When homelessness becomes a “luxury”: Neutrality as an obstacle to counterpublic rights claims

Abstract

ABSTRACTRhetorical scholars have consistently demonstrated the value of engaging with difference in processes of public deliberation, yet publics still regularly make arguments on the basis of neutrality. Using a case study of advocacy for homeless bills of rights, I employ rhetorical field methods to assess vernacular responses to counterpublic rights claims. By attending to neutrality’s rhetorical force in practice, I examine how it enables publics to deny counterpublic assertions of inequality and obstruct counterpublic rights claims. I argue that neutrality allows publics to deny counterpublics’ needs, define counterpublics’ identities, and disguise their own self-interest. The theory of neutrality I offer here pushes rhetoricians beyond questions of its (un)desirability and (im)possibility to an understanding of how it operates.