Recognizing the Body as Being Political: Considering Arendt’s Concepts in the Context of Homelessness in Japan

Abstract

People who are homeless inhabit public spaces; their bodies appear. Yet, they are not often seen as individuals with remarkable sufferings caused by invisibility in society. While thinking alongside the ideas elaborated by the German Jewish political theorist and philosopher, Hannah Arendt, I consider the possibility of a political act called forth by attending to the body of people who are homeless. By drawing on Arendt’s deliberations on human rights and citizenship and private and public realms, I attend to the incongruence emerging between the sociopolitical constructions of the bodies and the corporeal bodies shaping the worlds. Using narrative inquiry, I weave the voices, stories, and lived experiences of two men, Yoshi and Ama, who have been homeless in Japan for more than ten years. By doing so, it points that the body of people who are homeless can be understood as a political action against human recognition which creates suffering.