisions, it can be seen that decisions are made to cast women in a passive role where they are both protected and exploited.87 The implication is that those considered irrational (not fit for making political decisions) require the guardianship of those who are rational. What this implies on a broader level is that full citizenship involves more autonomy than does secondclass citizenship or complete disenfranchisement. Legislation, court decisions, and cultural mores enable full citizens to participate in civic life and the market and to exist freely. Those who are not full citizens are subject to laws that are often made without their consultation, with the view that they need to be protected in their decision making and are treated as irresponsible, primitive, or irrational. Nevertheless, it is not only women who are engaged in the tension between the protection of passive citizenship and physical violation. The notion of “bodily integrity”88 is an important facet of informal membership that is not widely discussed in mainstream literature on citizenship, but is important on a very real level to many individuals. To put it bluntly, violence is acceptable when it is perpetrated upon individuals of color, illegal immigrants,89 the homeless,90 gays and lesbians, children, and women, for example.91 What bodily integrity implies is that certain individuals do not have full protection of the law when their safety is compromised. Additionally, these individuals or groups are more likely to be victims of violence than others, whether by citizens or police officers.92 Thus, whether an individual who falls into this group is attacked by another citizen or by a police officer, social mores and the law very often let the perpetrator off the hook. In contrast, a full citizen can receive the protection of the law where bodily integrity is concerned. Furthermore, it is not culturally acceptable to attack these individuals. For all others, justice is a crapshoot and violence is very often acceptable or even encouraged. (In the following chapters, I will discuss the connection between the treatment of individuals as bare or biological life and Foucault’s notion of biopower).

Conclusion Thus, in analyzing the criteria for formal citizenship, substantive oppositions are both played out and obscured, as evidenced by the more informal criteria. The confluence of state, economic, and cultural power

44




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

sets the parameters of belonging and determines which identities are acceptable. Nationalism, questions of employment, and state sovereignty lead to the formation of an essentialized national identity and necessarily to exclusion. However, what is of interest is not the exclusion per se but the nature of these exclusions. Because the state has tacitly established criteria for citizenship based on economic contribution and a homogeneous norm of identity, the universal political equality and freedom that is supposed to mark this membership is a myth. In fact, the political exclusions that have developed with the growth of the nation-state and liberal capitalism problematize the degree to which anyone is truly free. Second, the exercise of prerogative power, which was originally conceived to be deployed only in foreign relations or in a state of emergency, has evidently become the norm in the modern state, rather than a state of exception. Consequently, those who are free are simply a product of these broader relations. Paradoxically, the most naked form of state power has historically been directed to the poor and other economic dependents while, simultaneously, it has been denied that there is or was such a thing as wealth discrimination. In this way, it was argued that the state was neutral even as economic status was the supreme value and that prerogative power was reserved for criminals on the one hand, and children, the insane, and others perceived as less rational (women, indigenous peoples, and African Americans, for example), on the other. Accordingly, it has been contended, the liberal capitalist state was and is universal. Nevertheless, Marx noted in his early writings that the state, in the attempt to negate particularity by granting individual (civil) liberties, was formulating its universality in terms of difference on the one hand, and conceptually displacing the locus of difference to civil society on the other. Thus, the problems of racism and sexism could be neutralized by extending the franchise, broadening civil liberties, and supplanting the issues of racism and sexism to the civil sphere (even if gender and racial categories were retained in government policy and decision making and flourishing in cultural and societal realms). However, because economic class has been treated as malleable, where gender and race are not, the problem of economic status and wealth discrimination has never been resolved, even in this minimalist way. For example, although race is a protected category under U.S. Supreme Court decisions (“suspect”) and gender is less so (“middle-level”), there has been a long history of denial that there is any type of wealth discrimination. This denial has appeared

Citizenship and Political Identity



45

in cases regarding unequal education and discrimination against the construction of low-income housing, among others.93 The refusal to recognize that unequal education is discriminatory is especially interesting because differences in school systems in the United States are based on property taxes alone. In most cases, however, it has been stated that wealth, unlike race, can be changed. Evidently, this applies to poor children as well as adults. The denial of wealth discrimination is further evidenced in the franchise and the uneven expenditure of local, state, and federal money in poor neighborhoods. First, there is a perception by the poor that their vote is impotent,94 which is often coupled with barriers to voting, including difficulty in access to facilities, harassment, and lack of time because of low-paid jobs that require long hours or the absence of daycare.95 Further, the uneven expenditure of government moneys can be seen in the state of poor neighborhoods where there is less transportation, poor road conditions, more violence, and at times, police blockades or walls that physically separate the poor from the middle class or rich.96 Nonetheless, other factors demonstrate that poverty is not the only basis of exclusion. For example, denial of civil rights and judicial review to gays, lesbians, and bisexuals evidences exclusion based on a norm of citizenship (national identity). Racial categories are another sort of exclusive norm where at least one modern state bases its citizenship on jus sanguinis and many others exclude or limit the numbers of immigrants of color. Citizenship thus is based on economic criteria as well as a conception of national identity that excludes those deviating from the norm. Nevertheless, one does not preclude the other; rather, materialist arguments have been forcefully made that connect discrimination based on identity to economic subordination and the need for cheap or unpaid labor.97 That is, the history of denigration of a racial or gendered Other is linked to the need for cheap or unpaid labor in the same way that the working or unemployed poor have served as an industrial reserve army in the past, (as do many immigrants in contemporary times). National identity thus can serve a role in preserving this economic and political hierarchy, even as circumstances and power dynamics change (and even if nationalism and capitalist logic merely have an “elective affinity” rather a direct causal relation). Further, the importance of family values in a liberal capitalist state can be viewed in terms of the liberal assumption that a nuclear family and the running of the household economy was and is

46




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

the precondition for the political and economic independence of the liberal individual.98 In this way, the rhetoric of family values and the consequent homophobia and sexism can be viewed in terms of both national identity and liberal capitalist logic. In other words, there is often a material basis for homogeneous norms that evolve from nationalist ideology. On the other hand, with increased territorial boundedness and stricter norms of national identity after WWI, there has been both mass displacement and political vulnerability for refugees, exiles, and poor immigrants. These exclusions have lead to varying degrees of citizenship. Partial citizenship is manifested indirectly in that certain groups do not hold in any substantial or consistent way corporate or political power. Rather, laws and Supreme Court decisions are often made in a paternalistic fashion leading either to cultural and economic disempowerment or an absence of protection, and where the personal safety of partial citizens is less than that of a full citizen. This middle range of citizenship is inconsistent and unreliable and yet can benefit the recipient at times, also.99 Altogether, women and minorities may have formal rights but suffer in other ways, reflecting what T. H. Marshall has noted as an increased awareness of rights (or lack thereof) in relation to citizenship distinct from participation. At the other end of the scale are the homeless, a group with which other excluded groups may overlap. It is impossible for the homeless to be the political equals of full citizens. Due to their perceived economic dependence or not making an economic contribution, the homeless lose civil rights and enter a nondemocratic space. Thus, where other groups were recently integrated into the franchise, the homeless have been the last group to be included and this is still precarious. Second, as T. H. Marshall has indicated, with the acceptance of economic dependence, the poor cede civil rights. Marshall believes that this leads to protection in exchange for submission to the welfare system. However, protections are only offered to those willing to assimilate while the homeless outside of the system are subject to criminalization. Those who accept welfare or enter into the shelter system are protected but still lose rights (and are subject to coercion and authoritative policies that curtail their freedom). Alternatively, those who live on the street (visible homeless) or in abandoned buildings, cars, or under bridges, for example (the invisible homeless), are not only unprotected but also suffer the loss of rights. Both of these broad groups are noncitizens until they are rehabilitated by the system or erased through local governments’ efforts. (This will be discussed

Citizenship and Political Identity



47

further in the next two chapters). They cannot even occupy public space because citizenship is inextricably tied to their worth as human beings. In this way, the homeless are punished for their status rather than any criminal act. Thus, the homeless are not merely forgotten, left alone, or given greater freedom and their status is by no means neutral. Rather, they are subject to coercion under the guise of protection or criminalization and hence divested of citizenship. Consequently, for the homeless, poor immigrants, and refugees, citizenship is certainly not meaningless. Rather, they experience an uprooting both on practical and political levels that is symptomatic of the modern nation-state and liberal capitalism. The legal limbo that they encounter illuminates the growth of prerogative power accounted for by liberal thinkers and yet reinforced and deepened by the formation of the modern nation-state. Accordingly, it cannot be argued that poor immigrants or the homeless are somehow freer than mainstream individuals. Rather, they are operating with limited mobility, blocked entry, and the very real threat of coercion and violence. In fact, without citizenship, the power that these individuals and groups encounter is of an entirely different nature than that experienced by full citizens. In liberal terms, home both allows for and represents an individual’s ability for selfpreservation and thus represents the capacity for reason. More broadly, the home is a precondition for citizenship just as the homeland is a precondition for political autonomy and action. In sum, the establishment of political norms based on economic status and attempts at homogeneity for nationalistic purposes betray the problematics of any citizenship in a modern democracy. Homelessness, however, is the ultimate signal of disenfranchisement as it illuminates the normative exercise of state power domestically. As argued above, in a liberal capitalist state, economic contribution often marks the distinction between partial and total enfranchisement, while home marks the point between any degree of political incorporation. Labor and participation in the market constitute a primary contribution to society while being housed represents economic independence and rationality. Given the polarities of self/Other, citizen/noncitizen, native/foreign and so on, this dynamic implies a simple dialectical opposition when in fact, just as there are varying degrees of citizenship, there are various versions of homelessness. As Marx argued in “On the Jewish Question,” the key is not simply to negate difference but to positively transcend particularities. That is,

48




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

the mere granting of civil rights or the vote or reforming wealth classifications is insufficient. Rather, political freedom will only be possible when difference, identity, and economic status are not reified in political ideology and practice, when they are not essentialized. This is, in fact, the only possible way to achieve what early liberals argued for: political equality in spite of economic differences. Nevertheless, with regard to the significant gaps in wealth that allow for homelessness, if capitalist logic were not applied to all areas of life save the market, economic differences would diminish and homelessness would be viewed as unacceptable. (For example, as Karl Polanyi has suggested, if labor were not treated as a commodity, there would be an important societal transformation for the better). In this way, incentives to sustain differentiation over the recognition of our interrelatedness would be decreased. More radically, it should also be recognized that citizenship needs to become more open to foreigners for reasons that will be explored in chapter 5 and thus, I will advocate a more cosmopolitan citizenship. To put it differently, the limits of the nation-state as well as the false construction of it as entirely natural need to be challenged and rethought. The radical liberal claims that self-preservation is a right and not a privilege and communal responsibility supersedes that of the individual would both undermine the centrality of the nation-state as well as the logic of Schuld, which positions the poor as debtors to society. It follows that citizenship is having the cultural, economic, political, and social space in which one can pursue one’s individual and community life. The home symbolizes this space as well as placing a very real barrier between the individual and the world. Full citizenship with all its connotations necessitates a relatively steady, secure place of residence as it reflects economic independence and status and allows one to participate in political life. Nevertheless, this is not to say that the home or citizenship should be marked as pure or free of tension. Rather, a reconceptualization of the home and citizenship as less bounded, more temporary, and a site of difference and potential conflict will allow all to exist. As it is now, the nation state offers an ideal of membership that cannot be realized. Thus, homelessness, physically or politically, is inevitable. If homelessness is statelessness, perhaps this is the unsettling we all need. The home—which is really identity, memory, relationships, and most importantly, freedom—may not have to be permanent or rigid but it does need to be constant. This type of freedom will only be realized when territories are more fluid and citizen-

Citizenship and Political Identity



49

ship is not defined by singular criteria such as economic contribution or ethnicity. However, fluidity will only exist when the “existential anguish”100 that is a reaction to the Other, social dislocation and radical difference are accepted as part of the human experience by all in a polity and are thus not reified or marginalized. In the next chapter, I will explore the meanings of both the abstract home and the physical location of home, as well as Otherness and homelessness. Thus, I will attempt to expand the notion of political identity that has been so narrowly constructed with citizenship.

Chapter 3

Das Unheimliche

There is no place for a homeless person. I always feel out of place, no matter where I am. I feel I shouldn’t be there, I’m not wanted there. . . . I feel I’ve lost my citizenship. I have no rights and no responsibilities. No one cares what I do. I have no connection with the society I grew up in. —A homeless person, quoted in Eliot Liebow, Tell Them Who I Am I’ve been homeless off and on since 1992. I went through three or four shelter programs before I figured out that they weren’t the answer. The problem is that we are living in a country with a political system that supports poverty and homelessness. As a homeless person, I don’t want charity. I don’t want a shelter. I want political power. I want my human rights. . . . —Dave, a homeless man, quoted in Lauren Byrne, “Homeless People Share Their Experience During the Third Annual Radio Marathon on Homelessness,” January, 2000, in Spare Change, Jan. 11–24, 2001 What is irritating about poverty is that it is visible, and anyone who sees it thinks: You see, I’m being accused; who is attacking me? —Charles Baudelaire, The Madness of the Day

51

52




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

Introduction In Counterfeit Money, Jacques Derrida comments on the horror and contempt with which people hold beggars. They even feel self-righteous about this contempt: beggars, after all, have brought their misery upon themselves. Derrida notes that “the beggar represents a purely receptive, expending, and consuming agency, an apparently useless mouth.”1 The poor are always there; they signify endless, parasitic need. Money given to them represents a gift or a hand-out. They are different from us; they embody all of society’s pathologies: alcoholism, drug addiction, poor mothering, abuse, violence, and squalor. They are taking from us and not giving back. That is, the guilt of Schuld—which would imply a relationship, a type of responsibility and mutuality, between self and other—is transformed into debt and cements the separation of self and Other. It alters the relation from the complexity and boundlessness of human relations to a fiduciary exchange with limited roles and a beginning and end. In the modern nation-state, there are two principle reactions to the homeless and immigrants: demands for assimilation and criminalization. In either case, these demands spring from the desire to subsume the Other into the same or to radically expel the Other to maintain the purity of the (political) self. Both presuppose a radical separation of self and Other. That is, the subjectivity of citizenship is perceived as pure and unmarked by difference while difference is associated with the Other. The home as precondition for citizenship and symbol of industriousness is also idealized as “a place free of power, conflict, and struggle, a place—an identity, a private realm, a form of life, a group vision—unmarked or unriven by difference and untouched by the power brought to bear upon it by the identities that strive to ground themselves in its place.”2 Analogously, the exercise of state power in the homeland is most salient when trying to maintain stability and eradicate difference. Nevertheless, I will argue, the binary modes of self and Other that have been politicized so profoundly in modern times represent the repression (rather than the eradication) of difference, just as civil rights do not wholly solve societal problems but seemingly neutralize and displace them. The psychological split that is effected on political economic levels then allows for certain individuals to be treated as bare life. They are not viewed in human terms (as citizens) but denied the right to occupy public space. They can inhabit shelters but “Not in My Backyard” or they

Das Unheimliche



53

can escape political repression and wind up in a refugee camp or holding cell. In the end it is citizenship (and its preconditions) that guarantees that one can either occupy public space or move about freely in a country. In a world of increasing fluidity, citizenship is an abstraction and yet is our identitarian home. It grounds us (albeit problematically) in a world of seemingly global and impersonal processes. The historical process by which citizenship has become our most crucial identity—in either guaranteeing or precluding human existence—not only symbolizes the search for rootedness in an increasingly uprooted world, but also signifies a new emotional dynamic where it has become acceptable to allow thousands of people to be set adrift. This could only be possible if economic interest on the one hand, and raison d’état on the other, were the lenses with which we viewed people. Thus, for example, economic efficiency is viewed as more valuable than the preservation of all or the security of state is valued above the rights of refugees in holding cells. In the modern nation-state, the fiduciary nature of citizenship should be viewed as an effort to remove personal and emotional considerations from political ones. This is effected in part, in the increasing emphasis on the individual (and individual responsibility) over notions of political community; thus, “Schuld as debt seeks to deny the structural dependency of the self on an other, by confronting that other as creditor to debtor.”3 Nevertheless, even in attempts to extirpate the emotional or personal aspects of political relations in favor of neutrality and universality, the emotive content has merely changed rather than being erased. The early liberals appealed to moral sensibilities in valuing work over noble birth or idleness just as ascetic Protestantism gave meaning to capitalism, thus making the accumulation of wealth a sign of grace and election by God. Alternatively, the emotive content of nationalist ideology and the logic of raison d’état were meant to replace the home for homeland rather than merely starting from a tabula rasa. Indeed, the logic of the state necessarily appealed to emotions in order to transcend conventional morality and law. On a political economic level, the emotions that individuals felt for their village, town, or manor are now attached to the homeland, a larger and more abstract place. In this way, notions of home are reconceptualized in terms of homeland and primitive emotions attached to the home and self-identity are displaced onto citizenship and nation-state. For this reason, questions of citizenship are not a mere formality but imply a complex interweaving of political, economic, moral, and emotional

54




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

considerations. Accordingly, the binary mode of self and Other is not a simple matter of inside and outside, included and excluded. Rather, it evokes primitive emotions and irrational group processes that politicize difference and deepen the undecidability of immigrants and the homeless. Thus, the construction of poverty as politically and economically significant to existence has not been deconstructed but repressed (through the denial that wealth discrimination exists, for example) and the homeless represent this irresolvable tension. In the past, marginalized groups such as women and enslaved African Americans had their place, even as their disenfranchisement was based on economic dependence, irrationality, and their image as biological (less than human) beings. In contrast, the dislocation of the poor (for example, migrant workers), which increased with urbanization and, paradoxically, the growth of the nation-state, was unresolved and representative of instability. Accordingly, the poor were perceived as a threat to the state just as much as outside invaders. The uncanny presence of the homeless (masterless men, vagrants) was then viewed as a danger to state security. With the development of capitalism, the increase of bureaucracy, and the rise of the nation-state, the exercise of prerogative power augmented, as well as the friend/enemy distinction described by Carl Schmitt.4 This was increasingly possible as territories became more bounded and notions of citizenship more rigid. On the other hand, the growing affinity between capitalist logic and national identity (most notably in the United States, less so in Europe) would eventually achieve what had already been developing: the perception of the poor as debtors to society. In this way, the fiduciary nature of citizenship allowed for the ultimate reduction of the poor, especially the homeless, to subhuman status. Further, the release of traditionally placed peoples from their circumscribed roles has only added to the uncanny character of the homeless population. The diversity of the image of the homeless is then racialized and gendered (not to mention the effects of the deinstitutionalization movement) as it had not been before the 1960s. However, it is not the homeless themselves who have evoked these uncanny feelings. In fact, homelessness is poorly understood in mainstream media or policy, for example. Rather, it is the place they occupy given the constraints of capitalism, the fiduciary nature of citizenship that evokes Schuld and concern for internal national security that makes them uncanny. Alternatively, it is the uprooting of the nation-state over and above more local, realistic identities and experiences and the instability of capitalism, as well as its inadequacy as a logic applied to any other

Das Unheimliche



55

realm but the market, which ultimately produces feelings of uncertainty and insecurity in the mainstream. To put it differently, in this context, the home is tied to primitive emotions just as primitive feelings make up a core component of nationalism and national identity. Consequently, the homeless become the token of social and politicoeconomic anxiety, just as immigrants represent fears of instability and the loss of the nationstate (which has been exacerbated since September 11, 2001). As home and homeland represent processes of inclusion or exclusion, self/Other, independent/dependent, they are crucial to political identity and signify the difference between citizenship, partial citizenship, and noncitizenship. Accordingly, the immigrant as political Other could be argued to be a radical Other, whereas the homeless are a more familiar Other as uncanny neighbor. That is, the relation to the political and economic Other remains unresolved (and so, uncanny) and yet the attributes of these Others are posited as the opposite of qualities valued for citizens. In this way, Carl Schmitt’s friend/enemy antithesis captures the inside/outside dichotomy that characterizes the political status of citizen and noncitizen. In contrast, Sigmund Freud’s analysis of the uncanny (das Unheimliche) reflects this tension and yet leads to a more complex view of identity. Freud’s analysis of the uncanny, discussed below, deconstructs current views of identity and challenges the logic of antitheses such as home and homeless, interior and exterior, and friend and enemy. These oppositions inform current public policy and illuminate the overly simple identities (which often fall under the rubric of “good” or “bad”) emerging in the political context. The manifestation of these overly simple identities can be found in Carl Schmitt’s theory of the political, where political relations are reduced to the categories of friend and enemy. A liberal critic, Schmitt argued that for a state to be truly strong, it must recognize that political power operates according to norms and demands that are particular to politics alone. Schmitt feels that the liberal state has never offered a coherent theory of sovereignty because it has “attempted only to tie the political to the ethical and subjugate it to economics.”5 The primacy of the liberal individual has resulted in a state that cannot act, rendering it ineffective when dealing with the exception to all rules: war. The exceptional circumstance of war necessitates distinguishing between friend and enemy and is the essence of the political to Schmitt.6 In this way, the state of exception should guide political considerations. Hence, the political is based on antagonisms and exclusions

56




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

that evidence a constant tension in political power. The logical extension of Schmitt’s arguments is that the concept of the political entails the construction of identity through the effort to kill the Other, the enemy.7 Similarly, Max Weber notes, “It is absolutely essential for every political association to appeal to the naked violence of coercive means in the face of outsiders as well as in the face of internal enemies.” He adds that success in this context is only possible when power follows its own logic and dispenses with notions of ethics.8 Significantly, neither author views the exercise of state power as restricted to foreign relations: both conceive of external and internal enemies. Second, both authors reveal that prerogative power is in constant tension with the more ethical values of democratic or liberal power. Nevertheless, with the steady increase in numbers of homeless and refugees, the state of exception is no longer exceptional. Rather, it represents a constant tension with the more ethical values of liberal democracy such as universality, equality, neutrality, and justice (even as prerogative power was accounted for by writers such as Locke). In this way, the homeless and some immigrants are not simply cast aside but are test cases for the exercise of prerogative power. In contradistinction to the universality and neutrality claimed to define the modern state, Julia Kristeva claims that as an étranger, one is a problem, a desire; that one is never neutral.9 Schmitt’s friend/enemy antithesis reflects this tension in identifying the political Other: immigrants either remind us what a great country we live in (good) or are blamed for taking jobs from natives during tough economic times (bad); immigrants assimilate (good) or withdraw into separate enclaves (bad); people become homeless because of natural disaster (good) or because of teenage pregnancy or unemployment (bad); the homeless person can “rehabilitate” him or herself and serve as a model for the American dream (good) or act as a drain on the welfare system that is eating our tax dollars (bad). Moreover, Schmitt’s analysis illuminates the power dynamic that constitutes these relationships. That is, despite appearances to the contrary, relationships between self (native/citizen/housed) and Other (immigrant/noncitizen/homeless) and public policy in general are political—not private or individual. While universal ideals and alleged political equality of the state imply neutrality, the liberal capitalist state marginalizes those who are different. There is no neutrality on the subject of the Other because difference is not provided for, thus creating a dynamic of unresolved tension, and the good/bad construct leaves no room for complexity or alterity. With this logic, the Other is

Das Unheimliche



57

substantialized and self-identity is seen as a pure essence. Thus, although identity is complex and varying, self-identity and the Other are both viewed in this context as homogeneous and radically different from one another. In this way, the Other is viewed as contaminating the purity of the self. On the other hand, the Heideggerian strain of poststructuralism (for example, in Derrida) and an exploration of the uncanny relations that mark self and Other lead to a more complex, sophisticated, and ultimately “realistic” perspective. This chapter will consist of three parts. I will first examine notions of home and homelessness; second, I will refer to Freud’s “The Unheimliche” and certain psychoanalytic and philosophical treatments of the Other to interpret power dynamics between housed and homeless; and third, I will consider the political dynamics of the Unheimliche.

Home/Homeless I will develop what appears to be a paradoxical argument below: the homeless need homes and yet, it is our notion of home in liberal capitalism, on the one hand, and the modern nation-state, on the other, that makes homelessness inevitable. The homeless—and everyone else—need homes, but not just any homes. Rather, they need homes that are relatively stable (as discussed in the Introduction). Second, a “homeless” notion of home will, in fact, allow more people to be at home whether this is a question of housing, public space, or politicoeconomic identity and activity. Thus, the advocacy of a more homeless conception of home/homeland is not giving up on the idea of home altogether (as Iris Marion Young charges) but rather reconceptualizing the idea of home in such a way that what formerly defined home has been radically revised in order to become more inclusive. Clare Cooper Marcus states that the home “fulfills many needs: a place of self-expression, a vessel of memories, a refuge from the outside world, a cocoon where we can feel nurtured and let down our guard. A person without a fixed abode is viewed with suspicion in our society, labeled ‘vagrant,’ ‘hobo,’ ‘street person.’ The lack of a home address can be a serious impediment to someone seeking a job, renting a place to live, or trying to vote.”10 One way to read Marcus’s description of home is that it implies a sort of freedom that is impossible when one is homeless. It allows for integration into the economy and politics but also a space for self-fulfillment, intimate and family relationships, and privacy. Thus, home, by this

58




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

definition, is the precondition for freedom. It is also a symbol of self and self-identity.11 In contrast to a hotel room that may have all the amenities one needs, “[a] home . . . is personal in a visible, spatial sense.”12 As Iris Marion Young argues, “We are not the same from one day to the next because our selves are constituted by differing relations with others. Home as the materialization of identity does not fix identity, but anchors it in physical being that makes a continuity between past and present. Without such anchoring of ourselves in things, we are, literally, lost.”13 Home in this sense goes beyond a mere address or bureaucratic category. It is imbued with social and cultural meaning, not to mention that it is the precondition for political and economic activity and identity. However, this reading of the home as a precondition for freedom could be critiqued in that it is a freedom marked by withdrawal rather than active autonomy, which would entail confronting strangers and difference as well as one’s family and friends. What’s more, it presupposes that the home will always be safe, a “cocoon” rather than a site of domestic struggle, for example. Indeed, it has been attacked by feminists for being the site of women’s oppression and confinement as well as being viewed as a site of class privilege and exclusion. The latter criticism could be extended in two ways. Home as a site of privilege and exclusion reinforces the “possessive individualism” of liberal capitalism, on the one hand. Alternatively, an exclusive notion of home mirrors the territoriality and exclusion of the homeland/nation-state. What is difficult is the ambivalence of home. In contrast to Clare Cooper Marcus, Michelle Wallace notes that except in movies, there has never really been an “economic and social demilitarized zone to which people could escape.”14 That is, home as an ideal of true freedom cannot be realized. Further, this implies that not only is public space never truly neutral, but the home is marked by political, economic, and social considerations, not to mention the fear of outside incursion. Related to this, Karl Marx recognizes that home is a reflection of circumstances that transcend the individual and his or her private efforts: “[T]he cellar-dwelling of the poor man is a hostile dwelling, ‘an alien, restraining power which only gives itself up to him in so far as he gives up to it his blood and sweat’—a dwelling which he cannot look upon as his own home where he might at last exclaim, ‘Here I am at home,’ but where he finds himself in someone else’s house, in the house of a stranger who daily lies in wait for him and throws him out if he does not pay his rent. Similarly, he is also aware of the contrast in

Das Unheimliche



59

quality between his dwelling and a human dwelling—a residence in that other world, the heaven of wealth.”15 Marx observes that the stability of home can be outside of our control, whether that control lay in the hands of a landlord or circumstances such as layoffs, unemployment or underpaid work. Thus, for both Marx and Wallace the home is a site of the interplay of power and limited individual agency. Alternatively, Thomas Dumm suggests that homelessness is perhaps the unsettling we all need.16 Dumm indicates that what is needed is freedom in a world of boundaries and limitations. This view could be read as a critique of capitalism, territoriality and the modern nation state; there is too much possessiveness in and among modern nation states. Modern times have brought exclusion and expulsion on a mass level, not to mention domestic displacement because of gender, class and race. Bonnie Honig’s treatment of home as a political conception echoes Dumm’s: “The dream of home is dangerous, particularly in postcolonial settings, because it animates and exacerbates the inability of constituted subjects—or nations—to accept their own internal divisions, and it engenders zealotry, the will to bring the dream of unitariness or home into being. It leads the subject to project its internal differences onto external Others and then to rage against them for standing in the way of its dream—both at home and elsewhere.”17 The boundedness of homeland, as well as the boundedness of homeplace, presuppose a pure and unified subject or geographical area. With this presupposition, difference and strife are projected onto Others. For these reasons, the homeless (refugees, exiles, or the urban poor, for example), aside from any physical privation derived from their condition, suffer precisely because, as Wallace states above, there has not been a politically and economically neutral zone to which people can escape. If citizenship in the modern state signifies a new type of freedom and equality, homelessness contests notions of citizenship. It is a sign of a larger surveillance that all experience to varying degrees. Paradoxically, the homelessness that Dumm and Honig speak of could lead to finding a home (a view indebted to Deleuze and Guattari). This would only come about through a general loosening of borders and boundaries (undermining the homelessness Wallace describes), thereby allowing all in the modern nation-state to live freely. The perception of home as a site of withdrawal, purity, and freedom from anxiety is not merely cultural but ideological and political. Hence, how home is perceived helps one to understand the dynamics of freedom

60




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

through one’s lived or daily experience. The reaction to the homeless (and its relation to anti-immigration sentiment), which will be discussed below, evidences the view that home is predominantly conceived of in homogeneous terms. Home is conceptualized as the opposite of what homelessness is and what it represents. However, this is wishful thinking. On the one hand, home is much more than simply a structure and thus is marked by heterogeneity rather than sameness. The stability that is projected onto the home is therefore more a dream than a reality; it is characterized by flux and uncertainty. On the other hand, on a very basic level, it allows people a relative degree of freedom—even if it is only the freedom to shower, sleep, or have sex in privacy—that is no longer possible when homeless. Home can be viewed in relational terms. Home “places are articulated space; they are constituted out of an experience of space that makes it familiar.”18 That is, whether the home is a “cocoon” or not, it involves relations that go beyond the structure itself. In this way, home is necessarily heterogeneous and inherently marked by difference. For example, we may all want a place for private activities, but how we conceive of achieving this and where exactly is an individual matter. Nevertheless, this heterogeneity exists within a social context that makes relationships, neighborhoods, and daily routines possible. The urban character in most people’s lives means that the location of home can change even while other factors remain constant. The significant elements of a relatively stable home, then, are the network of relationships one has and the relative degree of autonomy that home affords to pursue these relationships and long-term goals. Therefore, home both is an identity that overlaps and transcends the identity of citizenship and is representative of the dynamics of power that situate identity. The concept of home involves relationships and activities and, ideally, the freedom to pursue these. The house can protect a person physically, emotionally, and socially even when it provides anxiety, too. In a relatively stable home, one can be safe in this space—neither one’s body nor one’s possessions are at an immediate risk of attack or robbery, as would be the case on the street or in a shelter. Moreover, identity and acknowledgment by others have the potential to exist and develop. It is here that having a social network is possible; the social network is made up of someone’s daily path and locale. It involves a person’s interactions with a fixed group of people, such as friends, family, neighbors, and coworkers, who can offer material, emotional, or logistical support.

Das Unheimliche



61

The social network also reflects repeated interactions, time spent with people or alone and where one spends this time and thus can be a timespace map.19 One’s daily activities and travels make up the daily path which includes daily habits, rituals, and repeated interactions with certain people.20 An individual’s locale is “symbolic of individual experiences and aspirations” and serves as “the focus of meanings or intention, either culturally or individually defined.”21 Control of one’s locale measures one’s social status and relative power within a community. Although these are idealized notions of the home, my argument is that the possibility of these relations cannot be the same with homelessness. Rather, homelessness can displace an individual from his or her social network, making it more difficult to maintain friendships or other relationships, or a job. Further, the house as home itself is a physical barrier to the elements and other people, thus (ideally) allowing for the pursuit of one’s interests unobserved and unhindered. The home—one’s identity, interests, and relationships and not just its physical location—offers the possibility of protection. Having a space is absolutely crucial to protect oneself, for self-development and interactions with others, and to mediate between one’s private life and public or civil activities. Ideally, the physical location of home can permit autonomy and privacy. As Gaston Bachelard states, “[T]he house allows us to say, I am an inhabitant of the world in spite of the world.”22 Nevertheless, this is only possible if the home is relatively stable; not all homes fit this minimal criterion. For example, Bachelard discusses a work by Françoise Minkowska in which she describes places where Jewish Polish children hid from the Nazis as “maisons immobiles.” The “maisons immobiles” do not reflect activity or life, there is no coming and going.23 This can be related to contemporary urban homelessness where people are doubled up24 (they must hide this in order to avoid eviction), living in abandoned buildings or under bridges (hiding from the view of the public or police), are women (homeless women often feel the need to hide more than men because of robbery and rape), or are housed but living with abuse. Similarly, Emmanuel Lévinas believes that a house is only a home when in use, when it has become a privileged utensil of utensils; the home is not the end but the condition, the tool of human activity.25 Essentially, there must be freedom to live in one’s home openly. Marx’s distinction above, between the poor man’s home and a “human” home, speaks to this differentiation. Lastly, home should provide stability even when its components—friends,

62




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

relatives, or the physical space—change. In contrast, homelessness can be the loss of some or all of these elements. Thus, as argued above, home is not merely a fixed address but a variety of relationships and locations that have at their core some type of stability and consistency and, ideally, support. These complex and multiple meanings reflect identity, memory, and interactions with others, among other things. In this way, the house or living space becomes a home when it has relative stability, as well as the freedom and privacy described above. However, it is also the site of emotion, conflict, and the possibility of loss. This complexity challenges the purity and stability that has been projected onto the home in policy, the media and culturally. Rather, as will be discussed below, primitive emotions are attached to home and homeland in ways that indicate the paradoxical situation that life in the modern nation-state (homeland) is more generally uprooted than ever before. If the physical location of home represents the ability to act freely, finding a home is impossible in modern times.26 Nevertheless, even when the home is less than ideal, its loss leads to a precariousness that is often markedly different from being housed and thus, a struggle to hold onto families, relationships, and possessions, among other things. To put it differently, if we are all relatively homeless in the modern world, the homeless and some immigrants are displaced doubly or triply. Homelessness in modernity is far more radical than in the past for this reason. The physical manifestation of homelessness can mean the disruption of various relationships that are home and signifies a type of unfreedom. The homeless individual who inhabits public space no longer has his or her space in which to pursue private interests. Moreover, the individual or family focuses on shorter-term needs revolving around survival more than long-term pursuits. The loss of one’s home leaves memory and only varying degrees of what made up an individual’s identity and social network. Homelessness is the “lack of time-space discontinuity . . . the absence of home base” and therefore, there is less contact with families and friends, as well as the possible loss of employment.27 It is marked by unpredictability and the absence of economic, political, and social security. The core of one’s life is disrupted through homelessness whether one is alone or with others, and whether one stays in a shelter or does not. One cannot exist as one did.28 The homeless represent the ultimate manifestation of this unfreedom in the difficulty that they experience inhabiting public space, attending to hygiene, or sitting on park benches. Those

Das Unheimliche



63

who are displaced are either subject to attempts at erasure from public view (for example, through camps or shelters, or being forced into other remote areas) or surveillance (discussed in the next chapter). The causes of homelessness will also be discussed in the next chapter, but overall I attribute them to at least three things. First, there is a shortage of affordable housing. This housing crunch evidences the value of profit over housing for all as well as prejudices against the poor, disclosed in zoning ordinances and Not in My Backyard policies blocking the building of shelters and low-income housing. Second, changes in the economy have led to a preponderance of a low number of high-income finance jobs, on the one hand, and a great deal of low paid, temporary, part-time jobs with no benefits on the other. This is a shift from the past when manufacturing jobs allowed people with poor education or job skills to earn wages with benefits in a workplace protected by unions and thus procure relatively stable homes. Third, it is often those who have been disenfranchised or otherwise marginalized historically who suffer due to economic change and availability of affordable housing: immigrants, women, and minorities. Nevertheless, white males make up the majority of the homeless (and those on the streets) and are certainly vulnerable to changes in the economy.29 In this way, the causes of homelessness are linked to the exclusive criteria of citizenship as well as the globalization of capital, which has transformed national economies into global ones, making jobs in any nation-state temporary, contingent, and unsafe. Some causes of homelessness are eviction, a building being condemned, real estate discrimination, loss of work or a cut in pay, losing in a divorce settlement, fleeing abuse, or gentrification. However, as stated above, the larger structural factors are lack of affordable housing, market values, and prejudice. There are many arguments about who is actually homeless: it is generally accepted that those in shelters are homeless, as well as those on the street, under bridges, or living in cars, shanty towns, or urban camps. Those at-risk of homelessness are people who are doubled up (or tripled or more) in apartments if they are not the primary tenants, those in abusive relationships, and those with insecure employment. Christopher Jencks believes that individuals or families in welfare hotels are not really homeless but that caseworkers label them homeless to get them on certain lists for aid.30 I disagree; welfare hotels are a temporary solution where the caseworker and family do not know how long the benefit will last. The space is often cramped and not

64




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

intended for a family but rather a couple and the conditions afford no privacy. Most significantly, they have no right to be there. The welfare hotel is simply one step away from a shelter. Just as welfare hotels are similar to some homeless shelters, it should be noted that very often staying in a shelter and being on the street are not much different. Precariousness marks both shelter stays and living on the streets. Indeed, a confluence of forces makes it difficult to exist autonomously once an individual is homeless. First, there is the problem of shrinking public space. This occurs through the creation of semiprivate spaces in shopping zones and business districts, overdevelopment, and gated communities, for example. Second, and related to business and customer concerns, there has been an increased number of ordinances outlawing sleeping or camping, urinating, or panhandling in public,31 which means that homeless individuals truly have very few places to go. While some of these ordinances have been challenged in courts, their number has increased overall in the United States and Europe. Accordingly, things most people take for granted such as eating at regular hours, sleeping for a decent amount of time, or being able to shower are struggles for the homeless, but not by their choice. While Wallace notes that there is no neutral zone to which one can escape, this is particularly true of the homeless. A homeless woman, Kim, remarks, “[T]hat is our last precious freedom, freedom to be outdoors on public property. When I was kicked out of the County Law Library for being homeless, I went to the Human Relations Commission to file a discrimination case. I was told I couldn’t do so. ‘There’s no place on the form to claim discrimination on the basis of homelessness.’”32 Further, given the increasing hostility towards the homeless, it is ironic that many shelters will not allow individuals to stay there during the day, regardless of the weather. Rather, they awake to the message (explicit or implicit): “‘Arise, it’s time to go; please do not leave any of your personal belongings, or hang around out front.’ The homeless wake up every morning to those words even during the winter months or on rainy days.”33 Another man comments, “When it is cold and raining at 7:30 at night, we have to stand outside and wait until 9:00 p.m. to get in.”34 In this way, it becomes extremely difficult to inhabit public or private space, much less exercise autonomous decision-making. These circumstances also lead to exposure to the elements, disease and death. In fact, it becomes difficult to protect oneself. For example, one man reports, “A couple of years ago homeless people were sleeping around the county building here and under shrubs. And the police came through

Das Unheimliche



65

under orders of the city council and they threw away sleeping bags and other personal effects and among those effects was the insulin belonging to a homeless woman with diabetes. They just scooped it up and tossed it into the dumpster.”35 Without a home, one’s possessions are not considered private property; nor is there a right to self-preservation. Similarly, another man comments, “I am not homeless . . . [but] I can remember a time when I was in Denver . . . and I had to drive around for hours just to make sure that my fuel wouldn’t freeze up. I can’t tell you how many people I saw that night that were just like walking ghosts and all the shelters were just stuffed full. And it was amazing that any normal city . . . wouldn’t have done something to open up any kind of facility. But the idea that hundreds of thousands of people are out there—you know, cavemen would have had logical ways of keeping warm in 15 below weather. But it becomes illegal to save your own life. You know, you can’t set up a tent; you can’t set up a little shelter; you can’t build a fire. It becomes illegal to save your own life.”36 A man staying in a tent damaged in a snowstorm in Boston describes how he felt: “I mean, it was really cold Monday morning. There was sleet coming down, it was snowing. I was standing there and I was freezing. I didn’t know what I was going to do. And it could happen. Even the amount of money that I made for the two days in the hotel, I had no money for food. . . .”37 While passersby may think a homeless individual is on the street by choice, this is not often the case. In recent years, shelters have been filled to capacity in many major cities. Add to that the possibility of cutoff from a shelter or benefits if rules are broken (the arbitrary quality of many rules and decisions in shelters will be discussed in the next chapter) and it becomes clear that the shelter system cannot necessarily help all homeless individuals. However, whether in a shelter or not, the exposure to the elements is always a danger, exposing the individual to disease, cuts, broken bones, and death.38 Living on the streets or in abandoned buildings or going from shelter to shelter can leave the homeless open to assault, robbery, and harassment, also. There are instances of attacks on homeless people living in parks,39 by the police,40 as well as altercations between homeless individuals and shelter staff or each other.41 In what is already a tense situation, one man residing in a shelter comments “I’ve seen [the staff] treat people very disrespectfully. A lot of cursing and overly loud voices. I think the staff could use a lot more training in dealing with people in crisis situations.”42 Moreover, women can experience sexual harassment by

66




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

shelter staff, potential landlords, or people they encounter on the street, as well as facing the possibility of assault or rape. As one homeless woman, Grace, states, “When you are a single woman and alone, it seems the male population think you are up for grabs.”43 As discussed in the previous chapter, it is the disenfranchised whose bodily integrity is most compromised. Further, with no fixed address and no phone, it is difficult to hold onto relationships, family, and possessions. First of all, there is the possibility that housed kin will estrange themselves from a homeless individual or family. Second, it is hard for couples to stay together. Although they can stay together in cars or tents (if they do not become estranged from close and constant contact), there is the possibility of separation in a shelter.44 This can add further tension to an already stressful situation; in the words of one homeless woman, “It is traumatic being homeless anyway without being able to be with your partner. There should be some sort of access without being written up.”45 There is also the possibility of losing one’s child to foster care or the temporary breakup of families in shelters. Additionally, children may have difficulty enrolling in school with no address and perhaps no documentation. Alternatively, moving from one school to the next makes the feeling of homelessness more profound.46 It is also difficult to maintain possessions. The longer someone is homeless, the less they often tend to have. Nevertheless, trying to keep furniture, pictures, and other valuables can be very important for a variety of reasons. Giving up one’s possessions could be giving up hope that one will find an apartment, for example; it could be admitting defeat. As most homeless shelters don’t have storage space, homeless people often have to rent space or carry their personal effects with them. Thus, aside from the logistical difficulties of storing furniture, for example, it becomes challenging to even carry changes of clothing, toiletries, and photos or other irreplaceable mementos. Often objects that a homeless person will carry around are not mere material possessions. Eliot Liebow, who worked with homeless women, commented, “Many of the personal things—the letters, the religious materials, the photographs, and the mementos of people, relationships, and experiences—looked back to earlier, presumably happier times. In effect, the women carried their life histories with them. To lose one’s stuff, or to have to jettison some of it, was to lose connections to one’s past if not the past itself.”47 In fact, having to pare down what one has would make what remains even more significant.

