Counter Memories, Porous Personhood and Dwelling Against 'Progress'

In their major recent anthology, published in 2022, writer and poet Eileen Myles reclaimed pathos from the wretchedness of political rhetoric, all too often used in conjunction with media portrayals to marginalise vernacular, unruly, and incomprehensible opposition by those not aligning themselves with an acceptable image citizenhood in a place such as, say, London. Myles urged a resistance to despair, advocating for the right to a fullness of life on one's own terms, in refusal of this imposition, and the implication that simply being oneself in a certain location - often desired by developers - is problematic. As someone who has emerged into a cultural profile from the societal margins and their all-too-ignored traumatic registers, as someone who lives and works with still marginalised and traumatised individuals and communities (and who still lives as one of them in many ways), I am often required to challenge mediated, ‘naturalised’ and even ‘asserted’ ways of looking at others. Notions of 'giving voice to' others erases (lives and environments) and, crucially, masks this process, and hence tethers these lives into trope moulds. Andrea Luka Zimmerman (Abstract for Politics of Housing, June 2023) --- Politicians and academics will address urgent issues at the ‘Politics of Housing’ international conference at the University of East London on July 6 and 7. Amidst the current UK housing crisis, politicians including the Mayor of Newham, Rokhsana Fiaz, and the Deputy Mayor for Housing at the Greater London Authority, Tom Copley, are both attending. Hosted by the Centre for Social Change and Justice at UEL, Dr Anna Minton (ACE), Professor Jeremy Gilbert (ACI), Dr. Debra Shaw, Dr. Penny Bernstock (UCL) and Dr Lynne McCarthy (Co-director of CSCJ) are leading the conference in Stratford alongside a number of speakers from London authorities, international universities and housing associations