Homelessness, a look from the perspective of Philosophy
"There can be no bodily life without social and institutional support, (...) without networks of interdependence and mutual support," Judith Butler.
In the Sociology of Poverty and the Anthropology of Poverty, poverty has been defined by alluding to both personal and structural causes; Nels Anderson defines the dignified poor and the undignified poor, which leads to the polarization of who deserves attention and who does not (Vilagrasa, 2000). Other theories, such as trauma or attachment theories, also place us within a personal and relational view of the phenomenon.
Conceptions such as the governmentality of poverty, as developed by the French philosopher Michel Foucault, lead us to analyze how some governments accept a certain level of poverty within their populations (understanding poverty as a problem to be managed) and define governing as directing the lives of others. Therefore, it is accepted that a portion of the population lives in exclusion and poverty as a consequence of a liberal society where political and economic realities maintain an excluded population as long as it is "controlled" and manageable, without questioning the underlying structural causes. Ultimately, poverty management is geared towards integrating the poor into society through social programs or policies, without addressing the structural causes. Thus, poverty is managed based on who the State deems poor and who it considers deserving of aid.
We find theories that derive from Foucault's thinking, such as Robert Castel's theory of disaffiliation and social exclusion (Arteaga, 2008), where exclusion is understood in procedural and multicausal terms, and appeals are made to the relationship with the protection system linked to the concept of citizenship.
The invisible ones
People experiencing homelessness are frequently rendered invisible by society; we don't see them, even when we walk right past them. We don't know them, but we form an idea and make opinions about who they are and what they are like. There is no reality outside of language, as activist and philosopher Judith Butler (2004) states.
People living on the streets are perceived as deviant, maladjusted, anomalous, aggressive, dangerous… they are also depersonalized and stripped of their humanity, “the homeless.” Butler (1996), in the concept of abjection used in her book Bodies That Matter: The Discursive Limits of Sex , argues that language produces a materialization; there is a normative corporeality that is constructed through the exclusion of bodies that do not correspond to this normative corporeality (abject bodies). Butler understands the body as an entity in relation; self-sufficient bodies do not exist. To live, we need other people and, moreover, we need guaranteed conditions for subsistence.
From the concept of performativity , Butler analyzes how certain acts produce reality. She understands gender as an invention that is reproduced and preserved (1990:235 ff.). Social norms aim at normalization through a constructed framework and create a specific classification to maintain social order. When some bodies do not fit into this established social order, their lives are considered expendable.
The categories of man or woman, or excluded or included person, are part of this social construction through language; they are categories that form part of the prevailing political discourse. What we are told constitutes us. For the author, there is a normative corporeality that is constituted through the exclusion of bodies that do not fit with this normative corporeality (abject bodies). There is a foundational violence that constructs our social framework; society is built through what it excludes.
Butler begins with the premise that some bodies suffer different levels of violence or neglect, and that certain lives are treated with negligence by politics and institutions. In response to questions such as, "Why are there lost lives that do not elicit mourning or lament?" , the author expresses concern about the existence of lives that are not considered part of what is deemed humanly valuable.
Reframing the way we look at homeless people
The central concepts running through this analysis of homelessness, in light of Judith Butler's work, are vulnerability and precarity , which she understands as human conditions, as well as the concept of responsibility, borrowed from the philosopher E. Lévinas, and that of hospitality, from the philosopher J. Derrida. The resulting reflections aim to offer a different perspective in order to formulate a new vision for institutions that could protect these individuals.
Interdependence Butler understands being as being insofar as we are supported. To be and to live, we need others and a support network, a "network of hands," in the author's words. Many homeless people lack support networks, and the current social model leads us to an individualism and self-sufficiency that makes it more difficult to rebuild those social bonds that facilitate life. This neoliberal social model defines who is normal and who is not, constructs an idea of who is fit, and blames the homeless person for their own failure, identifying them as an "abject body" and condemning them to believe they are unworthy. At the same time, society shirks its responsibility and excludes those it considers do not fit the cultural parameters of success, disregarding the structural causes of exclusion and acknowledging only individual factors.
