“A Collection of Stories, Poetry and Theories”: Homelessness, Outsider Memoirs, and the Right to Theorize

Abstract

This paper argues that memoirs of homelessness advance a form of social theory that emerges from the lived experience of homelessness and housing displacement. While scholars have called for greater recognition of previously neglected forms of social theory, academic scholarship remains—in practice—overwhelmingly influenced by the theories of a narrow group of high-profile intellectuals and specialist textual forms. Life narratives, in particular, have often been framed as atheoretical testimonies, and homeless thinkers have been largely denied the right to theorize. This paper argues that reading “outsider memoirs” as theoretical texts can be a method for expanding current understandings of the nature of social theory and taking seriously the epistemic rights of marginalized thinkers. It engages with the writings of homeless memoirists to argue for a new understanding of the explanatory power of social theory that does not collapse into abstraction or generalization, but is profoundly rooted in reflection and collaboration.

本文主张，无家可归的回忆录，推进一种从无家可归和被迫重新安置住居的生活经验中浮现的社会理论形式。仅管学者呼吁对过去忽略的社会理论形式应有更大的认识，学术研究仍旧在实践上受到高姿态的知识份子小团体与专家文字形式的压倒性影响。生活叙事尤其经常被构想成非理论的证言，而无家可归的思考者则大幅被否定进行理论化的权利。本文主张，阅读“外行人回忆录”作为理论文本，能够作为扩张当前对于社会理论本质的理解、并严肃面对被边缘化思考者的认识论权利之方法。本文涉入无家可归的回忆录作者之作品，主张应对无法瓦解成为抽象或普遍化、但却深刻地植基于反思与协作的社会理论之解释力有崭新的理解。

Este artículo sostiene que las memorias sobre la carencia de techo adelantan una forma de teoría social que surge de la experiencia vivida con la indigencia y el desplazamiento de vivienda. Mientras los estudiosos del tema han reclamado un mayor reconocimiento de formas de teoría social antes descuidadas, la erudición académica persiste ––en la práctica–– abrumadoramente influenciada por las teorías y formas textuales de un estrecho grupo de intelectuales y especialistas de alto perfil. Las narrativas de vida, en particular, a menudo han sido tildadas de testimonios ateóricos, y a los pensadores sobre la carencia de techo se les ha denegado en gran medida el derecho a teorizar. Este trabajo argumenta que leer las “memorias del forastero” como textos teóricos puede ser un método para expandir los actuales entendimientos de la naturaleza de la teoría social y asumir con seriedad los derechos epistémicos de pensadores marginados. El artículo se involucra con los escritos de los memorialistas de la carencia de techo para reclamar un nuevo entendimiento del poder explicativo de la teoría social, que no periclite en la abstracción o la generalización, sino que arraigue profundamente en la reflexión y la colaboración.

Key Words:

• homelessness
• memoir
• narrative
• theory
• knowledge

• 无家可归
• 回忆录
• 叙事
• 理论
• 知识

• carencia de techo
• conocimiento
• memoria
• narrativa
• teoría

Acknowledgments

Thank you to Pamela Moss and Kathryn Besio for their help with early drafts of this paper, and to the editor and anonymous reviewers at GeoHumanities.

Notes

1. As oral history constitutes a distinct form with its own strengths and limitations—and archives of oral histories of homelessness are complex and unique sites of knowledge production—I discuss my research of homeless oral history archives in depth elsewhere (Speer 2018) and focus here on memoirs of homelessness.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the American Council of Learned Societies [Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship]; Andrew W. Mellon Foundation [Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship]; Syracuse University [Graduate Fellowship].

Notes on contributors

Jessie Speer

JESSIE SPEER is an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Geography at Queen Mary University, London E1 4NS, United Kingdom. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research engages with urban studies and feminist political economy, examining how property markets and ideologies of domesticity shape patterns of housing displacement and homelessness in the United States.