Das Unheimliche



67

The burden of having to carry one’s possessions around also affects homeless people’s appearance. That is, even though these circumstances make having storage space close to impossible, the appearance of homeless individuals with multiple bags or a shopping cart can be used against them. However, as one homeless individual explains, “Some shelters do not allow the homeless to leave their extra personal belongings, causing them to carry all their belongings everywhere they go, even to job interviews. This is why many homeless walk the streets with big bags of clothes and large backpacks.”48 Similarly, the conditions in shelters and on the streets are not conducive to good hygiene or a normal appearance. For example, one shelter resident comments about these conditions, “No laundry facilities. No toilet paper. No towels. They don’t clean. I guess the same sheet was on there when I got there. It was dirty. The blankets stink. And the staff are really rude.”49 A government shelter in Washington, D.C., had the following conditions: “[Both shelters] are . . . infested with roaches, mice, rats, lice and scabies . . . [and are] overcrowded. . . . Blankets were washed on only one occasion [in a sixmonth period]. . . . There is a cold water hose but only on occasion are the men provided with soap. The men are not provided with towels. . . . [There is] urine water spreading onto the floor where the men are sitting. . . . The men frequently sit in . . . contaminated water. The stench of urine pervades both shelters. Many men refuse to use the bathrooms.”50 While these conditions do not characterize every shelter, what is generally the case is the unstable nature of life once one is homeless, which is manifested in their appearance. Appearance can also affect getting or keeping a job. This is especially true when an individual has a poor education and little job experience; there is no other way to judge the person. Alternatively, a homeless person may lose a job if his or her homelessness becomes known. Although jobs can be very important for self-esteem, with little education or experience on the part of the homeless individual and the nature of low skilled jobs available to them, earnings aren’t normally enough to get an apartment. In fact, as will be discussed in the next chapter, they are often lower than welfare benefits (which are already quite low).51 Nevertheless, with increased pressure of welfare-to-work policies, individuals often feel that they must accept any employment offer. In fact, one source claims that homeless shelters supply cheap labor. The majority of “guests” in one shelter in Cleveland are temporary workers and as one resident comments, “‘Basically, it’s a warehouse for the temp agencies,’ a

68




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

man in his early twenties named Carlos says. ‘They’ll come in here in the middle of the night, wake you up because they need some workers. Then they lie to you. They’ll tell you you’ll make $7.50 and then when you get paid you find out it’s really $5.15.’” Federal welfare-to-work laws encourage employers to hire the homeless with monetary credits to compensate these companies for hiring the poor.52 However, with low earnings, the worker cannot make enough to be economically independent or get an apartment. Accordingly, whether the homeless individuals are on welfare or working in low paid jobs, they are very often economically vulnerable. With a low paid job, working more than forty hours a week is still insufficient: it is difficult to save one’s money for the requisite security deposit and first and last months’ rent for a new apartment. For example, if a single mother with two small children were struggling to pay her rent and were eventually evicted, she would face much more difficulty getting her next apartment. First, she probably would have lost any security deposit and thus would have to save up for the first and last months’ rent and security deposit for her next apartment. Everlenia, a homeless woman, states, “I am one of the able-bodied homeless that can go to work. I have two jobs; each pays minimum wage. I have two kids and we need a three-bedroom apartment. The cheapest we could find was $1000 per month. There is no way I could afford that and still be able to feed my children. Then there is the problem of first and last month’s rent, add $2000, and utilities.”53 That is, when one is in an economically precarious position, having to come up with a large sum of money while homeless is daunting. She may also have problems with filling out a housing form, getting references from her former landlord, and passing a credit check. As Kim notes in Liebow’s book, “Apartment management companies require an established positive credit history and recent rental references that homeless persons, due to circumstances and situation, very often do not have. Rental policy restricting the number of persons per apartment directly prevents poverty-level wage earners from obtaining housing.”54 Homeless refugees also have problems in obtaining affordable housing. In the United States, which accepts about eighty thousand refugees a year, resettlement agencies help individuals or families find housing. The agency receives approximately $570 per person, which needs to cover food, clothes, and rent. Refugees can get welfare for up to two years but have to work for it. One struggling Somali woman comments, “I don’t like

Das Unheimliche



69

being this way,” she said. “Homeless is a bad word.”55 Refugee resettlement is also difficult in England. A nonprofit group called Shelter inspected 154 housing units: “Dampness, overcrowding, poor sanitation, unhygienic cooking areas and lack of fire escapes were commonplace, the report said. A fifth of the lodging were infested with cockroaches, fleas and bedbugs, and 80 percent had safety violations, such as windows blocked shut, the report said.”56 Thus, when an individual or family is economically vulnerable, welfare or a low wage job will perhaps alleviate the contingency of poverty but will not eradicate this ever-present quality. Moreover, any emergency, such as a child falling ill, can deplete monetary resources. Unfortunately, problems can multiply because of constant moves (whether one is in a shelter or not), exposure to elements (again, whether one is in a shelter or not), overcrowded conditions, and the possibility of catching the flu or various other ailments. Additionally, as will be discussed in the next chapter, many people who are eligible for aid such as food stamps or subsidized medical care do not receive benefits: “[And] so when they need health care and a lot of times the only way they are going to get any health care is through the Emergency Room and possibly through some public health services. In Champagne/Urbana, IL, there isn’t any safety net. If you don’t have money, you can’t get health care. . . . [O]ne serious injury or health problem, such as a disease, can wipe out an entire family in terms of their economic stability.”57 In essence, a poor individual may be working numerous hours just to pay rent. This is challenging and stressful enough. However, once a person has been evicted, for example, and lost his or her security deposit, gotten bad credit, or lost an important relationship, he or she is “swimming without a raft.” Everything, from the simplest task of showering to the most difficult medical emergency, becomes that much more daunting. Ironically, housed individuals tend to associate the vulnerability of the situations of the homeless with the persons themselves. The homeless, in turn, perhaps have different (immediate) needs or desires than housed individuals. As discussed above, holding onto relationships, mementos, and other possessions is very important. In terms of self-esteem, jobs are significant, too. As Brian remarks, “I’m able to work, but I am so far away from everything and without any transportation. That’s an issue too. If they really want to solve the problem why can’t they give me $127 a month for transportation instead of food stamps? I would love to work. I would love to feel useful for a change.”58

70




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

Finding a home is also, perhaps obviously, a high priority. Eliot Liebow comments, “[I]t is difficult to exaggerate the importance of housing in the hierarchy of wants. But ‘housing’ means ‘an efficiency apartment,’ ‘a cubby hole,’ ‘my own place,’ and not a palace or mansion or even a house. Wants and expectations were minimal, elemental. ‘Housing’ did not seem to conjure up physical images so much as impressions of warmth and security and independence.”59 Last, but certainly not least, would be the importance of privacy and autonomy. Grace notes, “I didn’t mind personal questions. As far as I was concerned, my life was an open book. What I did mind was in the course of their asking questions, they then tried to judge me and proceeded to tell me what I did wrong since I now found myself homeless. There was this general consensus, that if you were homeless, you must have caused it to happen.”60 Shelter rules also remind homeless individuals that they are no longer in control of their actions. When asked what she would like to change in her shelter, one homeless woman declared that she would like “more flexible hours” and “[m]ore freedom to come and go so you are not restricted to the shelter. If you can go someplace at night it helps you feel more part of the community and get out of homelessness.”61 In addition to the physical hardship of homelessness, the homeless are also quite aware of the stigma attached to their condition. On the same shelter survey mentioned above, a man replied, “Want to be treated like human beings.”62 Kim, in Eliot Liebow’s work, contends, “[T]he Housing Opportunities Commission defines ‘homelessness’ as ‘lacks a fixed regular or adequate nighttime residence (and/or) living in a temporary shelter.’ Most people are out and about during the day, looking for work, shopping, and running errands. WHO WE ARE IS DEFINED BY WHERE WE SLEEP AT NIGHT.”63 In the same book, Vicki remarks, “Staff people and volunteers are scared of us. They think they have a decent life because they are decent people, because they’re clean and honest and hardworking. [To them], homeless women are homeless because they’re the opposite—dirty and dishonest and lazy. But most of us don’t look like that, are not like that, and that really scares them. It’s like a Hitchcock movie. What makes them so scary is that the people in them are so ordinary and look like everybody else.”64 The problem is that this reaction is not merely individual but a cultural, political, and economic phenomenon. Consequently, the following examples may appear extreme, but the further one researches the subject, the more it can be understood that they

Das Unheimliche



71

are a logical conclusion of the already dehumanized status of the homeless rather than being a pure anomaly. The first example is a funeral home that was paid by a county in Florida to bury a homeless man. Rather than bury him, they threw him out with the trash. A case was then brought against the county and the funeral home won.65 A second example happened on October 26, 2001, when a nurse’s aid struck a man with her car, “parked in her garage with him still stuck headfirst in her broken windshield and ignored his cries for help as he bled to death over the next two days. . . .”66 When he finally died, her friends helped her to dump the body in a park. While these two examples may seem pathological, when considered with the attacks and murders perpetrated on homeless individuals, the harassment, and the double binds that society puts the homeless in, they do not seem altogether surprising; just excessive. Thus, there are two problematics at work here: on the one hand, there is a very real need for some sort of affordable housing for the homeless; on the other, there needs to be an investigation of why we treat certain individuals as criminal or worthy of social exile because of their economic status. The dynamics of the second problem explain the first. The perception of home on political, economic, and cultural levels has meaning beyond being a mere structure. Notions of home represent economic independence, hard work, and the idea that one belongs in this world, on the one hand, accompanied by ideas that real problems, violence, alcoholism, and so on exist out there—somewhere else. Thus, the home is perceived as tension free and a place to escape social problems. In this way, the housed can believe they are problem free and moral while the homeless epitomize social problems and immorality. However, it can be argued that alcoholism, for example, is a disease of both the housed and the homeless. But for the homeless, alcoholism is more visible, is judged more harshly, and has much worse consequences (for example, being removed from a shelter). Indeed, problems that the housed experience are viewed as the sole cause of homelessness, rather than broader structural factors. As immigrants are perceived to be destroying our culture and posing a threat to national security, the homeless are viewed as a dangerous and mysterious Other that breaks down the moral fiber constituting our nation-home. Nevertheless, homelessness is not entirely foreign to the housed. It is not incidental that authors use the word “homelessness” for both real homelessness as well as the more abstract types of homelessness, which involve issues of identity and location in philosophy and politics. The

72




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

physical location of home, as indicated above, is part of our identity and thus is an intimate subject relating to the unconscious. Home involves emotions, identity, and a sense of location. What’s more, just as political identity is inextricably linked to human existence, home also allows for existence and therefore touches deeply upon each individual’s life. The significance of this is that feelings tied to the idea of home often emanate from the irrational or unconscious. For example, Gaston Bachelard writes that the idea of home is felt and should be described by a phenomenology of the senses rather than in cold, critical prose or in scientific terms.67 What Bachelard advocates is similar to Michael Taussig’s discussion of “implicit social knowledge.” This is “essentially inarticulable and imageric nondiscursive knowing of social relationality. . . .”68 Bachelard calls for an “ontologie directe” where the primitive quality of the imagination is captured. Thus, he tries to capture images of home before critical or even rational thought is taken into consideration. In this irrational discourse, captured by speech and the poetic image, there is freedom69 and the development of these images “measures” the human soul. Nevertheless, whether there is truly freedom in these irrational feelings as Bachelard claims or not, the notion that the home has a surfeit of meaning—that it is not simply a housing unit—is significant, as is the contention that the home evokes unconscious emotions and ideas. Regardless of one’s circumstances, the idea that emotions toward the physical space of home are primitive feelings (unmarred by criticism or even self-reflection and, according to Freud, emanating from the unconscious and representing childhood fears and feelings) is supported by Freud’s examination of the words heimlich and unheimlich. Like Freud, Bachelard notes that the physical location of home is always precarious and yet we (irrationally) imbue this image with the idea of security and stability.70 In Freud, heimlich seems to be opposite of unheimlich; heimlich should mean security and stability. However, what it does mean is “withdrawn from knowledge, unconscious . . . obscure, inaccessible to knowledge,”71 which is roughly the same definition of unheimlich. What the irrational feelings toward the physical space of home can involve is self-delusion with regard to security or permanence which, translated into psychoanalytic terms, is repression. The repression of outside factors implies a repression of the proximate and yet unknown Other. If repression of the outside represents control, the tension between self and Other remains despite this attempt to control or erase it and challenges the logic of the heimlich/unheimlich antithesis. Thus, in the first place,

Das Unheimliche



73

the concepts of home and security are formed through subjective feelings. Anxiety and tension accompany these more settled feelings, even if the former are unconscious. Second, the primitive quality of these emotions will manifest itself in irrational or primitive ways in dealing with the Other. Thus, perceptions and feelings about the home are crucial in terms of self-identity; that is, the relations and affiliations that make up one’s identity also make up what is home. Second, this identity (especially for the housed) involves a repression that leads to a construction of stability and security that might not exist in reality. Tension is always present. Third, home and identity are not consciously chosen ascriptions, but touch upon the unconscious and irrational. The link between the irrational and identity is all too evident in the ethnic wars in the former Yugoslavia as well as in reactions to immigrants and the homeless in Europe and the United States. That is, when identity is tied to the home and thus originates from more primitive feelings, the Other is viewed in stark terms as invading one’s territory or homebase. The Other, seen as pure alterity, is negated in policy and daily life. In this, self-identity is pure and cannot be tainted by Otherness. Analogously, the rationality of the liberal state’s treatment of the poor cannot be said to be wholly rational; policy very often has more to do with perceptions of the homeless and poor than their reality.72 Thus, policy could rightly be called “rationalized (in the Weberian sense) irrationality.” In sum, identity is conflictual and complex and cannot fall into the simple categories of good and bad or friend and enemy found in the web of power relations of the modern nation-state.

Power Dynamics of Home/Homeless: The Uncanny Freud’s concept of the Unheimliche can be used to read identity, homelessness, and alterity in a new way. Freud begins his essay “The Uncanny” by stating that the German unheimlich and heimlich (homely) or heimisch (native) are obviously opposites. Throughout the essay, he then shows that both etymologically and sensually, heimlich and unheimlich are not opposite at all. Heimlich has two different meanings: first, it has to do with what is familiar and agreeable and second, what is concealed or out of sight. The definition of “home” as described above corresponds to these notions: both a place that is agreeable and comfortable, as well as a place that is private and out of the view of strangers.

74




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

Nevertheless, Freud notes that heimlich also pertains to the unconscious, obscure and unknown. This feeling is developed, Freud says, to the point where heimlich becomes “hidden and dangerous.” Unheimlich can mean “homeless” but also “uncanny.” It is in this second sense that heimlich and unheimlich are close in meaning. The oppositional logic of the seeming antonyms is removed with the concepts of obscurity, hiddenness, the unconscious, and the uncanny. Unheimlich, however, is the more negative of the pair—or, as Freud says, the un- is the token of repression— and is a space of irresolvable tension.73 Freud argues that the uncanny is linked to primitive beliefs and fears74 and is rooted in what is familiar. It involves a repressed emotional impulse that turns into anxiety and can repeat itself. According to Freud, uncanny phenomena include the appearance of a double, which can recur repeatedly; a haunted house, which is both home and haunted by an Other; fear of castration; fear of death; and involuntary repetition. These phenomena involve what is both familiar and yet frightening. The covert quality of both heimlich and unheimlich helps in understanding how the linguistic use has turned das Heimliche into its antonym, das Unheimliche. Accordingly, it is the consciousness of the unconscious, thus splitting the self.75 At its most basic level, the uncanny dislocates subjectivity. It does not have intellectual roots but rather primitive fears (Freud) or is a primordial relation, characterized by “thrown-ness” (Heidegger).76 However, the uncanny results in manifesting both the conscious and the unconscious. My interpretation broadens the area of signification and I am arguing that primitive fears, repression, and the uncanny can be manifested on a societal level. As Adam Bresnick comments, the fear of castration, for example, could be viewed “less as a matter of the body per se than as a problem of signification.”77 Samuel Weber concurs with this view: “[T]o identify castration with any substantial determinate representation, scene or situation is to ignore or reduce its dynamic, which inscribes all phenomena in a symbolic context. . . . Uncanny is a certain undecidability which affects and infects representations, motifs, themes, and situations. . . .”78 Kristeva utilizes this more symbolic approach in Étrangers à nous-mêmes and claims that the stranger is not a race or nation but is in us; we are divided. Thus, psychoanalysis is an exploration of both self and Other that allows for the irresolvable tension inherent in these relationships. Moreover, she postulates that the uncanny leads to a deconstruction of the self and an opening towards the new. The familiar appears unfamiliar but is precisely strange because strangely

Das Unheimliche



75

familiar.79 This intersects with Heidegger’s thought in that he ascribes to being-in-the-world an anguish that is uncanny, that is both at home and not at home [Unheimlichkeit].80 Kristeva concludes that in recognizing inner alterity, one is more prepared to deal with the Other. That is, the stranger is in us and Kristeva’s conclusion is, “[I]l n’y a pas d’étrangers” [There are no strangers].81 This discussion of uncanniness is, thus, the way that Freud (and Heidegger in another way) shows our rejection of the Other in ourselves. This is especially interesting when the rejection of difference occurs on a politicoeconomic level. Group dynamics are both analogous to those of the self and yet different. Just as individuals may reject conflict or tension within themselves, a group can identify an Other who is believed to be markedly different from the group. This process of identification and repression of otherness is particularly salient in times of political or economic crisis. What is significant is that while an individual may not have power alone, fostering the repression of difference at a group level has economic, political, and cultural consequences. Freud notes that groups tend to see similarities among themselves (what Victor Wolfenstein calls an “in-group”) and differences with others (“out-group”).82 In times of political regression (for example, during a national crisis or an economic downturn), Wolfenstein remarks that group dynamics will be destructive and fall back into “unrestrained group-emotional processes.”83 Vamik Volkan84 argues that the more the Other or enemy is stereotyped, the more there is an unconscious fashioning of the image of the Other based on the in-group. The Other becomes the “reservoir for attributes of our own that we reject” and the consequence of this is “mirror imaging.” In extreme situations, the stereotyped Other can become an object of hatred that is increasingly dehumanized. In fact, the in-group can view the Other or enemy as the “original nonhuman.” As Wolfenstein notes, “repressed aggressive energy,” the result of projection,85 shapes the intergroup dynamic and is reflective of externalization of the self onto an Other. The group dynamic alleviates anxiety from ambivalence by splitting, where the ingroup is familial, loving, and good and the Other is the locus of bad feelings.86 It is this dehumanization that characterizes state policy toward internal and external enemies as well as the relation between housed and homeless, citizen and stateless. In essence, identity is complex and is characterized not only by healthy development but also conflict, anxiety, and processes of externalization

76




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

onto an Other or Others. These processes involve both conscious and unconscious activity. Second, certain primitive or irrational processes can function in externalizing unwanted or bad aspects of the self onto an Other or Others. For this reason, the creation of the Other is not altogether a rational one, that is, not completely (if at all) reflective of reality and involving emotions and reactions that are primitive or undeveloped. However, I am not subscribing to the black and white analysis of the need for one common identity that necessitates one in-group and one outgroup (that is, the notion that ethnic conflict and nationalism are natural and thus inevitable). In reality, every individual, even in the same nation, has different affiliations that will compete with one another. Nevertheless, during crises in which national identity becomes important, people can forget their class oppositions and their hostility will be externally directed. In this instance, “intergroup formation reduces complexity and anxiety” and is therefore resistant to rational discourse.87 Yet, what this shows is the instability of identity rather than its stability, which then calls into question any sort of subjectivity (that is, unitary and fixed identity). Third, these processes reflect a constant engagement with an Other, even when the Other remains Other. This is possible in that the Other or enemy, in more pathological instances, is merely a return of the repressed and can only be seen for what it is when the in-group reclaims its externalized elements. This reduction of complexity, and thus an escape from reality, is exemplified in stereotyping of the Other. That is, stereotyping is one example of negative identification. In general, the self or in-group is viewed as “clean, odorless . . . restrained, intelligent, hard working, moral” and the Other is “dirty, smelly . . . violent, stupid, lazy and immoral.”88 Although Wolfenstein uses this to describe racial stereotypes, they also fit stereotypes of the poor and some immigrants. He notes that in this construct, there is a hierarchical engagement with the Other that precludes free and equal interaction.89 Therefore, these unconscious externalizations that are exacerbated by anxiety can lead to domination of the Other, who becomes the reservoir of all that is bad in society. Whether poverty is real or not, the construction of the poor or homeless Other goes far beyond the reality that is poverty and indeed, ascribes the qualities of an individual or group’s situation to the person or people themselves. Political or economic uncertainty can lead to predatory tendencies of the in-group and the victims become even more victimized. Wolfenstein comments that although the United States, for example, is not at the

Das Unheimliche



77

level that Nazi Germany was, there are some fascistic tendencies in behavior towards political Others. That is, the United States has a similar intergroup structure as that of Nazi Germany, and the same processes of splitting, projection and “disavowal through which the devalued and dangerous other is created.”90 This is manifested along many lines: geographical segregation, hysteria against immigrants and welfare recipients, and in institutional domination, for example. In political life, “uncertainty generates anxiety; anxiety activates defensive tendencies.” Thus, there is a tendency for people to revert to defenses rather than to “engage situational realities. . . .”91 Hence, the treatment of the homeless, which is often manifested in a punitive fashion, comes from aggressive drives. I will argue at the end of this chapter that this should not be viewed as an acceptable or salutary manifestation of human interaction. Rather, political identity and inclusion could allow difference to exist both internally (within the identity of citizenship) and externally (policy and attitudes towards foreigners). This will only be achieved when the political self transcends the binary mode of self/other. However, as will be discussed below, this will mean acceptance of the Other as Other without demands for assimilation. Moreover, this will undermine the notion of subjectivity, or citizenship as home, in and of itself. In terms of political identity, the home/homeland is both an external and internal manifestation of self. Rather than arriving at the conclusion that the homeless are then nonselves, it should be recognized that in reality, home is more than a structure. For better or worse, it involves relationships, a daily path, and daily activities. Like the psychoanalytic concept of self, the home is a locus of both security and also conflict and anxiety, some of which is manifest and some of which is repressed. Through the mechanisms of repression, splitting, and projection on the part of the housed, the homeless and some immigrants are bearers of the uncanny, albeit in different ways. Behind these mechanisms are primitive emotions and unconscious fears of the political Other.

Political Manifestations of the Uncanny The political manifestations of the Uncanny are necessarily tied to the political identification of a group or groups as different. However, the homeless and poor minority immigrants have been constructed as not merely different but enemies. In both cases, although in different ways, these individuals as Other can be viewed as “one powerful return of the

78




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

repressed other, come back to haunt the individual in its claims to sovereignty.”92 The Other, as Freud claims, is what creates an unheimlich feeling, that which unsettles. In the political context, the Other as homeless individual challenges the notion of the “radical individual” that has emerged through the combination of liberalism and capitalism. It is precisely this polarized construction that presupposes intersubjectivity. While immigrants could be viewed as a far more radical Other—with different religion, food, and language—the homeless are often familiar and cannot be deported or blocked from entering the country. The homeless are uncanny precisely because of being perceived as both similar to and different from the housed. Thus, in relation to Carl Schmitt’s friend/enemy formulation, the homeless cannot be pure enemy as outsider but given economic relations, cannot be insiders either. Their relative status is uncanny in itself. In relation to the housed or citizens, it is more appropriate to describe the homeless as the “uncanny neighbor,” an “almost enemy” whose presence is spectral—spectral because this presence cannot be controlled, is unpredictable, and will not go away. The homeless are also spectral because they defy analysis—the simplicity with which the situation is portrayed does not adequately account for homelessness and never solves the problem. They can represent the externalized Other of the mainstream precisely because of their familiarity, in which a negative connection is perceived. Immigrants, on the other hand, are often a less familiar Other. They can be homeless in a double sense, in that they perhaps have lost some sort of community and relatives, as well as the physical location of home. If there is no familiar community in their new country, their difference from the mainstream could be interpreted as being far more radical than that of the homeless. The dynamics of the uncanny in this situation could be different in that immigrants do not simply mirror the mainstream population. A far greater psychological gap could be perceived. Nonetheless, where poverty, race, or gender intersect, reactions to the homeless and immigrants share some similarities. The dynamics of the anxiety that sets off the process of externalization and feelings of the uncanny are different also. In the case of the homeless, there are fears that they will drain our welfare system and create a culture of dependency. Moreover, they are often viewed as criminal and thus their mere presence can activate fear in public places. On the other hand, immigrants generate a fear of the unknown where the “native” does not know what to expect or does not understand foreign practices, food, or

Das Unheimliche



79

religion. Second, there is trepidation that immigrants will take away jobs and perhaps welfare; this is viewed as unjust, as they are considered noncitizens. Third, there is a view of certain types of foreigners as being dangerous, violent, and ignorant of civilized life. This perspective is often projected onto immigrants of Arab descent and Muslim religion. Two key differences between the homeless and immigrants remain, however. First, there can be an element of choice involved on the part of the immigrant that is almost never there with the homeless. Thus, autonomy is an important distinction when considering how immigrants’ experiences compare with those of the homeless. Second, money can mediate the relations fueled by anxiety and externalizations of the mainstream. Therefore, although immigrants of any class or race could experience some prejudice, class, gender, and race are important factors in the degree to which immigrants confront hostility and are therefore Other. Significantly, although the contexts are different, two principal responses to both immigrants and the homeless can be generalized. The first response is to mythologize (assimilate) the Other in terms of the self. The second is to view the other as criminal and less than human. The first response is manifested differently for the homeless and immigrants and is much more ephemeral than the second. As Bonnie Honig states in relation to immigrants, they are valued “for what ‘they’ bring to ‘us’— diversity, energy, talents, industry, innovative cuisines, and new recipes, plus a renewed appreciation of our own regime whose virtues are so great that they draw immigrants to join us.”93 In the case of the homeless, mythologizing the Other may appear in film, where the homeless, in their poverty and insanity, can actually teach the housed, “normal” person to appreciate what he or she has. This is evident in movies like The Fisher King, Sammie and Rosie Get Laid, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, and With Honors. In contrast, immigrants can be mythologized in the media or political rhetoric as being model citizens, paragons of family values, and hard workers. However, this seemingly positive response is never reflected in policy for any long period of time. Rather, it is a reaction to the general (political) rejection of the Other that ends in fetishizing the Other and demanding assimilation. Honig sees it as a way to reaffirm national identity through assimilation of the Other: it allows us to experience founding, pride of place.94 Thus, it is really seeing the Other in terms of self. The second response can also be found in literature, the media, films, and political rhetoric, but it has also been reflected in policy much

80




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

more. This second reaction is rejection, criminalization, objectification, and dehumanization of the Other. Although this has been prevalent throughout history, modernity has witnessed a more widespread, politically institutionalized rejection of the Other. Honig claims that immigrants are feared for what they will do to us: “consume our welfare benefits, dilute our common heritage, fragment our politics, undermine our democratic or cosmopolitan culture.”95 The same fears are associated with the homeless, who are considered leeches on the welfare system and who signify moral turpitude through sloth, having too many babies, and unwillingness to work. The policy manifestations of these fears are embodied in ordinances against camping, loitering, and begging; stricter welfare laws with bonuses for states that lower the number of welfare recipients; and busing of the homeless to other cities or areas that are removed from a city or town. Honig believes that, as with the first response, this second response is also the reexperience of founding through self-identification of a regime via inclusion and exclusion.96 In other words, the first image reaffirms our national identity through assimilation of the Other and the second does the same through excluding the Other. On a more abstract level, the more prevalent second response corresponds to repression of the Other only to have the Other come back in various forms as the uncanny. This repression of difference is also evident in the European ideology of a “right to difference,” manifested in the philosophy of difference and alterity. Reiner Ansén claims that otherness in Europe was “always excluded from the interior and then experienced as exterior alterity that did not really affect a safe interior identity.” That is, alterity was valued as neutral. However, when attempts are made to extinguish or assimilate the Other, there is a “euphoric discourse of unambiguous alterity” where alterity suddenly becomes a central value in itself.97 This ends in fetishizing alterity and extinguishing discussion. This process is exemplified in the rhetoric of the Nouvelle Droite in their claims of the right to difference that lead to expulsion and rejection rather than acceptance. In this context, Ansén argues that resubstantializing alterity or difference means to commit what Kant calls an “amphiboly”—to mistake what is in principle something imposed upon us. And in modern times, according to Ansén, this means a return to a tragic, antimodern pattern of thinking.98 The right wing’s exclusive self-identity follows a “logic of death” where “being present to itself without any distance, absence, difference, absolute consciousness as Hegel calls it, cannot be distinguished from

Das Unheimliche



81

absolute unconsciousness, that is death.”99 The acceptance of homelessness as natural as well as the tolerance of statelessness as a permanent exception to the rule is evidence of this line of thought. In this way, nationality or economic status is perceived as natural, on the one hand, and thus inevitable and unchangeable. On the other hand, homelessness is perceived as essential, static, and reified and thus absolutely Other. As with Carl Schmitt’s friend/enemy distinction, there is a nihilistic quality to this power dynamic. Thus, the philosophical and political exclusion of alterity is parallel to Freud’s notion of repression of the Other, in that the basis of exclusion is only apparent and not real. In political space, the presence of this human Other—in the form of immigrant or homeless person—cannot be wholly extinguished or ignored despite attempts to do so (short of genocide). Moreover, the irrational (in the psychoanalytic sense) elements of this reaction must be emphasized. Honig attributes this irrationality to the power of the symbolic and concludes that rational arguments fail to settle these issues because they have more to do with identity than interest (for example, utility).100 A similar argument could be made about an unchanging public reaction to the homeless despite the fact that the welfare budget is less than 1 percent of the federal budget and notwithstanding structural factors behind homelessness that have nothing to do with irresponsibility or moral degeneracy. Homeless Others are most often viewed as a threat and their presence makes the mainstream home unhomely. Frequently, unconscious fears of the Other combine with conscious action to produce policy that extinguishes or assimilates alterity. To be the Other must be uncanny also. As Salman Rushdie argues, what makes someone human is having roots, language, and recognizable social norms. The migrant who suffers this “triple disruption” is no longer considered human.101 The homeless person who has suffered other disruptions has also lost his or her status as a human being and enters into the uncanny space of human limbo. However, it is not just each group’s losses that evoke the uncanny but also reactions to them that, as stated above, are never neutral. The existence of the étranger is often formulated as “living hate” in a double sense: “Sentir constamment la haine des autres, n’avoir d’autre milieu que cette haine-là” [To constantly feel the hatred of others, to have no other milieu but that hatred].102 Reactions to immigrants can range from neo-Nazi attacks, to police brutality, to exploitation in the workplace, to citizens’ watch groups harassing foreigners. This would make immigrants’ new homes unhomely. Similarly,

82




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

the homeless who are removed from a city’s limits, not allowed to use public space without being arrested for vagrancy, and urged into urban campgrounds, and whose shelters cannot be built because of NIMBYism, are in the odd position of no longer having the right to occupy the earth. Open prejudice, moral judgments, and cynicism in the media are considered acceptable reactions to the homeless and poor. To be the Other is to inhabit an uncanny political and physical space. On the other hand, from the mainstream perspective, the proximity of this neighbor/enemy is part of our lived experience and thus reflects our notion of the physical location of home and self-identity. The homeless person, in contrast to the immigrant, represents the loss of what the mainstream possesses and therefore can touch upon unconscious fears of losing what “we” have. The homeless Other can be our unkempt crazy double that serves as the reminder that anyone could be “just a paycheck away” or can simply mirror ourselves in a frightening and unpredictable way. In a much broader sense, they challenge the American Dream, notions of political equality and justice. They are symptomatic of an ever growing class of the poor that will not disappear and which the American government or populace will not recognize as humans or citizens, but rather, view as the irresponsible unemployed. Within the liberal capitalist model in the United States, where welfare has never been a right and is becoming increasingly prohibitive, it can be argued that one does not have the right to even exist unless gainfully employed or part of the minority of the “good homeless” (for example, those displaced by natural disaster). Thus, the notion of individual responsibility can mean life or death. At the same time, this not only affects the homeless but also those expected to give handouts through tax dollars: given the structure of the system, it can be frightening to give or lose what one has. The notion of scarcity is inherent in the capitalist model where giving or taking is considered a zero-sum game. Moreover, given the dominance of the idea of individual responsibility, the monied classes can feel that they have indeed earned their wealth through work or birthright without asking for handouts. They repress their own losses, as well as handouts through tax breaks and other benefits. The homeless can symbolize moral degeneration, insanity, depravity, and dirtiness and therefore annihilation of our way of life. In other words, the homeless often represent fears of social, cultural, and economic death. To return to the argument, stated above, that perhaps homelessness is the unsettling we all need, I contend that there are two possible interpre-

Das Unheimliche



83

tations of homelessness. The first interpretation of homelessness is an exclusion and denial of alterity. This implies both an abdication of responsibility for others’ existence and politicoeconomic intolerance based on status or identity. The Other is either pushed away or must assimilate—in either case, this extinguishes difference. Both reactions signify unfreedom and recall the German’s use of Heimat and the “unscrupulous use of the sense of home, roots and history to justify and legitimize xenophobia, tyranny and the dread syntax of ethnic purity.”103 Difference is taken to the extreme and commonalities ignored. The distance that is created between self and Other is one of alienation, in terms of both identity and physical space. In this context, people are viewed as “illegals,” disposable, or superfluous and thus achieve subhuman status. The dynamic of power resembles that of Hegel’s master-slave relation in which domination and unfreedom prevail. The right to difference and even multicultural arguments that reify difference end in reinforcing the binarism of self and Other rather than transcending particularity. The second interpretation of homelessness is more of an unsettling but also signifies being “at home with oneself” or can be likened to migration as a form of rebirth, as suggested by Rushdie and Kristeva.104 This type of homelessness is situated in autonomy and is willed. Thus, it does not signify location so much as the freedom to exist and coexist even if the power dynamic between self and Other is asymmetrical. Paradoxically, “home is the place we have to leave in order to grow up, to become ourselves.”105 Further, “if home is to be a positive force in politics, it must be recast in coalitional terms as a differentiated site of necessary, nurturing, but also strategic, conflicted, and temporary alliances.”106 Thus, the “homelessness” I am describing is a type of voluntary uprootedness. It does not mean “home free,” however. This unsettling does not involve a new place free of Others, but more fluid boundaries. Thus, for example, if home were viewed as articulated space, and hence, in more relational terms, there would be less approval of simply busing homeless individuals to another city or placing refugees in camps indefinitely. Second, if possessions and relations were respected on politicolegal levels, it would be less acceptable to burn or confiscate possessions or force families and other relations to break up. That is, the physical and material integrity of a person would be respected equally for a displaced person as for a housed individual. Further, this second type of homelessness leads to a more complex view of the Other taken up by certain poststructuralist thinkers, especially

84




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

Jacques Derrida. To Derrida, the Other is necessary to self-identity but extinction of the Other is not a possibility. Rather, the Other is accepted as Other. Difference is not judged and arranged hierarchically but allowed to exist in a way that reflects an empty universalism (as discussed in chapter 2). Accordingly, law is a means rather than an end and the value of human life in itself supersedes expediency, profit, or stability. In this way, as I will discuss in the conclusion, citizenship is a gift without exchange, transcending the notion of Schuld as debt. This can be offered as an alternative to the rhetoric of ethnopluralism and the dominant responses to the Other described above. In practical terms, this would mean that Haitian boat people or Kosovar refugees would not be placed in a literal existential limbo simply because it is believed they belong elsewhere. Nor should fiberglass domes, tent cities, or even shelters be considered permanent solutions to homelessness. That is, human beings should not lose their status as humans, and thus the right to exist, when they lose their citizenship. More significantly, the inadequacy of citizenship norms should be recognized by investigating these exceptions to the rule. While a conflictual relation with the Other is almost inevitable, as Freud indicates, this does not mean we should foster the repression of difference or view ethnic conflict or marginalization as natural. Rather, these reactions are really “rationalized irrationality,” rooted in myths and stereotypes. The homeless and some immigrants represent the uncanny and it is this undecidability that should be examined rather than repressed or extinguished. In this way, the irresolvable tension of the uncanny can be used to challenge the stark oppositions of the dominant images of the political Others. That is, political, institutional and cultural recognition of the Other as Other could mitigate the severe consequences of the unfreedom that the political Other experiences. Nevertheless, even with a more fluid conception of the home, the homeless still need homes. As discussed in the introduction, a relatively stable home would meet certain minimum criteria: it would be affordable (one quarter to one third of one’s monthly income), have a fair landlord, and be located in an area with access to grocery stores and transportation, and no one residing under that roof would be normally violent or abusive. Perhaps, as Karl Polanyi107 suggested with regard to money, labor and land, housing, as something essential to life, should not be on the market. Human beings, Polanyi argues, were not produced specifically for the market and thus the reasoning that labor is a commodity is fallacious. Similarly, housing has historically been to shelter

Das Unheimliche



85

people and allow for daily activities; it was never created specifically for the market. Accordingly, it could be viewed as a “fictitious commodity” in the same way that Polanyi claims labor is. Alternatively, in liberal terms, housing is the extension of the right to self-preservation and in modern times, it is not practical to think that a tent or cubby hole is sufficient for this end. My argument thus far has been that the home and homelessness are significant metaphors for citizenship and identity and that through conscious and unconscious processes, repression of the political Other is taking place. As Derrida notes, we can try to repress the beggar, but he or she is always there, challenging our logic of annihilation of the Other. In the next chapter, I will discuss homeless policy and literature more specifically in order to demonstrate that homelessness is a politicoeconomic situation characterized by “rationalized irrationality.”