Social policies are not exempt from this social model, and they adopt this model of normality to create regulations and supposedly inclusive practices without considering that when "normal" becomes normative, exclusion takes hold. Regulations and laws themselves define "normal" and act accordingly, believing they are combating exclusion, but in reality, they perpetuate exclusion through inclusion.
Dispossession The author understands it as the support, affection, or care that does not depend exclusively on oneself. We are dispossessed in the other. The position of our bodies within the networks we depend on and relate to, as well as our exposure to others, is what allows us to live or prevents us from continuing to live.
This fact leads us to the reflection that runs through Butler's text on the need to lead a "good life", a dignified life, a "livable life" in the author's words.
For Butler, life also depends on the protection and guarantee of the structures that guarantee life: housing, food, employment… and that is why she calls on public authorities to promote the necessary conditions to sustain life: “there can be no bodily life without social and institutional support” (2017:88).
Living on the streets has a structural component of violence that is exacerbated by the violence suffered by homeless people, especially women. Our democratic societies should protect these people and provide the conditions for a dignified life.
Butler admits that the conditions of "livable life" or "good life" are unequally distributed among citizens because, within the framework of political decisions, not all lives are given the same value, nor are they protected equally from violence.
Among those who sleep on the streets, we observe how certain political and institutional decisions cause harm to certain individuals, or "bodies" as Butler calls them, because their lives are ultimately considered expendable. Lives like those of migrants who end up living on the streets or dying in the Mediterranean demonstrate that some lives are denied even the most basic conditions for survival.
According to data from Arrels Fundació , between October 2020 and October 2021, 69 people who were or had been living on the streets of Barcelona died. The youngest was 28 years old and the oldest, 88. Of these, 17 died directly exposed to the elements. For Butler, in her book *Precarious Life* (2006), these would be empty figures for the administration; they would be people who, despite having a life, are "ghostly bodies." Their deaths don't count, they cannot be mourned because they were not previously recognized as valuable lives. These 69 people only matter in the act of remembrance that Arrels Fundació holds each year. It is incomprehensible that we accept the deaths of people on the streets without anyone taking responsibility, without any mobilizations, and without even being aware of this human tragedy.
To guarantee the material conditions that sustain life
Related to the previous concepts, the author also alludes to the concepts of vulnerability and precarity. For Butler, these are concepts that express the relational nature of life; we depend on others (interdependence), and on this depends whether our lives are livable or unlivable (dispossession). It is not possible to get rid of the condition of vulnerability, since that would imply getting rid of the human condition (2006:327). To manage vulnerability, Butler proposes strengthening interdependent networks that promote the common good. Precarity is also a human condition and highlights the need for public policies that promote and generate guarantees of dignified living conditions.
For Butler, how and by whom something is defined is not neutral; it forms part of the power structures that assign meaning to what is important. Homeless people can die on the street without any public accountability for having abandoned and left them unprotected. There is no response; that life has fallen outside the framework of what is considered human. The death of a person on the street should be considered a crime against whoever allowed it to happen; however, regulations and public policies understand that death as something external, the result of personal failure, and society as a whole has adopted this view.
If we consider the concept of inclusive exclusion developed by the philosopher Giorgio Agamben, we observe a foundational violence that constitutes our social framework, since society is built upon what it excludes, such as homelessness, and allows people to become ill and even die on the streets . Although these individuals are included in the language and service design of public institutions, they remain outside the sphere of political participation. Specialized resources and services for homeless people are designed without their input, and therefore, they are not considered subjects of rights on equal footing with the rest of the citizenry.
Based on the author's work, I suggest a re-examination of the public discourse on homelessness. Political and institutional action produces a type of vulnerability and precarity that places certain lives outside the realm of human consideration (precarization).
