Homelessness and violence: Freud, Fanon and Foucault and the shadow of the Afrikan sex worker

Abstract

In this thesis, I will argue that one of the ways to think about the concept of homelessness and its relationship to violence is to trace the concept as it emerges in key theoretical texts of critical intellectuals who find themselves both in and outside the Western homeland. In attempting to do so, I limit this thesis to three key theoretical articulations from which the concept of homelessness can be extracted: the works of Sigmund Freud, Franz Fanon and Michael Foucault. In bringing to bear the life and work of these individuals, the hope is to conceive of the relationship between violence and homelessness in new and unforeseen ways. I propose to bring an informed interdisciplinary and gender perspective to bear on the concept of homelessness. Accepting the supposition that the body can be seen as a site of homecoming, I explore the question of who owns the body. This exploration is undertaken through an examination of the advocacy slogan, 'my body, my business', and the placement of the Afrikan sex worker alongside Freud, Fanon and Foucault. The Afrikan sex worker in this work is a new feminist potentiality in much the same way that homelessness offers new postcolonial possibilities.