What's In a Name?

Lately I have been wondering what it means for us to use the word "homeless" in reference to a particular person or group of persons. It's a linguistic practice I engage in all the time but one to which I have paid little sustained attention. For example, in conversations with my wife I will frequently refer to the "homeless" or "our homeless friends" at St. Joe's. And I suspect that, like me, most of us think nothing of using "homeless" as an indexical marker, a sortal by which to name a person or persons. However, it occurred to me today that, as a primary means of distinction, this readily available and handy denominator, while presumably applicable in the majority of cases it is used, is nevertheless perhaps not the most charitable descriptor available for our use.

For starters, the use of the adjective "homeless" as a primary designator opens subtle but no less insidious possibilities for the individual and collective exploitation of the already oppressively subjugated. After all, there's no glory (and thus, little point) in relaying to a colleague that I happen to have breakfast with some guys from my church every morning. But to mention that I daily share a breakfast table with the homeless, well, that's a much more personally advantageous way to tell the story! In such a case, my breakfast companions' plight can quite easily become my profit simply by use of that two-syllable word, "homeless." Indeed, by employing that otherwise seemingly harmless term, a great deal of social capital can be had at the expense of those with little to no capital whatsoever.

Secondly, and more reflexively, I think it is worth asking the question as to whether or not I would like to be identified primarily through descriptors the possibility for the rightful application of which I would be less than enthused to have so highlighted. What would it be like for the generally perceived "negative" features of my daily existence to be raised to the level of a primary marker? "Oh, there's Adam, my lazy friend." "Hi, I'd like you to meet my unjustifiably self-satisfied buddy, Adam." "Let me tell you what my unreasonably rotund friend from church did the other day." How many of us would like to be so denominated? Though ostensibly innocuous, I would imagine a less potentially damaging means of identification could be conjured than "homeless." I certainly have difficulty conceiving a scenario wherein I would be comfortable referring to my friend W primarily by the term "homeless" while in W's presence. What, then, does that say about how I use the term?

Thirdly, and on the topic of identification, how might the use of the word "homeless" as a frequently recurrent signfier promote the creation of a static and behaviorally short-circuiting identity among those so named? Here I have in mind friends whose various inclinations (imagined or otherwise) have, through externally generated reinforcement, become their primary (and often sole) means of self-description such that they cannot conceive of themselves apart from those descriptive terms. If one grows up in a home, for example, where one is called "stupid" with any significant frequency, it often becomes painfully difficult to imagine oneself in any other terms, effectively trapping such a one in an unnecessarily generated prison of identity. "Homeless" could thus function, not as a description of one's current domestic circumstance, but as an integral (metaphysical) feature of who one is. Yet, how would/could such a one ever begin to think of themselves any differently after having been (repeatedly and reinforcingly) so damned?

Lastly, I wonder how much the primary use of "homeless" as an indexical term is a function of our desire to create distance between our bourgeois selves and these, the phenomenologically "other". To what degree does "homeless", as a fundamental category, quarantine the terrifying possibility that we might otherwise be confronted with an actual person whose naked and common humanity, freed from all externally imposed, carefully constructed, and calculatedly constraining labels, might be seen to have legitimate claim on our lives and possessions? What kind of buffer or boundary does "homeless", as a primary designator, create for we who are apt to use it? At the very least, I wonder what it would be like if I discovered that "the homeless" folks with whom I share breakfast primarily referred to my friends and I as "the homed." What would the use of such a label, the differential grammar of which is rooted in economic class/status, do to my understanding of the nature of our relationship or their perception of me as a (classed) person?

I must confess that I don't have much to offer by way of an answer or linguistic replacement (recall that the above is merely a reflection on my own deeply ingrained - and potentially bad - linguistic habits). Really, all I intend to accomplish at this juncture is the raising of a question. And, indeed, perhaps a case can be made for the continued use of "homeless" in the signifying capacity I have described above. But, for the time being, I think that the question is worth asking and our linguistic practices with respect to "the homeless" we encounter worth evaluating. Minimally, can we not envision a more intentional and charitable means of reference to these, the embodiment of Christ's person made present?

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