Precarity, Precariousness, Homelessness and the Literature and Ethics of Responsiveness

This chapter uses examples from contemporary literature about homelessness and forcible displacement to identify literary intersections with response ethics and related concepts: recognition and framing; witnessing and address; relationality, dispossession and corporeality. I argue that literature on homelessness evokes elements of response ethics in action within the narratives but also that writing and reading these stories is a significant activity in witnessing and responding to the needs of others, particularly by stimulating critical self-reflection on our relative vulnerabilities and possible ethical actions.