Chapter 4

Homelessness and Panopticism

Introduction In this chapter, I will focus on the treatment of the homeless on many levels: media coverage, academic studies, public policy, and views of the general public. The dominant research and policy orientation toward homeless people reveals several things. First, the homeless are clearly viewed as Other in contradistinction to an implicit norm of citizenship that involves economic and national identity. This norm encompasses values such as responsibility, rationality, and economic independence that are associated with hard-working citizens. However, these values illuminate more about the mainstream than they do about the homeless. Second, a paradigm of the homeless has also been formulated through the confluence of media, academic studies, public perception, and public policy that by no means reflects the diversity, agency, or humanity of the homeless. Rather, this paradigmatic view originates in myths and stereotypes that reflect more a fear of the unknown and uncanny Other than anything else. Indeed, this perspective of the homeless and the reaction to it reveal how deeply felt the dichotomy between self and Other is, in that policy makers, the media, and the general public react more from a sense of identity (including primitive emotions and stereotypes of the Other) than empirical fact. Thus, the general perspective of the homeless is not that they have merely fallen through the cracks; instead, they are viewed as a population that is exceptional and anomalous. This radical separation of self and Other can be explained by the idea that identity in a modern nation state such as the United States is inextricably linked to both nationalistic and economic concerns. One’s labor and participation in the market constitute the primary contribution to society while being housed has become a clear symbol of economic independence and

87

88




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

socially important labor. While nationalism often forms the basis of emotive content for many modern nation-states, those countries that also define themselves through the market have a different sort of selfunderstanding that is no less emotional. Solutions to the homeless problem, as they have developed historically, are clearly punitive. In short, this power dynamic reflects an effort to control difference through demands for assimilation (turning them into good citizens) or criminalization. Because more women enter the welfare system and more men end up on the streets, it could be argued that very generally, demands for assimilation fall on women more while criminalization and efforts to extinguish the Other are often directed at poor homeless men. (However, gender lines are not strict.) Nevertheless, these reactions are really two sides of the same coin; they represent attempts to subsume difference into the same (mainstream) or to radically expel it. In both cases, homeless individuals are treated as criminals and subjected to prerogative power, just as foreign enemies are, on the one hand, or individuals needing guidance (such as children and the insane), on the other. Thus, policy and attitudes towards the homeless have placed them in a web of domination and objectification despite the goals of early liberal writers such as Hobbes and Locke, to achieve political, if not economic, equality. Nevertheless, liberal writers accounted for what I will describe in this chapter: the confluence of biopower and prerogative power, which are outgrowths of liberalism, capitalism, and the development of the modern nation-state, rather than aberrations. In fact, against Foucault’s distinction between sovereign power and the power that characterizes bureaucracy (disciplinary and biopower), I treat prerogative power and bureaucratic power as overlapping.1 In general, policies towards the homeless 1) have been coercive, 2) appeal to the idea of a natural order by blaming them rather than examining the causal foundations of their poverty and 3) effectively disenfranchise them. To put it differently, homeless and welfare policies have been conceived of in terms of the notion Schuld—that is, debt—in that the homeless and welfare recipients are viewed as debtors to the ordinary taxpayer. Consequently, as opposed to the relative autonomy of the citizen, the homeless are subjected to the types of power and knowledge practices of surveillance and discipline articulated by Foucault. This contradiction between universal norms of citizenship and the political status of the homeless undermines the democratic potential of citizenship. In fact, rather than being an exceptional or anomalous problem,

Homelessness and Panopticism



89

the status of the homeless reveals tensions and contradictions in late modern citizenship. I will begin with a brief history of homelessness in the United States. Second, I will discuss the dominant contemporary conceptions of homelessness. Third, I will critique these conceptions, drawing upon Foucault to interpret the treatment of the homeless. Last, I will critically examine the nondemocratic character of public policy and demonstrate that most authors analyze these policies superficially. I will discuss the degree to which the status of the homeless is criminalized and illustrate how policy and cultural reactions to the homeless reflect a political identity that is essentializing rather than being truly universal.

History and Background The image of the homeless is very often that of a drunk, aged man talking to himself in the street or perhaps a bag lady picking through the trash. This picture of the homeless (especially the male hobo) has been perpetuated from the beginning of this century and is evident in the media, literature, and policy making. Unfortunately, this portrayal and the various sites of power that have constructed it lead to 1) an inaccurate picture of who the homeless really are, thereby essentializing their identity; 2) an examination of only a small percentage of the actual homeless population; and 3) criminalization of the homeless through rhetoric and policy, justified by their alleged pathologies. Thus, a constructed image of the homeless is always competing with a more complex reality.2 This image also reflects a hierarchy of the homeless in media portrayals and government policies where certain people are “deserving” (of aid, for example) or “responsible” and others are “undeserving” or “irresponsible.” Those who have been displaced by natural disaster, for example, are generally considered deserving and responsible, while those who have been unemployed or evicted fall under the latter rubrics. Similarly, there has been a perception that there is a marked difference between the “old” homeless (vagabonds, hoboes) and the “new” (those who have suffered displacement, deinstitutionalization, and so on). This paradigmatic view of the “bad”—that is undeserving, pathological, and irresponsible—homeless has been constructed through narrow definitions of home, rationality, and citizenship. The following is not meant to be an authoritative account, but rather, suggests that there is enough research to undermine the presupposition that homelessness

90




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

is an individual, and thus apolitical, phenomenon. To argue that homelessness is an individual phenomenon, given that homelessness has increased exponentially since the end of the 1960s, is to posit that individuals have changed. This is an odd argument to make given radical changes in the availability of affordable housing, welfare accessibility, and transformations in the nature of employment. In fact, it is paradoxical to argue that homelessness is individual and yet policy and public opinion is molded around one or two stereotypes of the homeless. Rather, it could be argued that structural factors have contributed to the growth of this population and the homeless are in fact far more diverse and complex than the dominant images would have. The history behind the image began at the turn of the century. These men (and some women) were the products of the industrialization of the United States. Industrialization consequently involved increased urbanization and the building of railroads and highways across the country. Employment opportunities from these industries created a larger working class as well as a class of migratory workers (rural or railway employees). Because of the transient character of this work, coupled with its sporadic nature and low wages, new housing arose specifically for these individuals. This included the flophouse, the municipal lodging house, and police stations (among other options).3 Although choices included both private and public sector housing, the former was more popular because it allowed for autonomy and privacy. In contrast, government facilities subjected tenants to social control and were utilized less.4 At this time, there were many communal ties among the poor. For example, there were the “Hoovervilles” of Los Angeles,5 Hobohemia in Chicago,6 the Hobo College and a social hierarchy among the poor. Despite evidence of civilization, public fears of indigents’ transient lifestyles led to greater social control.7 They were perceived as dangerous, unstable, or victims, which implied weakness or incompetence on their part. However, an alternative culture was established and their social organizations thrived, thus undermining both images. In other words, the economic and cultural marginalization of the poor at this time led to their characterization as deviant or immoral, despite evidence to the contrary. Nevertheless, they enjoyed a degree of autonomy and community that arguably no longer exists. In the 1920s, with the decreased demand for cheap labor and railway workers, the profitability of Single Room Occupancy hotels (SROs) diminished and the public sector began to appropriate them. The Great

Homelessness and Panopticism



91

Depression finalized the withdrawal of the private sector in running SROs. As a result, inexpensive housing took on new meanings: rather than profitability, housing the urban poor was linked to the idea of morality, elimination of poverty, and the application of scientific solutions to social problems. With the Depression came the contrast between the new homeless and old, similar to the differentiation made today, in that the new homeless were blameless, while the old homeless were viewed as moral degenerates. The distinctions made were often classist and established a hierarchy of the poor, created this time by policy makers.8 In the 1940s, efforts to help the new homeless and the war economy defused the situation and it was no longer the focus of public attention. At the same time, shelters were increasingly seen as a solution to homelessness. It was at this time that the homeless began to lose their community (and their autonomy) through increased government intervention and urban renewal, and indirectly as a consequence of the increasing focus on pathologies of the homeless.9 Research was especially focused on mental illness, drug addiction, alcoholism, and criminal activity. However, Hoch and Slayton assert that “every scientific investigation, whether in Chicago or elsewhere, showed that alcoholics, though proportionately a larger group than in any other section of the city, still formed a minority of the Skid Row population.”10 Nevertheless, this was not the impression given by researchers. At this point, the government increasingly began to regulate homeless activity while only providing aid such as emergency shelters. Public and academic attention continued to focus more on pathologies of the homeless than their poverty. Research based on these assumptions continued in the 1960s and 1970s and consequently, molded public opinion against the urban poor. Perhaps as a result of the confluence of these forces, by the late 1980s, Skid Row no longer existed in major cities like Chicago or Boston. Alternatively, in Los Angeles, Skid Row began to decline with changes in the downtown economy and “the aging and predominantly white and black population of Skid Row became economically redundant.” Thus, “merchants and landowners, along with bankers and tourism boosters, have come to see the continued existence of Skid Row as a huge impediment to the central business district’s ‘renaissance’ as a corporate and financial command post of the Pacific Basin.”11 Furthermore, between 1970 and 1982, the nation lost 1,116,000 SRO units.12 This limited the options of the poor in seeking shelter. Research conducted by Hoch and Slayton shows that most Skid Row residents were working at this time (despite

92




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

portrayals to the contrary) and it was the progressive destruction of the SROs that pushed individuals into homelessness.13 In recent decades, homelessness has increased while the number of shelter beds and affordable housing has decreased, accompanied by budget cuts in welfare. This has led to what has been called a crisis situation, as of this writing. The homeless population has not only expanded numerically but also in diversity to include women, teens, the mentally ill, minorities, and immigrants, among others. In the first place, the deinstitutionalization movement began in the 1950s and so increasing numbers of the homeless were mentally ill. Between 1955 and 1980, the population of state mental institutions decreased by more than 75 percent.14 As a result, in the 1970s, there were more former psychiatric patients on the streets. This remained true in the 1990s and the early part of this century for several reasons: 1) deinstitutionalization was supposed to be supplemented by out-patient mental health services in each neighborhood that, for the most part, never materialized; 2) with welfare cuts and cuts in Medicare or Medicaid, there are fewer services for any of the poor; and 3) certain populations that are even more marginalized (for example, former inmates) or in hiding (for example, runaway youth) cannot be targeted to receive care. According to one survey, 27 percent of the homeless now are mentally ill.15 Nevertheless, as will be discussed below, mental illness in general has not really increased in percentage over the past century. What has changed is the number of mentally ill who are now homeless. Second, since the 1960s and early 1970s, the contemporary homeless are still from the urban working class but unlike other periods, when single white, ethnic males filled most low-paying industrial jobs, minority youths, immigrants, and women now fill them.16 As low-paying jobs become less secure, these groups are the most at-risk for homelessness. Indeed, the numbers of young, unemployed minority youth have grown17 and with regard to the homeless population, there has been an overall increase in the number of minorities and women.18 In addition, in 1993, families were reported to be 43 percent of the homeless population,19 according to the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Consequently, the number of homeless children has increased significantly; a 61-percent increase, one source claims. Another more recent survey concludes that the fastest growing group of homeless people is those between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one.20 This survey maintains that 60 percent of these youths are “graduates” of the welfare system; that is, they have become too old

Homelessness and Panopticism



93

to remain under foster care and yet have no skills or education to move on. Similarly, there are more former inmates among the homeless because there are now fewer transitional programs for prisoners being released.21 In sum, the diversity of the homeless population challenges the hobo stereotype. Third, in contrast to the middle of the last century, when shelters were replacing affordable housing, there is now a shortage of both affordable housing and emergency shelter.22 Additionally, there has been overcrowding at these shelters all year long, which has never happened before (there is usually a decrease in the summer).23 Nationally, it has been found that almost every city has more homeless individuals than shelter beds.24 Finally, a December 1999 survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors demonstrated that in twenty-six of the largest cities, the total number of requests for food and shelter had increased by 18 percent and 12 percent respectively over previous year’s figures.25 However, there is no mystery in this crisis; as one author states, “[A]dd the uncertainty created by the state and federal welfare overhauls, plus huge cuts in state and federal housing programs, and it’s no surprise shelter officials are predicting a crisis.”26 The shelter crisis challenges the notion that living on the street is a personal choice or an inherent individual quality. Nevertheless, there are many families and individuals whose income is below the poverty line and yet they often can’t meet the income eligibility for shelters.27 Thus, they are in a double bind because there is a shortage of affordable housing but they cannot take shelter space. It has been generally agreed by economists, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and housing advocates that rent should be 30 percent of an individual or household income. If rent is 50 percent or more of one’s income, the individual or family is said to be at-risk of homelessness or “shelter poor.” In Boston, there are estimated to be thirtynine thousand families who pay more than 50 percent of their income on rent and who would be eligible for housing subsidies.28 Nationally, in 1995, 3.9 million low-income households paid more than 50 percent of their income on housing, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.29 In 1999, it was reported that a record number of low-income families (5.3 million) were paying at least half of their income on rent.30 At times when this occurs, families or groups of people will double or triple up in one unit.31 Additionally, it is predicted that between 1983 and the year 2003, another 3.5 million low-rent units will have been eliminated.32

94




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

Low-income families or individuals who do not live in subsidized housing also face many problems with the quality of housing. For example, children in low-income units can suffer from rat bites, lead paint poisoning,33 and asthma from exposure to cockroaches and other insects. If parents are paying more than 50 percent of their income for rent, many children can be underfed. Alternatively, children are forced to move frequently because families cannot stay in one place for very long and thus their schoolwork is diminished.34 Immigrants, too, are subjected to extremely low quality housing. In one exposé on the problems of immigrants on Long Island, it was reported that the housing shortage has given landlords the chance to charge thousands of dollars a month to large groups of men (for example, Salvadorans) living in a small space. This includes lodging in sheds and garages. Many apartments are in unsafe areas, in bad condition, and overcrowded and these circumstances have even been fatal. The relatively sanguine enforcement of housing regulations allows undocumented workers to be exploited by landlords. The other quandary is that exposing the problems in one place will lead to overcrowding in another, as tenants flee the first place in search of another.35 In the late 1990s and the early part of this century, the affordable housing crunch is affecting people across class lines, which challenges the notion that the situation of the homeless is anomalous. While housing construction is up and in 1998 the building of new homes reached a peak, affordable housing for many is still a problem. This tight housing market is especially bad in San Francisco and Boston.36 This is ironically due to the booming economy (of the late 1990s) in that rent could be increased due to fuller employment and higher incomes for certain groups. As the economy declined more recently, rents remained the same. Losses of affordable units also occur from gentrification, condo conversion, commercial development, and abandonment.37 Between 1996 and 1998, residential rents rose by 6.2 percent, twice the rate of inflation.38 Thus, many people of all economic classes are now paying over 30 percent of their income for rent.39 For home buyers, prices are similarly unattainable. Nevertheless, as one politician has noted, while yuppies can simply move to a more affordable area, blue-collar workers “have no alternative to inflated rental prices—no high-paying job in Silicon Valley, no neighborhood of last resort, no means of avoiding monstrous rents.”40 The irony is that now middle- to upper-class people are renting and buying in neighborhoods where they once wouldn’t have lived, in

Homelessness and Panopticism



95

order to save money. A prominent example of this in Boston involved a public official buying an apartment slotted for low-income families in the Charlestown Navy Yard. While some have reacted with outrage, one Boston Globe reader had the following reaction: “I consider that having such a desirable location used for low-income families . . . a total misuse of public funds.” A similar attitude has manifested itself with many landlords who participated in a program with HUD to provide low-income housing. This program allowed low mortgage rates for landlords if they kept apartments affordable; however, as of this writing, the contracts that sealed this agreement are expiring or will expire very soon. Many landlords are opting out of the program by paying the balance and refusing to sign new contracts; about half have done so already.41 This affects about one million apartments nationwide. HUD is trying to make the arrangement more lucrative, but many landlords can still make more money at market rate. The problem is the worst in areas that are centrally located, near schools, or attractive in some other way.42 In addition, federal housing funds in general have been cut by 61 percent since 1976 and there was a sharp decrease in the number of Section 8 housing vouchers.43 While HUD did get a $2 billion increase for Section 8 vouchers, it cannot make up for the losses that have occurred in the program up until this point.44 Further, close to one million low-income families were on waiting lists for public housing units in 1999.45 In general, waiting lists are up to seven years in some places for available housing and vouchers, with some closing once they become too long.46 In New York, the wait is eight years, in Oakland six years, and in Washington, D.C. five years. The 1999 HUD report stated, “Finding affordable housing has become an ominous game of musical chairs,” where “only the lucky get seats.”47 Furthermore, in October, 1998, Congress passed a measure that would dramatically change public housing for the first time in decades. One change that would occur would be mixing income levels in order to provide role models for the unemployed. The loss of housing for the very poor would be supplemented by increasing the number of vouchers available. However, this presupposes that landlords are willing to rent to voucher holders, something that landlords have little incentive to do. Second, about half of the units affected are for the elderly and disabled, two groups that may not benefit from having role models. The 1998 overhaul also increased funding for the controversial HOPE VI program, which allows older high-rise projects to be demolished and replaced by

96




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

lower density townhouses. One application of this program was in the Chicago public housing area called “The Hole,” where eleven thousand units are planned to be demolished in fifteen years. This will and has already affected a population that is 99 percent African American, about half of whom earn less than five thousand dollars a year.48 Finally, the 1998 bill required all unemployed, healthy tenants to perform community service eight hours a month,49 a requirement that some claim is unconstitutional (because, it is argued, it is forced labor). The crises in shelter space and affordable housing challenge the stereotype that public housing is somehow easy to get and an opportunity for freeloading. Second, the fact that a significant number of people are at-risk of homelessness (or “shelter poor”) undermines the notion that the homeless are an exceptional and anomalous group. Third, it would appear logical that homelessness has increased given these conditions. According to studies by the Donohue Institute at the University of Massachusetts and (separately) Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, reasons for this crisis in housing include the wage gap between whites and African Americans; inadequate wages for head of household in low-income families, the fact that pay increases have not matched the rise in the cost of living, the paucity of affordable housing, an increase in evictions, and real estate discrimination.50 It is also a problem of political focus: Nicholas Retsinas, director of the Harvard center, states that “in recent campaigns,” two housing issues made it onto the polls: one was the need for more home ownership, and the other was ‘Let’s get criminals out of public housing.’”51 In other words, housing the poor is not a hot issue but teaching them a lesson is. In addition to the housing and shelter crises, the economy has not been good to the poor, either. The disparity between economic well being in general and worsening conditions for the poor continues to this day.52 Families headed by single mothers and children in general are most at risk of being poor and are amongst the poorest in the nation.53 The child poverty rate in California is especially severe as it makes up almost 25 percent of all impoverished children. Younger parents have also suffered income losses of about a third over the past two decades.54 With regard to ethnicity, Latinos and African Americans have been found to be among the poorest,55 although the percentage of African Americans living below the poverty line is the lowest since 1959.56 For both groups, the wage gap between whites and people of color is still a significant factor. This results in the fact that about two-thirds of the African American

Homelessness and Panopticism



97

community have no financial assets, for example. According to one journalist, unequal holdings between blacks and whites is a result of “132 years of Affirmative Action policy by the government for whites.”57 In general, groups that are most at risk of being poor are often those who have historically been disenfranchised, receive unequal pay for the same work, and suffer other types of discrimination. Despite the fact that the economy was booming for the United States in the late 1990s, the gap between rich and poor has been quite significant. This has been due to an increased polarization of incomes as well as a “casualization” of lower end jobs. For example, income inequality in Massachusetts has increased by 40 percent in the last twenty years.58 Nationally, there been a marked growth in income inequality since 1968. While inequality decreased from 1947 to 1968 by about 7 percent, it increased by 24 percent between 1968 and 1994.59 According to Robert Reich, wages have been decreasing even as business is doing well. This can be explained by decreased unionization, jobs that no longer offer long-term security or benefits, and the loss of skilled and unskilled manufacturing jobs.60 For example, between March and November of 1997, 245,000 jobs were lost and blue-collar workers are about 15 percent of the workforce now.61 As Saskia Sassen notes, the manufacturing sector has been replaced by a “downgraded” manufacturing sector and a growing service sector. The lower end manufacturing sector often means an increased number of sweatshops and industrial homework (lower skilled work), significantly lower wages than with higher skilled manufacturing jobs of the past, and the near impossibility of unionization.62 Further, for illegal immigrants filling these positions, it has recently been ruled by the Supreme Court that they do not have “the same rights to restitution as citizens who are mistreated on the job.”63 In essence, the more precarious job market is a result of the globalization of the economy. The results include changing urban demographics, less protection of blue-collar workers, and greater inequality in income distribution. These changes affect lower-class, immigrant, and minority women in particular. Very often women fill temporary or other low-paying jobs that are not viewed as constituting a primary economic contribution to the economy. In 1993, twice as many women had part-time jobs as men. Additionally, women dominate service jobs, childcare, and reception positions.64 Even when women gain access to socially significant employment, they are often not paid the same as men. Moreover, despite certain changes in attitudes towards housework and caretaking, they are often left with child

98




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

rearing and housework, which compromise their earning power. For all of these reasons, women are often in a more vulnerable position economically. This carries into retirement also: women make up about twothirds of the elderly poor. This is due in part to the fact that women live longer than men, but it is also related to the unequal pay they receive. (And, as noted above, inequality in wages cuts across gender and racial lines). To this day, women earn approximately seventy-four cents to the dollar of men’s wages and therefore, gain less in social security.65 In fact, if affordable housing stock continues to decrease and the gap between rich and poor increases and welfare cuts persist, women could be the fastest growing group of the homeless.66 Proposed changes in taxes in the late 1990s further evidence the inequalities discussed above. Most recent tax cuts have been shown to benefit the well off, rather than the middle or lower classes. The inequality in benefits is not the only result, however; tax cuts have meant massive cuts in welfare and social programs.67 The debate on who benefits from tax reform has caused more than a few people to question our values and measures of success.68 On the other hand, those who propose tax cuts that benefit the rich may feel that income and success are inextricably linked. Alan Rabushka, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, upon learning of a study that claims that the gap between rich and poor is the greatest since the Depression, declared, “The problem is how to take high-school dropouts and educate them. Taxes haven’t got too much to do with social pathology.”69 In other words, a national problem is viewed as individual. For all of the reasons above, homelessness has reached its highest levels and more people are on the street, again lending to talk of the new homeless. The image of the new homeless is reinforced by the novelty of “their visibility, the absence of a supportive community, and hence their susceptibility to institutionalization.”70 However, it could be argued that the homeless 1) are a diverse group; 2) have been organized culturally,71 socially, and economically72 when options are available (thus, challenging the idea that they are irrational), and 3) do not suffer pathologies as much as stereotypes in the media and public policy would indicate.73 Thus, the basis of homelessness—poverty and lack of affordable housing—is the same for the new or old homeless. There are simply more homeless now, with the addition of women, minority youths, and the middle classes. Others who are displaced include runaways, migrants, women escaping domestic violence, and the elderly (especially elderly women).74 The prob-

Homelessness and Panopticism



99

lem has simply become more visible because of the lack of cheap housing or other options that existed in the past. To argue that homelessness is merely an individual phenomenon—due to individual irresponsibility, sloth, and pathology—is to ignore changes in housing and the effects of the globalization of the economy, which has led to the casualization of work. While pathologies can account for the homelessness of some individuals, as Brendan O’Flaherty remarks, there would have to be a corresponding rise in pathologies in the general population to match the rise in the numbers of homeless since the 1970s to view this as a causal explanation. However, this general increase has not been the case.75 Moreover, as numerous advocates have already claimed, many pathologies are brought on or exacerbated by homelessness. In other words, perhaps some or even many homeless individuals have substance abuse issues, for example, but this does not explain their homelessness per se. If the number of alcoholics or mentally ill has not increased for the population in general, the question remains as to why the mentally ill or alcoholics were once housed and are not now. Recent changes in welfare law reflect the view that the poor and homeless are pathological, promiscuous, and lazy (among other things) without taking into account changes in the economy or affordable housing. These changes especially affect poor women’s economic status. One of Clinton’s goals was to change “welfare as we know it” and essentially diminish the numbers of people on welfare rolls.76 This plan, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation of 1996, was passed in conjunction with the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (discussed below). The original intention was to supplement the welfare cuts with new jobs, health care, daycare, occupational training, and education programs. However, while the budget was slashed and welfare is now harder to get, the supplementary programs never materialized.77 Changes have included a two-year limit on receiving welfare; family caps in various states that put a limit on the number of children a woman can have and still receive welfare; and stricter eligibility. All of these revisions have a moral component to them (for example, the fact sheet for TANF78 states that the purposes of TANF are “to reduce dependency by promoting job preparation, work and marriage; to prevent out-of-wedlock pregnancies; and to encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent families”).79 This tightened eligibility has even been extended to food stamps and has hurt eligible adults as well as many eligible children.80 However, TANF,

100




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

formerly AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children), has been especially targeted for reductions and new restrictions, seemingly because it helps a population, mostly single mothers, that has become controversial. Ironically, the constant push for family values and the endorsement of marriage on the one hand, and family caps on the other, is that poor homeless women often feel pressured into staying with an abusive husband on behalf of their children or having an abortion.81 Further, the consequences can be that the jobs that many TANF recipients could get, if they can even get a job, are low paid and usually don’t have medical insurance.82 Women who left welfare for work have had an average decrease in income of 33 percent. Moreover, half of mothers who do get off welfare have to get back on because their wages are insufficient in comparison to their welfare subsidies.83 As one author states, “[W]ithout job skills and especially education, work does not equate with self-sufficiency. . . . [T]he idea that welfare recipients need work requirements in order to get them into the labor market is out of touch with the realities of welfare mothers’ lives.”84 Moreover, there is a dilemma for mothers with children who have no adequate daycare: they risk losing their children (to social services) if they leave them in unsafe circumstances, but if they accept welfare, they will eventually be cut off. Deborah Connolly notes, “The refusal to address such dilemmas means that current welfare reform legislation acts primarily as an assault on the poor, seldom providing a genuine escape route from poverty.”85 However, there seems to be a moral imperative to get people off of welfare at all costs. In all forms of welfare, the numbers have dropped and it is unclear whether this is due to tough restrictions on the acceptance of welfare or the fact that the economy is doing relatively well and there is low unemployment. One source claims that welfare rolls were declining even before the changes in the rules.86 In contrast, according to President Bill Clinton’s chief domestic advisor, 44 percent of caseload drops were due to the economy and 31 percent to welfare reform.87 Other researchers claim that people have been leaving the welfare rolls for two reasons: public hostility towards welfare recipients and lower unemployment rates in the late 1990s. Still others surmise that some people get off welfare by going back to a partner (20 percent of all welfare recipients have been abused within twelve months of receiving welfare and two-thirds overall have been abused by a husband or boyfriend as adults).88 Regardless of how people have gotten off of welfare, a study in April 2001 reported that a high per-

Homelessness and Panopticism



101

centage of low-income people and former welfare recipients are still unemployed and suffering from homelessness, hunger, and inadequate medical care. According to a recent report, Welfare to What, 15 percent of respondents had been evicted from their homes as a result of the welfare change and less than half believed they had stable living conditions.89 Some have become homeless and the McCormack Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, claims that 13 percent of those already homeless in Boston had recently lost their welfare benefits although they were still eligible.90 In general, the one significant change that has been recorded according to one source is that the reforms punish people who wouldn’t participate in work programs.91 Similarly, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 has raised concerns about the fate of poor immigrants. This welfare legislation marked the end of sixty years of federal protection for the needy and poor while generating $50 billion dollars in savings for the federal government and creating block grants to the states, which determine how their constituents will be served. Most noncitizens will no longer be eligible for Social Security Insurance (SSI) and food stamps. New immigrants coming to join their family members after August 22, 1996, will be denied most federal means-tested programs for five years. After five years, individuals will still be ineligible for programs if the combination of their income and that of the person sponsoring their entry into the country does not meet the income eligibility requirements (this process is called “deeming”). In January, 1997, states were able to determine whether immigrants would be eligible for TANF, Medicaid, and Social Service Block grants. States can also provide or refuse state-funded programs for current and future immigrants.92 President George W. Bush, encouraged by the lower numbers on welfare rolls, has decided to tighten welfare eligibility even more in 2003, as the Clinton plan has expired. Bush’s 2003 proposals are essentially the same ones he tried (and failed) to pass in 2002. The proposals in 2002 included a “strong pitch for marriage”; $300 million dollars will be directed to programs encouraging marriage for recipients. As with the Clinton plan, states will receive bonuses for lowered numbers; Bush also wants to continue the five-year bar for benefits for legal immigrants. The most significant change would be stricter work requirements. This would increase the required work hours from thirty to forty and would augment the overall percentage of people working by 2007. Bush has also proposed that workfare jobs be paid less than minimum

102




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

wage, although he has met with so much protest that this particular point may not pass. Although Bush was criticized for pushing people off of welfare during a recession, he replied, “‘[W]e got a plan to make sure our economy grows.’” Thus far, states have responded to these tougher requirements by simply reducing the numbers on welfare rolls but not placing recipients in jobs.93 Much in these policy changes is based on certain ideas that are not borne out by empirical fact. For example, three ideas have been predominant in the past few decades: there is a culture of dependency that leads to years of welfare use and abuse; minorities make up the bulk of single mothers on welfare; and many recipients are “cheats.” Nevertheless, about 50 percent of people are on welfare for less than a year and 70 percent are on it less than two years.94 A twenty-year study also demonstrates that in any given year of the study, a significant number of women on welfare were also working.95 Second, less than half of all welfare recipients are African American but the racialization of the image of the welfare client seems to be based on the stereotype of the poor, abusive mother squandering taxpayers’ money.96 Moreover, although out-ofwedlock births have increased in all economic classes by about eight times the rate in the 1940s,97 “nonmarital birth rates of black women have not changed in two decades.”98 The majority of mothers who have children outside of marriage are not teens or minorities and welfare was not found to be a significant factor in recent increases in numbers of children born out of wedlock.99 Nonetheless, even though AFDC accounted for only about 1 percent of the budget100 it has been eliminated as a response to these alleged problems and many women have had to find other means of supporting their families. Further, the new rules have been combined with a presumption of criminality or “cheating” on the applicants’ part.101 This has led to heightened screening of applicants and fingerprinting. Nevertheless, in California, for example, very few cases of fraud have been found. Moreover, the increased surveillance of applicants actually costs $8,583 per person and the county with the highest level of general relief—San Francisco at $345 a month—only found one “double dipper” in the first year. Other counties have also had relatively few cases.102 Elsewhere, there are plans to drug test welfare applicants.103 Alternatively, Mayor Giuliani (New York) would have had homeless people work in return for shelter and put kids in foster homes if parents who could work refused. This unfortunately puts families in a double bind. While many families are

Homelessness and Panopticism



103

working in exchange for shelter, thousands of others are on waiting lists for daycare.104 Although he did not succeed with his plan,105 Giuliani’s desire to get tough on the homeless illustrates the level of hostility toward the homeless in politics today. What is funny is the widespread impression that people would want to take shelter space or live on welfare benefits that add up to less than an income at the minimum wage.106 The conditions described above explain how homelessness could have increased in the recent past, even when the economy has been robust. Nevertheless, policy and public perceptions have widely diverged from this story. Rather, they focus on altering individual behavior or increasing punitive measures. This is especially true of homeless policy (as distinct from policy for the poor in general): “[M]isconceptions about Skid Row residents and the SRO hotel way of life have played a central role in framing public debates about the contemporary homeless.”107 As argued in the previous chapter, there are two general reactions to political Others in the modern nation-state. Often those who do not fit into the political and economic mainstream are expected to either assimilate or have their existence subjected to coercion, surveillance, and even criminalization. These two reactions are mutually reinforcing—or, rather, two sides of the same coin—but the demand for assimilation characterizes the treatment of poor women in the welfare state while more overt coercion is reserved for poor men (although this distinction is not absolute). Men in poverty, and particularly those who are homeless, do not receive aid nearly as much as women. In fact, when poor men become homeless, they are more likely to be on the street or part of the “invisible” homeless. As poor women submit to welfare rules in exchange for aid, poor and homeless men can be arrested for sleeping in parks or cars or panhandling, and can have possessions seized or burned. Thus, their existence is criminalized, as are their life-sustaining activities. The relation that women have with the state is perhaps no less criminalized, but it is different and exemplifies a more subtle and yet no less potent coercion. Poor women receive welfare108 more often than men for various reasons: 1) their applications for assistance are approved more frequently than men’s; 2) they are often primary caretakers of children; and 3) they fit the norms of biopower (discussed below) more closely than men. However, receiving welfare is by no means a neutral experience. In contrast to many poor men’s experience of indigence, women’s greater participation in welfare programs is marked by attempts to assimilate them and make them better citizens. This implies that there are pathologies and behavior

104




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

to be corrected and in this sense, women’s transgressions that led to poverty are tacitly being punished. Alternatively, the presumption of criminality regarding the homeless on the streets is based on status rather than behavior. In either case, like convicted criminals and illegal aliens, they are subjected to the authority of prerogative power. The norms, expectations, and coercive acts of the state illuminate a policy based on a paradigm of the poor, women, and the politicoeconomic Other as lazy, conniving, pathological, and irresponsible. Nevertheless, this paradigm is not unified or consistent but poses a number of double binds and exposes the inner contradictions of the status of gender, race, the poor in general, citizenship, and political identity. The numbers dispute, regarding an accurate count of the homeless population, exemplifies the lack of understanding regarding the nature of homelessness. The reason that the numbers are so controversial is that they determine the difference between defining whether the homeless are an exceptional or anomalous population (small numbers) or a statistically significant group. The claim of lower numbers allows the government and certain conservatives to argue that the homeless are not a normal part of the population and do not deserve special treatment. Accordingly, it is easier to argue for welfare and social spending cuts. In contrast, higher numbers signal that this is a problem that affects the population as a whole and that the homeless are not particularly pathological or abnormal. However, when researchers narrowly define homelessness, the numbers of homeless counted on any given night will be low, and thus the seriousness of the problem cannot be seen.109 The government’s approach to counting, in 1988, was to have the Department of Housing and Urban Development simply call 205 shelter providers across the country to find out how many people were staying overnight.110 This method has been repeated in more recent studies. Nevertheless, many homeless people do not go to shelters, as they turn away many eligible people because of space limitations. What’s more, many individuals are afraid to stay in shelters because of disease, robbery, overcrowding, noise levels, and strict rules. Lastly, certain groups of people need or want to remain invisible if their citizenship status is in question, they are escaping domestic abuse, or they face other problems. In his book The Homeless, Christopher Jencks uses the U.S. Census Bureau’s information, along with studies by Martha Burt and Peter Rossi, to estimate the numbers of homeless individuals. Jencks admits that the homeless are often invisible and thus, difficult to count, but then only

Homelessness and Panopticism



105

counts the visible homeless in his own work.111 (The visible homeless are those in the shelter system, while the invisible homeless are those living under bridges, in abandoned buildings, and in encampments, for example.) This approach (by Jencks or the government) presupposes that home and homelessness can be reduced to the number of shelter beds, rather than taking into account a perspective of homelessness that involves relationships with family, friends, the workplace, or community. Jencks was unwilling to enter abandoned buildings or other sites (such as bridges, campgrounds) where the homeless had created living situations outside of the shelter system, due to his assumption that “a large fraction of the homeless use drugs, and these are precisely the buildings in which they are most likely to be found.”112 He states that most interviewers are hesitant to enter these buildings, which is why the visible homeless are easier to count. Thus, rather contradictorily, he believes a large portion of the homeless live in areas outside of the shelter system and yet he refuses to enter the buildings and areas where they allegedly stay. What’s more, he admits that he has not examined what he thinks is a large number of the homeless population but somehow knows they all do drugs. Significantly, he unmasks a preconceived fear that these researchers have of the homeless, which raises suspicions as to how accurate their information could be. This psychological distancing from the object of study is perhaps explained by the desire for neutrality. However, in reality, it creates a hierarchy of power where the homeless are not only unaccounted for but also viewed with suspicion and fear. This fear, rather than reflecting reality, illuminates the otherness of the homeless in that they are the reservoir of uncanny feelings. Jencks discusses the numbers dispute in his book on the homeless and emphasizes the advantage of having big numbers for grassroots activists.113 However, the difference between the two approaches is that very often, homeless advocates have a deeper understanding of homeless individuals’ lives and have often formed friendships, and thus understand the complexities of homelessness better. That is, they often have an expanded knowledge of where the homeless are and what they do. Because of Jencks’s limited perspective, his numbers are closer to that of the government’s.114 Nonetheless, as Deborah Stone remarks, “Jencks acknowledges, since the scientific counts are based on the number of homeless people on streets and in shelters on any one night, the number of people who are homeless at some point during the year might well be over 1 million”115 and this is not counting the invisible homeless. While Jencks criticizes activists for using high numbers to emphasize how dramatic the

106




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

problem is, he ignores the fact that his claims of significantly lower numbers are consequential, too. In general, two conclusions can be drawn. First, increased federal intervention in the homeless issues over the course of the twentieth century helped to create the paradigmatic figure of the homeless Other, in conjunction with nationalist and economic demands. Public policy and attitudes have addressed the character and morality of the poor and homeless, ironically taking on the character or quality of social control that existed in poorhouses in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. However, the creation of this Other now has racial and gendered meaning that it never did in the past. Second, there have been a great number of misconceptions about who the homeless really are and what constitutes the homeless situation. These misconceptions have justified arguments that the poor should be conceptually divided into categories of deserving and undeserving. The homeless are either viewed as having pathologies that can be treated through surveillance and discipline or they are treated punitively (as will be discussed below). In the past, punishment took the form of capital punishment. Likewise, in contemporary times it has translated into the erasure (elimination of both the visibility of the problem and, at least indirectly, these individuals) of the homeless, albeit in a more covert and insidious manner. This has been manifested through either taking away their means of living116 or encouraging their obscurity through busing to other cities, building campgrounds outside of the city, or conducting sweeps where the homeless are arrested or chased out of public view. In essence, it would appear that the problem of homelessness is not being solved, but ordered and managed.

Homelessness and Panopticism There are several ways to interpret the history and current nature of homelessness in America. These interpretations fall loosely into liberal and conservative categories, each of which is closely linked to policy orientations. When more closely considered, however, they reveal underlying patterns of discursive and actual domination, of the kind analyzed by Michel Foucault. In this section I contend that the line of analysis Foucault develops in Discipline and Punish (as well as The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1) has interpretive relevance to the problematics of homelessness. In this text, Foucault explores the evolution of the modern prison system.

Homelessness and Panopticism



107

General criminality according to Foucault has registered certain important transformations in the past century and a half. Punishment, in general, has changed from a deliberately obvious manifestation of sovereign power over the body of the criminal to a more hidden, less physical type of punishment. Thus, he argues that authoritative power has become extrajuridical. Rather than mete out a punishment to a criminal, a judge prescribes a treatment and assesses the normality of the individual. In doing this, the judge must rely on a whole network of experts—psychiatrists, criminologists, educators, doctors—in order to evaluate the individual’s pathologies and corrigibility.117 Second, in judging the criminal/vagrant, it is necessary to establish what is normal.118 Delinquency, anomalies, deviations, potential dangers, illness, and this form of existence must be accounted for in formulating policy and prescription.119 The entire extrajuridical web supports the functioning of the norm and the body of knowledge generated on this basis evidences the denaturing of the power that authorities exercise. The rules and laws set up around assessing each client or case function as a normative power. Discipline hierarchizes, individualizes, and categorizes.120 It subscribes to a binary mode (good/bad, deserving/undeserving) and the contemporary version of branding (through documentation, the transformation of each individual into a case, and fingerprinting, for example). Knowledge is generated from the combination of this power that infiltrates society and penality on all levels and involves the individual as a subject to be investigated, the effectiveness of the power wielded, and the social or human sciences that support disciplinary power. Although this extrajuridical web that has been created can become unwieldy—“with the multiplicity of scientific discourses, a difficult, infinite relation was then forged that penal justice is still unable to control”121— it builds the case, brands, and defines the individual. Contemporary policies towards the homeless have effectively placed the homeless in this legal limbo, thus subjecting them to the same power/knowledge relations that Foucault elucidates in Discipline and Punish. As described above, the homeless were treated in the past by a policy and public attitude, while still moralistic and disdainful, that allowed for their relative autonomy (for a brief period). This has been transformed in more recent times into government intervention, increased bureaucratic contact and the development of a scientific body of literature examining their pathologies. In essence, this is what Foucault calls “biopower,” which he describes as a normative power that has arisen

108




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

with the growth of the modern nation-state. As territories have grown larger and more populated, biopower represents the attempts to manage and study populations (for example, through economics and the study of human interaction) and discipline or normalize them (for example, in school and the military). Consequently, power relations support stability and public order rather than justice. In this way, “biological existence” is “reflected in political existence” and “law operates more as a norm; less a show of naked power than molding, redistribution.”122 The aim is to make the individual docile, a citizen-subject. Hence, as disciplinary power treats the body as a machine, it develops an “anatomo-politics of the human body.” This can be seen in Enlightenment notions of the body as applied to political thought. The later development of biopower, made possible by eliminating famine and plague in the West, focused more on the species of the body and was informed by biological (for example, Darwinian) discourses. Political power began to center more on birth, mortality rates, and public health than the ravages of death. In this way, “Their supervision was effected through an entire series of interventions and regulatory controls: a bio-politics of the population.”123 It was this “bipolar technology of power” that allowed for biological existence to be reflected in political existence.124 Thus, departing from classical notions of citizenship, modern membership is based on preservation of life: “For millennia, man remained what he was for Aristotle: a living animal with the additional capacity for a political existence; modern man is an animal whose politics places his existence as a living being in question.”125 However, while it may be true that life and the management of populations has replaced a search for Aristotle’s good life, it is the homeless, refugees, and some poor immigrants whose existence is most particularly viewed as biological. That is, their existence comes into question because they have lost their citizenship. Authoritative power is also extrajuridical as the welfare state relies on the same network of psychiatrists, criminologists, educators, and doctors to assess the individual’s corrigibility and pathologies. The homeless individual is judged upon whether he or she is treatable; that is, whether, he or she will respond to the various welfare benefits offered. Thus, the homeless individual could be placed in transitional housing or subsidized housing (the highest in the hierarchy of housing solutions) or be left to stand in line at a mission or emergency shelter (the lowest of the sheltered strata). Second, in judging the homeless, a norm is established and each individual is judged by this standard. Pathologies of the homeless are

Homelessness and Panopticism



109

viewed as societal contaminants and bureaucratic and political authorities must judge whether they can be treated or eliminated. Here it is evident that disavowed elements of society are projected onto the Other. Bureaucratic categories and rules and criminal laws support the activation of these norms. However, the treatment of criminals in general, and the homeless specifically, does not demonstrate a new respect for humanity but rather “a more finely tuned justice, towards a closer penal mapping of the social body.”126 This power, as I have stated, cannot be described as democratic because of the domination in these relations. Beliefs rooted in capitalism and a Darwinian notion of economic success further reinforce the division between citizen and noncitizen. The following will be divided into two sections, the first of which will deal with the practices of panopticism and the second with the interpretations of homelessness that operate within the power/knowledge framework.

