This thesis considers the condition of homelessness through its marginalposition against society. Exteriority is often perceived as an abnormal stateto be resolved through assimilation. To investigate it in its relationshipwith the inside, as opposites in a field of interaction, implies a constantstate of reaction and change, instead of one that rests in a resolution. Thethesis takes this form of continuous shifting between perspectives, media,scale of interaction, and locations, both physical and psychological. Itsjourney constitutes a search for a middle ground between absolute powerand absolute freedom, interiority and exteriority, and an exploration intothe possibilities for interaction in this strange and uncertain place.
Through this strategy, the thesis removes the issue of homelessnessfrom the conventional framework of an economical problem, to understandit instead as an existential reality. Homelessness becomes an experiencethat involves real people and unseen identities; the shifts in the form ofthis work reflect the subtle idiosyncracies that arise from this subjectivereading. In its exteriority, homelessness is related to the psychoanalyticalnotion of otherness: a quality that is emotional and uncontrolled, andexists outside of social laws. As a threat to public order, this quality isundesireable within society. Thus, the Other is an identity that becomessubjugated and hidden through the exercize of power. The thesis relieson established ideas, including Michel Foucault;;s exposure of thissocial repression, R.D. Laing;;s empathetic perception of ontologicalinsecurity, and Julia Kristeva;;s essay on abjection, to give context to itsambiguous subject. Set against the tentative narration and notation of livedexperiences, they seek to uncover the subjective identity of the Other, andto grasp the significance of his expulsion from the interior. The intentionof this work is not to judge, or to implement solutions. Rather, it is passiveand receptive, and exists largely in the mere confrontation of this estrangedcondition.
Out of this confrontation, the voices that were buried begin to emergeand assert themselves. Narrative, criticism, design, and visual essaybecome the vehicles that convey these voices and the multiplicity of theirexistential experiences, forming a reality from that which was previouslyinvisible to the objective city. This mapping is a construction of displacedidentities. The synthesis of these elements exposes the grounds for thepossibility of new connections between individuals.
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