Organizing remembrance: Publicness, commemoration, and counter-archival practices at the Toronto Homeless Memorial

This project responds to the related problematic of neoliberal dehousing and the decline of the public realm. As citizens, our capacity for action and speech is curtailed by neoliberal rationality and the loss of public sites of/for educational exchange. Meanwhile, the commodification of housing and gutting of social assistance has created crisis levels of people living without housing in Canada. These are joint concerns as 1) neoliberal rationality has cemented the idea of the citizen as self-sufficient consumer, rather than collectively responsible political actor, and 2) the phenomenon of dehousing is an attempt to remove from public discourse (and public space) the very citizens subjected to the violence of neoliberal policies. In addition, the very existence of a public realm for citizens to appear in together is being traded for sites of economic consumption and social conformity. This dissertation takes as its point of departure an event known as the Toronto Homeless Memorial. For almost 25 years, the Toronto Homeless Memorial has cultivated an environment that invites the public expression of grief for those who have died without housing. The monthly memorial event declares that this is not okay and demands that citizens act together to contest the ongoing violence of preventable death. Drawing on public pedagogy scholarship, political theory, and memory studies, this project asks, how does commemoration generate and reinvigorate the public realm? The account of the Toronto Homeless Memorial here is compiled through an analysis of comprehensive archival data, testimonies from past and present memorial volunteers, and ethnographic observation at the monthly memorial event. It is an attempt to map the historical context, conceptual vocabulary, and pedagogical practices of the Toronto Homeless Memorial. By doing so, this project offers insight into the relationship between commemorative pedagogy and “publicness,” the role of the archive in the public pedagogy of housing activists, and the aesthetic practices used to cultivate wonder, care, and action amidst conditions of trauma, mass privatization, and media spectacle in neoliberal times.