Homeless people and the city of abstract machines: Assemblage thinking and the performative approach to homelessness

Abstract

The paper focuses on one central point of the 'performative' approach to homelessness that is still inadequately explored by the current literature: the conceptualisation of the relational entanglements between homeless people and the city. The argument is that only through a critical attention to these fluid and more-than-human details will we be able to re-imagine a different politics of homelessness. The paper, engaging with the work of Deleuze and Guattari as well as with critical assemblages thinking, proposes two concepts that are considered to be fundamental in this sense. First, assemblage, as a concept able to render the hybrid constituency of the individual within the city; and second, abstract machines, as a way to take into account the fluidity of power in affecting one's own experience of homelessness. The approach proposed in the paper is illustrated through the presentations of original ethnographic material derived from ten months of ethnographic fieldwork in Turin, Italy. The paper concludes by suggesting that the abstract machine of homelessness can be tackled in at least two ways. First, re-working the institutional assemblages of care that produce stigmatising discourses and deep emotional effects. Second, liberating homeless people's capacities and resources, which are currently poorly accounted by canonical literature and policies. Plate 2 City of Turin's card granting a free showerSource: April 2010, field observation on the streets of Yogyakarta, Indonesia Urban Studies 39 1665-83Homeless people and the city of abstract machines 363

Towards a paradigm of Southern urbanism

“…Finally, in some instances it may be useful to view the city itself as a series of heterogeneous and interconnected networks whose unbounded nature is characterized by indeterminacy (Farias and Bender 2010;McFarlane 2011b). The essence and role of things is also up for debate, but perhaps the most profitable approach has focused on the ways in which objects mediate relations among humans in ways that foreclose or open up avenues of human action (Collier 2011;Coward 2012;Lancione 2013). Scholarship focused on materiality that is situated in the global South has largely focused on urban infrastructure because it 'demarcates both literally and figuratively which points in urban contexts can and should be connected, and which should not, the kinds of people and goods that can and should circulate easily, and which should stay put, and who can and should be integrated within the city, and who should be left outside of it'.…”

Between Tactics and Affect, Non-place and Place: A Visual Analysis of the Everyday Geography of Homeless People

“…V takovém městě-stroji je důležité studovat nejen to, co je na povrchu města, ale soustředit se také na často skryté sítě, entity nebo způsoby organizace, jako jsou například toky elektrické energie, jejichž koncovky ve veřejném prostoru jsou lidmi bez domova využívány, nebo samovolně vzniklé městské džungle, které se stávají pro lidi bez domova ideálním prostředím pro různé formy improvizovaného přístřeší. Jinými slovy: v takovém městě-stroji jsou spolu propojeny lidští i ne-lidští aktéři, ale i taktiky i afekt [Adya, Wilkins 2012;Lancione 2013;Anderson 2017].…”

“…A tak zatímco v zahraničních pracích věnovaných bezdomovectví dochází od roku 2000 k razantnímu rozmachu přístupů akcentujících afekt (a performativitu) [srov. Cloke, May, Johnsen 2008;Del Casino, Jocoy 2008;Daya, Wilkins 2012;Lancione 2013], česká sociální věda na tento posun stále ještě čeká.…”

The affective right to the city

“…The analysis that follows attempts to draw out the affective and performative conditions of this politics in order to elaborate the lived expression of the right to the city, and its investment in ‘collective forms of self‐determination’ (Vasudevan , 323). I pursue these interests with reference to recent work in urban studies and human geography (Lancione ), although I focus on Judith Butler's efforts to advance a performative theory of assembly.…”