The Crisis of Meaning: In Culture and Education

4 A Change of Address: Homelessness and the Politics of Voice

A CHANGE OF ADDRESS HOMELESSNESS AND THE POLITICS OF VOICE There are some folks for whom opennessis not about theluxury of"will I choose to share this or tell that,"but rather, "will I survive—will I makeit through—will I stay alive?"And openness is about how to be well and tellingthe truth is about how to put the broken bits and pieces ofthe heart back together again. It is aboutbeingwhole, being wholehearted. —bell hooks1 "Remember when we thought we could make a difference?" asks a recent advertisement from the Plan International foster parents program. "When I was in college we fought every kind of social and economic injustice.We sang songs like 'He Ain't Heavy. He's My Brother,' and we thought we could change the world. Then I started having other responsibilities."2 The ad tells the story ofAdrienne, awoman in her mid-thirties. "She's bright, concerned, hardworking. She has a loving husband and a good job.Yetshe has never lost her awareness ofproblems like poverty in the world. Nor that deep need to make a difference." Naturally, Plan International has an answer, a solution tailored for an upwardly mobile generation ofyoung professionals. For seventy-two cents a day it offers Adrienne and her husband a child in Guatemala, a helpless baby ofcolor that they need never actually meet. In effect, the organization relieves the couple ofany procreative or charitable concerns in a single gesture, while subtly alluding to their political powerlessness. As Plan International puts it, "You can reach out to a child who really needs you ... because you believe in each child's value in the Family ofMan." The Plan International campaign is noteworthy for a number ofreasons, not the least of which is its size. Though not exactly a household word, the organization boasts six thousand employees and an annual budget of over $100 million,making it one ofthe largest nonprofits in the nation. More significantly, Plan International's success derives from its ability to complement the methods and ideologies of U.S. business interests. Its emphases on personalized charity (rather than collective action ) and child/family aid (rather than population control or reproductive choice) are hardly accidental, for they neatly elide the thornier conditions ofexclusion and exploitation produced byglobal capitalism. Thus the campaign distorts both causes and remedies for human suffering. As do current discourses on homelessness, 58 FOUR drug abuse, crime, illiteracy, and AIDS,it frames social problems as historically decontextualized and depoliticized phenomena that inexplicably strike "some people" who are inept, in trouble, or simply out ofluck. But this view ofhuman tragedy is more than a conservative conceit. In different forms it permeates perceptions of poverty that infuse much of the language of the political Left. It results from the way ideology installs people in imaginary relations to the conditions inwhich they live.Within this scheme, a program placing selected groups at the bottom of society is naturalized into a benign, even virtuous, entity.It forms a fictional narrative in which a universal "we" is counterposed to an imaginary "them." This ubiquitous binarism has a major influence on public policy and popular opinion.It is reinforced in the roles ofexpertise assigned to social workers, teachers, cultural producers—in fact, to everyone except the disadvantaged themselves . These practices sanction a view of economic catastrophe as a "personal" consequence of human existence, often equating it metaphorically with illness or mental impairment. As in the Plan International ad, the remedies typically offered are personal as well. In a world where "making a difference" in political terms has become a Utopian anachronism, social responsibility is consigned to the individual sympathies of "a thousand points oflight." By focusing on an isolated problem,people can ignore the structural necessity and deliberate creation of poverty in an economic order that requires losers so it can producewinners. In this chapter I discuss the links between work, welfare, and public discourse, particularly as manifest in recent journalism,advertising, and documentary practice . The discussion will entail an analysis of the ways exploitive politicalinstrumentalities are rationalizedby business interests, supported by government policy, sanctioned by popular opinion,and reified in media texts. Special attention will be paid to the ways well-meaning liberal/leftist organizations inadvertently support regressive and damaging views of the poor. This is partly a function of representational conventions that distort through stereotyping and objectify in their form of address. But it also results from attitudes about charity and social reform that privilege singular views about change and...