The Bartleby-Pilate principle. Will and responsibility in the government of homelessness.

Abstract

This paper discusses how several actors who must govern others reject being responsible for the negative consequences of their actions. Understanding this entails looking at this refusal of responsibility before it occurs. Its explanatory principle lies in a characteristic of governmental practices to which the social studies have paid little attention: the fact that several of the mentioned actors would rather not undertake the effort necessary to the act of government. Taking homelessness as a paradigmatic case, this issue is explored using what I call the Bartleby-Pilate principle. Like the scribe, actors with governmental functions in homelessness “would rather not”. However, unlike Bartleby, the former must act, which leads them to reject being responsible for the negative consequences of what they do over the lives that they govern, thus symbolically washing their hands like Pilate.