Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity: The Uncanniness of Late Modernity

6. Debt, Guilt, and Responsibility: Schuld

163 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. 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 self164
Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity 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...