Panopticism The desire to erase the problem of homelessness is reflected in the legal limbo into which they fall. For example, Not in My Back Yard policies,127 supported by policy makers, bureaucrats and the average citizen, have arisen frequently, as well as anticamping or antivagrancy laws.128 With the increase of homelessness, there has been more hostility towards these individuals.129 The manifestations of this hostility very often end in violating civil rights. There have been efforts to banish the homeless through antiloitering and vagrancy laws (abridges the right to freedom of movement), place homeless people in a double bind by arresting them for sleeping in public when they have nowhere else to go (cruel and unusual punishment) and to take away means of survival through seizure of property (violations of Fourth and Fifth Amendments).130 Although antiloitering and vagrancy laws were struck down by the Supreme Court (Papachristou and Kolender cases), three new methods of banishing the homeless have been arrest sweeps (for camping on public land or sleeping in public); property sweeps, where possessions are seized and destroyed; and laws against panhandling.131 Cities characterized as the toughest on the homeless include Atlanta, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and Tucson. For example, it has been reported that San Francisco arrests people for giving food to the homeless and Cleveland displaces homeless individuals to isolated areas outside of the city.132 All have used arrest sweeps, issuing tickets for begging, physical removal from the city, and detention for “quality of life”

110




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

violations.133 Although panhandling has been deemed a form of free speech by the Supreme Court and in Massachusetts it was ruled that laws against begging restrain “the right to engage fellow human beings with the hope of receiving aid and compassion,”134 cities have found various ways to go around this ruling (77 percent of U.S. cities restrict or prohibit panhandling).135 For example, beggars who “‘transgress peaceful limits’” can be arrested for disorderly conduct, assault, or trespassing.136 In Orlando, Florida, panhandlers are required to buy a permit to beg. Ironically, the permit requires an address and many areas are offlimits for begging. One cannot falsely represent oneself (for example, by wearing a military uniform when one hasn’t served) or ask for money for one thing and then spend it on another. Begging without a permit can mean sixty days in jail and a five-hundred-dollar fine, although these rules do not apply to church groups who solicit money. The officers in the permit unit “wear rubber gloves and surgical masks to ward off odor and germs.” The motivation behind the permit, according to one official is that “‘panhandling frightens children and adults’ and reminds tourists of ‘the unpleasantries of every day life.’” The purpose of it is to “‘attract and consolidate’ the homeless away from downtown shopping areas” and provide the police with “an easier way to arrest for panhandling.” Or, as one officer states more bluntly, “We’re actually hoping we’ll displace people to other cities.”137 Mike Davis likewise describes proposals by Los Angeles Councilman Gilbert Lindsey to drive the homeless to a camp in the Santa Monica Mountains or to ferryboats anchored in the harbor.138 San Francisco’s recent Operation Scrub Down is a similar effort to clean the streets of the homeless and their shopping carts. This program includes hosing down streets with high-pressured hoses (to awaken those sleeping on the sidewalks),139 confiscating shopping carts, and issuing citations of up to five hundred dollars for sleeping in a park after hours or camping in public.140 In 1999, more than forty-two thousand citations were issued. As Gavin Newsom, a San Francisco politician, declares, “It’s time for tough love, accountability and outcomes.”141 Santa Monica, California, has made similar efforts to curb begging in tourist areas with their Dolphin Change Program. The city is asking people to deposit money in bronze statues of dolphins rather than giving directly to the homeless. However, as Len Doucette, the editor of Hard Times (a homeless newspaper) notes, the homeless will lose political agency and the ability to keep the issue “in people’s faces” if they are not allowed to be there physically.142

Homelessness and Panopticism



111

Regardless of political partisanship, it is generally agreed that public policy toward the homeless has become increasingly harsh and treats the effects of homelessness rather than its causes. (This is partly due to the sentiment that the McKinney Act has failed to solve the problem of homelessness.)143 By 1999, for example, all fifty of the largest cities in the United States had sanctioned new regulations against loitering and sleeping on sidewalks.144 In 1997, Mayor Willie Brown of San Francisco outlawed sleeping in Golden Gate Park and scores of homeless people were arrested. In October, 1999, Mayor Giuliani of New York ordered the police to arrest homeless people who refuse to enter shelters.145 In 1994, Berkeley, California, passed a law prohibiting people from sitting or lying on a sidewalk within six feet of a building in a commercial space.146 These ordinances and arrests effectively disallow the homeless from conducting life-sustaining activities in addition to prohibiting their freedom of movement. Taken with the shortage of emergency shelter and lack of affordable housing, arrest sweeps, prohibiting the homeless from sleeping in public parks, removing them from the city, burning possessions, and making begging difficult or criminal not only put the homeless in a double bind, but make their very existence questionable. In essence, homeless individuals are no longer considered citizens, as constitutional protections do not apply to them. They are treated as criminals although they have not committed any crimes; laws against vagrancy, for example, punish status rather than conduct. As the executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty states, “By penalizing people for innocent, necessary, life-sustaining conduct, cities are essentially punishing people for being homeless.”147 These actions are effectively designed to erase the problem of homelessness by forcing the homeless to go from town to town, but they could also literally erase these individuals through removing any means of survival. Moreover, “solutions” often reflect a desire to exile the homeless. Rather than allowing a population that “continue[s] to consume tax dollars and demoralize society”148 to infest public space, one solution has been the urban campground. This has been used in Los Angeles at least twice and squeezes many homeless individuals in a city into one place, as if it were a refugee or internment camp. Another recent innovation is the construction of fiberglass domes in Los Angeles and more recently, the proposal to shelter the homeless on retired cruise ships in New York City.149 The first two solutions manifest a disregard for

112




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

human life as often there is no sewage, the land is bad, and the camps (real or proposed) are located in unsafe, remote places. Low-budget efforts such as these diminish the standards of what is considered fit for human habitation. Furthermore, they reinforce the separation between self and other geographically. Given the history of the homeless and the suspension of their civil rights, it is hard to deny that the political status of the homeless falls into a legal limbo, characterized by the prerogative power that the average person or political theorist assumes is reserved for foreign relations, illegal immigrants, and enemies of the state. The pathologies of the homeless, an integral element of much of the legal and bureaucratic perspective, are viewed as contaminating and threatening society. The perception that they are unfit for public life (meaning citizenship), criminals, or pathological is reflected through diffuse mechanisms of bureaucratic and other specialized power. This is what could be called “analogical punishment”: the power that punishes is hidden.150 Each homeless individual is different and thus reflects varying levels of criminality. Federal definitions of homelessness are created within a certain budget and draw distinctions between deserving and undeserving poor, as not every homeless person can be provided for within the budget allotted. This is reinforced by the media and society in distinctions between drug addicts (bad) and people who are not users (good), people who could not afford to pay rent any longer (bad) versus people who were displaced by natural disasters (good) and people who are mentally ill (bad, although more complicated) versus those who are not (good), for example.151 These judgments are conferred upon the homeless and illuminate an unequal power dynamic. Welfare recipients fall under the “bad” rubric: “AFDC [now TANF], the ‘children’s’ program . . . is still viewed with suspicion . . . [because] we are concerned about work incentives, moral behavior, and child rearing.”152 Additionally, because of distinctions made in determining eligibility for housing subsidies or general relief, not everyone who is eligible is a recipient. Barriers to becoming a general relief recipient include “large, noisy central offices that are crowded with a variety of people from the street, long lines, and untrained, harassed workers. The forms are lengthy and complicated.”153 In order to receive benefits, one must have a twelfth-grade reading level for the forms,154 extensive documentation must be provided, as well as detailed housing histories, and sometimes a permanent address is needed. (The barriers are also budgetary and many waiting lists exist for

Homelessness and Panopticism



113

various services.)155 Additionally, welfare workers can cut people off for calling at the wrong time or not providing enough documentation. As Foucault has noted, “law and justice do not hesitate to proclaim their necessary class dissymmetry.”156 Thus, these obstacles deter requests for aid and put people in their place. The extensive documentation required for services allows for assessment and hierarchizing, and builds a case that brands the individual. The disciplinary apparatuses divide the “good” and the “bad” subjects; those who receive only food stamps are generally at the bottom of the hierarchy, while those who obtain a wide range of benefits are at the top. The repetition involved in these processes and the unpleasantness of the welfare office and workers demonstrate what is not so much the “vengeance of outraged law as its repetition, its reduplicated insistence.”157 It manifests what Foucault would call “the rule of sufficient ideality” in that a penalty works because the idea of it is so disagreeable.158 In this way, the severity of the welfare office is designed to discourage “repeat offenders.” These barriers clarify the state’s view of the poor and homeless. Policy makers have provided relatively few shelter beds, established a hierarchy of welfare that excludes certain individuals, and perpetuated outdated images which are reinforced through the media, popular culture, and societal reactions to the homeless. The unity of these influences results in both an attempt at surveillance of those in the system through lengthy forms and documentation, on the one hand,159 and an attempt to erase the problem by denying that many categories of people even exist, on the other. If civil servants and the police treat the very poor and homeless with hostility and disrespect, they will avoid contact with the system, thereby enabling the government to claim small numbers and give fewer benefits and services.160 On the other hand, those who come in contact with the system can be simultaneously punished and molded into good citizens. Because welfare workers are the sole judges in each case, they can choose “good” clients and cut off “bad” ones: as Deborah Connolly notes, “Deviations from this model are ‘challenges’ to the worker. The incentive to appear to be a good client is strong since workers have enormous power over clients.”161 Bureaucracy affects the lives of many homeless people through welfare, the police, immigration, and social service workers and yet, it is a nondemocratic medium. No one person can be held responsible in the bureaucratic machine; civil servants are not elected and simply represent and carry out state policy. The entire web of authorities in each case

114




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

reinforces the idea that rules, regulations, and law are at the heart of this treatment, not people. The vastness of the bureaucracy depoliticizes daily life while reflecting state ideology. Welfare workers, for example, who must judge each case by a certain set of criteria, do not simply function as intermediaries but rather as the arbiter of each case. The police function in a similar manner in relation to people on the street. “By assessing acts with precision, discipline judges individuals ‘in truth’; the penality that it implements is integrated into the cycle of knowledge of individuals.”162 Consequently, the homeless are objectified and alienated from each other and society.163 This alienation is reinforced by the nature of welfare, in that receiving benefits isolates the recipient from mainstream society, on one hand, and other poor or homeless people, on the other. Bureaucratic categories place recipients in “‘nonroles’: Clients are school dropouts, broken families or unemployables.”164 This atomization of each individual is part of the politicomoral schema of individual isolation and hierarchy.165 Welfare serves individual needs, not that of the group. Furthermore, the lower one’s income is, the greater risk there is of families or other relationships breaking apart. In this way, homelessness is dual: people are displaced geographically and from their social network. Moreover, these ties to the bureaucracy put homeless individuals in the double bind of having more links to the state than the average person while systematically being denied what is the liberal conception of justice. Entrance into the welfare system is an admission of guilt. Thus, this person, through lack of economic independence, has suspended his or her civil rights. The individual becomes branded through documentation of personal details or a police record and this follows individuals even after they are out of the system.166 Nevertheless, there is no recourse for the homeless individual or family; authority in bureaucracy is based on its self-created knowledge and exclusion of the outside world. The nondemocratic nature of bureaucracy’s authority promotes fixed ideas and passive obedience rather than change or justice. The alternative, however, is denial of their existence. A temporary solution, the shelter, represents the characteristics of a discipline. Like a penal institution, a shelter can be the ultimate representation of the means to which the marginalized can be controlled, documented, observed, and molded.167 And, like a penal institution or mental hospital, it can be a site of confinement.168 Historically, the roots of confinement of marginalized peoples have been found in reactions to economic crises

Homelessness and Panopticism



115

beginning in the seventeenth century. Throughout Europe, confinement was the answer to problems “that affected the entire Western world: reduction of wages, unemployment, scarcity of coin. . . .”169 In “The Great Confinement,” Foucault discusses the confinement of the poor which later included the insane and consequently led to a segregation and criminalization of all societal outcasts. The origins of poverty were believed to be “neither scarcity of commodities nor unemployment but the weakening of discipline and the relaxation of morals.”170 Foucault uses the word “discipline” to describe the fields of education, medicine, psychiatry and psychology. These fields involve institutions such as prisons, schools, hospitals, and insane asylums. Thus, the disciplines are brought into effect in sites of confinement. Discipline revolves around the economical exercise of power and the maximization of effectiveness.171 Foucault notes, “The disciplines have to bring into play the power relations, not above but inside the very texture of the multiplicity, as discreetly as possible . . . in short, to substitute for a power that is manifested through the brilliance of those who exercise it, a power that insidiously objectifies those on whom it is applied; to form a body of knowledge about these individuals, rather than to deploy the ostentatious signs of sovereignty.”172 The synthesis of social and bureaucratic powers converts a structure into a panopticon, a center of surveillance. This synthesis leads to a space that allows for detailed, close control: “in more general terms, an architecture that would operate to transform individuals: to act on those it shelters, to provide a hold on their conduct, to carry the effects of power right to them, to make it possible to know them, to alter them.”173 Ideas about the confinement of the poor can be found in early liberal writings, but it is Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon that is salient among other proposals. Bentham created the ideal of the Panopticon in the 1780s for “the poor, the deviant, and the wards of society. . . .”174 A shelter is construed in a similar way. Housing histories, personal stories, and other personal facts (medical, parenting) are documented at least once, providing links to the state that result in a parental type of guidance while ignoring the larger social problems of poverty, poor urban schools, racism, and real estate discrimination. For each pathology, a different solution is proposed (such as twelve-step programs). Energy is poured into documentation, classification, and invasion. As each case is established, the individual is compared to others and placed in a hierarchy.175 For example, in an emergency shelter, those who

116




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

live in the few cubicles have “come clean” and proven themselves reformed. In the same shelter, those who sleep on cots with hundreds of others in a main room are at the bottom of the hierarchy. Their behavior is assessed and they are rewarded or punished accordingly. Good behavior (assimilation) often includes listening to passages being read from the Bible and admitting one’s vices. The reward is having a place to stay for the night and the reverse is ending up on the street.176 The arbitrary quality of the enforcement of welfare and shelter rules is well documented.177 Any temporary solutions to homelessness cannot avoid being precarious, nor, where the government is involved, devoid of ideological value. These solutions and many others mask the problem and distance citizens and state from the implications of homelessness. What is interesting is that the notion of scarcity arguably conditions the manifestation of the unconscious fear of helping the poor.178 Nevertheless, this same perception is hardly ever used to explain homelessness. That is, economics is perceived as a zero-sum game where giving handouts leads to less for the rest of us, but the same logic is not applied to employment or housing availability. In keeping with this, there has been increasing hostility with regard to spending tax money on welfare recently. Thus, to prevent a culture of dependency, emergency shelters are often used rather than housing subsidies (which pay for rent) despite the fact that emergency shelters can cost three times the amount of a housing subsidy. The costs of jailing and policing the homeless must be high also, but this is never the focus of public debate. The degree of criminalization and authoritarian policies toward the homeless arguably demonstrates that citizenship and political power places identity over interest in that unconscious fears and irrational behavior inform our policies and reactions to the homeless.

Homelessness, Power, and Knowledge The literature about homelessness can be summed up under the two broad categories of conservative or progressive interpretations. The conservative view is prevalent in mainstream culture, literature, and government policy, and it blames most homeless people for their situation. The deserving (that is, deserving of aid) homeless are generally the victims of natural disasters or some other recent disaster. The undeserving are a much larger group and include formerly deserving individuals such as Vietnam veterans and those who were displaced by a disaster and yet slipped through the cracks, continuing to be homeless. This literature

Homelessness and Panopticism



117

often involves empirical work about the addictions and sociopathic tendencies of the homeless, and their inability to hold a job. The Protestant work ethic is often invoked by suggesting that the homeless are simply lazy, disorganized, or irresponsible. The implication is that this group is homeless by choice. There is not much that is new about this literature except for the empirical gymnastics. Rather, it could be argued that it is one of the discourses that supports panopticism. The conservative literature establishes a distancing of the problem from everyday issues in politics and society. It often reflects government and academic research and policies, thus focusing on either reports that the homeless are mostly alcoholics or mentally ill179 or the deserving versus undeserving dichotomy.180 This literature can be useful but does not reflect the majority of the homeless population; nor have pathologies been found to be a significant causal factor in homelessness. Moreover, the frequent emphasis of these problems has not served to alleviate or change homelessness in any obvious, substantial way.181 It does add to the rhetoric of abnormality and criminality, thus feeding in to the division between worthy and unworthy and the liberal ideas of merit and responsibility. One’s problems become the cause for homelessness rather than the more obvious economic reasons. Nevertheless, other than trained professionals, no one can judge whether mental illness was a result of being homeless or was present before the onset of displacement. Alternatively, it is not often considered that what is irrational on its face could be perfectly rational behavior for a homeless person.182 In criticizing the conservative literature, the authors of one book state, “[I]t has become increasingly apparent that the problem of homelessness has less to do with personal inadequacy than it does with resource scarcity. Accordingly, it makes little sense to confine analysis of the problem to a scrutiny of those who are its victims.”183 Nevertheless, the media rarely mention demolitions of buildings or lack of adequate services in connection to homelessness. This literature can also ignore the fact that the homeless have agency, that they can and do assert themselves. However, assigning pathologies to the homeless justifies punitive policies and dehumanization of the Other. The liberal literature is more complex. For example, one can find articles focusing on pathologies of the homeless, but in a less blameful manner (for example, they should be helped, not punished). This literature portrays the homeless as victims of themselves, their own worst enemies. An article on Andrew Cuomo’s dealings with the homeless in The

118




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

New Yorker exemplifies this. He states, “There is no such thing as homelessness.” According to him, the plight of the homeless has been a big public relations job on the part of homeless advocates in order to blame Republican housing policies. Cuomo believes, rather, that drug and alcohol addiction, mental illness, poor education, and dependence upon welfare, among other things, are the causes of homelessness.184 Another, more progressive view portrays the homeless as victims of the system. While this may be more humanistic, it does not allow for agency of the homeless; they are, according to this view, pawns of society and capitalism. Last is the perspective characterized by those who would have us believe that homelessness is anything from a personal choice to a form of rebellion.185 According to this viewpoint, it is not always the case but homelessness need not be a situation of victimization. This point of view is reminiscent of Jack Kerouac’s Dharma Bums and other works of that era. The problem with this is that in the current political context, it is a romanticized version of homelessness. Christopher Jencks notes that this is ironically the same view held by conservatives, who think that the homeless are “rebellious and delinquent.”186 Similarly, Sue Ruddick notes that much of the existing literature revolves around two mythologies: first, the victimization of the homeless and second, the inevitability of homelessness and the acquiescence of the homeless in this situation.187 She argues that the homeless do assert themselves. They are not purely victims, nor can they (always) be characterized as accepting their situation. She critiques perspectives of the homeless as Other, abnormal, deviant because they ignore the response that comes back from the street and “the multiple and singular acts of resistance by the homeless and their advocates to confront and transform both these images of themselves as deviant, and the spaces they occupy.”188 If they were powerless or completely oppressed, many issues would never have been raised in the political, cultural, or social forum. Moreover, the individual cannot be the only unit of analysis; there is always a tension between individuals and groups, each side informing the other. Ruddick has remarked that the insertion of the homeless in visible places, such as in front of town hall, is a political move that demands to be noticed by passersby-by and administrators. Various acts of defiance should undermine the notion that the homeless do not assert their agency. Moreover, even the act of panhandling can be a political one, informing the public of what it is like to be poor and hungry.

Homelessness and Panopticism



119

Another misconception in both types of literature is that the homeless are almost all males. What is not usually indicated is that women are much more at risk of becoming homeless than men.189 Christopher Jencks believes women are becoming increasingly homeless because “the minority who did not work were less likely to have husbands” and yet had dependents. Thus, according to Jencks, women’s homelessness has had little to do with employment or housing prospects.190 Nor does he account for institutionalized sexism and racism. Although it could be argued that women have simply been deemed “worthy” in the worthy/unworthy dichotomy—because they receive welfare more often—their situation is no less complex than any other group of the homeless. Indeed, these women are subjected more to power/knowledge domination than many others due to their involvement with the welfare system. In this way, they are branded by the government and their poverty is portrayed in the media as the paradigm of what is wrong in the United States. That is, women on welfare are blamed for society’s ills. Family caps on welfare, personal responsibility workshops, and even orphanages are used as tools to keep these women in line. The insinuation is that these women are promiscuous, irresponsible, and perhaps even accountable for the breakdown of the nuclear family. The culture of dependency fostered by welfare has led Charles Murray of the Wall Street Journal to declare that this is “‘the most important social problem of our time’ fueling poverty, crime, drugs, illiteracy and homelessness.”191 Thus, there arises a false set of choices: women can stay with an abusive husband or boyfriend or be financially insecure; work in a low-paying job with no insurance or get on welfare and suffer the stereotypes; go into a job training program because it is mandated for those on welfare even though the programs have “shown no progress in twenty-five years”;192 receive unequal pay in the labor market and yet be blamed for their poverty; work and take care of children but be characterized as irresponsible and lazy; and be denounced for their single status as if they alone chose this. As Frances Fox Piven notes, “Most women on welfare are not passive or dependent, although we might well expect that pauper-level benefits, coupled with harassment by welfare-agency staff and denunciations by politicians, are bad for morale.”193 It appears that although women on welfare may experience homelessness differently than single men, for example, (that is, they receive more benefits) they are the repository for unconscious feelings of sexism—perhaps even misogyny—in addition to the usual prejudices against the poor. Further, women on welfare are often considered as

120




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

different altogether from other people who are at risk of being or actually homeless despite the similarities in problems. This could be explained by the idea that the literature is self-perpetuating and refers more to the paradigmatic view of the homeless individual discussed above than to the diversity of experience and individuals. What is common to examinations of people conventionally considered homeless is the emphasis on pathology, laziness, and irresponsibility; they are objects of analysis blamed for society’s problems. Literature about the homeless has mostly served to increase the body of knowledge of the pathologies of the homeless, whatever the intentions of the author. There are few political accounts of homelessness because of this;194 that is, there are few critiques of current literature and policy that emphasize the overall consequences of focusing on pathologies rather than poverty or exile. Rather, most criticisms are internal critiques. The result is that the literature supplements arguments to control the population and places labels upon individuals that create a truth other than the one experienced by the individual. In this way, spaces of marginalization are subsumed by the mainstream and the norms of political and daily existence established. Furthermore, the literature reflects class dissymmetry in a couple of ways. First, its intended audience is not the homeless but mainstream individuals and policy makers. The homeless can be seen in this context as irrational and inhuman where they are written about as subjects. Second, the switch of focus from long-term pursuits to shorter-term ones, revolving around survival, lends to the characterization of the homeless as subhuman, or, for example: “predators [who] foraged out from this site to prey on the weak and would steal on order.”195 Similarly, J. Q. Wilson and George Kelling compare vagrants to broken windows in a building. To protect the building, the “windows” need to be fixed by arresting vagrants to remove a potential danger.196 And, as Christopher Jencks so aptly points out, “The homeless are indeed just like you and me in most respects. But so are saints and serial killers. Members of the same species have a lot in common . . . but important as such similarities are, our differences are also important.”197 To further emphasize the class dissymmetry Jencks obviously feels, he states that “living with the homeless is both disagreeable and dangerous, so only the adventurous want to do it.”198 It is obvious that the homeless are the dirty, dangerous, and unpredictable Other who can only be studied from a distance. Third, these portrayals are coached in terms that make poverty and homelessness

Homelessness and Panopticism



121

appear natural rather than institutional, political, or economic. Finally, the normalizing processes to which the homeless are subjected are conditioned by a double standard: the prescription of ascetic ideals for the poor while the well-off have a different moral standard for themselves. This prescription is especially targeted towards women: in the present context, asceticism appears to be an outgrowth of the differentiation of gender (and its intersection with poverty) in political identity and citizenship in liberal capitalist society. Thus, the vices of sexual wantonness, poverty, economic dependence, and breakup of the nuclear family (among other things) are marked as particularly feminine. The vice of greed, on the other hand, is transformed into economic independence and responsibility and these values are associated with men. The primary value that determines the distinction between vices is paid, full-time, legal, and mainstream work, along with notions of responsibility and independence. That is, the middle classes and rich feel they have earned the right to their excess. In this way, the fetishization of the stock market is interpreted as a logical consequence of work in the new economy while poor working families are criticized for spending beyond their means, not buckling down.199 Additionally, the invisible homeless who want to avoid the social and political gaze are not accounted for, obscuring the issue even more.200 This invisibility—practiced by those who live under bridges, are doubled up in apartments, or who are hiding from immigration officers or abusive spouses201—does not fit neatly into the literature. What is particularly interesting is that it is precisely these people who are the direct objects of prerogative power. Homelessness in these cases takes on other meanings, such as exile and statelessness. The research and theories most propounded serve to justify current practices and attitudes. On the other hand, others romanticize the situation of the homeless. The dichotomy between the liberal or progressive literature and the conservative literature is exemplified in comparing Christopher Jencks’s The Homeless with Eliot Liebow’s Tell Them Who I Am. Stone remarks that the distinction between the two reflects the “quantitative vs. qualitative” division in the social sciences.202 Liebow’s book explores what it is like to actually be homeless,203 whereas Jencks (as discussed above) did not even attempt to establish contact with the homeless. As indicated, “Jencks came to know homelessness at least three times removed from himself.”204 Liebow, in contrast, talks about family, relationships, and interactions. Jencks, unlike Liebow, tends to blame the individual more

122




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

than structural factors.205 As Liebow and Stone note, rationality is different on the streets than it is for the housed person. Moreover, while the homeless women in Liebow’s book discuss relationships and keeping personal belongings, Jencks portrays the needs of the homeless as “a roof and some crack.” Jencks would see, for example, a poor or homeless woman’s pregnancy as her “agency in causing homelessness.”206 He ignores not only structural factors in his analysis, but also human emotions. In short, his analysis does not deviate from the disciplinary discourses that have surrounded the poor. Finally, in contrast to Liebow’s contention that homelessness is a problem of poverty, lack of affordable housing, and low-paying jobs, Jencks feels that housing the homeless will not make much of a difference: “Stable housing and daily work might reduce alcohol and drug consumption a little and might make some of the mentally ill a little saner, but they will not work miracles.” He does state, however, that we should provide housing “because we can.”207 Liebow’s method, however, shows that “a relational concept of home may be truer to human experience and even more desirable as a guiding light for policy” and demonstrates the deficiency of any simple solution.208 Clearly Jencks’s works adds nothing new and contributes to the vast web of disciplinary power and technology.

Conclusion In chapter 2, I argued that full citizenship signifies something more than the franchise or civil rights. To meet the criteria of full citizenship, one needs to be economically independent and one’s identity must conform to the norms of national identity. While partial citizens receive protections (passive citizenship), they do not always have access to active rights de facto, if not de jure. The homeless, in contrast, cannot be said to have any meaningful citizenship rights. However, their status is not only political but they serve as an exemplar of an internal enemy. That they are not merely a forgotten population or a group that has fallen through the cracks is evidenced by their criminalization and demands for assimilation. As argued in chapter 3, the fact that the homeless represent qualities posited as the opposite of citizenship requires the repression of difference and tension within the political mainstream (self) and the consequent projection of difference and tension onto the homeless. That is, the binary modes of self/Other, citizen/noncitizen and friend/enemy obscure a more complex reality that is repressed rather

Homelessness and Panopticism



123

than eliminated. In this way, the undecidability of the homeless becomes unheimlich, a return of the repressed. In this chapter, the politicoeconomic and politicoemotional dynamics should be evident. The problem of homelessness is not one to be solved by simply giving more food or allowing the homeless to vote more easily: these things are not bad, but inadequate by themselves. Exploring the treatment of the homeless illuminates the fact that citizenship is not simply a formal status, but one that affects daily life, significant decisions, and an individual’s future. To put it differently, citizenship, rightly or wrongly, in a world of nation-states is the recognition of one’s humanity and right to exist. By the same token, the reaction to the homeless as debtors to society, whose existence is considered an assault on the average citizen, appears to be limited to certain transactions (for example in the welfare office or in arrests) and yet overflows any creditor-debtor relationship (or citizen/noncitizen). In fact, the binary modes of self and Other in this context reveal more about our own politics, the status of democracy, and the importance of citizenship than about the homeless themselves. On one level, the home is conceived of as a site unmarked by difference, tension, or struggle. In contrast, homelessness represents the problems outside of the home: the breakup of the nuclear family, mental illness, promiscuity, and addiction. It is as if one group is problem free and moral and the other epitomizes social problems and immorality. At another level, the politics of homelessness reflect these myths and halftruths, forcing the homeless to occupy these fixed roles. This is not to say that there are no street people and no mentally ill homeless, for example, but that the diversity and complexity of homelessness is not taken into consideration. Just as race is real, so is homelessness; but both race and homelessness have meaning far beyond their physical manifestations and this meaning has been conferred and hyperbolized rather than self-defined. Further, there is little recognition of the “difference within ourselves.” A liberal reading of the problem of homelessness prior to September 11, 2001, would likely be that nationalism is not an independent force in liberal capitalist societies. National power, to the degree that it exists, is superstructural to the base of liberal capitalism or is only exercised in international relations. This argument would hold that homelessness is a problem of inadequate civil rights and the malfunctioning of the welfare state. Post September 11, 2001, it is difficult to argue that nationalism is

124




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

not also a core component of our political makeup, nor is it exercised in the international arena exclusively. Since that date, the apparent national bonding process has excluded the homeless; indeed, criminalization of the homeless is at its height and donations and charity have decreased radically for those already poor or displaced before this date. Alternatively, against a traditional Marxist reading of homelessness, while nationalism and national identity may give emotive content to capitalist values, they are not merely capitalist ideologies. In fact, just as they reflect and maintain capitalism domestically, they are also a reaction against the forces of globalization and the individuating processes that issue from liberal capitalist politics. Prerogative power aims at establishing order and stability—a homeland—over and against the disintegrating processes of global capitalism. The identity that is citizenship is informed by all of these trajectories—liberal, capitalist, and national— but the status of the homeless falls under the purview of prerogative power. However, this would not be recognized by a purely liberal reading of the problem. The demands for assimilation and criminalization do not indicate neutrality or universality but rather the essentialization of difference and a complex power dynamic involving the demands of the market, liberal precepts, and raison d’état. However, as Wendy Brown notes, “Not only does the domination inherent in capitalism and the state acquire little attention from most contemporary political theorists, few of them articulate a concern with the kind of bureaucratic domination first formulated by Max Weber and then developed into radical social theory by the Frankfurt School. Again, it is as if all the lack of freedom attendant upon bureaucratized societies was contained in the former socialist state, this notwithstanding Michel Foucault’s own theorization of disciplinary power—the increasing organization of everything—as the pervasive mode of subjection in our age.”209 As Foucault has argued, this domination is not apparent for at least two reasons: the exercise of power is now diffuse where it was once concentrated and it operates normatively just as much as it does through agents. The double binds that the homeless have been placed in evidence these two aspects of modern power: no one person is responsible for the treatment of the homeless and yet, the power that they face is more totalizing than in the past, even if contradictory. For example, public space is shrinking with the growth of gated communities and semipublic commercial space (the “mallizing” of public

Homelessness and Panopticism



125

space) and yet, statutes against loitering, sleeping, and begging have increased. There is a lack of affordable housing and a crisis in shelter space and yet NIMBYism is still pervasive. Some cities (such as New York, San Francisco) have even issued “shelter or arrest” laws although many shelters are dangerous and dirty and there is never enough space for the entire homeless population. Further, receiving welfare and staying in shelters have been portrayed as entitlements—something the poor demand—when they can be arbitrarily cut off for breaking the rules and many of those who are eligible never receive services. There is a presumption that cheating is rampant and that the homeless are criminal even as welfare subsidies are below a minimum wage income and earning an extra income is arguably necessary. There are family caps (tacitly encouraging the use of birth control and abortion) at the same that there is the promotion of family values (advocating pregnancy and marriage). The public and welfare workers blame women for staying with abusive husbands and yet, with welfare limits as well as family values rhetoric, there is pressure to do exactly that. Welfare mothers are painted as unfit mothers even as they risk losing their children when they enter the welfare system, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Shopping carts are criminalized and yet, there is no place for the possessions of the homeless. Property rights are viewed as of the utmost importance in determining who can occupy public space but they do not apply to the homeless. Additionally, the inadequacy of many shelters ensures that many will stay on the streets even as their existence is criminalized. Finally, there is the stereotype of the homeless—that they are mentally ill, live on the streets, and have chosen their situation—that we have created by fostering conditions that would trigger mental illness and inadequate health care, not providing satisfactory shelter, and by judging the alleged choice of the homeless from a position of privilege (the range of choices open to economically independent full citizens is imputed to be the same range available to the homeless). The homeless on the streets are portrayed as animals or subhumans even as policies have made it impossible for them to conduct life-sustaining activities. In sum, homeless policy, media portrayals, and public images of the homeless betray the emotive content of citizenship and public policy and thus can be called “rationalized irrationality.” Further, the moral component to welfare law and homeless policy not only puts the poor and homeless in double binds but also demonstrates a double standard. The homeless are admonished to stop drinking even

126




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

as the housed continue to do so; welfare mothers should stop having babies because this is a right only the economically independent possess; eating at McDonald’s when poor is an excess but eating at a four-star restaurant is not when wealthy; being a single poor mother is a sign of promiscuity, dependence, and ignorance while being a wealthy single mother is a sign of independence, strength, and education; owning a functioning toaster or a nice piece of jewelry is a crime if on welfare but owning four houses is contributing to the work of building the economy (and so on). One must earn one’s rights to those things. Moreover, what this double standard exposes is what counts as work (it must be paid, full-time, legal), a family (two parent, heterosexual, and economically independent) and who has the right to private property. This double standard evidences the split between citizen and noncitizen as well as that between relative autonomy in decision making and coercion and protective imperatives. This duality also highlights the difference between liberal democratic power and prerogative power: the dictates of the latter necessitate an assumption of the Other as threatening, possibly dangerous, and unstable. With the case of the homeless, the ascetic ethos of capitalism and liberalism converges here with the political asceticism of nationalism where those who do not do what counts as work pollute the national body. In essence, the us/them dichotomy does not reflect the fact that many thousands of people are at risk of homelessness. Rather, stereotypes and myths imprint the public imagination of homelessness even as it is said to be an individual phenomenon. The inadequacy of the notion of home is also demonstrated. On the one hand, home and homeland are problem free and safe; on the other, the homeless embody social problems just as certain immigrants and refugees embody danger to the state. On the other, if possessions can be bulldozed, hosed down, confiscated, or burned and occupying public space is no longer a right, home does not merely signify a physical space but the surrounding community, relationships, and work, which the homeless are viewed as invading or assaulting. Thus, I am questioning the notion of a unified subject in the political identity of citizenship and, correspondingly, a unified location for citizenship. Second, if order and stability are more valued than equality or agonistic democracy, territorial boundedness is increasing, and if market values as well as essentialized identity determine who is included and excluded, the marginalization of difference and mass homelessness will be not only inevitable but irresolvable. In our present historical and

Homelessness and Panopticism



127

cultural context, the homeless defy the logic of the nation-state: they are out of place, irrational, and economically redundant. Government statistics, policies towards the homeless, and various laws that have been enacted have served to thrust the homeless into a political and legal limbo, characterized by authoritative and punitive policies. The laws used against the homeless and some of the solutions proposed affirm that the loss of home delineates a break from even partial citizenship. One’s existence or status is criminalized, putting homeless individuals in an arbitrary situation within the mainstream. This can only be possible if in conceiving of political equality and universal citizenship in modern political theory, certain exclusions from this equality (based on class, gender, and race) were also conceptualized and enacted. As liberal theory was based on the rule of law and equality before the law, the provision for prerogative power allowed for the development of panoptic power. While the exercise of prerogative power has often been formulated as a state of exception, as Giorgio Agamben has argued (and Carl Schmitt advocated), the exception has become the rule. Foucault remarks that “whereas the juridical systems define juridical subjects according to universal norms, the disciplines characterize, classify, specialize . . . they effect a suspension of the law that is never total, but is never annulled either.” The human sciences give these power mechanisms a “respectable face.”210 In this way, the dynamics of power in the liberal capitalist state have allowed for the coexistence of seemingly contradictory power mechanisms, both democratic and nondemocratic. However, this seemingly paradoxical coexistence is an integral part of liberal capitalism: the poor, deviant Other is crucial to political identity and power. In conclusion, I would argue that the homeless have been made a political Other that defines the construction of political identity and inclusion. The paradigm of the homeless as dirty, uncontrollable, disaffiliated, and unpredictable represents an ambiguity or undecideability within the political context of the modern nation-state. This demonstrates a norm of citizenship that is really an essentialized identity, tied to notions of economic self-sufficiency, responsibility, and rationality (not to mention the fear of redistribution of goods in a world of scarcity). The homeless become superfluous when they reject or fail to conform to disciplinary power—that is, assimilation into the welfare or prison system—and thus, cannot be “proletarized.”211 In this case—more often how men are treated—they represent a population considered useless, parasitical, or

128




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

even predatory. Alternatively, they are expected to assimilate into good citizens via the ascetic prescriptions of the welfare state—and this is the case most often with poor women. In either case, their relegation to the ambivalent position of Other is portrayed as natural through social Darwinist notions that underlie certain capitalist presuppositions (for example of equal opportunity and self-made wealth). In other words, the homeless paradigm is necessarily tied to portrayals of weakness, sloth, and insanity to convey a natural, rather than political or economic, failure to conform to the ideal of citizenship (as mentioned above). However, the homeless do not simply fall through the cracks but represent a return of the repressed where they are often treated with cruelty. In analyzing Mauss’s commentary on alms, Derrida states, “As marginal people excluded from the process of production and circulation of wealth, the poor come to represent the gods or the dead. They occupy the place of the dead man or the spirit, the return of the ghost, that is, of an always imminent threat.”211 The result is a desire to punish this political other who cannot fill the role of a normal citizen and yet demands to occupy public space and live, speak, and move as a human being. That is, panopticism reflects efforts to mold, reform, repress, and even destroy the uncanny Other. In the present context, citizenship is far too powerful an identity, distinguishing between the right to live or die, have possessions or not, and inhabit public space or not. This is not merely an issue of the liberal state but a problem of the modern nation-state; the stateless cannot merely exist elsewhere but have become a permanent feature of modernity. In the next two chapters, I will explore the connections between domestic homelessness and statelessness, as well as possible solutions.

Chapter 5

Homeland, Homelessness, and Cosmopolitanism

Introduction I began this book by arguing that concepts of the home and homelessness provide the basis for a critique of freedom in the modern nation-state. I have interpreted homelessness in a double sense: both the physical dislocation experienced by the homeless, poor immigrants, and refugees as well as the political dislocation that occurs. This link between home and homeland is not a metaphorical one but “a reaffirmation of the duplication of the patria-household in the form of the patria-nation,”1 as discussed in chapter 2. Accordingly, political homelessness is an “uprooting” (in Simone Weil’s words2) from what is conceived of as a homeland. Nevertheless, the notion of being grounded in a homeland is specious: it is precisely due to rigid definitions of home and homeland that contemporary homelessness has been possible on such a large scale. Thus, while homelessness has increased domestically (most notably in the United States), the twentieth century was also the century of the refugee. In this way, just as domestic homelessness is a significant problem and has only increased with time, what has happened with various refugee groups such as the Albanian Kosovars is also a symptom of a growing homelessness, ironically necessitated by the modern nation-state and notions of belonging and citizenship, in addition to capitalist logic. Hence, the quest for home/homeland and self-determination ultimately causes less security rather than more. Instead, the effort awakens an irresolvable tension (and simultaneous violence) that is masked by the reliance on concrete identities and boundaries. Conversely, political spaces will only be more inclusive and accepting when they become more homeless.