We understand, as Butler does, that life must have guaranteed material conditions to sustain it and that interdependence must be framed within public policies as guarantors of a livable/dignified life. Institutions must respond to the author's question, "What is a valuable life, one that deserves to be recognized and protected?" based on the concepts of vulnerability and precarity. And the answer would be that a valuable life is any life.
We are vulnerable to the extent that we are subject to social networks and conditions that either facilitate or hinder our lives. Vulnerability is shared, and therefore, there is an interdependence without which it is impossible to achieve common well-being. If a person is in a situation of poverty or exclusion, it is because there are structural mechanisms that cause it, and hence there is a shared public responsibility to ensure that all people have the same rights to a dignified life.
If we consider this idea from Levinas's perspective on responsibility , we see that for the philosopher, responsibility is understood as responding to the other's demand, a response that implies a commitment. The other makes a demand of the subject, which causes the subject to question themselves. Responsibility is responding to the other; the face-to-face, I-Thou interaction is not being responsible in the Kantian sense. If we exist, it is because we occupy the other's place, and that is why we are responsible.
Levinas tells us that first philosophy is ethics (not metaphysics, as Aristotle said), and by ethics we must understand the inversion of the subject-object relationship that has occurred in modernity. That is, ethics does not involve taking the object and reducing it to myself, but rather my openness to the interpellation/interpretation of the object (before understanding something, there must be a prior demand that calls me to account from the other). Ethics is, therefore, the response (responsibility) to the demand of the other; for this reason, the other is above the subject, since the subject must ask himself if his position as subject is the usurpation of the other's place. Before questioning his right to persevere in his existence, he must ask himself if his position as subject is not always usurping the other's place. Our privilege as subject is sustained by the precariousness that the usurpation of the other entails. The face represents the extreme precariousness of the other.
We cannot think of ourselves without looking at others, because I am not without others. We cannot think about homelessness without questioning our position in relation to it and our contribution to maintaining this situation of inequality. Inclusion policies cannot be conceived without considering the people they affect. The need for alliances or unity among those affected by shared suffering, and the inclusion of those affected in the design of public policies, are also essential for true inclusion.
It is necessary to rebel against these prejudiced, stigmatizing ideas that fall on homeless people and to claim rights in the public sphere, to generate new social meanings of homeless people and to make the street also a space for encounters, collective struggle and the claiming of rights.
If we take Derrida's concept of hospitality to continue the analysis, we understand that hospitality (as opposed to tolerance) implies accepting being altered by the other. Hospitality is not letting the other in because they are like me, but rather as an unconditional structure; this implies stepping down from a position of sovereignty and accepting difference, otherness. Hospitality is welcoming the other rather than being myself as a disposition toward the other; hospitality is a constant questioning of myself. Derrida understands hospitality from the perspective of unconditionality, as an unconditional duty that should be promoted by institutions.
It is about making face-to-face encounters possible, starting from the concept of precarity and vulnerability that Butler discusses, and understanding that institutions, in order to guarantee coexistence, must transform themselves by allowing others to participate and by conceiving of vulnerability as a human condition. The condition of vulnerability means that we all need support and that support networks are necessary to provide us with affection, care, and well-being. Public policies should not aim for invulnerability but rather offer support, facilitate networks, and guarantee dignified living conditions.
Philosophy allows us to relate to others on an ethical and political level, to understand the experience that opens up to an encounter with the other (alterity), and to overcome the fear of looking at a homeless person. The political is not only about what is common; it is also about thinking about what is not common and living alongside those who are not like me.
In conclusion, the concept of responsibility and hospitality could be a starting point for political and institutional action that values different lives. We must reclaim, through non-violent means, the right to a "good life." The process of reclaiming the rights of marginalized bodies also involves identifying with the marginalized body and making it a cause for protest. We need a new, face-to-face politics founded on an understanding of precarity and structural vulnerability.
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