Tracing Displacements: Or Evictions in the Nomosphere

In this paper I sketch some of the practical connections between two kinds of displacement: experiential–material displacement and discursive or metaphorical displacement. I examine these connections in the context of legal struggles over the eviction of families from public housing. The evictions were authorized on the basis of interpretations of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 (the “One Strike and You're Out” law) which allows public-housing authorities to evict blameless tenants if anyone in their family had been convicted of drug possession. The paper introduces a neologism, “the nomosphere”, and offers suggestions as to its utility for advancing the project of critical legal geography.