129

130




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

This is due, in part, to the fact that home and homeland are not simply physical locations but inextricably linked to citizenship, which is both represented and made possible by the home. Consequently, if citizenship is based on exclusive norms, the exclusion of those who don’t fit these norms signifies this uprooting from the homeland. One not only lives a precarious political existence but is denied the right to self-preservation. At the minimum, political exclusion can signify subordinating oneself to a normalizing process. At worst, it means arrests, harassment, and disrespect—based on economic and other differences and thus, status or identity, and not criminal acts. This exposes the growth of prerogative power accounted for by liberal thinkers and yet reinforced and deepened by the dictates of nationalism and capitalism. Accordingly, the political exclusion of guest workers in Germany can be compared to the status of the homeless in the United States, and both of these domestic cases can be juxtaposed to the condition of refugees living in camps. This is because in all cases, they represent a manifestation of power that both illuminates the growth of state—prerogative and bureaucratic—power, on the one hand, and the supreme importance of capitalist values that undermines efforts to achieve justice, political participation, civic duty, notions of political community, and other democratic values, on the other. Rather, the dehumanization of an Other or Others means just that: they are no longer treated as human beings. If self-preservation was the minimum goal of modern and liberal thinkers such as Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Locke, this is not even guaranteed to those who are stateless or disenfranchised. Thus, one’s “home,” even if only one’s photos and a few personal belongings or a cardboard box, can be burned or bulldozed. Similarly, a family or group can be relocated into camps or driven away because their identity does not fit notions of political belonging (for example, Gypsies in the Czech Republic, Kosovar Albanians in the Yugoslav republic, and Serbs in Kosovo). On the one hand, this is because notions of home and identity (and thus, citizenship) are conferred rather than reflecting lived, daily experience. On the other hand, when individuals, families, or groups become displaced, their existence is then considered subhuman and their keepsakes are no longer protected or seen as necessary for self-preservation. Accordingly, the Mexicans who do gardening, cleaning, and childcare in California may contribute to the economy and fill a need, but can be harassed, made to feel Other, subject to police brutality, or deported. They don’t belong because of status rather than fact. Analogously, the home-

Homeland, Homelessness, Cosmopolitanism



131

less man who lived in the parking space next to my apartment on Venice Beach could be driven out by the police in spite of the fact that the parking space was used only by him and served as a space for his possessions. In title, however, the property was not his. And, in fact, even if it had been public space, he would have been pushed out. He could have his belongings confiscated or thrown out because the definition of home has more to do with legal right, property laws, and money than lived existence. This dynamic is evident in proposed solutions to homelessness: urban campgrounds without the necessary facilities for normal hygiene and cubicle hotels and fiberglass domes that wouldn’t allow the individual to move freely, much less make a home out of them. All of these are suggested and built for mere survival, where the human being is transformed into subhuman. Most of these camps or shelters are in out of the way places because urban spaces demarcate this separation of self and other. In essence, many solutions for homelessness would not be acceptable to privileged, mainstream citizens. Indeed, there is a double standard operating in that asceticism—bare living, mere survival—is viewed as not only an acceptable minimum for the poor and dislocated but also a sort of punishment or lesson. One’s lived experience such as connection to the community, fact of occupancy, mementos, and photos, becomes irrelevant. The homeless shelter is then comparable to, if not exactly like, a refugee camp in its physical manifestation and purpose. But these spaces are also similar in what they signify politically. They represent a legal limbo where there are no longer legal or political guarantees. It is in this sense, as I discussed in chapter 2, that one’s citizenship is crucial to one’s survival. Without even this minimum of legal or political protection, an individual’s or group’s political agency is constrained. Thus, just as home provides a context for citizenship in the nation-state, homeland provides a basis for self-defense, self-protection, and political action in a broader sense. What the homeless and stateless demonstrate is that citizenship as it is now is both inadequate as a political identity and yet crucial to existence. Second, they show the tension between lived reality (Judith Butler’s idea that identity is in fact performative3) and multiple attachments on one hand, and the will to home on the other, which involves the polarization and simplification of identities. Although I will argue that Derrida’s notion of a gift without exchange and thus, a sort of unconditional love, will provide guidance for making the earth more hospitable to all, a certain kind of intimacy or love has been dangerous to politics. As de

132




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

Tocqueville predicted, Americans’ love of country has often meant not being able to criticize it.4 Love for the patria, in this sense, has meant polarizing good and bad and externalizing the bad onto Others. This brand of love is also what Freud has warned against: the narcissism of minor differences that makes people attack their own. Hence, gangs normally attack other gangs, the poor attack other poor people, most mainstream violence happens in the family and, more broadly, we all stigmatize and make impossible the existence of the homeless—our former neighbors, friends, coworkers. Similarly, poor immigrants and refugees have often been the victims of attacks, as if they were not part of the economy, hadn’t established residency, and were purely foreign or strange. The love for country that has characterized nationalism in the modern nation-state is an impoverished one. It is the sort of love that takes for granted rather than the unconditional love that keeps some distance from and respect for the love object. The narcissistic love that characterizes American nationalism does not involve a love of people or democratic values, nor does it involve a true love of the land. Rather, as Foucault states, there is “a constant correlation between an increasing individualisation and the reinforcement of this totality. From this point of view we can understand why modern political rationality is permitted by the antinomy between law and order.”5 Additionally, economic rationality has replaced democratic and environmental values, such that efficiency, order, expansion, and use of all possible space often trump notions of equality, justice, the rule of law, preservation of land, and democratic processes, which include debate, conflict, and uncertainty. The result is a dangerous sort of unity that precludes truly democratic values in its radical individualization of people and instrumental rationality towards land and labor. In fact, the love of country that is the status quo often leads to acts of civil war and yet the projection of this otherness within ourselves elsewhere. However, it is not enough to recognize difference within the (political) Self in order to make political membership less exclusive. Rather, a politics that allows for difference must be institutionalized and practiced. I will argue below for a more cosmopolitan citizenship and politics that will involve de-essentialized (empty) criteria for citizenship and transform the fiduciary nature of political membership into a more open debt (Schuld) of society to its own members. Most importantly, while capitalism may not disappear, its values and logic should only be allowed to exist in the market. In many ways, urban centers are already global, but what is needed is a politics that protects their inhabitants from

Homeland, Homelessness, Cosmopolitanism



133

impersonal and colonizing forces that undermine democratic processes and allow for homelessness to exist.

Self/Other There will always be distinctions of self and other. However, the danger is when this distinction is politicized. As I discussed in chapter 3, a rigid conception of self and other means that the Other is substantialized and identity essentialized. That is, the Other is viewed as purely external and identity is defined in narrow terms. One cannot see any commonality with a person viewed as Other; the person represents pure alterity or otherness. The basis of this dynamic is the idea of a pure or essential self that cannot be contaminated or polluted. In this way, the homeless are viewed as radically different from the mainstream as well as being defined in terms of their circumstances or situation. Alternatively, certain immigrants can be threatening if they do not appear to assimilate, do not choose to pursue their host country’s citizenship, or deviate from the homogeneous norm of the ideal citizen. Both types of dynamic lead to uncanniness; difference is suppressed only to resurface again. What is familiar is strangely unfamiliar and vice versa. The notion of Schuld as debt, a financial transaction, characterizes the attempt to repress this otherness and posit the homeless and poor as debtors to society. In contrast, a poststructuralist approach to identity involves recognizing that difference in an Other is also, or could be, within oneself. In this view, alterity is conceived of as both external and internal. Alternatively, it could mean simply allowing someone who is different to be Other without demanding assimilation or extinction. In this way, difference is not substantialized—that is, imbued with (political) meaning—but simply is. The category is empty and thus, status is not reified or politicized. Nor is it a mere inversion of the status quo; rather, as Reiner Ansén comments about Derrida’s deconstruction, it “is always a deconstruction precisely of difference because difference is only an inversion of identity that creates another identity and changes nothing, leaves the whole system intact.”6 In other words, the post-Heideggerian strain of poststructuralism interprets the substantialized category of difference as a construct that is simply within the same self/other framework. Thus, as Marx implied in his early writings, the key is to transcend particularity in favor of an empty universal. Antinomies are not resolved in this transcendence but are no longer essential criteria for judging membership.

134




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

Nevertheless, identity politics has not necessarily broken free from what appears to be a Hegelian dialectic of (pure) self and other. Rather, the consideration of the poststructuralist acceptance of difference in all its complexity appears to be too extreme to proponents of multiculturalism in that identity and values are lost to cultural relativism. As Michael Geyer notes, the debates on identity “have crystallized around the issue of whether to replace the postmodern play of difference through a metaphysics of community difference, each one equal but separate.”7 This is why multicultural (as I define it) arguments and groups have emerged in the past few decades: to address the idea that difference should be an important consideration of full political incorporation but also to avoid the loss of identity that purportedly occurs in the relativism of poststructuralism and thus, agency for which groups have struggled.8 For example, if women are excluded from full citizenship, then some argue that women should be politically included as women. In this framework, different groups identify how they have been excluded and work to rectify this. At the group level, this can work well for many reasons: to provide support in the face of exclusion and oppression; to identify how one is excluded, and to formulate solutions. The idea is that each group is unique in its identity and history and only they can really determine their status and goals to become more fully enfranchised. Nevertheless, the political incorporation of formerly excluded groups based on one identity (for example race or gender) is problematic. In efforts to oppose mainstream hegemony, difference is celebrated as a value in itself: “the otherness of the other, his alterity, has to be defended at all costs. There is a certain type of philosophy of alterity which treats alterity like a fetish, not to be questioned, not to be touched, something almost sacred.”9 First, it presupposes that one identity counts more than others. For example, the incorporation of a historically oppressed religious group could ignore class and racial differences. Second, there is a resulting narrowing of the definition of that identity when groups are formed in this way. For example, a racial group would have problems with people who are biracial or multiracial. Third, a group is then defined in terms of victimization or oppression, which further reinforces difference or otherness rather than eradicating it. Fourth, as discussed in chapter 2, the celebration of difference mirrors the process that liberal states have perpetuated which creates difference and seemingly eradicates this difference through the granting of civil rights while maintaining these very categories. For example, African Americans are given civil rights as individuals while racial categories are maintained in policy. Additionally, multicultural

Homeland, Homelessness, Cosmopolitanism



135

strategies not only foster difference between the mainstream (self/citizen) and Other but also between different sorts of Others. Really, this is simply working within the same essentialist framework that groups are challenging, in that identity becomes rigid and exclusive. Ethnopluralism is an alternative of multiculturalism that has appeared most significantly in Western Europe, Eastern Europe (such as Kosovo), parts of the Middle East, the former Soviet Union and Africa (for example, Rwanda). If multiculturalism was the political response to the philosophical discourse of alterity on the one hand and a homogeneous norm on the other, ethnopluralism has been the extension of the tendency to substantialize otherness. That is, the Other is seen as pure alterity. For example, French conservatives argue that there is a right to difference, and thus Algerians belong in Algeria; in England, Pakistanis belong in their homeland; and in Germany, the temporary work and resident status of Turkish workers is justified for the same reasons. In other words, the argument is that each ethnicity has its place and should not contaminate the purity of the French, English, or German culture or homeland. Moreover, it presupposes the ethnic purity of the Other; a Turk could not be of mixed blood, or be a Protestant, for example.10 Further, this seemingly progressive stance of a right to difference in effect is based on an assumption that identity and national borders are natural rather than situational or political and relies on culture, language, and regions as defining criteria. Thus, notions of alterity and ethnicity are applied to pluralist arguments to promote ethnopluralist arguments. This sort of formulation justifies circumstances where the Other can be politically repressed, economically exploited or enslaved, deported, or extinguished in some other fashion. Nevertheless, it is not really a radical deviation from the politics of the modern nation-state but a reinforcement of its underpinnings: the unification of diverse areas through a single language, a bounded territory and a homogeneous national identity. In spite of these efforts by groups themselves or the mainstream to polarize identity, the uncanny represent undecidability in modern politics and serve to challenge the simplicity of the logic of identity. As I will argue below, a more cosmopolitan politics accepts difference without essentializing it.

State Power, Identity, and the Nation-State Citizenship in itself represents many things: exclusion and inclusion, a norm of political identity, and territorial belonging. A political identity

136




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

that is defined by ethnicity or other rigidly exclusive determinants takes all of those factors to the extreme where, for example, exclusion and inclusion mean friend and enemy, national identity signifies purity, and territory is an extension of this identity. In this way, political identity becomes polarized and the Other a contaminant that must be purified, a dehumanized object of hatred. This polarization involves a collective unconscious in which primitive emotions become salient during political and economic crises (as discussed in chapter 3). Hence, the binarism that characterizes this sort of political identity would seemingly create stability but instead illuminates the degree to which identity, land, and self-determination are unstable. In an effort to secure this stability, greater control is exerted, exemplified in the treatment of the homeless: arrest sweeps, permits to beg, and forced busing to other cities. In fact, as state power supersedes democratic power, the need to constantly exercise its authority becomes greater. As Hannah Arendt remarks about the modern bourgeois state, “[O]nly by constantly exercising its authority and only through the process of power accumulation can it remain stable.”11 The problem is that while prerogative power was conceived of as necessary only in the case of a temporary emergency or problem by liberal theorists such as Locke, its manifestation of totalitarian or absolute power has become the norm with the development of the nation-state and capitalism. Giorgio Agamben links the Nazi concentration camps to this power dynamic. He believes that the camp is not just an aberration from the past but rather it is “the hidden matrix and nomos of the political space in which we are still living.”12 He states that the camp “is the space which is opened when the state of exception begins to become the rule.” What is normally a temporary suspension of order based on a factual state is “given a permanent spatial arrangement that nevertheless remains outside the normal order.”13 When this happens, the homeless in urban camps or hiding under bridges and immigrants detained in holding cells are “reduced to bare life by being stripped of political status.” Thus, “[T]he camp [the refugee camp, the detention center, the police station for the homeless] is . . . the most absolute biopolitical space ever to have been realized, in which power confronts nothing but pure life, without any mediation. This is why the camp is the very paradigm of political space at the point at which politics becomes biopolitics and homo sacer is virtually confused with the citizen.”14 At this point, made possible by this suspension of democratic power, anything is feasible in the interests of national security.

Homeland, Homelessness, Cosmopolitanism



137

Just as life in the city can be compartmentalized and segregated, on a national level, the binarism of self and other is manifested geographically. Land is an extension of the political self (national identity) and this can explain why the integrity of the nation was and is so important to groups in power, such as the Serbs, Israelis, and the Irish free state, or those trying to find a homeland, such as the Palestinians and the Kurds.15 Land as an extension of self grants some political identity and status, but it necessitates uprooting those who are Other physically and politically. Consequently, control over geographical areas and borders determines how and if certain groups or individuals exist. The more exclusive the political membership, the greater the chance for political homelessness, for example, refugees, internally displaced peoples, and what is conventionally considered homelessness. Political exclusion based on essentializing criteria such as race, class, and religion forces the question of who is at home. When some of the poor become homeless, or refugees end up in camps, their dislocation seals the us/them split in a radical way: identity and home are tied together inextricably. The Roma (Gypsies) are a particularly good example of the way in which home and homeland are constructed narrowly under the rubric of nationalism and inherently force the creation of a political Other—that is, a homeless Other. The Roma are arguably more radically Other than domestically excluded groups because they do not fulfill the usual criteria of the nation-state.16 Unlike the Kosovar Albanians or the Palestinians, for example, they do not have territory with which they are identified. In this way, the notion of homeland, as conceived in the modern nation-state, politicizes human existence to an extreme: those who are excluded and homeless may have nowhere to go. Political identity does not just qualify one’s home place; rather, it marks one’s daily life: the right to occupy public space, the right to travel, and so on. Because they do not belong anywhere, the Roma have always had difficulties with daily existence. They have had an ambivalent relation to the nationstate because their language is largely unwritten, they are not associated with one territory, and their culture and traditions are secret.17 Although they are mentioned infrequently in news reports, they could be said to represent the aporetic space in the creation of the racially polarized identities in troubled areas of Eastern Europe. Their ambivalent political status explains why they are excluded or abused by right-wing dictatorships (like the Nazis and more recently, the Serb government) and relatively democratic countries like the Czech Republic. Due to the fact that their

138




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

community and existence defy all definitions and presuppositions of the modern nation-state, it is important to attempt to control or eliminate their uncanny presence. The foundation of modern citizenship, the nation-state, and international law is that there is one home for each group. The establishment of much more permanent boundaries since WWI18 has introduced a new dynamic in geopolitics that presupposes conceptions of the proper, property, and political identity. Nevertheless, ethnic conflicts worldwide and the fact that the twentieth century was the “century of the refugee” betray the contradictions in these assumptions. Paradoxically, stability, order, and sovereignty are gained through force—exclusion, displacement, prejudice—that is, violence. Samuel Weber, in discussing notions of home, self-determination, and violence, notes that the word “violence” itself implies a “conflictual relationship between self and other, identical and nonidentical.” In German, Weber writes, the word “violence” (Gewalt) is “not just an imposition of a certain alterity upon the self but also of the self upon others.”19 But the word “violence” has also been defined as an infringement on property. This notion goes back to Plato, who believed violence to be a violation of another’s property, as disallowing another to utilize this property freely. This infers, Weber argues, that property rights can be negotiated without violence. Furthermore, it presupposes that ideas of self and property precede all violence. In contrast, modern thinkers have departed from Plato in their ideas that “what is proper to human existence is not only not beyond violence but constituted through it.”20 But, Weber asks, if violence is the law and the norm, how can it be conceived of as a violation? In essence, violence is not outside of the nation-state but a fundamental element of it. Because there will always be ambivalence, instability, and tensions—that is, the uncanny presence of the Other—the pursuit of stability and the consequent use of state violence can be an endless process. These power dynamics are manifest in relations between nations, too. Just as the modern nation-state formulates citizenship based on notions of rationality as opposed to conceptions of irrationality and the natural, there is an implicit distinction between civilized and uncivilized nations in the relations of modern nation-states in the Western hemisphere to nation-states almost anywhere else. The distinction between north and south or civilized and uncivilized is reinforced by the perception of an economic hierarchy: countries that are relatively developed are considered to function within terms of economic rationality and efficiency.

Homeland, Homelessness, Cosmopolitanism



139

Arguably, this is why the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Balkans have been much more widely publicized than the struggles in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Eritrea, and the Sudan. Because the Balkans are a part of Europe, genocide and ethnic cleansing in the cradle of civilization conflict with the Western sense of identity and self-understanding. In this idea there is an “ethnocentric and imperialist bias” that “we,” the leaders, the civilized nations of the world (as opposed to the uncivilized ones in Africa) should be able to transcend this.21 Sigmund Freud demonstrated a similar prejudice in his lament after WWI that civilized peoples could be capable of such barbarity (or primitive mental states). This implies, writes Weber, that the white race’s “claims to universality and world leadership are belied by unconscionable comportment but also that its violence is compatible with technologies that should have made violence impossible.”22 It also demonstrates what we ignore in our own culture. Freud sees the beginnings of what led to barbarity in the exclusion of the Jews, who had demonstrated that they were civilized and yet were internally excluded. However, in this logic of civilization (inherent in the idea of the nation-state) it is implied that “the exclusion of that other, ‘universally unpopular’ people, the Sinti (gypsies), might be considered to be justifiable to the extent that such a people was deemed unfit or unwilling to participate ‘in the common work of civilization.’”23 Analogously, the West, in handling ethnic cleansing and genocide in Rwanda and Kosovo, appears to have two different standards of what becomes so unconscionable that it demands intervention. Thus, perhaps, similar to ignoring the plight of the Roma, there is some feeling that tribalism is natural to Rwandans and therefore, they must be left alone to fight their battles. The fact that the ethnic separation between the Hutus and Tutsis occurred to such a radical degree after European occupation would then be forgotten or dismissed. Hutus and Tutsis, who lived in relative peace and, significantly, had intermarried, are suddenly different from each other, thanks to the Belgian mandate and new identity cards identifying them by affiliation. They become separate, opposite, like never before and pitted against one another in the political system. Despite the mixing of blood through intermarriage, their identity cards classify and separate: they are either Hutu or Tutsi. They are distinguished by their features, thus explaining how the Hutus want to “cut the Tutsis down to size” in the massacre, by chopping off their legs at the knee.24 This is nationalism, albeit to an extreme degree.

140




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

What has happened with the homeless and immigrants domestically and various refugee groups such as the Kosovars is a symptom of a growing homelessness, ironically necessitated by the nation-state and notions of belonging and citizenship as they have developed historically. In the era of the modern nation-state, the quest for home/homeland and selfdetermination ultimately causes less security rather than more. Instead, the effort awakens an irresolvable tension (and simultaneous violence) that is masked by the reliance on concrete identities and boundaries. The more polarized the identity and rigid the boundaries, the more a totalitarian power dynamic is created that emphasizes primitive emotions over what is deemed to be civilized behavior. The more that nationalism is invoked, the more it reinforces nondemocratic power dynamics. Thus, the “state of exception” is “now a new and stable spatial arrangement inhabited by bare life that more and more can no longer be inscribed in that order.”25 Law is suspended and yet exerts its full, violent potential. The refugee camp, like our own immigration detention centers or spaces for the homeless, “is the new biopolitical nomos of the planet.” While refugees can be treated well, the danger of this political space is its arbitrary nature: “[W]hether or not atrocities are committed depends not on law, but on the civility and ethical sense of the police who temporarily act as sovereign.”26 In such a space, anything is possible—the individual becomes bare life—and therein lies the danger. Solutions to urban homelessness and poverty often involve geographic or physical separation. Similarly, proposals to end ethnic or other tensions in the recent past, for the most part, are partition, secession, and other geographical divisions. Oppressed groups also play this binary game and have increasingly demanded self-determination rather than increased tolerance under their current government.27 However, this is avoiding living with the Other by radically expelling the Other. The answer does not seem to be the absence of tension (although it should entail the absence of unnecessary tension) but learning to live with the uncanny and ambivalent presence of difference. The notion of cosmopolitanism is a challenge to this logic. It indicates a fluidity of boundaries, an acceptance of the Other as Other and a more complex conception of identity. In this way, home in all of its manifestations is not idealized as pure or essentialized. While it may appear that the globalization of the economy has opened borders and fostered intercultural understanding, I will argue below that global economic processes ultimately reinforce separation, difference and territoriality (even if these processes change the role of the nation-state).

Homeland, Homelessness, Cosmopolitanism



141

As it is now, a fluidity of boundaries is only reserved for global capital and not people, who are not only increasingly homeless or stateless but whose status is criminalized.

Capitalism and Globalization In policy, capitalism has been portrayed as a cure-all for a more neutral, less bureaucratic nation-state in the West; problems of economic development in poorer countries; and the path to democratization in all nation-states. Indeed, if a country has a relatively open market, it is considered a democracy in spite of authoritarian government (South Korea, for example). Friedrich von Hayek’s ideas28 about an open market are crucial for understanding the neoliberal push for deregulation since the 1980s. Hayek believed that a system governed by the price mechanism would be inherently neutral. While there would admittedly be losers and winners in this game, no one person could be blamed for these outcomes. Rather all equally had a chance to win or lose. Hayek claimed that choosing this system over others was in fact value free and thus the closest approximation of justice that we could have on earth. Neoliberals such as Reagan and Thatcher jumped on the Hayek bandwagon, although ironically it was Bill Clinton who pushed for more widespread deregulation. However, unlike Hayek, who both was antinationalist and argued for a guaranteed minimum income, neoliberals and New Democrats in the United States argued contradictorily for both deregulation and nationalism, along with Clinton’s welfare reform that affected both the native born and immigrant poor. While capitalism was allegedly under attack in the year 2002 with the Enron scandal, it does not appear that deregulation has been recognized as a failure. Rather, the capitalists are blamed and not capitalism. Neoliberal views that capitalism is natural, value free, and universal do have certain obvious problems. First, the push for deregulation was by no means representative of the entire population but pressure exerted by finance and banking industries.29 In fact, the choice of capitalism over a mixed economy, for example, has more to do with human agency than historical inevitability or nature. Related to this, to declare that capitalism is value free is, of course, ignoring the fact that what Hayek, neoliberals, and New Democrats advocate is applying economic logic to all areas of life indiscriminately. Indeed, allowing people’s lives to be submitted to an allegedly impersonal game is a form of nihilism, a ceding of

142




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

political will and agency. Of course, proponents of deregulation paradoxically assume that all players in this game begin with an equal footing and yet they also argue that wealth will trickle down, which assumes a hierarchy of goods and peoples. Which is it? While even certain (formerly) radical rock stars are advocating capitalism as the answer to underdevelopment, starvation, and dictatorial states, it is not recognized that the problems of capitalism have merely proliferated from the domestic scene to the world and that there is no necessary correlation between democracy and capitalism. Authors such as Gayatri Spivak, Étienne Balibar, and, most significantly, Saskia Sassen demonstrate that the problems of capitalism have merely taken on new forms in Western states and traveled elsewhere rather than being eradicated. In fact, the end of the Cold War has brought this reality to a fore, exposing the North/South divide in the midst of the alleged death of ideology. Sassen shows that rather than improving economies in the West or fostering development in poorer countries, new industries have come in, destroyed traditional economies and then left their host countries once special favors for taxes and labor are depleted. In the West, Sassen reports that the greatest trends toward insecurity and inequality are in the United States, as it does not intervene in the market to the degree that European countries do.30 Overall, she demonstrates that far from trickling down to the poorest people or countries, the wealth generated from the globalization of the economy (deregulation) has caused greater job insecurity and increased inequality in incomes. As Roland Axtmann states, “[G]lobal capitalism is best analysed as a system of structured inequality.”31 Trends in a postindustrial economy are the hypermobility of capital aided by deregulation; new methods of managing finance such as securitization, which allows for capital to circulate more rapidly; and the growth of the service industry in both high- and low-end jobs. The greater direction toward export manufacturing, in particular, has led to a general downgrading of manufacturing and consequently, the increased informalization of manufacturing jobs.32 In contrast to the wave of industrialization after WWII that served to build a middle class, the new dynamics of globalization, a service economy, and export manufacturing have led to increasing inequalities in wealth.33 The corresponding change in jobs has led to a general split between high-end, overly valorized positions such as those of financial consultants and analysts and low-end, informal employment. The trend in

Homeland, Homelessness, Cosmopolitanism



143

lower-end employment is the increased informalization of work, the feminization of labor, the increased use of immigrant labor, lower wages, less unionization, and the downgrading of manufacturing.34 As discussed in chapter 4, service employment is often part-time and has low wages without benefits and on contract. Thus “involuntary parttime employment has grown significantly.”35 Nevertheless, it is predicted that the demand for this type of labor will only expand. Further, the informalization of many jobs has led to the proliferation of industrial homework and the growth of sweatshops. Because these jobs are temporary and part-time and workers are isolated from each other if working in the home, unionization is close to impossible. These jobs are also increasingly filled by immigrant labor in the United States, and women in all geographical locations. This has led to the myopic view that immigrants cause sweatshops and other forms of illegal or informal work to exist rather than recognizing the demand for it. Nevertheless, the benefits of low-wage, nonunion, immigrant labor to finance and industry seem obvious.36 In addition, as Sassen notes, the connection between the feminization of labor and globalization have not been linked in scholarly literature, and yet there seems to be a strong connection between the two.37 Pushes to deregulate the economy and change what were once secure full-time jobs with benefits to more part-time work correlate with the cultural, political, and economic place women have traditionally occupied. Although Sassen argues that some of the changes effected have empowered women, and especially immigrant women, it could be argued that greater informalization and feminization of the labor market have also led to women’s exploitation. At the very least, positive changes are quite clearly accompanied by negative ones. Gayatri Spivak remarks, “[N]ow women all over the world are absorbing many of the costs of management, of health care, of workplace safety and the like by working at home”; in fact, she calls the feminization of labor “pimping.”38 The push for poor women to leave welfare and work low paid jobs is linked to this global trend, in addition to structures that create a silence of the “subaltern,” whether this subaltern resides in the developed or underdeveloped world.39 Given the transnational quality of capital, the question is whether the nation-state has been weakened by global economic processes or not. Thinkers who advocate deregulation view the state as serving merely administrative functions, much as Adam Smith and later, Hayek advocated. However, unlike Smith and Hayek, who both believed that some type of

144




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

welfare or right to work should exist, neoconservatives and New Democrats have advocated the end of the welfare state and tightened borders. In this way, economic values are applied to all areas of life rather than merely the market. Additionally, there is the push-pull of deregulating markets and yet increased xenophobia, nationalist rhetoric, and border control. It is empirically true that the nation-state has been weakened by deregulation but it has also strengthened its prerogative power. If anything, the call for deregulation would increase administrative and bureaucratic power even as democratic or liberal power would be pushed aside (evident in the dismantling of the welfare state, the choice to end affirmative action rather than reform it, and so on). In part, this is why Étienne Balibar has called globalization the “end of politics” as political processes cede to economic imperatives.40 The nation-state has been weakened in two important ways: through the creation of new legal regimes that “negotiate between national sovereignty and the transnational practices of corporate economic actors” and the creation of institutions such as the IMF, WTO and GATT.41 Nevertheless, the importance of place has merely changed rather than being eradicated. It has made certain key cities the center of global finance while deterritorializing national territory. The dispersal of different economic activities and “telematic global integration” have led to the greater importance of major cities in the global economy while weakening national borders.42 Additionally, economic globalization has created a denationalized business elite with no sense of civic responsibility. Ironically, as stated above, capital is more mobile than ever while people are increasingly displaced and refused entry into certain countries. Within cities, inequalities in wealth are not merely quantitative but reflect new patterns: they can “be interpreted as social and economic restructuring and the emergence of new social forms and class alignments in large cities of highly developed countries: the growth of an informal economy; high-income commercial and residential gentrification and the sharp rise of homelessness.”43 In this way, centralization is still important to finance and industry but this is now manifested differently. Hence, the nation-state has certainly ceded some of its sovereignty in its pursuit of deregulation and denationalized national territory in pushing for open markets. It is no longer the center of economic activity or all forms of sovereignty.44 This is true even as human rights norms, on the one hand, and liberal theory, on the other, still assume the centrality of the nation-state. Nevertheless, the nation-state is far from disappearing.

Homeland, Homelessness, Cosmopolitanism



145

In fact, concerns with national identity and the protection of domestic markets have become stronger with what appears to be the homogenization of culture and social norms through economic globalization. Furthermore, certain key states emerge over other ones in the global economy to form a hierarchy; this is due to their privileged position with regard to military power, communications, and technology,45 not to mention natural resources. Given this, many Western nation-states must guarantee their superior position through the protection of contracts and property rights.46 That the state has military power to back these guarantees makes it an irreplaceable institution. This hierarchy within the global economy thus undermines the picture that is painted of interdependence, with all participants equally sharing the benefits or losses. Certain states emerge above others and unquestionably do not feel any civic responsibility towards others. In sum, certain regions and cities have become the centers of global finance, thus undermining the integrity of the nation-state in some respects, and multinational corporations have emerged as powerful actors in their own right.47 Nevertheless, the nation-state has not disappeared but has actually strengthened its role with regard to questions of citizenship, immigration, protection of economic interests, and military power. In this way, it has strengthened its prerogative power as economic logic increasingly dictates postindustrial life. As I’ve argued, this is not antithetical to liberalism per se. What is clear, nonetheless, is that there is a great political void. The real issue is not the potential loss of state but the loss of democratic power and processes to more administrative ones, where modernity becomes associated with efficiency, scientific approaches, and profit as a supreme value. Global processes, statelessness, and domestic homelessness show the need for a cosmopolitan politics in addition to and even against the nation-state. Furthermore, if economic globalization has linked each country to one another, there needs to be a corresponding political program addressing this interdependence and responsibility to one another. Currently, illegal aliens, the homeless, and the stateless are criminalized while the rather widespread occurrence of white-collar crime is overlooked. We ignore the losses incurred by southern countries to the financial gambling that went on in the late 1990s and early part of this century and blame them for overpopulation while ignoring overconsumption in developed countries.48 Two things are clear: economic values are certainly predominant in determining social and political values

146




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

rather than the reverse and this is perceived of as a natural and historically inevitable phenomenon. Further, the elective affinity between bureaucratic power, nationalism, and capitalism undermines democratic values and processes. This allows us to project difference onto Others elsewhere and ignore the difference, strife, and tension in our own homes/homeland.

Identity and Cosmopolitanism: A Politics of Homelessness Perhaps paradoxically, the meaning of national borders has become increasingly important, even with the globalization of capital. If anything, economic success in the modern nation-state has actually increased efforts to control the flow of human traffic even as this flow is more prevalent than ever. Thus, just as the homeless are pushed out of the city and the wealthy enclose themselves in gated communities, the control of immigrants signals a similar partitioning at the international level. In this way, as discussed in chapter 3, immigrants are turned back in fear that they will create social and political problems and drain the welfare system. Similarly, refugee groups can be pushed from country to country for comparable reasons (witness the shuffling of Haitian and Chinese boat people landing in Canada or the United States or Kurdish and Albanian refugees trying to get into Italy). Flows of people are guided by economic rationality and marked by state power. In fact, immigrants and refugees fleeing poverty and war-torn countries are not recognized as products of this global economic interdependence; the bridges or linkages49 that developed countries establish with less developed countries are forgotten when waves of boat people arrive on the shores of the wealthier country. Instead, the homeless and stateless defy the logic of the nation-state in their physical or geographical dislocation and challenge the logic of capitalism in that they are not necessarily proletarizable. Both have been described as the human detritus of economic and political processes and their status is accordingly subhuman and criminalized. Even if they are assimilated through the protection of the welfare state or aid from development agencies, this is help offered within a hierarchical and authoritative power dynamic. What groups of refugees, the Roma, and domestic homeless demonstrate is a political, that is, democratic, void. Aristotle argued that we are naturally political, which means that we are born into society and

Homeland, Homelessness, Cosmopolitanism



147

thus social interaction precedes the establishment of the market. Similarly, Hannah Arendt, Carl Schmitt, and Leo Strauss, among others, argued that the political has been lost to the economic and accordingly, what is truly human has been lost to an impersonal force independent of human agency. Below, I will argue for a more cosmopolitan politics and citizenship, not as a withdrawal or suspension from attachments or interaction, but as a thoughtful and responsible engagement with and responsibility to others. In fact, it has been declared that this is the “end of politics” although not for the reasons that Hegel and more recently, Fukuyama, claim. Rather, as the economy has globalized and state power becomes more administrative, that is, more characteristic of biopower, politics as a process and democratic values are lost. Instead, capitalism and economic rationality have seemingly triumphed, even as they coexist sometimes in tension, sometimes in unity with nationalism and prerogative power. In this way, while there is fear that the nationstate will lose sovereignty with more open borders, it appears that only when borders and citizenship become more homeless will the state become truly political. Referring to Simone Weil’s work, Nicholas Xenos remarks that if patriotism has a history dating back to the Greeks, what is different about its contemporary manifestation is its rigidity.50 The contemporary debate on cosmopolitanism as a corrective rests on two assumptions: either cosmopolitanism is the opposite of nationalism and thus is a suspension or even withdrawal from the particular, or it unquestioningly presupposes the centrality of the nation-state. Although both sides of the debate have their merits, a few things seem clear: a call to eliminate the nation-state is not only unrealistic, but will merely be a politics of binary opposites where the rejected value is reinforced by its inversion. Alternatively, while many authors fear that the nation-state will be lost in a revised nationalism or cosmopolitanism, leaving us all cynical, homeless, and without attachments, the nation-state as the sole object of patriotic devotion has only come under attack because it largely does not reflect lived, daily experience. The cosmopolitanism I propose is one that Xenos implies: an agonistic form of patriotism that allows for multiple manifestations and attachments. This includes love for one’s home, neighborhood, and city and thus, the original meaning of patria. Allowing for multiple forms of attachment to make up a cosmopolitan politics may seem too unstable; for example, many authors express concern about the willingness of any individual to die for a country in the absence of a unified and singular

148




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

conception of the home/homeland. However, as Xenos argues, posing the problem of national loyalty in such a way is a nihilistic desire to escape tension and “a symbolic affirmation of an untroubled home amid the experience of a troubled world.”51 While it may appear risky, allowing for “conflict, compromise, multiple loyalties and obligations” not only corresponds to individuals’ very complex lives and personalities, but may even foster or reflect a truer appreciation of where they live. Hence, this cosmopolitanism or agonistic patriotism is not an outright rejection of the nation-state but the centrality of the nation-state as the patriotic (and idolatrous, to Weil) object of devotion. Corresponding to this notion of cosmopolitanism, the Heideggerian strain of poststructuralism found in the work of Derrida takes up multiculturalism in a more complex way, allowing for both inner and exterior alterity, and thus points towards agonistic democracy. This is a politics that accepts tension, otherness and contingency: “The politics of deconstruction is a politics of the double gesture, a politics of stabilisation and of general uncertainty. . . . [T]he stabilising factor does not supplement a general uncertainty in order to offer a precarious foothold: the stabilising factor is this very uncertainty. . . . [T]he politics of deconstruction is . . . a space in which politics is neither a politics of identity and meaning guided by terms that can be reconstructed and identified, nor a politics of constant deferment, shifting and displacement of identity. From such a perspective, the politics of deconstruction is not simply that of a double gesture but moreover that of a pure existence, of an existence without identity, of an existence that Adorno called ‘selfness.’”52 This statement evokes what is truly political: the process of politics, the idea that politics is not a fixed set of values but ever changing, flexible, malleable. This notion is reflected in the work of Sheldon Wolin and, alternatively, Bill Connolly’s notion of “agonistic democracy”53 in that deliberation, participation, and even uncertainty provide for both agency and historical contingency. It is also suggested in Bonnie Honig’s notion of “taking,” which reminds us that in a democracy, power is not to be granted but can be seized, demanded, and challenged. Martin Luther King proposed this in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” when he explained why civil rights advocates did not want to wait for their rights to be handed down to them. This does not have to be a call for revolution or criminal activity but an “honorific democratic practice— that of demanding or, better yet, simply enacting the redistribution of those powers, rights, and privileges that define a community and order

Homeland, Homelessness, Cosmopolitanism



149

it hierarchically.”54 In fact, this taking is most necessary when people have been deprived of rights, especially the most basic human rights. Nevertheless, I will argue below that political agency is not always possible unless human rights are recognized alongside the recognition of state membership. Regardless, these agonistic processes would challenge the normative exercise of prerogative power. One condition of fostering some sort of political equality (even if a rough one) necessary for cosmopolitan politics would be the notion of a gift without exchange. This would involve not only accepting the Other as other rather than demanding or coercing assimilation, but also the idea that people should not have to prove their merit in order to exist or receive services that aid their existence. As stated above, allowing the Other to exist as other is not a resolution of opposites but a motion or gesture beyond particularity. This would involve transforming the relation of Schuld as a fiduciary and thus limited relation, to the boundlessness and infiniteness of human relations.55 Allowing for multiple attachments, identities, and loyalties would let people negotiate compromises and understanding without coercion. A further condition for the possibility of equality would be embracing the idea of an empty universal. In chapter 2, I argued that universal values regarding citizenship were not truly universal but reflected identity over a more complex reality and the particular over empty or universal values. Universal criteria are necessary for any political grouping but become exclusive in their articulation as ethnic or economic purity. Racism, ignorance, and selfishness have prevented the widespread manifestation of a salubrious coexistence and currently subordinate difference in favor of sameness. In contrast, values such as justice and equality may not be absolute but have inclusion as their aim. Universal values will only have meaning when they are rooted in geographical and demographic reality. What is needed is a tension between universalism and difference where universalism is not imposed and serves only to promote justice, equality, and communication and difference does not lead to separatism or essentializing one’s identity. Thus, universalism must be fueled by temporary interest based on concrete issues56 and not identity. In this way, it should be conceived of as contingent and thus elastic. Accordingly, if citizenship in the modern nation-state were truly universal, it would be based on values such as justice (discussed in the next chapter) or equality and the lived, daily experience of all involved. In this way, homogenous norms of identity would be undermined by the

150




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

diversity of an individual’s experiences, complexity of life, and instability of identity. As Judith Butler argues in Gender Trouble, identity is both performative and historically contingent: “My argument is that there need not be a ‘doer behind the deed,’ but that the ‘doer’ is variably constructed in and through the deed. This is not a return to an existential theory of the self as constituted through its acts, for the existential theory maintains a prediscursive structure for both the self and its acts. It is precisely the discursively variable construction of each in and through the other that has interested me. . . .”57 Consequently, it seems more helpful to reflect upon daily life and experiences and thus the complexity of one’s identity rather than assuming pure self or pure Other. It is, perhaps paradoxically, this complexity that allows people to see commonalities. Thus, in order to account for political community, political identity must be truly universal or empty. Allowing for this would translate into a perspective that no identity is pure, stable, or fixed and thus, identity cannot be polluted. Cosmopolitanism is not a unified argument or program but does capture what are the beginnings of a poststructuralist response to the problem of identity in contemporary political life. If the desire is to combat the exclusivity and homogeneity of the modern state, “politics may have to become series of disjointed, but not necessarily unifiable programs, projects responding to ghosts of past and future.”58 This hermeneutic would apply to citizenship in that the hierarchical criteria for citizenship would be revised and dual nationality would be easier to attain. This leveling of hierarchical norms would also involve the incorporation of groups that have been considered both economically dependent and the precondition for others’ economic independence. For example, the same respect on political levels that is given to immigrants with special capabilities and education could be extended to those who take care of our children, clean our gyms, and work in restaurant kitchens. That is not to say that the rubric of work should still define citizenship but rather that the simultaneous economic exploitation and political disenfranchisement of certain groups should be recognized and ameliorated. In this, it could be acknowledged that citizenship, especially confronted by economic globalization, is far too important a status to existence to make it hierarchical or elitist. This citizenship would not be the minimalist citizenship of Locke and Hobbes (low citizenship) nor that of Plato, Aristotle, or Rousseau (high citizenship). Rather, it would be grounded in a notion of political community that allows for individuality and responsibility

