COLOMBINI, Crystal

Winter 2019, 49.5, pages 447–469

The Rhetorical Resistance of Tiny Homes: Downsizing Neoliberal Capitalism

Abstract: 

Asking how post-crisis countercultural formations compose new means of resisting an unjust economic order, this essay centers the tiny homes movement, which takes the financialization and commodification of housing as a warrant for radically downsized dwellings. As I argue, the campaign to displace (from) big homes and emplace tiny homes relies on coordinating rhetorical modalities: the parrhēsiastic case against dominant but flawed materializations of “good living” and the eudaimonic envisioning of an alternative “good living” less beholden to capital. I conclude by reviewing both problematics and possibilities that emerge from this inventive play for social and economic change.