Homeless assistance has frequently adhered to the “three hots and a cot” model, which prioritizes immediate material needs but may fail to address the political and social exclusion of people experiencing homelessness. In this study, Loehwing reconsiders typical characterizations of homelessness, citizenship, and democratic community through unconventional approaches to homeless advocacy and assistance.
While conventional homeless advocacy rhetoric establishes the urgency of homeless suffering, it also implicitly invites housed publics to understand homelessness as a state of abnormality that destines the individuals suffering it to life outside the civic body. In contrast, Loehwing focuses on atypical models of homeless advocacy: the meal-sharing initiatives of Food Not Bombs, the international competition of the Homeless World Cup, and the annual Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day campaign. She argues that these modes of unconventional homeless advocacy provide rhetorical exemplars of a type of inclusive and empowering civic discourse that is missing from conventional homeless advocacy and may be indispensable for overcoming homeless marginalization and exclusion in contemporary democratic culture.
Loehwing’s interrogation of homeless advocacy rhetorics demonstrates how discursive practices shape democratic culture and how they may provide a potential civic remedy to the harms of disenfranchisement, discrimination, and displacement. This book will be welcomed by scholars whose work focuses on the intersections of democratic theory and rhetorical and civic studies, as well as by homelessness advocacy groups.
Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Dwelling Within Democracy
1 The Rhetorical Conventions of Contemporary Homeless Advocacy
2 The Democratic Vision of Homeless Meal-Sharing Initiatives
3 The Democratic Bodies of the Homeless World Cup
4 The Democratic Temporalities of the Homeless Persons’
Memorial Day
Conclusion: Rhetorical Constructions of the Civic Home
Notes
Bibliography
Index
“Approaches a topic connected to marginalized voices that is sorely missing from rhetorical studies and, in many cases, from critical analysis writ large: the discourse of, and rhetoric about, homeless communities. The value of this study is that it demonstrates the transformative benefits of viewing homelessness advocacy as a rhetorical means rooted in ‘home’ rather than just through and by instrumental and utile ends. Loehwing’s work serves as a watershed moment of exploring the double marginalization of homeless communities.”
—Jason Black, author of American Indians and the Rhetoric of Removal and Allotment