Homeland, Homelessness, Cosmopolitanism



151

towards others (discussed further in the next chapter). As Marx noted in his discussion of species-being and Foucault, in his notion of the care of the self, political community and connection with others can only be possible when an individual has the freedom to develop, live consciously, and pursue long-term plans. Thus, citizenship and political community should not be a process of “deselfing” but rather recognizing connections and responsibility, not as debt or guilt (Schuld), but as a positive transcendence of formerly exclusive categories. In Étrangers à nous-mêmes, Julia Kristeva discusses a cosmopolitanism that is in keeping with this argument. Kristeva believes that difference will always exist and that it must become less difficult to become a citizen. She states that in this context, “[C]hacun est destiné à rester le même et l’autre: sans oublier sa culture de départ, mais en la relativisant au point de la faire non seulement voisiner, mais aussi alterner avec celle des autres” [Each person is destined to remain the same and the other, without forgetting one’s culture of origin, but relativizing it to the point that it not only exists alongside but alternates with the culture of others].59 Thus, she allows the tension between universal and individual to remain. In this context, a new homogeneity is not desirable or even possible. Instead, dual nationality would be ideal in order to give étrangers political and juridical rights, with a clause of reciprocity with the country of origin.60 Hence, one will have to learn to live with differences without eliminating them. This would lead to a paradoxical community, which Kristeva describes in the following way, “La societé multinational serait ainsi le résultat d’un individualism extrême, mais conscient de ses malaises et de ses limites, ne connaissant que d’irréductibles prêts-à-s’aider dans leur faiblesse, une faiblesse dont l’autre nom est notre étrangeté radicale” [The multicultural society would thus be the result of an extreme individualism, but conscious of its discontents and its limits, knowing little more than those who are in their weakness ready for stop-gap charity, a weakness, therefore, for which the other name would be our radical foreignness].61 The creation of the Other may not be eradicated but would not lead to the radical oppositionality of Schmitt’s friend/enemy distinction. Although Bonnie Honig criticizes the work of Kristeva in its demand for assimilation,62 her version of cosmopolitanism on a theoretical level is close to Kristeva’s. She argues that “democratic principles are best realized at this moment in a commitment to a politically engaged, democratic cosmopolitanism in which the will to national unity or identity is

152




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

attenuated and democratic actors have room to seek out political, cultural, and other forms of not just identity-based affiliation at the subnational, national and international registers. Increasingly, democratic practice exceeds the states it seems to presuppose; democracy’s demos is dispersed.”63 Honig envisions an immigrant who can retain his or her Otherness and yet adapt to a new country through means of a “transitional object,”64 an idea first proposed by Kristeva. She contends that Kristeva’s work emphasizes the necessity for a cosmopolitanism that “engages others in their particularities” while defending universal values such as dignity and human rights. The transitional object, if allowed to exist in a healthy and nontraumatic environment, will allow for agency of the immigrant/Other. The notion of a transitional object does not demand assimilation per se, but coexistence.65 What is significant is that certain universal values characteristic of a democracy may be maintained while allowing for difference on other levels. By not respecting difference, not only is equality undermined but certain groups are made to feel oppressed and threatened. For example, the lack of understanding shown toward Muslims in most Western nation-states as well as uncritical and unreflective endorsements of Israel can create resentment and foster enclavism. More broadly, an enlightened notion of humanity, going beyond mere human or biological need, would perhaps make us more open to understanding and respecting others. Emile Durkheim recognized this need early on: “Thus, we make our way, little by little, toward a state, nearly achieved as of now. Where the members of a single social group will have nothing in common among themselves except their humanity, except the constitutive attributes of the human person (personne humaine) in general. This idea of the human person, given different nuances according to the diversity of national temperaments, is therefore the only idea which would be retained, unalterable and impersonal, above the changing torrent of individual opinions.”66 While Durkheim may have been overly optimistic about the level of societal integration possible in modernity, he certainly saw the overwhelming necessity for it, indeed, not to quell dissent (as his critics charge) but to ensure its possibility. A cosmopolitan politics rooted in the urban area would reflect the reality of economic globalization in that large cities are the locus of international activity while extending political protection and the possibility of freedom to an increasingly diverse and migratory population. Urban areas are more often what people identify with than the abstract national

Homeland, Homelessness, Cosmopolitanism



153

identity conferred upon them. This sort of politics would not encourage physical dislocation but rather would recognize that it should not determine a person’s right to exist. However, there are at least two possible objections to this argument. First, global cities (for example, San Francisco and New York) are often criticized for being the harshest to homeless people and exploiting immigrant labor. Second, the notion of cosmopolitanism cannot be viewed from an elite or privileged perspective. Currently public policy in many urban areas responds to the needs of corporate elites and the desire for order and stability. This one-sidedness is evident in the increasing criminalization of homelessness and the shrinking of truly public space, not to mention the exploitation of immigrant labor. If political values are left to concerns of national security and corporate interest, elite interests will prevail and the subaltern, the oppressed, the exploited will be ignored. What is urgently needed is not an acceptance and adaptation to global forces but politics as an active and democratic response to a nihilistic force. Certain cities are already powerful in the global economy and centers of global and transnational economic processes that involve cheap labor, the centralization of management in urban areas, and the reliance on specialized services. In fact, some of these cities have begun to act independently and set up offices abroad and many of them depend on one another independent of their national location.67 If political power were conceived of as a federated power based in urban areas, it would fill a need where there is now a void, not to mention appealing to more local sympathies of denizens. There are also positive reasons why the urban area could be the site of powerful political change. Given the international character of many cities, radical differences often coexist and there is a potential for less provincial politics (which is ironically embodied in current forms of nationalism). For example, Saskia Sassen argues that political empowerment is more likely to happen in a city than a small town or village: “The global city is a strategic site for disempowered actors because it enables them to gain presence, to emerge as subjects even when they do not gain direct power.” Further, while there is certainly great inequality across the globe, there is no supreme global city; rather, “the new geography of centrality cuts across national boundaries.”68 Historically, the notion of patriotism developed in the city-state rather than the nation-state and there is a lesson in this. In avoiding the abstraction and dislocation of the nation-state, the city as center of political loyalty and affiliation is both less of an abstraction and more reflective of

154




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

physical existence. In discussing Machiavelli’s idea of patria, Nicholas Xenos argues that although the city too could be conceived of as abstract, “the city exists as a physical marker of a created space that is experienced both intellectually and sensually. To risk the pun, there is a concreteness to the urban experience that has no counterpart in the experience of the nation.”69 In fact, the development of nationalism was a putting aside of the city-state, where “the forces of the nation triumphed over those of the city; of national assimilationism over urban cosmopolitanism; of the ‘rooted,’ ‘natural’ French nation over the deracinated, artificial city.” In contrast, the city was historically viewed as reflecting an older heritage that was supplanted by the idea of nationalism.70 As opposed to the artifice of the national family, the city has been a repository of different cultures, religions, and ethnicities that coexist at the worst and interact at best. This intermingling reflects the reality of international travel, migration, and globalism: “When Michael Ignatieff expresses his embarrassment at being a cosmopolitan—grandson of Russian immigrants, a Canadian citizen, resident of London—he grants too much to the myth of national identity. . . . Intellectuals live in cities, at least in their minds. Not Plato’s city, but a site of diverse experiences and knowledge, transcending the arbitrary borders of nations. It is a privilege, but it is one we should exercise, not regret.”71 Ignatieff himself evokes the strong ties that were once had to the city: “Yet we should remember the nineteenth-century city and the richness of its invention of new forms and possibilities of belonging. Those great cities—Manchester, New York, Paris—were as strange to those who had to live in them for the first time as ours may seem to us. Yet we look back at them now as a time of civic invention—the boulevard, the public park, the museum, the cafe, the trolley car, street lighting, the subway, the railway, the apartment house. Each of these humble institutions created a new possibility for fraternity among strangers in public places.”72 Ignatieff reminds the reader of the art and novels reflecting this time such as Hopper’s New York, Toulouse-Lautrec’s Paris, Joyce’s Dublin, Musil’s Vienna, and Kundera’s Prague. However, urban cosmopolitanism cannot only take into account the privileged perspective of certain writers in exile, but “instead the uncountable masses for whom UN agencies have been created. You must think of the refugee-peasants with no prospect of ever returning home, armed only with a ration card and an agency number.”73 If the centrality of the larger area of the nation-state became decentered and commit-

Homeland, Homelessness, Cosmopolitanism



155

ted to agonistic democratic values while attempting to limit prerogative power to what is strictly necessary, two things might be possible: first, international organizations such as the United Nations would be allowed to play a more significant role in international politics because they are no longer viewed as a threat to state sovereignty but another actor in a complex world; and second, a more fluid concept of borders and citizenship will put the burden of responsibility for those who are politically homeless on all modern nation-states. What’s more, the exclusion of refugees and immigrants arriving from poorer southern nations could be reconceived in light of the debt that more developed nations owe them in terms of material, natural resources, and labor. More specifically, this would involve submitting the administration of borders to democratic processes while at the same time moving borders away from the center of politics. As Balibar notes, “[E]lles devraient être au bord du territoire, marquer le point où il cesse d’exister” [They should lie on the edge of the territory, marking the point where it ceases to exist].74 Indeed, reevaluating the role of prerogative power in all areas of life is necessary. The democratization of borders would not only challenge the exercise of biopower but make it possible for international agencies to check the potential abuses of state power. This is not to theorize a world government, but to acknowledge that checks and balances can occur internationally. For example, the broadening of international agreements has allowed coordinated use of geographical space and the protection of the environment in certain instances. These agreements have allowed for states to be held accountable for their actions. Further, human rights serve a very real need for those who have no citizenship or the backing of their country to have rights independent of any homeland. The plight of Afghan refugees demonstrates this need even amidst calls for greater security since September 11, 2001 Nevertheless, this is not to accept the role that the United Nations and international nongovernmental organizations play uncritically. It must be recognized that human rights norms as they exist now still presuppose the centrality of the nation-state. This is true first of all because it is still states that guarantee and enact human rights norms. Thus, states are conceived of as the singular locus of human rights issues. While this is not a bad thing, it does not account for people caught in between states, internal refugees, or the homeless, whose status has been criminalized. Related to this, the notion that everyone naturally belongs in one place creates a hierarchy, privileging

156




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

the nation-state above individual life. For example, suppose that Chinese boat people arrive on U.S. shores and they are refused entry. The United States attempts to ship them back to China but China won’t take them either. These refugees end up in limbo because the integrity of the nationstate is held to be more important than individual lives. Third, the United Nations and many international nongovernmental organizations have been accused of being elitist, colonizing, and paternalistic.75 In all cases, if the United Nations and human rights norms had more power as independent entities that could effectively check the power of political actors, be they multinational corporations or states, they might actually serve constituencies that need protection and accomplish that more democratically. For poorer countries, this may involve being “willing to venture interpretations of those rights in the same place and with the same language employed by the dominant power, to dispute its hierarchy and methods, to elucidate what it has hidden, to pronounce what it has silenced or rendered unpronounceable.”76 Indeed, the hierarchy of human rights needs to be dismantled and equalized. For example, if the United States refuses to sign a treaty for the rights of children, thus seemingly protecting child labor abroad, a more independent United Nations could challenge this complicity. While some may object that strengthening the role of the United Nations and human rights norms is too idealistic, it was Kofi Annan who remarked that the most strenuous objectors to human rights norms are states that violate them. The fact that European countries have largely adopted human rights norms demonstrates a willingness to cede some sovereignty and shows that their adoption is not unprecedented. However, these countries’ own problems with immigrants, Gypsies, the homeless, and racial minorities demonstrate a need for enforcement outside of the state. Examples of claims against or outside of the nation-state do show that this is a possibility. For example, the Nuremberg trials introduced the “idea that citizens have rights pertaining to a universal moral code” and subordinated the power of the nation-state to that of the human community.77 Alternatively, Edward Said points out that if it were not for grass roots agitation against the South African government, the problem of apartheid would not have received international attention and eventually pressure to change.78 Or, as Sassen notes, many claims have been made against western European governments and the United States due to the 1976 Protocol to the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which “enables private parties to file complaints to the U.N. Human Rights Committee

Homeland, Homelessness, Cosmopolitanism



157

if a state that has ratified the protocol is involved.”79 While much work needs to be done in democratizing the enforcement of human rights as well as administering aid, these laws and institutions fill the political gap that has been created inside of and between nation-states.

Cosmopolitan Citizenship In chapter 2, I critically examined what citizenship is de facto and de jure. In exploring what citizenship means in the modern nation-state, it is evident that voting and civil rights are not enough. Very often liberal theorists spend a great deal of time figuring out how to increase political participation and debate while retaining or merely reforming the status quo. It is only through recognizing what citizenship signifies on a daily basis and for all residents of a country that true change can be effected. If we can all vote and yet certain groups have less of a de facto right to bodily integrity, the vote is meaningless. Or, if racial profiling occurs and racial categories are retained in government policy, one cannot posit equality on any level for racial minorities. Alternatively, the oppressed often express agency in ways different from the mainstream (such as homeless newspapers) and yet indicate more identification and community than is expressed in the mainstream. To ignore these acts of agency, on the one hand, is to focus exclusively on mainstream norms of what defines acceptable political activity. On the other hand, communities formed on the basis of oppression may not solve any problems that political theorists search for, but they do illuminate the privileged position from which the latter argue. To put it differently, the discussion of how to make life more political demonstrates that the middle and upper classes can withdraw from politics when oppressed groups cannot withdraw. This is a luxury, even if it signals a fundamental problem with liberalism. In fact, the conflation of middle- and upper-class political status with that of the poor and disenfranchised presupposes that all individuals have equal opportunity. The taking for granted of equality has allowed the mainstream to blame the poor or for authors to charge women with complicity80 in their oppression. Indeed, the notion that citizenship is merely a status and the homeless are in fact freer than the rest of us is an argument only a privileged person could make. While it remains true that even in the most desperate situations people can exert agency, to ignore the asymmetry of power in many relations is naive and dangerous. It is better to

158




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

acknowledge and attempt to ameliorate power inequalities rather than assuming that they can merely be suspended at will. One example of this dangerous ignorance is the assumption that the racial and gender categories of affirmative action constitute an equivalent reverse racism and sexism.76 This is to ignore a long history of oppression of racial minorities and women, not to mention their continued second-class citizenship. As I argued in chapter 2, the mere granting of civil rights does not change prejudiced policy, ideology, or social mores. In an increasingly complex world, equality must be taken (in Honig’s terms) or legally encoded but cannot be assumed to exist sui generis. In certain respects, the European state is a model for providing for greater equalities. In the first place, European states have a more effective voting system: proportional representation. The adoption of proportional representation in the United States would deterritorialize the voting process, allow for minorities’ interests and candidates to be represented, foster coalition building, and increase voter turnout and public debate.82 The constant protests, strikes, and marches in European cities evidence the fact that citizens feel they can demand rights, just as the arguably more effective squatting movements in London and Paris demonstrate Honig’s notion of “taking.” In other words, more citizens are apparently active rather than passive citizens. Second, European states have largely adopted human rights norms, even if they don’t follow them perfectly. While this may not be adequate, they do have better records on abuse and enforcement than the United States.83 Third, until recently perhaps, European states have ensured that quality of life takes precedence over corporate interest and profit. This has been manifested in a few ways: permitting and encouraging workers’ rights and unionization, granting social security to all citizens and thus destigmatizing welfare, and establishing mixed economies. On this last point, European states’ policies have been closer to recognizing what Karl Polanyi calls “commodity fictions.” Karl Polanyi argues that political economy has posited people and land as commodities despite the fact that these elements were not designed for the market.84 Polanyi explores the utopian notion of laissez-faire, contending that it never in fact existed, and connects this to two of the great fictions. In reality he claims, “Labor is only another name for a human activity which goes with life itself, which in its turn is not produced for sale but for entirely different reasons, nor can that activity be detached from the rest of life, be stored or mobilized; land is only another name for nature, which is not produced by man. . . .”85 Indeed, to treat land as a

Homeland, Homelessness, Cosmopolitanism



159

false commodity would not only support environmental concerns in all countries but would respect the attachment to land that is found in other cultures as well as Native Americans’. To treat land as a false commodity would be to stop pressuring other areas of the world to become more developed and yet deregulated. Without protections for safety, workers’ rights, and respect for land, poorer nations will be exploited and yet not receive any benefits that allegedly trickle down. In these respects, the European state has been a better model than the American one until recently. To these fictions I would add housing and food,86 as they are necessary for self-preservation regardless of the predominant economic system. In this, the radical claim for self-preservation over property rights that early liberals made demonstrates that this notion is not anathema to liberal values, even if it is to capitalist ones. Nevertheless, in one key respect, European states cannot serve as a model. This is in regard to the questions of nationalism, borders, and immigration. Just as the homeless evidence that citizenship is based on economic identity and homogeneous norms of national identity not strictly reserved for foreigners, immigrants force the ethnic component of citizenship to the fore. As argued above, not only must borders become more democratic, but the nation-state needs to become decentered. Allowing for multiple attachments and identities will permit people to relate to others on a variety of levels. As it is, judging others on the basis of nationality or homeland is far too narrow. A more agonistic patriotism and agonistic democracy will perhaps remove certainty but challenge the simplicity of economic and national logic. One concrete way to open borders is to allow for dual citizenship more easily. It may be argued that this is an impractical suggestion after September 11, 2001. Nevertheless people may consider that Islamic militancy did not occur in a vacuum and is not wholly irrational; certainly no more or less irrational than our nationalism. Only when borders and citizenship become truly democratic will certain groups or geographical regions stop feeling victimized, exploited, and colonized. (Of course, maybe it’s too late). Furthermore, just as the nation-state needs to become less central to political life, the category of work should not serve as the precondition for citizenship. In part this is because work in itself is not necessarily a transcendent human activity, as Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, and Simone de Beauvoir would argue. It is true that the distinction between work as preservation versus work that is transcendent could be characterized as elitist and sexist. However, the broader argument that public

160




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

debate, intellectual interaction, and acting on behalf of oneself and others—creating, acting, participating—is truer to human individuality challenges the notion that any kind of work should be a precondition for citizenship. As Samuel Weber argues, “What is required is a different concept of synthesis, one that would allow an irreducible dimension of disparity to persist at the heart of all association.”87 Thus, while what counts as work should certainly be expanded, work should not be a central criterion of citizenship. While it may be argued that it is taxpayers and hence workers who make any welfare state or political institutions possible, it is time to question deregulation and allowing corporations such great freedoms while the poor and foreign are criminalized. In fact, the dismantling of deregulation could help to foster a more inclusive notion of citizenship. To return to my main argument, a politics of homelessness would allow more to be at home. This is not a call for an abstract notion of freedom in that the conventional notion of freedom presupposes a monolithic and unified subject that is the citizen. Rather, spaces must be made, demanded and taken within the home/homeland to allow for difference and the assertion of different voices. These spaces could be found in Homi Bhabha’s notion of supplementarity as a strategy of intervention. As he states, “It is in this supplementary space of doubling—not plurality—where the image is presence and proxy, where the sign supplements and empties nature that the exorbitant, disjunctive times of Fanon and Kristeva can be turned into the discourses of emergent cultural identities, within a nonpluralistic politics of difference.”88 Edward Said’s experience of “in-betweenness” is an example of occupying and acting from this supplementary space. However, as Said cautions, exile should not be fetishized in proposing alternative perspectives of homeland. Nonetheless, exile, statelessness, and domestic homelessness can be used to measure the status of democracy. Additionally, there is some merit in seeing beyond one’s own borders: “I have given the name ‘worldliness’ to this voice, by which I do not mean the jaded savoir-faire of the man about town, but rather a knowing and unafraid attitude toward exploring the world we live in.”89 To put it differently, “Most people are principally aware of one culture, one setting, one home; exiles are aware of at least two, and this plurality of vision gives rise to an awareness of simultaneous dimensions, an awareness that—to borrow a phrase from music—is contrapuntal.”90 While the notion of supplementary spaces or in-betweenness may appear overly abstract, these ideas

Homeland, Homelessness, Cosmopolitanism



161

suggest at least two things. First, groups should not wait for rights or spaces to be granted but organize and demand their rights or create their own spaces. Nevertheless, this cannot happen just anywhere but in a political context that is more open to debate, difference, and responding to the demands of all groups. Second, as I have argued, home will only be possible if we give up on the idea of a unified, rigid, and bounded notion of home. The politicization of home and homelessness signals a political splitting between normal/abnormal, rational/irrational, economically independent/dependent, and so on that is radically signified in the perception of home as the repository for positive attributes and homelessness, that of negative characteristics. Indeed, the fundamental violence that is revealed in notions of property and the proper demonstrate the connection between the political status of the homeless and stateless. If identity and home(land) have been tied to one another inextricably, it is time to loosen this relation. Rather than basing a politics on notions of national security and by extension, uncertainty and instability, a politics that embraced lived, daily experience as realistic would allow for greater inclusion, more flexibility in the political process, an expanded notion of home and ultimately, a sort of political homelessness. Altogether, a politics of homelessness, reflecting this openness to the Other, would involve cosmopolitan values. Against the idea of a homogeneous universalism and exclusivity, allowing the Other to exist as Other is a significant component of justice. Correspondingly, a citizenship that is more open and the possibility that dual citizenship be more easily obtainable would permit a positive destabilization of the homeland that would paradoxically allow more people to be at home. Finally, the charge that cosmopolitanism involves rootlessness can be reversed where it is revealed that it is, in fact, the nation state that uproots and the urban landscape that anchors everyday reality. In adopting a cosmopolitan politics, we will not have the privileging of the existence of one group at the expense of another. But this is only when all are at home.

Chapter 6

Debt, Guilt, and Responsibility: Schuld

The same man who is full of humanity toward his fellows when they are also his equals becomes insensible to their sorrows when there is no more equality. Cicero, who raised such a storm of complaint about the crucifixion of a Roman citizen, had nothing to say about this atrocious abuse of victory [the strangling of enemy generals]. It is evident that in his eyes a stranger is not of the same type of humanity as a Roman. —Alexis de Toqueville, Democracy in America

In this book, I have hoped to demonstrate the incredible vulnerability the homeless experience not only physically but also politically. They do not simply fall through the cracks but are deprived of citizenship due to their status. The logic of the modern nation-state in combination with a capitalist ethos dictates that difference is excluded not only by denial of rights but also geographical separation or extinction. Homelessness on many different levels reflects the fact that political inclusion has been based more on identity and irrational emotional group processes than empirical fact. Thus, political identity in the modern nation state is manifested in a bipolar manner, where citizens are either friend or enemy, leaving little room for justice. This is what ties the plight of the domestic homeless to stateless peoples and the quest for a home to the desire for a redemptive homeland. Given the undecidability of homeless groups, citizenship is not only crucial to existence but also inadequate in its current manifestation. Paradoxically, one is only recognized as a human if a citizen and equal.

163

164




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

The exclusion of difference, as I have argued, is based upon the criteria of national identity and economic independence. Nevertheless, poverty and homelessness are what make individuals most vulnerable. This claim is supported by the history of attitudes and policy towards the poor, which have historically been punitive in nature since the beginning of the modern nation-state. These perspectives have been tied to the idea of economic contribution as a criterion for citizenship and the conception of the home as a precondition for this criterion. The focus on work has thus defined other complementary criteria, such as ideas of economic independence, responsibility, and rationality. These criteria have informed political decision-making, political participation, and the acceptability of physical transgression, where the less money one makes, the more one is perceived as needing guidance, punishment, reform, or annihilation. The disciplines—the media and academic and social forces—have reinforced this space of otherness for those who are disenfranchised. Nevertheless, political and personal identity cannot really be contained. Experiences of the homeless demonstrate the disparity between a complex reality and the inadequacy of the paradigm constructed by much of the literature and public policy. Moreover, attempts to control the homeless have only curtailed their freedom; they have not served to make them conform or push them down entirely. Where there have been pockets of freedom, the homeless have established newspapers and innovative ways of handling housing (through encampments and “cities”) and employment (through recycling, car washing and detailing, and providing other services). That is, efforts to erase them from the urban landscape or to criminalize them do not erase their agency but rather, limit it and make it a precarious phenomenon. Thus, their presence is unheimlich and spectral. The real issue is the attempt to control those who seem uncontrollable and in this way, the homeless are a symptom of larger problems in the nation-state. Their search for a political home provides the conditions for the physical location of home. This involves recognition of our own agency in creating political Others and hence, human responsibility. The ideas of the early liberals, then Hegel, and later, Marx (in a different context), called for communal responsibility as well as equal political power. The early liberal writers laid out a moral claim that has not been fulfilled: that all, being creatures of God, are equal and should be provided for. Politically, this has meant that power should be distributed equally despite economic inequalities and that the conceptual precondition for this was the notion of self-

Debt, Guilt, and Responsibility



165

preservation and the material and physical means to attain it. However, given the notion of liberal responsibility coupled with the development of capitalism, individual interest has taken precedence over the needs of the community. Furthermore, even the early liberal writers had a contradictory notion: equal political power for all, except the poor and unemployed (and identities that intersect with these categories). Thus, views of the early liberals were problematic with regard to the poor but certain guarantees were absolute: to Locke, subsistence was a right and not a privilege. Hegel later reaffirmed this moral claim in even stronger terms, as he saw that the poor were becoming increasingly disenfranchised. In light of the present situation—subsistence is certainly not a right in the United States and poverty can lead to disenfranchisement and dehumanization—this moral demand of the past is quite radical. Responsibility is not placed entirely on the individual but on society as a whole. While social protections are less stigmatizing and more inclusive in other modern nation-states,1 the homelessness of the United States mirrors the homelessness of the Gipsies, refugees, or guest workers in other countries. (Further, homelessness in these countries is still a problem.) Hegel’s work both represented the culmination of liberal writing, where he recognized that the liberal tenet of political equality was a just innovation, and marked the beginning of the explicit philosophical discussion of the Other. The power dynamics of the latter conception have been significant in influencing philosophers since then. It is not a coincidence that the philosophical preoccupation with the Other emerged with the development of individuality in modernity and humanity’s increasing homelessness.2 The discussion of alterity could have fostered a more inclusive politics but, combined with the liberal capitalist emphasis on individual responsibility, it has led to exclusion instead. Rather, the more abstract community of the nation state has led to the abdication of responsibility for the population as a whole and created a political Other on a domestic level, against which the self-identity of the citizen can be defined. Correspondingly, the concerns of state power— stability and national security—become more important than democratic values. According to liberal tenets, the very least we owe the homeless is subsistence and political equality. The homeless would not only have an inalienable right to live, but public space would become inhabitable for all. However, our debt to the homeless is no longer part of our political institutions or practices, ideas, or mores. This could be for two reasons,

166




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

both conditioned by market values: either our debt is so overwhelming that it has become neutralized or we have inverted this debt to say that, in fact, the political Other is the one in debt. This latter view correlates with the idea of individual responsibility and the notion that a superfluous population is leeching off of society. The poor become the debtors, and taxpayers the lenders. Two types of dynamic arise in this seemingly fiduciary relationship. The first is that compensation (welfare) is tied to cruelty to the Other.3 They must suffer in order to pay for their indebtedness. Derrida notes that there is a tradition of “sadistic aggressivity with regard to the donee, the perversity which threatens a beggar suspected of speculating. . . .”4 And we do make them pay through the punitive and normalizing character of the welfare system and the disciplines that support it. It is not easy to get welfare and, as has been documented since Piven and Cloward’s work in the 1960s,5 the process is designed to be alienating and punitive. Much research and money is poured into demonstrating that the homeless are draining the welfare system or are cheats, for example, that is, in examining their debt to us. Second, because the state is the mediator in this relationship, we are merely witnesses. The state removes the personal relations in this exchange, only involving the citizen as taxpayer or passerby.6 This reinforces the roles of debt and debtor and all but erases the humanity of these relations. Instead, interactions are limited to examining the debt of welfare recipients and reducing their identity to this singular phenomenon. One facet of the debt/debtor relation is demanding that the donee be deemed worthy of aid to receive it. However, in response to the deserving/undeserving dichotomy, Michael Ignatieff quotes Hamlet: “[I]f we were to give every person what they deserve, ‘who would ‘scape whipping?’”7 An individual’s need does not involve his or her merit but necessity. In a world of both preexisting inequalities and the continual presence of others, a type of dependency will always tie self to Other. This reality challenges the finite quality of a debt/debtor relation and the demand for worthiness. At the root of the idea of (economic) merit is the criterion of citizenship: to be economically independent and make a contribution to the market. However, defining a person by work is obviously inadequate given the complexity of human identity and relations. Indeed, if political inclusion excludes a certain type of exteriority, political identity becomes entirely self-referential and thus we could be accused of cultural narcissism.

Debt, Guilt, and Responsibility



167

Therefore, perhaps narcissistically, little has been done to examine our debt to them. If home means some type of freedom, this implies a debt to the Other that is not possible with homelessness. However, this debt is not individual; rather, it is of the state to all its citizens. The moral claims of democracy, equality, and justice are the debt of the state, which then reverts back to a more generalized “we” or “us.” This does not necessarily mean a return to the high citizenship of Aristotle or Rousseau but a reconceptualization of the political in terms of human interaction, interdependence, humanity, and responsibility. Although Marx’s discussion of species-being is in another context—“when I am active scientifically etc.,—when I am engaged in activity which I can seldom perform in direct community with others—then I am social, because I am active as a man”8—it is this balance between individual (and individual needs) and community that indicates a new direction for political membership. The Other is not simply part of a limited transaction but, as Lévinas states “le visage ouvre le discours originel dont le premier mot est obligation qu’aucune ‘intériorité’ ne permet d’éviter” [The face opens the original discourse in which the first word is obligation, which no interiority can avoid].9 Lévinas introduces an ethos into the relation to the Other that cannot be present in the limited debt/debtor relation.10 Similarly, as Heidegger refers to Schuld, it is a type of guilt or responsibility that is prior to consciousness. In this discussion, Heidegger also brings up the notion of a “call” (Ruf) or “appeal,” (Anruf) that is a sort of “call of conscience where the “caller and called are, ultimately, the same—although by no means simply identical.” The term Schuld and our engagement with the Other do not indicate an oppositional association, but a relation that involves inner and exterior alterity.11 Nevertheless, the debt that we owe them, the guilt we feel, can be rendered neutral in a variety of ways: by placing the guilt on them (they are welfare cheats, leeches, parasites, and so on); by looking at the multitude of problems throughout the world and deciding that it is all too overwhelming (the reasoning that giving even a little really does nothing, so why bother?); or by viewing them as subhumans who simply do not have the same needs. That is, debt becomes guilt, which is quickly transformed into contempt for the Other. The debt we owe the homeless is not concrete; there is no bill or statement. Our abdication of responsibility makes us witnesses to the spectacle of poverty, the exposure of the homeless to the elements, harassment, violence, and arrests where the debt of the word Schuld can become guilt

168




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

but it is a guilt that does not cease. We would like to make it a simple transaction with a beginning and an end, but this is impossible: “Schuld. Debt, guilt: debt as guilt, guilt as debt. And if the two words are one, it is precisely because they seek to be two: Schuld as debt seeks to deny the structural dependency of the self on an other, by confronting that other as creditor to debtor.”12 Guilt does not just involve money or business; rather this guilt involves creation of a lower caste, an Other, in countries that were founded upon antiaristocratic notions (especially the United States). The debt/debtor relationship is an attempt to erase the guilt or justify inequalities because the recognition of guilt, unlike a fiduciary relation, is “unredeemable.”13 The link between citizenship and economic contribution reinforces the political and geographical dissymmetry between the housed and the homeless. Indeed, no one can be equal from the incipience of liberalism because there are preexisting economic inequalities from unequal holdings. The home and socially important employment have become significant features of political incorporation and exclusion. Nevertheless, the normative criteria defining the ideal citizen are inadequate and unjust. Rather, “If justice . . . consists in the impossible task of giving the other its due, then the notion of ‘expropriation’ would have to be radically rethought and, above all, extricated from any dialectic that has restitution as its ultimate term. This means that the archaeoteleological model of work—with its dialectics of production and consumption—no longer sets the horizon of social relations.”14 Indeed, multiple affiliations allow us to see humanity in others and recognize each other as equal at some times and unequal at others. In this, each person is recognized as unique. Rather than dehumanizing the homeless and narrowly defining their existence based on work, it could be recognized that our stereotypes and attempts to control them have made their presence spectral—out of place and out of time. Derrida’s emphasis on specters and messianicity15 could lead to a view of relationships of time that are not based on “the ontological priority of the present, of sameness over alterity” but rather in a “disjointed union” that could be called “spectral messianicity” or “messianic spectrality”:16 “What characterizes the monetary logic of modern capitalist societies is still very much dominated by the present. . . . It is here that ‘deconstruction’ perhaps can help to transform the perspective, by demonstrating how and why that present is both more and less than itself—by teaching it how to respect the ghosts that haunt it and the messianic hopes that drive it.”17 This reference to time alludes to the challenge

Debt, Guilt, and Responsibility



169

that the spectral or uncanny Other poses to the compartmentalization of the past and the future; it allows for the unpredictability of the Other and a notion of historicity that has been markedly absent. Hospitality toward alterity, manifested in political equality and guaranteed subsistence for all, will only be achieved if one’s citizenship is not predicated on work but multiple identities, affiliations, and attachments. Moreover, what must change are not only formal conceptions of citizenship but also the lack of dignity with which the poor are treated. If need and scarcity have been seen as the horizons or limits of the combination of capitalism and liberalism, the problem is that these ideas do not confer dignity. Satisfying a people’s physical needs while stigmatizing them does not lead to liberty or an enhanced existence: “[T]o define human nature in terms of needs is to define what we are in terms of what we lack, to insist on the distinctive emptiness and incompleteness of humans as a species.”18 How aid is given and how it is perceived shapes the respect given to the recipient. Thus, dignity can only be conferred upon people if they are treated with respect for who they are and the multiplicity of their lived daily experiences rather than mere biological life. This distinction can be seen in the interpretation of housing as a shelter or something beyond a shelter that involves relationships, work, mementos, privacy, and personal expression. Similarly, this distinction is evident when a homeless person is seen only as homeless and not viewed as a coworker, friend, brother or sister, or former neighbor. By merely appealing to humanity as a biological fact, they become empty, objects, unworthy of life. Perhaps the notion of dignity inheres in the idea of mutual recognition: when the self goes beyond the polarity of the self/other antagonism. However, the need for mutual recognition is both useful and problematic. It is useful regarding the idea of mutuality but it indicates that we have no inherent worth if we are not recognized by others. Hobbes’s statement that the power or worth of a man “is not absolute; but a thing dependent of the need and judgment of another”19 is telling. If the dialectical tension between self and others does not result in the unity of the public or political self, where does that leave individuals? They would not only be perceived as less than a citizens, but also less than human. What must be added to the concept of mutual recognition is obligation, that is, the obligation to engage with the Other respectfully. This invokes Lévinas’s call for a justice in which the presence of the Other implies responsibility. The importance of this, above all other

170




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

political relations could be read in his statement that “la morale n’est pas une branche de la philosophie, mais la philosophie première” [Morality is not a branch of philosophy, but philosophy itself].20 Mutual humanity is recognized in people’s histories, their particularities, and their difference; not their physical need. Even as political equality is a necessity, inclusion should not be based on sameness but on difference: “[L]a justice consiste à rendre à nouveau possible l’expression où, dans la non-réciprocité, la personne se présente unique. La justice est un droit à la parole” [Justice consists in making possible the expression where, in a nonreciprocal relation, the person is presented as unique. Justice is a right to speech].21 The notion of humanity in a more abstract sense, rather than its mere biological manifestation, could protect those without affiliations. If politics is rooted in a community that allows for complex identities and difference, this may circumscribe choice and yet allow for belonging for those who would otherwise be homeless. Thus, our responsibility to the homeless could be argued to be twofold: to provide for existence, as the early liberals did, but also to allow for the dignity and particularity of the Other. These two elements could be described as “justice,” a justice that is in the spirit of early liberal writings but also beyond it. In this sense, justice would have to do with moral obligation. If the unconscious of Freud is unbounded or dislocated and rationality signifies limits and location, this ethic is not a call for controlling the unconscious. That is, it does not necessarily entail a further repression of our repressions, but rather recognition that the panoptic treatment of the Other is irrational. Demands for assimilation, criminalization, and extinguishing the Other are not rational in the psychoanalytic sense of the word and the political manifestation of this irrationality is nondemocratic, leading to political repression. The burden of unredeemable guilt and debt could be lifted as the notion of political responsibility shifts from the individual to society as a whole. Justice is allowing the Other to be other, “which presupposes a gift without exchange” and which exceeds what one has or can do.22 This brings about the true test of human respect that Ignatieff discusses: the test of respect is not in a friend or neighbor but the unkempt stranger. If difference is viewed as dangerous and alien, there will be no home for it. On the other hand, “only when difference has its home, when the need for belonging in all its murderous intensity has been assuaged, can our common identity begin to find its voice.”23 This will only happen if this Other is allowed to exist as Other. Justice should be

Debt, Guilt, and Responsibility



171

pure hospitality with no expectations or conditions;24 only then will the Other be accepted on his or her own terms. As Derrida claims, “any politics that fails to sustain some relation to the principle of unconditional hospitality has lost relation to justice.”25 Citizenship will only bestow equal political power when it welcomes difference, goes beyond the present, and allows for political homelessness not based on merit but unconditional acceptance. There is a certain hubris in the divisions that exist now in which the survival of some people is privileged over that of others. Preexisting inequalities on many levels prevent this “survival of the fittest” competition from being fair or just. Although the recognition of interdependence and responsibility impinges upon individual choice, it broadens freedom in the end. It is, paradoxically, a responsibility for Others that leads to a greater autonomy for all. Accordingly, what is moral here does not involve what could arguably be easy—to supply the necessary things to survive—but also to do so with dignity, which is far more difficult and imposing. This argument may be paradoxical, too, to recognize difference and yet to have the universal value of dignity, giving the Other its due, while repudiating universal identity as a criterion for membership or inclusion. Lastly, these values require action and practice.26 A citizenship that confers political equality regardless of economic status, race, gender, or other difference is one manifestation of a cosmopolitan politics. The same openness should be shown to immigrants. As discussed in the previous chapter, the political manifestation of this argument would be a cosmopolitan politics rooted in the urban area that would change the model of the nation-state to one of a city-state, even if there is a federation of city-states. The idea of urban cosmopolitanism has proven in the past to be the basis of the formation of the nationstate.27 However, while this concept has shown itself to be a political reality of the past, it does not mean that urban cosmopolitanism in the present day should emulate the past. Rather, it is an example of a political community that has meaning, both historically and in the present. Neighborhoods of New York and Paris serve as a better model of how to foment community than do the fortified enclaves of Bel Air or the violence-ridden projects of Chicago. There would have to be more integration, according to this logic where urban planning would find solutions to real estate discrimination because of class, race, and religion. The urban landscape would not only have a multiplicity of identities (which it already has), but would need to foster tolerance and mutual respect to

172




Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

create a more meaningful sense of belonging. Hence, the real change would be that the conception of belonging would be narrowed geographically, and yet opened immeasurably to the multiplicity of identities of the city. Similarly, the importance of home is not to be able to essentialize identity but rather to allow for the multiplicity of identities in one’s life. That is, home should not lead to an exclusive type of territoriality but rather coexistence and mutual respect. What is important is the possibility of making a home, and thus the potential for political freedom. This can only happen successfully, however, if these identities allow for difference and market values do not define political membership. Thus, a “redemptive homeland” is not the answer but rather a home right here, where the Other already exists.

Notes

1. Introduction 1. See Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982). 2. See Jeremy Waldron, “Homelessness and the Issue of Freedom,” UCLA Law Review 39, no. 295 (December 1991) and Mike Davis, “Afterword—A Logic Like Hell’s: Being Homeless in Los Angeles,” UCLA Law Review 39, no. 295 (December 1991). 3. See Hal Foster, “Bigness,” London Review of Books 23, no. 23, (Nov. 29, 2001), on Rem Koolhaas simultaneously embracing and critiquing the transformation of public space to commercial, semipublic space: shopping is both predatory and “the last remaining form of public activity.” On a practical level the Koolhaas group is much less ambivalent; recent projects (the Prada Store) hasten the commercialization of formerly public spaces. 4. See Simone Weil, “Uprootedness and Nationhood,” in Simone Weil Reader, ed. George Panichas (Mt. Kisco, N.Y.: Moyer Bell, 1977). 5. Colette Guillaumin, Racism, Sexism, Power and Ideology (New York: Routledge, 1995), 50. Guillaumin holds that this occurs in egalitarian societies but I refine this broad category to liberal democracies that base membership on jus soli rather than jus sanguinis. 6. Political acts designed to make life difficult for Mexican immigrant workers even as they serve a vital economic role or jailing homeless mendicants when housing subsidies are approximately three times less expensive, for example. 7. Conceptual inflation is Robert Miles’s term to describe the theoretical mistake of using a concept too broadly (for example, the overuse of the word “racism”) or conflating class and race. See Robert Miles, Racism (New York: Routledge, 1999), chap. 2. 8. See Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Routledge, 2001). 9. When the word “homeless” appears unqualified, it signifies the real homeless.

173

174




Notes to Chapter 2

10. Wendy Brown, State of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 176. 11. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, An Introduction (New York: Vintage Books, 1980), 140–144. 12. See Giorgio Agamben, “The Camp as Nomos of the Modern,” Violence, Identity, and Self-Determination, ed. Hent de Vries and Samuel Weber (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 108. 13. Samuel Weber, private correspondence, Aug. 7, 1996. 14. Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd ed., ed. Robert Tucker (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978). 15. Iris Marion Young, Intersecting Voices: Dilemmas of Gender, Political Philosophy, and Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 161–164. 16. She distinguishes privacy from a private sphere or right to privacy; Young, 162. 17. Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny,” Standard Edition, Vol. 17 (Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1919). 18. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage, 1979), 222–224. 19. Ibid., 222. 20. Ibid. 21. See Saskia Sassen, Globalization and Its Discontents: Essays on the New Mobility of People and Money (New York: The New Press, 1998). 22. Étienne Balibar, “Frontières du monde, frontières de la politique,” in Du cosmopolitique, ed. Mireille Delbraccio, Bernard Pelloile (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2000). 23. See Samuel Weber, Institutions and Interpretation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), chap. 8. The German word captures the complexity of reactions to the homeless and is a significant concept in Nietzsche’s and Heidegger’s work.

2. Citizenship and Political Identity 1. I refer to immigrants only as their status can be compared to real or conceptual homelessness. 2. Simone Weil, “Uprootedness and Nationhood,” in Simone Weil Reader, ed. George Panichas (New York: Moyer Bell, 1977), 186. 3. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), 277.

Notes to Chapter 2



175

4. Carl Schmitt, Concept of the Political, ed. George Schwab (Piscataway: Rutgers University Press, 1976). 5. T. H. Marshall and Tom Bottomore, Citizenship and Social Class (London and Concord, Mass.: Pluto Press, 1992), 21. 6. Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” in The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd ed., ed. Robert Turner (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978), 33. 7. Ibid., 35. 8. Ibid., 39. 9. See Saskia Sassen, Globalization and Its Discontents: Essays on the New Mobility of People and Money (New York: The New Press, 1998). 10. Richard Ashcraft, “Liberalism and the Problem of Poverty,” Critical Review (1993): 11, 12. 11. Ibid., 7. 12. See Thomas Horne, Property Rights and Poverty: Political Argument in Britain, 1605–1834 (Durham: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 22; Ashcraft, 12. 13. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C. B. Macpherson (New York: Penguin, 1968), 139, 161, 188, 203, 258. 14. Horne, 287, 350. 15. See Horne, 22, 49; Ashcraft, 12, 15; and Hobbes, 188, 203. 16. See the work of Judith Shklar or Carole Pateman, for example. 17. See John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, ed. C. B. Macpherson classic series (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1980), 287. 18. See Richard Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics and Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 263–270, regarding Locke’s emphasis on labor in the social context, contrasting real labor with idleness (of poor or rich). 19. See Phineas Baxandall, “Explaining Differences in the Political Meaning of Unemployment,” Journal of Socio-Economics 31, no. 4 (2002): 469–502: “Officially recognized employment is protected [meaning “recognized”] through business subsidies, tax breaks, social security, workers compensation, labor codes and other regulations” (488). As Sassen, Baxandall, and William Julius Wilson show, many jobs no longer fit these criteria. 20. Political: right to participate in political power; civil: rights necessary for individual freedom; social economic: welfare/security/civilization (education) (Marshall and Bottomore, 8). 21. Robert Pinker, Introduction, T. H. Marshall’s The Right to Welfare and Other Essays (New York: The Free Press, Macmillan Publications, 1981), 12, 19.

176




Notes to Chapter 2

22. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class, 9. 23. Ibid., 14, 15. 24. Ibid., 6, 10, 12. 25. Pinker, 11. 26. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class, 21, 28, 29. 27. Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” 42. 28. See Schmitt, Concept of the Political; Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001); Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). 29. See Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 82–85. 30. See Background Papers—German Citizenship and Naturalization, http://www.germany-info.org/newcontent/np.bak/np_3c_2.html (September 17, 2002), and Muslimedia, “Germany’s New Nationality Law Good for Some Turks,” January 16–31, 2000 (September 17, 2002), http://www. muslimedia.com/archives/world00/germ-turk.htm, for recent changes. 31. Brubaker, 96. 32. Ibid., xi. 33. Ibid., xi, 1. 34. Ibid., 77, 98. See Brian Love, “French Hit Streets to Oppose Le Pen,” Boston Globe, April 28, 2002, A21. 35. Ibid., 50, 51, 72. 36. See Yasemin Nuhoglu Soysal, Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). 37. See Nicolaus Mills, ed. “The Era of the Golden Venture,” introduction to Arguing Immigration (New York: Touchstone/Simon and Schuster, 1994), 24; Charles A. Radin, “Fears of Deportation Bias,” Boston Globe, June 26, 2000, A1; Mark Babineck, “Agents Indicted in Death of Mexican Immigrant,” Boston Globe, September 26, 2002, A9. 38. See Kathleen Paul, Whitewashing Britain: Race and Citizenship in the Postwar Era (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997); Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands (London: Granta Books, 1991), 132–136. 39. See Rushdie; Mills, 20; Dowell Myers, et al., “The Changing Immigrants of Southern California,” (University of Southern California School of Urban and Regional Planning, Oct. 1995); Bonnie Honig, Democracy and the Foreigner (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 134, 16n; Teresa Mears, “Immigrants Are Told to Pay Back Aid,” Boston Globe, October 19, 1997, A18; Lynne

Notes to Chapter 2



177

Terry, “French Protest Anti-Immigration Bill,” Boston Sunday Globe, February 23, 1997, A2.; Hans Magnus Enzensberger, From L.A. to Bosnia (New York: New Press, 1994), 121; Bonnie Honig, “Ruth, the Model Emigrée,” Political Theory 25, no. 1 (1997): 112. Most significantly: Knight-Ridder Service, “Case Spotlights Use of Codes to Label Us Visa Applicants,” Boston Sunday Globe, June 8, 1997, A28. 40. See Eric Schmitt, “Watching the Door: Immigration Policy, Once a Target for Liberalization, Is Cast in a New Light,” Seattle Times, October 18, 2001, A3; Wayne Washington and Anne Kornblut, “Fighting Terror/Immigration Policy; US Offers Visas for Data on Terrorists, Bush Defends Use of Military Courts,” Boston Globe, November 30, 2001, A1. 41. Bryan Turner, “Outline of a Theory of Citizenship,” in Dimensions of Radical Democracy, ed. Chantal Mouffe (New York: Verso, 1992), (quoting Nodier, 1866), 49. 42. Nicholas Xenos, “Statelessness: The Making and Unmaking of Political Identity,” (Amherst: Department of Political Science, University of Massachusetts, 1996), 3, 4. 43. Ibid., 3. 44. Turner, 49. 45. Slavoj Zizek, “Eastern Europe’s Republics of Gilead,” in Dimensions of Radical Democracy, ed. Chantal Mouffe, 205. 46. Elías José Palti, “The Nation as a Problem: Historians and the National Question,” History and Theory (October 2001): 324–346. 47. Palti, 328. 48. For a critique of demands for assimilation, see Honig, Democracy and the Foreigner; Alejandro Portes and Ruben G. Rumbaut, Immigrant America: A Portrait, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); and Soysal. 49. Robert Miles, Racism (New York: Routledge, 1999), 89. 50. See Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Routledge, 2001), introduction. 51. International lawyer Albert Golbert of Golbert, Kimball and Weiner, Los Angeles. 52. International Court of Justice, Liechtenstein v. Guatemala (Nottebohm Case) [1955] I.C.J. Rep. 4; 492, 493, 496, 497. 53. Ibid., 495. 54. Ibid., 494, 495. 55. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class, 18. 56. Brubaker, 21–23.

178




Notes to Chapter 2

57. William Lockhart et al. Constitutional Law, 7th ed. (St. Paul: West Publishing, 1991), 572. 58. International Court of Justice, 496. 59. Arendt, 293, 294. 60. See Colin Nickerson, “Gypsy Influx Puts Canada Under Strain,” Boston Globe, August 25, 1997, A1. “Czechs Move to End Gypsy Exodus,” Boston Globe, October 30, 1997, A19. The Roma comprise several groups originally from India and migrating to Europe in the 1400s. They prefer Rom or Roma (man, people) to Gypsy, which is considered derogatory. They have been victims of political persecution in Europe since the 1400s and most notably during the Holocaust. See Harold J. Fontenot, “Introduction,” www.geocities.com/Paris/ 5121/vlib, 1999 (August 10, 2003). 61. See Susan Gilmore, “New Laws Pose Challenge to Thousands of Immigrants,” Seattle Times, March 12, 1998, A1; Rosin; Richard Chacon, “Imprisoned by Policy Convicts Deported by US Languish in Haitian Jails,” Boston Globe, October 19, 2000, A1; Agnes Blum, “Helping Those Who Get One-Way Tickets to Haiti,” Boston Globe, June 9, 2002, 5; “Haitians Decry Unequal Treatment,” Boston Globe, January 13, 2000, A7. 62. Giorgio Agamben, “The Camp as Nomos of the Modern,” in Violence, Identity and Self-Determination, ed. Hent de Vries and Samuel Weber (Stanford University Press, 1997), 108. 63. Giorgio Agamben, “What Is a Camp?” (1994), 7, 8. 64. See David Oliver Relin, “Who will Stand Up for Them?” Parade, August 4, 2002, 4–6. See Beth Carney, “Down Under, Bid for Asylum Tends to Result in Detention,” Boston Globe, September 9, 2001, A12; Bruce Shapiro, “Alien’s Law,” The Nation, December 17, 2001, www.thenation.com/doc. mhtml?i=20011217&s=shapiro; Maria Margaronis, “Europe’s Unwelcome Guests,” The Nation, December 17, 2001, www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i= 20020527&s=margaronis&c=1. 65. Quoted in Xenos, “Statelessness,” 11. Marx makes a similar observation, 34. 66. Nicholas Xenos, “A Patria to Die For” (Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 2000), 7, 11. 67. Nicholas Xenos, “Refugees: The Modern Political Condition,” Alternatives 18 (1993): 425. 68. Brubaker, 182, 183, 188. 69. Michael Walzer, “The Civil Society Argument,” in Theorizing Citizenship, ed. Ronald Beiner (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 161.

Notes to Chapter 2



179

70. As Audre Lorde suggests by her use of the term “mythical norm,” in “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference,” in Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures, ed. Russell Ferguson et al. (New York and Cambridge: New Museum of Contemporary Art and M.I.T. Press, 1990), 281. 71. See, for example, Anne Phillips, Engendering Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991). 72. Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996). 73. See Colette Guillaumin, Racism, Sexism, Power and Ideology (New York: Routledge, 1995), 83, 96n, 212, 214, 282n, for a critique of the social construction of intelligence as natural, as well as its racist, classist, and sexist consequences. See William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), xiv–xvi. 74. Rodney King was the African American man whose beating by California police was videotaped in March 1991. The jury acquittal of four officers involved sparked the Los Angeles uprising or riots. 75. See Terence Hutchinson, Before Adam Smith: The Emergence of Political Economy, 1662–1776 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988). 76. Locke, 34. 77. I will problematize this safeguarding in my forthcoming book Globalization, Prerogative Power, and Exploitation: Consequences for the New Working Class. 78. See William Gienapp’s work. (This transformation was predicted by de Tocqueville.) 79. See James T. Patterson, America’s Struggle Against Poverty, 1900–1985 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986). 80. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 228, 229. 81. Ibid., 230, 233. 82. See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1979). 83. The argument is that we haven’t lived up to liberal goals; see R. Ashcraft or R. Smith, for example. 84. Wendy Brown, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 170. 85. See Rostker v. Goldberg, Lockhart et. al., 1349. 86. Ibid., 1346. See Michael M. v. Superior Court, Dothard v. Rawlinson, 1341, 1342.

180




Notes to Chapter 2

87. Ibid., The Florida Star v. B.J.F., 721, for example. 88. See Carole Pateman, The Disorder of Women (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), 82. 89. For example: Babineck, A9. 90. See “Colorado Springs, Colorado; Police Investigating Attacks on Homeless in Colorado Springs,” Spare Change: Massachusetts’ Journal of the Streets, November 16–29, 2000, 10; “Two German Skinheads Confess to Beating Death of Homeless Man,” Spare Change, November 16–29, 2000, 11; “Miami Officers Tried in Homeless Shooting, Gun Throw-down Case,” Spare Change, March 22–April 4, 2001, 14; Takuji Nakao and Mainichi Shimbun, “Osaka Homeless Face Ruthless Attacks,” Spare Change, October 19–November 1, 2000, 6. 91. See William Sherman, “The Boys in the Hoods,” Mirabella 4 (September 1992), 146. 92. See Kenneth Reich, “Consul General Says Mexican Nationals are Mistreated,” Los Angeles Times, July 7, 1995, B1; Susan Moffat, “Violent Acts Against U.S. Asians Climb,” Los Angeles Times, August 1, 1995, 3; Patrick McDonnell and Robert Lopez, “Tense Times in Lincoln Heights,” Los Angeles Times, August 7, 1995, 1; Marc Haefele, “Memory of Fire,” Los Angeles Weekly 17, no. 37 (1995): 10; violence against women: Robin Wright, “For Women Around the World, Survival is Problem No. 1,” Los Angeles Times, September 3, 1995, M2; Ann Patchett, “The Comfort of Strangers,” Vogue, October 1995, 102; “UN Details Widespread Violence against Women,” Boston Globe, July 23, 1997, A6; violence against Latinos: Mexican-American Bar Association, “Crime Stories,” Los Angeles Reader 18, no. 1 (1995): 5; Reuters, “Muslim Women Accuse Policemen, Boston Globe, September 19, 1996, A12; “Abuse of Gays Found on Rise,” Boston Globe, March 12, 1997, A6; these types of cases can also be found in other Western democracies. 93. To the Supreme Court, wealth alone is not a suspect classification. This is despite cases such as James v. Valtierra, which requires a referendum (in California) for low-income housing when not requiring this for any other type of housing (1432). Regarding unequal education the Court writes, “[T]his Court has never heretofore held that wealth discrimination alone provides for invoking strict scrutiny” because “the class is not saddled with such disabilities, or subjected to such a history or purposeful unequal treatment, or relegated to such a position of political powerlessness as to command extraordinary protection from the majoritarian political process” and education is not a fundamental right (1445). San Antonio Ind. School Dist. v. Rodriguez, (see Plyler v. Doe), Lockhart et al., 1444–1446. 94. See Pateman, 7.

Notes to Chapter 3



181

95. Pete Wilson’s efforts to stop the “Motor Voter” law from passing, for example, in California; see Piven and Cloward; Hugh Heclo, “Poverty Politics,” in Confronting Poverty: Prescriptions for Change, ed. Sheldon H. Danziger et al. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), 397. This is not apathy; the poor have less time and information and fewer resources. 96. See Mike Davis, City of Quartz (New York: Vintage Books, 1992); Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993); Wilson; and Memphis v. Greene. 97. See Edna Bonacich, “A Theory of Ethnic Antagonism: The Split Labor Market,” American Sociological Review 37 (October 1972): 547–559; Edna Bonacich, “Advanced Capitalism and Black/White Race Relations in the United States: A Split labor Market Interpretation,” American Sociological Review 41 (February 1976): 34–51; Robert Miles, Racism; and Oliver Cromwell Cox, Race: A Study in Social Dynamics (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000). 98. Here I am influenced by the work of Carole Pateman and Wendy Brown. 99. For example, through affirmative action or police protection. 100. Julia Kristeva, Étrangers à nous-Mêmes (Paris: Gallimard, 1988), note 37, 279.

3. Das Unheimliche 1. Jacques Derrida, Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, trans. Peggy Kamuf (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 134. 2. Bonnie Honig, “Difference, Dilemmas, and the Politics of Home,” Social Research 61, no. 3 (fall 1994): 567. 3. Samuel Weber, Institution and Interpretation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987, Theory and History of Literature, Vol. 31), 120. 4. For the connection between prerogative power and bureaucracy, see Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998) and Sheldon Wolin, “Democracy and the Welfare State: the Political and Theoretical Connections Between Staatsräson and Wohlfahrtsstaatsräson,” in The Presence of the Past (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989). 5. Carl Schmitt, Concept of the Political, ed. George Schwab (Piscataway, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1976), 61. 6. Schmitt, 58. 7. Samuel Weber, “Piecework,” Strategies 9–10 (1994): 16. See Schmitt and Leo Strauss, “Comments on Carl Schmitt’s Der Begriff Des Politischen,” in Concept of the Political.

182




Notes to Chapter 3

8. Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 334. 9. Julia Kristeva, Étrangers à nous-mêmes (Paris: Gallimard, 1988), 59. 10. Clare Cooper Marcus, House as a Mirror of Self (Berkeley: Conari Press, 1995), 4. 11. See Dolores Hayden, Redesigning the American Dream (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984). 12. Iris Marion Young, Intersecting Voices: Dilemmas of Gender, Political Philosophy, and Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 149. 13. Young, 151. 14. Michelle Wallace, Invisibility Blues: From Pop to Theory (New York: Verso, 1990), 12. 15. Karl Marx, “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844,” in The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd ed., ed. Robert Tacker (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978), 100. 16. Thomas L. Dumm, “Democracy and Homelessness,” prepared for the 1993 American Political Science Association Meeting, Washington, D.C. (Amherst College). See Michael Geyer “Multiculturalism and the Politics of General Education,” Critical Inquiry 19, no. 3 (spring 1993): 533. 17. Honig, “Politics of Home,” 585. 18. Nicholas Xenos, “Intifadah,” Grand Street 9, no. 1 (autumn 1989): 232. 19. Stacy Rowe and Jennifer Wolch, “Social Networks in Time and Space: Homeless Women in Skid Row, Los Angeles,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 80, no. 2 (1990): 188. 20. Rowe and Wolch: they are the “pivotal stations in the daily path,” 19. 21. Ibid., 190. 22. Gaston Bachelard, La poétique de l’espace (Paris: Quadrige, 1994), 58. 23. Bachelard, 78. 24. For example, having two or more families live in an apartment designed for one family. 25. Emmanuel Lévinas, Totalité et infini (Paris: Kluwer Academic, 1992), 162. 26. Nicholas Xenos, “Refugees: The Modern Political Condition,” Alternatives 18 (1993): 427, 428. 27. Rowe and Wolch, 190. 28. As Jencks notes, definitions of home and homelessness have changed over time: first, the definition was based on family ties; those without them were

Notes to Chapter 3



183

considered homeless. In the late 1960s, home was a fixed address (3). Since 1980, “any private space intended for sleeping can qualify as home, as long as those who sleep there have a legal right to be there and can exclude strangers. The homeless have become those who have no private space of their own, however temporary” (3,4). Christopher Jencks, The Homeless (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994). 29. However, visible street homeless are not the majority of the homeless. See Liebow, 2. 30. Jencks, 4, 5. 31. See Michelle Roberts, “Homeless Camping Ban Voided,” Spare Change: Massachusetts’ Journal of the Streets, November 16–29, 2001, 13; Kristen Brown, “Outlawing Homelessness,” Spare Change, November 16–29, 2001, 13, 14; “Homeless to be Moved Out of Maui Beach Park,” Spare Change, March 22–April 4, 2001, 14; “City Council Could Ban Hawkers, Panhandlers from Street Medians,” (AZ), Spare Change, October 19–November 1, 2000, 6; “Panhandlers Restricted to Special Zones,” (FL) Spare Change, October 19–November 1, 2000, 6; Kendall Hill, “Council Demands Eviction of Disabled,” (Sydney, Australia), Spare Change, October 19–November 1, 2000, 6. 32. Liebow, 160. 33. Stanley L. Donald, “A Formerly Homeless Voice,” Spare Change, September 20–October 3, 2001, 12. 34. Editorial, “Experiences with San Francisco’s Shelter System” (nationwide survey), quoting African-American male, age 50; Spare Change, January 11–January 24, 2001, 5. 35. Lauren Byrne, “Homeless People Share Their Experiences During the Third Annual Radio Marathon on Homelessness January, 2000,” Spare Change, January 11–24, 2001, quoting Billy (errors are not typographical), 1. 36. Byrne, quoting Dave, 1. See David Abel, “Reasons Sought in Homeless Deaths,” Boston Globe, January 20, 2002, B1. 37. Linda Larson, “Interview with Rocky,” Spare Change, March 22–April 4, 2001, 3. 38. Liebow, 38; Thomas Gagnon, “Outreach Interviews,” Spare Change, September 20–October 3, 2001, 3. 39. “Police Investigating Attacks on Homeless in Colorado Springs,” Spare Change, November 16–29, 2000, 10; “Two German Skinheads Confess to Beating Death of Homeless Man,” Spare Change, November 16–November 29, 2000, 11; Takuji Nakao and Mainichi Shimbun, “Japan; Osaka Homeless Face Ruthless Attacks,” Spare Change, October 19–November 1, 2000, 6.

184




Notes to Chapter 3

40. See “Miami Officers Tried in Homeless Shooting, Gun Throw-Down Case,” Spare Change March 22–April 4, 2001, 14. 41. See Liebow, 118: violence between homeless, abuse by shelter security workers or staff. 42. “Experiences with San Francisco’s Shelter System,” 5. 43. Grace in Liebow, 48. Regarding sexual harassment and rape, see 47, 48. 44. See Deborah Connolly, Homeless Mothers: Face to Face with Women and Poverty (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000) on this subject. 45. “Experiences with San Francisco’s Shelter System,” 5. 46. See Connolly; Liebow; and Robert Blanchard, “Homeless Children: Segregation of Public Schools,” Spare Change, Septemer 20–October 3, 2001, 12. 47. Liebow, 34. 48. Donald, 12. 49. “Experiences with San Francisco’s Shelter System,” 5. 50. Liebow, 55, 1n. 51. See Liebow, xvi, 57–67, 69. 52. Josh Greene, “Temporary Insanity: Dangerous Work. Low Pay. No Future. Caught in the Jaws of the Temp Labor Industry,” Spare Change, April 19–May 2, 2001, 7. 53. Linda Larson, “Hundreds Rally at the Common and March Through Downtown Boston,” quoting Everlenia, Spare Change, November 16–29, 2000, 1. 54. Liebow, 66. 55. Cindy Rodriguez “Somali Refugees Fall Victim to Housing Squeeze in Massachusetts,” reprinted from The Boston Globe in Spare Change, March 22–April 4, 2001, 7. 56. “Report Raps Britain’s Refugee Housing,” Spare Change, March 22–April 4, 2001, 15. 57. Byrne, quoting Claudia, 1. 58. Byrne quoting Brian, 1. 59. Liebow, 180. 60. Ibid., 137. 61. “Experiences with San Francisco’s Shelter System,” 5. 62. Ibid., quoting African-American male, former Vietnam POW, age 50, 5. 63. Liebow, 211. Kim’s emphasis. 64. Ibid., 129, Vicki.

Notes to Chapter 3



185

65. Pat Leisner, “Bags of Trash Found Stuffed in Pauper’s Coffin in Florida Grave,” Spare Change, March 22–April 4, 2001, 14. 66. Angela K. Brown, “Friend Testifies in Windshield Case,” http://membe... /002%2F0030625%2F090081078.htm, March 25, 2003 (June 25, 2003). 67. Bachelard, 2, 10. 68. Michael Taussig, Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 367. 69. Bachelard, 10. 70. Ibid., 102. Heidegger also discusses this desire. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1962), 214. 71. Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny,” Standard Edition, vol. 17 (London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-analysis, 1919), 226. 72. Providing more shelter beds than housing assistance because people do not want to give the poor handouts, for example. Shelters cost up to three times the cost of a housing subsidy. 73. Freud, 219, 220, 224, 225, 226, 245. 74. Primitive: emotions that are considered raw, undeveloped, or irrational. 75. Freud, 220, 234. Splitting is a process in which good and bad internal images are not fully integrated but maintained as separate and externalized. Good and bad images can include childhood memories, one’s own fears or drives or adult perceptions, among other things. When they have not been fully integrated, they have not been fully processed or they are experienced in an unqualified (unsophisticated) manner. 76. To Heidegger “thrown-ness” is not intellectual, nor anticipated by Dasein. 77. Adam Bresnick, “Prosopoetic Compulsion: Reading the Uncanny in Freud and Hoffman,” Germanic Review 71, no. 2 (1996): 1. 78. Ibid., 8, quoting Samuel Weber, “The Sideshow: Remarks on the Uncanny: Freud, E. T. A. Hoffman, Villiers de l’Isle-Adam,” Modern Language Notes 88 (1973): 122–149. 79. Kristeva, 268–270, 271, 278. 80. Ibid., 279; referring to Heidegger, sect. 40 of Being and Time. 81. Ibid., 284. 82. See E. Victor Wolfenstein, The Victims of Democracy: Malcolm X and the Black Revolution, (New York: Guilford Press, 1993), 352, 353. 83. E. Victor Wolfenstein, Psychoanalytic-Marxism: Groundwork (New York: Guilford Press, 1993), 416.

186




Notes to Chapter 3

84. Vamik Volkan, The Need to Have Enemies and Allies: From Clinical Practice to International Relationships (Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1994), 118–120. 85. Projection: placing unwanted or unacceptable thoughts or impulses onto an object (such as an individual, a race, or other class of people). 86. Malcolm X, 352, 353. 87. E. Victor Wolfenstein, “Psychoanalytic Marxism in a Time of NeoFascism,” Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society 1, no. 1 (spring 1996): 79. 88. Ibid., 335. 89. Ibid. 90. E. Victor Wolfenstein, “Hating the Self in the Other,” Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society 2, no. 1 (spring 1997): 77. 91. Psychoanalytic-Marxism, 403. 92. Samuel Weber, private correspondence, August 7, 1996. 93. Bonnie Honig, “Ruth, the Model Emigrée,” Political Theory 25, no. 1 (February 1977): 116. See Honig, Democracy and the Foreigner regarding xenophobia and xenophilia. 94. Ibid., 116. 95. Ibid., 116. 96. Ibid., 117. 97. Reiner Ansén, “Amphibolies of Identity” (paper presented at the meeting of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas [ISSE], Graz, Austria, August 1994), 3. 98. Ansén, 4, 6, 8. 99. Ibid., 4, 5. 100. Honig, 113. 101. Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands (London: Granta Books, 1991), 280. 102. Kristeva, 24. 103. Rushdie, 285. (He is referring to Siegfried Lenz’s book called The Heritage). 104. Rushdie, 149; Kristeva, 23. 105. Michael Ignatieff, The Needs of Strangers (New York: Penguin, 1984), 141. 106. Honig, “The Politics of Home,” 583. 107. See Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001).

Notes to Chapter 4



187

4. Homelessness and Panopticism 1. See note 4, chapter 3. Also, see Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), introduction. 2. This is not to say that there is some preexisting homeless subject that undermines this paradigmatic structure—quite the opposite. 3. Charles Hoch and Robert Slayton, New Homeless and Old: Community and the Skid Row Hotel (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), 10, 11. See Jacqueline Leavitt, “Homelessness and the Housing Crisis,” and Joel F. Handler, “The Modern Pauper, The Homeless in Welfare History,” in Homelessness: A National Perspective, ed. Marjorie Robertson and Milton Greenblatt (New York: Plenum Press, 1992); Brendan O’Flaherty, Making Room: the Economics of Homelessness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996). 4. Hoch and Slayton, 11. 5. See Mike Davis, “Essay: Afterword—A Logic Like Hell’s: Being Homeless in Los Angeles,” UCLA Law Review 39, no. 325 (December, 1991). 6. An area with cheap restaurants, thrift shops, bookstores; Hoch and Slayton, 29. 7. Ibid., 34, 38, 41, 44. 8. Ibid., 62–68, 74, 79, 80. 9. Ibid., 81, 85–88. Consequently, housing for the very poor was lost. 10. Ibid., 87. 11. Davis, 327. 12. Homelessness Information Exchange, Washington, D.C., March 1988, 2. See David Bushnell, “Nonprofits Try to Save a Housing Tradition,” Boston Globe, April 25, 2002, C1. 13. Hoch and Slayton, 173. 14. General Accounting Office (GAO), “Homelessness: A Complex Problem and the Federal Response” (Washington, D.C.: Homelessness Information Exchange, n.d.), 5, 20. Regarding the mentally ill homeless see Robert Desjarlais, Shelter Blues: Sanity and Selfhood Among the Homeless (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1997); Paul Koegel and M. Audrey Burnam, “Problems in the Assessment of Mental Illness among the Homeless, An Empirical Approach,” in Robertson and Greenblatt, for example. 15. Cassandra Burrell, “Families Now 43% of Homeless.” Boston Globe, December 22, 1993, A3. 16. See Saskia Sassen, Globalization and its Discontents: Essays on the New Mobility of People and Money (New York: The New Press, 1998) and William

188




Notes to Chapter 4

Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (New York: Vintage Books, 1996). 17. See Kim Hopper and Jill Hamburg, “The Making of America’s Homeless: From Skid Row to New Poor, 1945–1984,” in The Workings of the Private Housing Market (New York: Community Services of New York, 1984), 13. See Wilson, Sassen. 18. Burrell, A3. See Hopper and Hamburg, 24; Deborah Connolly, Homeless Mothers: Face to Face with Women and Poverty (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000). 19. Burrell, A3; Editors, “. . . and Families on the Edge,” Boston Globe, October 27, 1999, A22. 20. “Vigil Held for Homeless Youths,” Boston Globe, December 24, 1992, 48; Adrian Walker, “Summer Fails to Thin Shelter Crowds” Boston Globe, June 18, 1997, B1. 21. Zachary R. Dowdy “From Prison Cot to Shelter Cot” Boston Globe, February 3, 1997, B1. 22. Tatsha Robertson and Joanna Weiss, “Rent: The Harsh Reality.” Boston Globe, October 3, 1999, A1; Michael Grunwald, “Homeless Shelters Face Crisis.” Boston Globe, December 2, 1996, A1. 23. Walker, B1; Editorial, “More Room for the Homeless.” Boston Globe, October 12, 1999, A12; Editorial, “. . . and Families on the Edge,” A22. 24. “Cities Get Tougher on Homeless, Report Finds.” Boston Globe, December 12, 1996, C26; Eric Brosch “No Place Like Home: Orlando’s Poor Laws Attempt to Regulate the Homeless Away,” Harper’s, April 1998, 58, 59. National Coalition for the Center for the Homeless, National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, “Illegal to be Homeless: The Criminalization of Homelessness in the United States,” http://www.nationalhomeless.org/crminalizatinrelease.html, 2001. 25. U.S. Conference of Mayors, “A Status Report on Hunger and Homelessness in American Cities, 1999” (1999 USCM Report), http://www.usmayors. org/UCSM/home.asp (August 18, 2003). 26. Grunwald, A1. See Stephanie Ebbert “Public Housing Policy for Poor Faulted,” Boston Globe, September 27, 2000, B2. 27. Editorial, “and Families on the Edge”; Editorial, “The Bay State’s Unhelped Homeless” Boston Globe, April 27, 1998, A16. 28. Stephen Kurkjian and Walter V. Robinson (Spotlight Team), “Needy Lose Out at Navy Yard,” Boston Globe, October 7, 1999, A1. 29. Nicholas Retsinas, “In Urban Housing, the Poor Lose Again . . . ,” Boston Globe, July 12, 1999; see Judith Havemann, “Affordable Housing Gets Scarcer, HUD Study Says,” Washington Post, March 9, 1996, A6.

Notes to Chapter 4



189

30. Havemann, A6. Matthew Brelis, “Helter Shelter: Housing Costs Are Out of Control. Does Anyone Care?” Boston Globe, January 24, 1999, F1. 31. This is not only grounds for eviction but lowers the quality of living. 32. Hopper and Hamburg, 25. 33. See Mac Daniel, “Child’s Death Spotlights a Hidden Menace; Lead Paint Kills Young Refugee,” Boston Globe, December 20, 2001, B1. 34. Dolores Kong, “Housing Crisis Causing Health Risks, Study Finds,” Boston Globe, April 8, 1999, A4. 35. Charlie LeDuff and David M. Halbfinger, “Slums Behind Shutters: A Special Report; Wages and Squalor for Immigrant Workers,” New York Times (on-line), May 21, 1999 (December 14, 1999). 36. Retsinas, Ebbert. 37. See Leavitt, 19–34; Rachel G. Bratt, “The Housing Drought No One Is Talking About,” Boston Globe, March 12, 2000, D7; Editorial, “Setback on Housing,” Boston Globe, July 21, 2000, A22; Steven Wilmsen, “Church Issues Call for Housing,” Boston Globe, September 14, 2000, B1; Editorial, “A Call for Housing,” Boston Globe, September 14, 2000, A18. 38. Lisa Tolin, “Homelessness,” Issues and Controversies on File 5, no. 1 (January 21, 2000): 3. 39. David Price, “Viable Options for Affordable Housing,” Boston Globe, October 16, 1999, A21. 40. Jarrett Barrios, “. . . Let’s Find a Way to Break the Pattern,” Boston Globe, July 12, 1999, A9. 41. Stephanie Ebbert, “The Hot Housing Market Puts Low-Income Tenants at Risk,” Boston Globe, January 1, 1999, A1. 42. Louise D. Palmer, “Attempt to Save Housing Subsidy,” Boston Globe, April 30, 1999, A3. 43. Kong, A4. 44. Brelis. See David Stout, “Accord Reached on Bill for More Rent Subsidies,” New York Times, October 6, 1998, A18; “Public Housing Reform,” Issues and Controversies on File, 3, no. 21 (November 6, 1998): 434. 45. Havemann, A6. 46. In subsidized housing, if a member of a household is convicted on drug charges, the entire family can be evicted, even if the arrest occurred elsewhere. Tatsha Robertson, “Hard Line on Eviction Hits Home,” Boston Globe, June 18, 1999, A1. 47. Havemann, A6.

190




Notes to Chapter 4

48. Pam Belluck, “Razing the Slums to Rescue the Residents,” New York Times, September 6, 1998, A1. 49. “Key Provisions in the FY 1999 Housing Bill,” in “Public Housing Reform,” Issues and Controversies on File 3, no. 21 (November 6, 1998): 435. 50. See Retsinas; Jennifer Babson, “Affordable Housing Crisis Seen.” Boston Globe, December 10, 1998, B16; Bruce Butterfield, “Smashing the State’s Fair Housing Myth, Aggressive Legal Tactics Urged to Root Out Discrimination Against Blacks, Others,” Boston Globe, March 19, 2000, G1. 51. Brelis. See Hopper et al., 25; Homelessness Information Exchange: GAO, 19. 52. See James Risen, “Reich Cites Falling Wages as Administration Failure,” Los Angeles Times, June 23, 1995, A26; Max Vanzi, “Low-Income Youths Face Higher Odds,” Los Angeles Times, June 22, 1995, A3; James Lardner, “The Declining Middle,” The New Yorker, May 3, 1993,108–114; “Reich Eyes a Broader Prosperity,” Boston Globe, January 10, 1997, A16; “Sharp Drop Reported in Young Parents’ Income,” Boston Globe, September 17, 1997, A9; Editorial, “Now the Bad News,” Boston Globe, September 30, 1997, A20; Derrick Jackson, “The Economy’s Booming, but Not for the Poor,” Boston Globe, October 22, 1997, A19. 53. Laura Meckler, “White House Cites Economy in Welfare Dip,” Boston Globe, May 10, 1997, A1. 54. Vanzi, A3; “Sharp Drop Reported in Young Parents’ Income,” A9. 55. Meckler. 56. “Most Incomes Gained in 1996,” Boston Globe, September 30, 1997, A3. 57. Derrick Z. Jackson, “The Money Gap for Blacks,” Boston Globe, September 17, 1997, A23. 58. James R. St. George, “No Trickling Down in Massachusetts,” Boston Globe, January 19, 1999, A11. 59. Carolyn Shaw Bell, “The Rich vs. the Poor,” Boston Globe, July 27, 1999, D4; see John Kenneth Galbraith, “The Unfinished Business of the Century,” Boston Globe, July 12, 1999, A11. See Meckler. 60. See “Sharp Drop” and Risen, A26. 61. Peter G. Gosselin, “US Economy Shows Strong Growth,” Boston Globe, December 5, 1998, A1. 62. Sassen, 46–48. See Wilson. 63. Gina Holland, “Illegal Workers Lose Back Pay,” Boston Globe, March 28, 2002, A4.

Notes to Chapter 4



191

64. Rachel Kaprielian, “Women Are More Likely than Men to Face Poverty in Retirement,” Boston Globe, July 16, 1998, A19. 65. Kaprielian, A19. See Diane E. Lewis, “Amid Boom, Widening Gender Wage Gap Seen,” Boston Globe, January 27, 2002, E1. The lowest figure is in retail. 66. See Hoch and Slayton, 198; Kirsten Grimm and Jaime Maldonado, “And So a Woman Searches For her Home—Gender and the Homeless Experience: Implications for Housing and Service Provision,” (Los Angeles: UCLA Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning, 1992), 1; Esther S. Merves, “Homeless Women: Beyond the Bag Lady Myth,” in Roberston and Greenblatt, 231, 242. 67. See St. George, A11; Bell, D4; Harry E. Berndt, “Tax Cuts Say a Lot about Our Values,” Boston Globe, September 9, 1999, A19. 68. See Galbraith; Bell; Berndt; and “Bishops Condemn U.S. Economy, Government,” UCLA Daily Bruin, November 15, 1995, 6. 69. Editorial, “Flat-Tax Follies, “New Yorker, June 5, 1995, 34. 70. “General Information,” Homelessness Information Exchange, 198, 237. 71. For example, homeless newspapers: in France, Le Réverbère, Le Lampadaire, Macadam, and La Rue; in Boston, Spare Change; in Santa Monica, Hard Times. See Piet van Lier, “Selling the Street Beat,” Spare Change, February 10–23, 2000, 4–5. 72. Initiatives for small businesses involve washing and detailing cars and recycling, for example. 73. See “General Information,” “The Problem of Homelessness Nationwide,” (Washington: Homelessness Information Exchange, March, 1988), 2 and “The Homeless: Myths vs. Reality,” Democratic Study Group, February 18, 1987, 3,4. 74. Homelessness Information Exchange: GAO, 5. 75. For the structural argument, see Eliot Liebow, Tell Them Who I Am (New York: Penguin, 1993); O’Flaherty, Making Room: The Economics of Homelessness; Jacqueline Leavitt, “Homelessness and the Housing Crisis”; and Gary Morse, “Causes of Homelessness,” in Robertson and Greenblatt. 76. See Administration for Children and Families Website: Welfare Fact Sheet: “Temporary Assistance for Needy Families,” from U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, June 1, 2000; “HHS Reports all States Meet Overall Welfare to Work Participation Rates; New Record of Parents Working,” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, August 22, 2000; “HHS Announces Welfare Caseload Continues Unprecedented Decline and Releases Employment Retention and Advancement Grants,” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, August 20, 1998; http://www.acf.dhhs.gov/programs/opa/facts/tanf.htm. 77. Frances Fox Piven, “Poorhouse Politics,” The Progressive 59, no. 2 (1995): 22.

192




Notes to Chapter 4

78. TANF: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. 79. Welfare Fact Sheet: “Temporary Assistance for Needy Families,” 2. 80. “Some Jobless Adults Face Food Stamp Cutoff,” Boston Globe, February 23, 1997, A9; Editorial, “An Anemic Food Stamp Program,” Boston Globe, August 5, 1999, A24. 81. See Connolly, 60–65, 96–104; see Wilson. 82. Ibid., 24. 83. Kathryn Edin, Diane Dujon, and Ann Withorn, quoted in Derrick Z. Jackson, “The Real World for Welfare Mothers,” Boston Globe, April 9, 1997, A19. See Wilson. 84. Kathleen Mullan Harris, quoted in Jackson. 85. Connolly, 161. 86. Randy Albelda “What Has Happened to Those Who Left the Massachusetts Welfare Rolls?” Boston Globe, October 30, 1997, A23. 87. Meckler, A1. 88. Albelda, A23. 89. Tolin, “Homelessness,” 1. See National Alliance to End Homelessness, “Housing Consequences for TANF Leavers,” www.endhomelessness.org/pol/ papers/tanfleavers.htm. 90. Albelda, A23. 91. Meckler, A1. 92. National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH), “Changes in Laws Relating to Immigration: Impact on Homeless Assistance Providers,” ww.naeh.org/pub/immigration/imig2.htm (Washington, D.C.: NAEH, May 1998). 93. Laura Meckler, “Bush Outlines Welfare Plans,” Boston Globe, February 26, 2002. See Editorial, “Working on the Margins,” Boston Globe, March 10, 2002, D6; Scott Lindlaw, “Bush Demands Stiffer Welfare-to-Work Laws,” http://www.nationalcampaign.org/media16.asp, July 31, 2003; and U.S. Gov Info/Resources, “Bush: More Work for Welfare,” http://usgovinfo.about.com/ library/weekly/aa022502.a.htm, July 31, 2003. 94. Piven, 22–24. 95. Jackson citing Kathleen Mullan Harris, “The Real World for Welfare Mothers,” A19. 96. See Connolly, 162–4. 97. Elizabeth Mehren, “So Who Are Those Unwed Mothers?” Los Angeles Times, October 30, 1995, E1.

Notes to Chapter 4



193

98. Piven, 23; also “College Grad Single Moms on the Rise” UCLA Daily Bruin, November 8, 1995, 6. 99. Mehren, E1. 100. Piven, 22. 101. See Michael Patrick MacDonald, All Souls: A Family Story from Southie (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999), for an account of having to look poor for social workers. 102. Ron Curran, “Two Scoops and You’re Out,” Los Angeles Weekly, May 27–June 2, 1994, 14. 103. Stephanie Simon, “Some on Welfare Welcome Drug Tests,” Boston Globe, December 20, 1999, A3. 104. “Advocates for Homeless Angered by Giuliani Work Requirement,” Boston Globe, October 27, 1999, A32. 105. Ellen Wulfhorst, “HUD Seizes Control of Funds for Homeless in NYC,” Boston Globe, December 22, 1999, A3. 106. See Connolly, 157, regarding the inadequacy of welfare benefits. See Wilson. 107. Hoch and Slayton, 199. 108. See Greater Boston Housing Advocates, “The Housing Handbook” (Boston: Greater Boston Housing Advocates, 1990), 5; Wendy Brown, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 171; and Sheldon Danziger et al., Confronting Poverty: Prescriptions for Change (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), 7, 34. 109. The government found 250,000 to 350,000 homeless; Mitch Snyder estimated 3 million. Christopher Jencks, The Homeless (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), 2. 110. Homelessness Information Exchange, “Homewords,” 4, no. 1 (January, 1992), 5, 6. 111. Jencks, 7, 9, 10. 112. Ibid., 9, 10. 113. Christopher Jencks, “The Homeless,” New York Review of Books 41, no. 8 (1994): 20. 114. Jencks, The Homeless, 17. He contradicts the idea that the homeless are responsible for their situations by indicating that homelessness declined between 1988 and 1990, when “unemployment was at its lowest in twenty years.” The poor will work when they can. 115. Deborah Stone, “Helter Shelter,” New Republic, June 27, 1994, 30.

194




Notes to Chapter 4

116. Burning possessions, bulldozing encampments, or not offering shelter in bad weather. 117. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, trans. Alan Sheridan, (New York: Vintage, 1979), 20–22. 118. Ibid., 184. 119. Liberally taken from Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 255. 120. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 170, 191, 199, 304. 121. Ibid., 98. 122. Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, vol. 1: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1980), 140–144. 123. Foucault, History of Sexuality, 139. 124. Ibid., 142. 125. Ibid., 143. 126. Ibid., 78. 127. See “Homelessness,” Issues and Controversies on File, February 21, 1997, 86; National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, http://www. nlchp.org, December 1995 Report; and Richard Worsnop, “Helping the Homeless,” The CQ Researcher 6, no. 4 (1996): 75. 128. See Davis, Jeremy Waldron, “Homelessness and the Issue of Freedom,” UCLA Law Review 39, no. 295 (December, 1991). 129. Harry Simon, “Towns Without Pity: A Constitutional and Historical Analysis of Official Efforts to Drive Homeless Persons From American Cities,” Tulane Law Review 66, no. 4 (March, 1992): 647. 130. Ibid., 633, 634. See Waldron. 131. Ibid., 643–645, 647. See Brosch, 58–59. 132. “Cities Seen ‘Criminalizing’ Homeless.” Boston Globe, January 6, 1999, A7. See Evelyn Nieves, “In Famously Tolerant City, Impatience with Homeless,” New York Times, January 18, 2002; Noelle Oxenhandler, “Carted Away,” New York Times Magazine, February 3, 2002; Brosch, 59. 133. “Cities Seen ‘Criminalizing’ Homeless”; “Cities Get Tougher . . .” 134. John Ellement, “SJC Backs Begging as Speech,” Boston Globe, May 15, 1997, A1. 135. Brosch, 60. See Laura Parker, “Homeless Find the Streets Growing Colder,” USA Today, December 3, 1998, 15A; Andrea Simakis, “Arresting Homeless Makes Sense to Some Advocates,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, January 10, 2000, A1; Kevin Flynn, “Webb’s Panhandling Crackdown Assailed as ‘War on the Poor; Others Cite Need to Make City Safe; Council Backs Restriction in 8–4 Vote,” Denver Rocky Mountain News, June 6, 2000, 5A.

Notes to Chapter 4



195

136. Ellement, A1. 137. Brosch, 59, 60. 138. Davis, 327, 328. 139. Parker, 15A. 140. Nieves, Oxenhandler. 141. Nieves. 142. Antonio Olivo, “City with a Porpoise: A Santa Monica Solution to Panhandling,” LA Weekly, July 1–7, 1994, G15. 143. The McKinney Act was passed in the late 1980s and despite losing support in 1996, the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act was reauthorized in December, 2001. 144. National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, http://www. nlchp.org. 145. Editorial, “Toward a Sensible Homeless Policy,” New York Times, February 25, 2000, 18. 146. Peter Goodman, “Berkeley Is Set to Curb Sidewalk Sitters,” Washington Post, December 7, 1996, A13. 147. “Cities Get Tougher.” 148. Hopper, 35 (referring to New York Times editorial, April 9, 1984). 149. Elston Carr, “Dome Sweet Dome,” Los Angeles Weekly, November 5–11, 1993, 13; “Cruise Ships May House Homeless,” Boston Globe, November 21, 2002, A23. 150. Foucault, 105. 151. See Gary Blasi and James Preis, “Litigation on Behalf of the Homeless,” 312, and Joel Handler, “The Homeless in Welfare History,” in Robertson and Greenblatt. 152. Handler, 42. 153. Ibid., 44. 154. Ibid., 44. 155. See Liebow, 317. 156. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 276. 157. Ibid., 180. 158. Ibid., 94. 159. See Helen Liggett, “Where They Don’t Have to Take You In: The Representation of Homelessness in Public Policy,” Journal of Planning Education and Research 10, no. 3 (summer 1991): 204.

196




Notes to Chapter 4

160. See Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, The Politics of Turmoil: Essays on Poverty, Race and the Urban Crisis (New York: Pantheon Books, 1965), 20–27. 161. Connolly, 143. 162. Foucault, 181. 163. See Patricia Cayo Sexton, “The Life of the Homeless,” Housing the Homeless, ed. Jon Erickson and Charles Wilhelm (Piscataway, N.J.: Rutgers, the Center for Urban Research, 1986), 80. 164. Piven and Cloward, 100. 165. Foucault, 248. 166. Ibid., 272. 167. Foucault, 272. Compare to Liebow: “This ideology of forced change required an authoritarianism that the staff [of the shelter in which he volunteered], by training, experience, or personal need, were all too ready to deliver,” 123. 168. Joan Forrester Sprague and Desjarlais would disagree. 169. Paul Rabinow, The Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 131. 170. Ibid., 136, 137. 171. Ibid., 207. 172. Ibid., 209. 173. Ibid., 190. 174. Bentham, quoted in Hayden, 112. 175. See Nieves; Connolly, 22–24, 45; Piven and Cloward, The Politics of Turmoil, 37. 176. See Connolly, 121, 122, on the role of religion in shelters. 177. I have experienced this as a housing advocate; see Connolly and Liebow. 178. See Nicholas Xenos, Scarcity and Modernity (New York: Routledge, 1989). 179. See Erickson and Wilhelm, xxiv; Thomas J. Main, “The Homeless of New York,” 91, 92; and Jonathan Alter et al., “Homeless in America,” 5, in Erickson and Wilhelm; Martha R. Burt and Barbara E. Cohen, America’s Homeless: Numbers, Characteristics and the Programs that Serve Them (Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute Press, 1989), 3. 180. See Main, 103; Jeffrey Bean, “Homes, Sweet Homes, at Last,” Times Advocate, March 19, 1991, B3; Helen Liggett, 203. 181. See Hoch and Slayton, 199; Liebow, 224–226.

Notes to Chapter 4



197

182. See Hoch and Slayton, 204. 183. Hopper, 13. 184. Pamela McCarthy, ed., “Talk of the Town: Homelessness Revisited,” New Yorker, February 28, 1994, 41. See also, Sally Satel, “Out in the Cold,” New Republic, October 3, 1994, 13, 14, where it is assumed that most of the homeless are mentally ill. 185. The argument that homelessness is a form of resistance or a choice can be found in works by David Wagner and Peter Marin. On the other hand, others, such as Anthony Auletta, also believe homelessness is a choice due to social pathology. 186. Jencks, 27. 187. Sue Ruddick, “Heterotopias of the Homeless: Strategies and Tactics of Placemaking in Los Angeles,” Strategies: A Journal of Theory, Culture and Politics no. 3 (1990): 184, 185. 188. Ibid., 192. 189. See Hoch and Slayton,198; Grimm and Maldonado, 1; Merves, 231, 242. 190. Jencks, 25. 191. Quoted in Piven, 23. 192. Piven, 24. 193. Ibid. 194. Exceptions: Sexton, Blasi, Davis, Waldron, and Dumm. See Michael Massing, “Ghetto Blasting,” The New Yorker (January 16, 1996), 37. 195. Andy Raubeson, “Islands of Sanity in a Cruel World: S.R.O. Housing and Supportive Services,” (National Low Income Housing Coalition, Washington, D.C., February 23–26, 1989), 1. 196. J. Q. Wilson, George Kelling, “Broken Windows,” The Atlantic 263, no. 2 (February 1989). 197. Jencks, 46. 198. Ibid., 44. 199. In one New Yorker article, a poor family is criticized for going to McDonald’s once a week and it is recommended that they eat beans rather than meat in order to save money. 200. Jencks, “[W]hat I am really writing about is what we might call the ‘visible homeless’—people whose presence on the streets upsets the more prosperous classes.” Jencks, 7. 201. Jencks’s definition of “invisible” is different from mine.

198




Notes to Chapter 5

202. Deborah Stone, “Helter Shelter,” New Republic, June 27, 1994, 30. 203. As with Desjarlais and Connolly. 204. Stone, 31. 205. Contradictorily, Jencks states that “if no one drank, took drugs, lost contact with reality, or messed up at work, homelessness would be rare. [But] If we had social services to the extent that Sweden or Germany does, homelessness would also be rare,” 47, 48. 206. Stone, 31–32. 207. Jencks, 121, 122. 208. Stone, 30. 209. Brown, 14, 20n. 210. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 223. 211. Foucault, 242. 212. Derrida, Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, trans. Peggy Kamuf (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 138.

5. Homeland, Homelessness, and Cosmopolitanism 1. Nicholas Xenos, “A Patria to Die For” (Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 2000), 16. 2. See Simone Weil, “Uprootedness and Nationhood,” in Simone Weil Reader, ed. George Panichas (Mt. Kisco, N.Y.: Moyer Bell, 1977). 3. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990). 4. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. J. P. Mayer, trans. George Lawrence (New York: Perennial Classics, Harper Collins, 1969). 5. Michel Foucault, quoted in Homi Bhabha, Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990), 302. 6. Reiner Ansén, “Amphibolies of Identity,” (presented at the Meeting of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas, Graz, Austria, August, 1994), 4. 7. Michael Geyer, “Multiculturalism and the Politics of General Education,” Critical Inquiry 19, no. 3 (spring 1993): 518, 519, my emphasis. 8. See Kirsty McClure’s argument against this loss in Chantal Mouffe, ed., Dimensions of Radical Democracy: Pluralism, Citizenship, Community (New York: Verso, 1992). 9. Ansén, 4.

Notes to Chapter 5



199

10. Similarly, Said notes, “[T]here was always the insistence that such national identities homogenized the races and languages that they governed, herding everything under their strict, almost Darwinian rubric. Thus all Orientals were Orientals, all Negroes were Negroes; all had the same unchanging characteristics, and were condemned to the same inferior status.” Edward Said, Reflections on Exile and Other Essays (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 419. 11. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), 142. 12. Giorgio Agamben, “The Camp as the Nomos of the Modern,” in Violence, Identity and Self-Determination, ed. Hent de Vries and Samuel Weber (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 106. 13. Agamben, 108. 14. Ibid., 110. 15. These cases are not equivalent but do show a concern with borders and territory. 16. See Denise Hamilton, “Inside a World of Outsiders, Check Your Stereotypes at the Door and Step Out with the Gypsies,” Los Angeles Times Book Review, November 19, 1995, 2. 17. Nicholas Xenos, “For and against Romanistan,” London Review of Books 18, no. 16 (1996): 16. 18. Xenos, “For and against Romanistan,” 16. 19. Samuel Weber, “Wartime,” in de Vries and Weber, 83. 20. Weber, 84. This is reflected in the work of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and even Locke. 21. Weber, 86–88 22. Ibid., 88–89. 23. Ibid., 88. 24. Lynne Moorhouse, United Nations lawyer, 1999. 25. Agamben, 114. 26. Ibid., 113. 27. See Peter W. Galbraith, “Independence Day—Why Are There More New Nations Emerging in the World Today Than Ever Before?” Boston Sunday Globe, June 23, 2002, E8. 28. See Chiaki Nishiyama and Kurt R. Leube, eds., The Essence of Hayek (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1984). 29. See William Pfaff, “A Dangerous ‘Experiment’ in Globalism,” Boston Globe, March 1, 1999, A17.

200




Notes to Chapter 5

30. Saskia Sassen, Globalization and Its Discontents: Essays on the New Mobility of People and Money (New York: The New Press, 1998), 138. 31. Roland Axtmann, Liberal Democracy into the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, Integration and the Nation-State (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), 121. 32. Sassen, 88, 120. 33. Ibid., 149. 34. Ibid., 91, 111, 112, 146, 158, 161, 163. 35. Ibid., 146. 36. See Sassen, 154, 158, 161, 163; Honig, Democracy and the Foreigner (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 82. See Edna Bonacich on this subject, also. 37. Ibid., 91, 131. 38. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak “Cultural Talks in the Hot Peace: Revisiting the ‘Global Village,’” in Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling beyond the Nation, ed. Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 336, 342. 39. See Spivak. For example, the fact that home workers are not unionized. 40. Étienne Balibar, “Frontières du monde, frontières de la politique,” in Du Cosmopolitique, ed. Mireille Delbraccio et Bernard Pelloile (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2000), 188. 41. Sassen, xxvii, xxviii. 42. Ibid., xxviii, 170; or, as Axtmann claims, region states. See Axtmann, 118, 119. 43. Ibid., 148; see 137. 44. Ibid., 86. 45. Axtmann, 121. 46. Sassen, 197, 199. 47. See the work of James DerDerian, Scott Bowman, Balibar, Sassen, and Axtmann. 48. This second point is made by Spivak, 341. 49. Sassen’s idea that developed countries establish links that encourage immigration. 50. Xenos, “A Patria to Die For,” 13. 51. Ibid., 16. 52. Alexander García Düttman, “The Elasticity of Terms. On Deconstruction, Critique and Politics,” trans. Kenneth Woodgate, unpublished, 16–18.

Notes to Chapter 5



201

Originally published in German as “Die Dehnbarkeit der Begriffe,” in Politik und Postmoderne, ed. Jutta Georg-Lauer (Tuebingen: Edition Diskord, 1991). 53. See William E. Connolly, Identity/Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991). 54. Honig, Democracy and the Foreigner, 8; see 61, 99. 55. These ideas are influenced by Lévinas but go against his intention of developing an ontology, not a political program. 56. For example, recognizing that certain immigrants fill a vital role in the economy and deserve political recognition or not basing homeless policy on stereotypes and myths. 57. Butler, 142. 58. Samuel Weber, “Piecework,” Strategies 9–10 (1994): 17. 59. Kristeva, Étrangers à nous-mêmes, 288. 60. Kristeva, 288, 289. 61. Ibid., 290; thanks to Peter Gordon, Harvard University, and Samuel Weber, Northwestern University, for their help with this translation. Bryan Turner also argues for global citizenship in “Outline of a Theory of Citizenship,” in Dimensions of Radical Democracy: Pluralism, Citizenship, Community, ed. Chantal Mouffe (New York: Verso, 1992). 62. Honig criticizes Kristeva’s cosmopolitanism (123) because she sees her work as continuous. I feel that Étrangers à nous-mêmes can be distinguished from Kristeva’s later work. Honig, “Ruth the Model Emigrée,” Political Theory 25, no. 1 (1997). Honig’s later critique, that merely recognizing difference is insufficient and that Kristeva’s cosmopolitanism is too state centered and teleological, is persuasive. 63. Honig, “Ruth the Model Emigrée,” 113. 64. A transitional object can replace or help earlier childhood protective devices. It is an object that is both part of the self and not part of the self. A childhood example is a teddy bear that aids the separation anxiety a child feels when his or her parents are away. 65. Honig argues that Kristeva’s ultimate goal is assimilation of the immigrant. 126, 127. 66. Emile Durkheim, “Individualism and the Intellectuals,” in Durkheim on Morality and Society, Selected Writings, ed. Robert Bellah (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 51, 52. 67. Sassen discusses the interrelation between New York, London, and Tokyo. Sassen, 212. 68. Sassen, xxi, xxv.

202




Notes to Chapter 5

69. Nicholas Xenos, “Civic Nationalism: Oxymoron?” (paper presented at the 1996 American Political Science Association, Department of Political Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst), 7. 70. Ibid., 9. 71. Ibid., 14. 72. Michael Ignatieff, The Needs of Strangers (New York: Penguin, 1984), 140. 73. Said, 175, 176. 74. Balibar, 192. Border control is not only proprietary but regulates internal movement. 75. See Spivak, or Pheng Cheah, “Introduction Part II,” in Cheah and Robbins. 76. Said, 430. 77. Axtmann, 140, 141. 78. Said, 430. 79. Sassen, 95, 96. 80. De Beauvoir, for example, is not wrong per se but does not account for asymmetry of agency. 81. Robert Miles (Racism) provides a persuasive argument against claims such as these. 82. See Joseph F. Zimmerman and Wilma Rule, “A More Representative United States House of Representatives?” PS: Political Science and Politics 30, no. 1 (1998): 5–9; Arend Lijphart, “Reforming the House: Three Moderately Radical Proposals,” PS: Political Science and Politics 30, no. 1 (1998): 10–13; Editorial, “Along Racial Lines,” New Yorker, April 4, 1994, 7, 8; Richard Carelli, “Supreme Court Limits Georgia’s Congressional District Map,” UCLA Daily Bruin, February 7, 1996, 8. 83. See Jack Donnelly, International Human Rights, 2nd ed. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1998), 68: On all levels, “the European human rights regime . . . is unprecedented.” 84. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001). See 75, 122, 127, 142–144. 85. Polanyi, 75. 86. For example, the French government sets the price of certain necessary food staples below market price. This does not disrupt the market because all other food is market price. 87. Samuel Weber, “Piecework,” 16.

Notes to Chapter 6



203

88. Bhabha, 305. 89. Said, 565. 90. Ibid., 186.

6. Debt, Guilt, and Responsibility: Schuld 1. See James T. Patterson America’s Struggle Against Poverty, 1900–1985 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), for example. 2. See George Lukacs, The Theory of the Novel, trans. Anna Bostock (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1994). 3. See Samuel Weber, Institution and Interpretation (Theory and History of Literature, vol. 31, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 118. 4. Jacques Derrida, Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, trans. Peggy Kamuf (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 58. 5. See Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, The Politics of Turmoil: Essays in Poverty, Race and the Urban Crisis (New York: Pantheon Books, 1965); and Piven and Cloward, Poor People’s Movements (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977). 6. On the other hand, the welfare recipient does not have to depend on the caprices of individual charity. 7. Michael Ignatieff, The Needs of Strangers (New York: Penguin, 1984), 34. 8. Karl Marx, “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844,” The MarxEngels Reader, 2nd ed., ed. Robert Tacker, (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978), 86. 9. I am using Lévinas’s ideas in a way that he did not intend. Emmanuel Lévinas, Totalité et infini (Paris: Kluwer Academic, 1971), 220, my emphasis. “The term ‘face’ here denotes the way in which the presentation of the other to me exceeds all idea of the other in me.” Seán Hand, ed., The Lévinas Reader (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1993), 5. 10. Lévinas never views this relation to the other as a “stigma or enslavement.” Hand, 7. 11. Weber, 109, 127, 114. 12. Ibid., 120; see 115. 13. Ibid., 115. 14. Samuel Weber, “Piece-work,” Strategies 9–10 (1994): 16. 15. “[M]essianique, préférons-nous dire, plutôt que messianisme, afin de désigner une structure de l’expérience plutôt qu’une religion . . .” [We prefer to say “messianistic” rather than “messianism” in order to designate a structure of experience rather than a religion]. Jacques Derrida, Spectres de Marx (Paris:

204




Notes to Chapter 6

Galilée, 1993), 266. This concept can also be explained by the idea of arrival and thus, hospitality. It is an “expectation without horizon” and “inseparable from justice.” Brigitte Sohm et al., “The Deconstruction of Actuality: An Interview with Jacques Derrida,” trans. Jonathan Rée, Radical Philosophy 63 (autumn 1994): 32. 16. Weber, 16. 17. Ibid., 17. 18. Ignatieff, 14. 19. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C. B. Macpherson (New York: Penguin, 1985), 152. The idea of status or recognition can be found in Hegel, Isaiah Berlin, and Max Weber, also. 20. Lévinas, 340. 21. Ibid., 332, my emphasis. 22. Derrida, 37, see Counterfeit Money, chap. 1. See Lévinas, 229–242, 275. 23. Ibid., 44, 131. 24. Unconditional hospitality is analogous to Derrida’s notion of a gift without exchange or expectations. See Counterfeit Money, chap. 1. 25. Sohm, “Interview,” 35, my emphasis. See Jacques Derrida, “Aporias: Dying Awaiting (One Another at) ‘the Limits of Truth,’” (paper presented at Conference at Cerisy, France, spring 1993), 16. 26. See Paul Rabinow, The Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 343, 352. 27. See Nicholas Xenos, “Civic Nationalism: Oxymoron?” (paper presented at the 1996 American Political Science Association Conference, Department of Political Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst).

Index

References to notes give page number of the note, note number and page where reference can be located. Adorno, Theodor, 148 affirmative action, 2, 38, 97, 158 African Americans, 38, 96 Agamben, Giorgio, 34, 127, 136 agonism/agonistic, 14, 15, 37, 126, 147, 149, 154, 159 agonistic democracy, 14, 15, 126, 154, 155, 159 agonistic patriotism, 14, 15, 147, 148, 159 Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC), 100, 102 alcoholism, 71, 99, 117 American dream, 82 Anderson, Benedict, 36 Annan, Kofi, 156 Ansén, Reiner, 80, 133 anti-begging ordinances, 64, 80, 109 anti-camping ordinances, 64, 80, 109 anti-vagrancy ordinances, 109, 111 appearance (physical, of the homeless), 67 Arendt, Hannah, 18, 27, 34, 136, 147, 159 Aristotle, 108, 146, 150, 167 arrest sweeps, 106, 109

asceticism, 121, 126, 131 Ashcraft, Richard, 22 assimilation/criminalization, 7, 46, 47, 52, 77, 79–81, 82, 88, 89, 103, 104, 116, 122, 124, 127, 128, 149, 153, 160, 170 Atlanta, 109 at risk, 11, 63, 93, 96 Axtmann, Roland, 142 Bachelard, Gaston, 61, 72 maisons immobiles, 61 Balibar, Étienne, 15, 142, 144, 155 Baudelaire, Charles, 51 Beauvoir, Simone de, 159 beggars, begging, 52, 85, 111. See also panhandling Bell Curve, 38 Bentham, Jeremy, 13, 115 Panopticon, 13, 115, chapter 4 Berkeley, California, 111 Bhabha, Homi, 160 supplementarity 160 biological arguments, 38, 39, 54, 108 biopower. See Foucault, Michel bodily integrity, 43, 65, 66, 157

205

206




Index

Bonacich, Edna, 3 borders, 8, 15, 138, 144, 146, 147, 154, 155, 159 Boston, 91, 93, 94, 95, 101 Bottomore, Tom, 19 Bottomore and T.H. Marshall, 175n. 20 (23) Bresnick, Adam, 74 Brown, Mayor Willie, 111 Brown, Wendy, 42, 124 Brubaker, Rogers, 27, 33, 37 bureaucracy, 41–42, 109, 113–14, 144 Burt, Martha and Rossi, Peter, 104 Bush, President George W., 101, 102 busing (homeless to other cities), 7, 80 Butler, Judith, 131, 150 California, 102, 130 Cape Verdeans, 29 capitalism, 5, 8, 23, 24, 42, 46, 48, 53, 82, 124, 127, 128, 129, 132, 141–46, 159, 165, 166 Census (United States Census), 104 Charlestown, Massachusetts, 95 cheats (welfare cheats), 102–3, 125 Chicago, 91, 96, 109, 171 children (homeless), 66, 69, 92, 96 foster care, 93 citizenship, 4, 5, 10, 53, 55, 104, 122, 123, 127, 131, 135, 145, 149, 150, 159, 160, 163, 171, chapter 2 active citizenship, 22, 39, 158 cosmopolitan citizenship, 157–61 dual citizenship, 15, 150, 159, 161 full citizen, 19, 20, 25, 43, 47, 48, 122 partial citizenship, 24, 25, 46, 122, 158 passive citizenship, 18–19, 22, 39, 43, 46, 158

civil liberties, 44 civil rights, 24, 26, 48, 109, 111, 112, 148, 157 Civil War (American), 40 Cleveland, 109 Clinton, President William, 99, 100, 141 coercion (political), 39, 40, 41, 47, 103 complicity, 157 conceptual inflation, 5, 173n. 7(5) Congress, 95 Connolly, Deborah, 100, 113 Connolly, William, 148 cosmopolitanism, 14, 16, 48, 80, 132, 140, 145, 146–161, 171, chapter 5 culture of dependency, 102, 116 Cuomo, Andrew, 117–118 Davis, Mike, 110 deconstruction, 133, 148, 168 deinstitutionalization, 92 democracy, 27, 37, 127, 132, 145, 152, 155, 156, 157, 160, 167 Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), 93, 95, 104 deportation, 8 deregulation (economic), 142, 144, 160 Derrida, Jacques, 12, 14, 52, 84, 85, 128, 131, 133, 148, 166, 168, 171 Counterfeit Money, 52 messianicity, 168, 203n. 15 (168) specters, 168 disciplinary power, disciplines. See Foucault, Michel Discipline and Punish, 13, 106, 107 Dolphin Change Program, 110 Donohue Institute (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), 96

Index doubled up, 61, 63 Dreyfus Affair, 28 drugs, 105 Dumm, Thomas, 59 Durkheim, Emile, 152 Düttmann, Alexander García, 148 Eastern Europe, 37 economic discrimination, 2, 25, 26, 44, 45, 180n. 93 (45) economic exploitation, 150, 153 economic identity, 2–3, 25, 26, 44, 76, 80, 159, 164 economic independence, 5, 22, 23, 24, 27, 38, 39, 46, 49, 68, 114, 164 economy, the, 63, 94, 96, 97, 140, 141–46. See also globalization education, 45 empty universal. See universal enfranchisement, 26, 45 English only, 38 Enron scandal, 141 equality (political), 22, 23, 48 ethnopluralism, 14, 84, 135 European Union (EU), 33 eviction, 61, 63, 69, 96, 101, 189n. 46 (95) family breakups (of homeless), 66, 114 family values, 38, 45, 46, 100, 101 feminization of labor, 143 fictitious commodities. See Polanyi, Karl films mentioned: Down and Out in Beverly Hills, The Fisher King, Sammie and Rosie Get Laid, With Honors, 79 Foucault, Michel, 6, 13, 41, 43, 88, 89, 106, 107, 113, 115, 124, 127, 132, 151 “analogical punishment,” 112



207

biopower, 6, 43, 107–8, 147, 155 disciplinary power, disciplines, 13, 88, 107, 108, 113, 115, 164, 165 panopticon, panopticism, 13, 88, 106–16, 117, 127, 170, chapter 4 Fourteenth Amendment, 20 France, 27, 28, 29, 37 Freud, Sigmund, 12, 31, 55, 72, 73–77, 78, 81, 84, 132, 170 Das Unheimliche, “The Uncanny,” 12, 55, 78, 139 Fukuyama, Frances, 147 gated communities, 12, 64, 146 Gemeinschaft, 30 gender (any discussion of), 25, 26, 39, 40, 42, 43, 44, 46, 54, 58, 61, 65, 88, 97, 98, 100, 106, 119–21, 143 reverse sexism, 158 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), 144 genocide, 139 Germany, 27, 28, 29, 30, 37 Gesellschaft, 30 Geyer, Michael, 134 gift without exchange, 131, 149 Giuliani, Mayor Rudy, 102–3, 111 globalization (economic), 63, 97, 124, 140, 141–46, 150, 153 Grace (from Eliot Liebow, Tell Them Who I Am), 66, 70 Great Depression, 41, 91 Guillaumin, Colette, 4 gypsies. See Roma Habermas, Jürgen, 31 Haitians, 29, 34, 36 Hard Times, 110 Hayek, Friedrich von, 141, 143 health care, 64, 69, 94 health issues (of the homeless), 64, 69

208




Index

Hegel, Georg W. F., 18, 80, 83, 133, 147, 164, 165 Heidegger, Martin, 74, 75, 159, 167 History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, 106 Hobbes, Thomas, 6, 22, 23, 40, 42, 88, 150, 169 Hobo College, 90 Hobohemia, 90, 187n. 6 (90) Hoch, Charles and Slayton, Robert, 91 home, 3, 4, 10–11, 22, 47, 52, 57–62, 71, 72, 73, 123 relatively stable home, 10, 11–12, 57, 60, 61, 84 homeland (home as), 3, 14, 34, 35, 47, 48, 52, 53, 55, 58, 59, 62, 77, 126, 129, 131, 140, 146, 148, 155, 160, 163, 172 homelessness, 3, 4, 10, 11, 12, 46, 56, 62–71, 98, 99, 173n. 9 (6), chapter 3 agency of homeless, 65, 118, 128, 164. See also political agency as statelessness, 46, 47, 48, 83, 114, 121, 147, 161 causes of, 63 definitions of, 182–183n. 28 (62) history of, 89–93 numbers, 104 politics of, 12, 18, 19, 21, 57, 71–72, 83–85, 123, 147, 161, 171 homeless policy, 88, 103, 106, chapter 4 homogeneous ideal, 36–38 homosexuals (gays, lesbians), 38, 43, 45, 46 Honig, Bonnie, 15, 59, 79–81, 148, 151, 152. See also “taking” Hoovervilles, 90 HOPE VI Program, 95–96 housing, 63, 70, 71, 90, 93, 94, 96, 99 low-income or affordable housing, 11, 45, 68, 93, 94, 95, 96, 125

human rights, 15, 144, 149, 155, 157, 158 identity, 2, 18, 38, 39, 42, 44, 58, 71, 73, 131, 133, 134, 136, 150 identity over interest, 173n. 6 (5) psychoanalytic conceptions of identity, 73–77 Ignatieff, Michael, 154, 166, 170 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IRCA 1996), 99, 101 immigrants, 6, 7, 18, 43, 46, 47, 55, 56, 71, 76, 78, 79, 80–82, 83, 84, 92, 94, 97, 99, 101, 108, 132, 133, 140, 143, 145, 146, 150, 153, 155, 156, 159, 174n. 1 (18) immigration policy, 29, 33, 99, 101 industrial homework, 97 industrialization, 90 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 144 invisible homeless, 46, 103, 104, 105, 121 irrational, 31, 159, 163, 170 irrational policy, 185n. 72 (73) See also primitive emotions Israel, 152 Jamaicans, 29 Japanese internment, 40 Jencks, Christopher, 63, 104, 105, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 198n. 205 (122) The Homeless, 104, 121 Joint Center for Housing Studies (Harvard University), 93, 96 jus soli, jus sanguinis, 4, 21, 27—31 justice, 170, 171 Kant, Immanuel, 10, 80 amphiboly, 80

Index Kelling, George, 120 Kerouac, Jack, 118 Dharma Bums, 118 Kim (from Eliot Liebow, Tell Them Who I Am), 64, 68, 70 King, Martin Luther, 148 King, Rodney, 38, 179n. 74 (38) Koolhaas, Rem, 173n. 3 (1) Kosovo, Kosovars, 34, 129, 130, 137, 139, 140 Kristeva, Julia, 56, 74, 75, 83, 151 Latinos, 96 Le Pen, Jean-Marie, 28 Levellers, 22, 23 Lévinas, Emmanuel, 61, 167, 169, 203n. 9 (167) liberal(-ism), 38, 39, 40, 46, 55, 144, 159, 165, 168 early liberals, 9, 16, 21, 164, 165 Liebow, Eliot, 51, 66, 70, 121, 122 Locke, John, 6, 22, 23, 39, 40, 41, 88, 136, 150, 165, 175n. 18 (23) Los Angeles, 91, 111 Machiavelli, Niccolo, 6, 42, 154 maisons immobiles, 61 manufacturing jobs, 97 Marcus, Clare Cooper, 57, 58 Marshall, T.H., 19, 23, 24, 25, 32, 46 Marx, Karl, 10, 20, 25, 39, 44, 47, 58, 59, 61, 133, 151, 164, 167 “On the Jewish Question,” 10, 20, 25, 39, 47 species being, 151, 167 Massachusetts, 110 materialist arguments, 45, 46 McCormack Institute (University of Massachusetts, Boston), 101 McKinney Act, 111 mentally ill, mental illness, 92, 99, 117, 125



209

Mexicans, 29, 130 multiculturalism, 14, 26, 38, 133, 134, 135 Murray, Charles, 119 narcissism of minor differences, 132 National Front, 28 national identity, 3, 5, 36–42, 45, 46, 79, 80, 136, 145, 159, 164 nationalism, 30, 31, 35, 36–42, 44, 132, 140, 147, 154, 159 national sovereignty, 27, 32, 144, 147, 155 nation-state (future of), 33, 144, 145, 147, 159 Native Americans, 38, 159 nativism, 42 naturalization, 33 natural law, 21, 22, 39. See also selfpreservation neoliberal, -ism, 141 New York, 95, 109, 111, 153, 171 1976 Protocol to the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 156 Not In My Backyard policies (NIMBYism), 1, 63, 82, 109, 125 Nottebohm Case, 31, 32, 33 numbers (of homeless), 104, 105, 193n. 109 (104) Nuremberg Trials, 156 Oakland, California, 95 “On the Jewish Question.” See Marx, Karl Operation Scrub Down, 110 ordinances against the homeless, 64, 109, 110, 111 Orlando, Florida, 110 out of wedlock births, 102 Palestinians, 34, 36, 137 Palti, Elías José, 30

210




Index

panhandling, 109, 110, 118 permits, 109, 110. See also begging panopticism. See Foucault, Michel pathology (-ies), 71, 99, 103, 107, 108, 109, 112, 115, 117, 120 patria, patriotism, love of country, 31, 36, 129, 132, 147, 148, 153, 154, 159 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, 99 Piven, Frances Fox, 119, 166 Piven and Cloward, Richard, 166 Plato, 150, 154 Polanyi, Karl, 27, 48, 84–85, 158–59 fictitious commodities, 48, 84, 85, 158–59 political agency, 2, 110, 118, 134, 157, 164 Poor Laws, 24, 39, 41 poststructuralism, 133, 134, 150 prerogative power, 6, 9, 14, 15, 35, 40, 44, 47, 54, 56, 88, 104, 112, 124, 130, 136, 147, 155 and bureaucracy, 181n. 4 (54) primitive emotions, 31, 53, 54, 55, 62, 72, 73, 74, 76, 140, 185n. 74 (74) prisoners, 93 private property, 21, 22, 65, 126, 159 projection, 75, 186n. 85 (75) property qualifications, 25 proportional representation, 15, 158 protection, 2, 42, 43, 46 public housing, 95, 96 public policy, 153 public space, 2, 47, 53, 58, 62, 64, 82, 124, 125, 126, 128, 153, 173n. 3 (1)

Rabushka, Alan, 98 race or racialized images, 25, 26, 45, 54, 98, 102, 106, 157 racism, 42, 44, 157 reverse racism, 158 rationality, 38 “rationalized irrationality,” 73, 84, 85 Reagan, Ronald, 141 refugee camps, 34, 35, 140 refugees, 34, 35, 37, 46, 47, 68, 69, 108, 129, 130, 132, 138, 140, 146, 155, 156 Reich, Robert, 97 rent, rental issues, 11, 68 Retsinas, Nicholas, 96 right to difference, 26, 80, 134, 135 Roma (Gypsies, Sinti), 29, 34, 37, 130, 137, 139, 146, 156, 178n. 60 (34) Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 150, 167 Ruddick, Sue, 118 Rushdie, Salman, 81, 83 Rwanda, 139 Said, Edward, 156, 160 “in-betweeness,” 160 San Francisco, 94, 102, 109, 110, 111, 125, 153 Santa Monica, California, 110 Sassen, Saskia, 97, 142, 143, 146, 153, 156 bridges, linkages, 15, 21, 146, 200n. 49 (146) Schmitt, Carl, 6, 18, 27, 37, 40, 42, 54, 55, 56, 78, 81, 127, 147 friend/enemy, 18, 19, 27, 37, 54, 55, 56, 78, 81 Schuld, 15, 16, 26, 48, 52, 53, 54, 84, 88, 132, 133, 149, 151, 167, 168, 174n. 23 (15), chapter 6 section 8 housing vouchers, 95

Index



self-preservation, 16, 22, 48, 65, 85, 130, 159, 164–165 September 11th, 2001, 7, 29, 55, 123, 155, 159 sexism, 26, 44, 119. See also gender sexual harassment, 65 shelters (homeless), 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 84, 92, 93, 96, 111, 113, 114, 115, 116, 131 shelter solutions (urban campgrounds, fiberglass domes, cruise ships), 11, 111, 116 single room occupancy hotels (SROs), 90, 91, 92, 103 Skid Row, 90, 91, 103 Smith, Adam, 143 Social Security Insurance (SSI), 101 South Africa, 156 sovereignty, 35, 44, 55, 155 Spivak, Gayatri, 142, 143 splitting, 74, 185n. 75 (74) squatting movements, 158 stateless(-ness), 14, 18, 33, 34–35, 81, 128, 145, 146, 156, 160, 163 state of exception, 8, 34–35, 44, 56, 136, 140 stereotypes, -ing, 7, 70, 76, 89, 90, 93, 98, 102, 103, 104, 106, 112, 119, 125, 168 Stone, Deborah, 105, 121, 122 Strauss, Leo, 147 streets, living on the, 65 “subaltern,” 143, 153 Supreme Court, 2, 33, 43, 44, 46, 97–109, 110 sweatshops, 97, 143

Thatcher, Margaret, 141 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 132, 163 transitional object, 152, 201n. 64 (152) Trop v. Dulles, 33 Tucson, 109 Turks, 29, 37

“taking,” 15, 148, 149, 158, 160, 161 Taussig, Michael, 72 taxes, 98 Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), 99, 100, 101

wages, 96, 98, 100, 101 Wallace, Michelle, 58, 59, 64 Walzer, Michael, 37 Washington, D.C., 67, 95 Weber, Max, 5, 31, 41, 56, 124

211

uncanny, unheimlich, 12, 54, 55, 72, 73–77, 78, 105, 123, 133, 164, 169, chapter 3 unconditional hospitality, 171, 204n. (171) undecidability, 8, 54, 123, 163 unions, unionization, 63, 97, 143, 158 United Kingdom, 27, 69 United Nations, 32, 34, 154, 155, 156 United States, 27, 29 United States Conference of Mayors (USCM), 92, 93 universal (empty), 10, 20, 21, 84, 149, 152 uprootedness, 3, 47, 129 urban areas or city (for example, as site of cosmopolitanism), 14, 30, 45, 152, 153, 154, 171, 172 violence, 138 anti-immigration violence, 81 attacks on homelessness, 65. See also bodily integrity Volkan, Vamik, 75 voting, 45, 47, 157, 158

212




Index

Weber, Samuel, 8, 18, 74, 138, 139, 160 Weil, Simone, 3, 18, 37, 129, 147, 148 welfare (policies or benefits), 46, 67, 69, 99, 100, 101, 102, 119, 141 welfare hierarchy, 113 welfare hotels, 63–64 welfare to workfare, 67, 68, 100, 101, 102 Wilson, James Q., 120 Wolfenstein, Victor, 75, 76 Wolin, Sheldon, 148

women, 97, 98, 100 homeless women, 65, 103, 104 work, 63, 67, 68, 69, 97, 143, 150, 159, 168, 169, 175n. 19 (23) work in liberal theory, 22, 23, 47, 168 World Trade Organization (WTO), 144 Xenos, Nicholas, 36, 147, 148, 154 Young, Iris Marion, 11, 57, 58