‘A movement that renovates people, as well as buildings’: squatting and neodomestic space in Seth Tobocman’s <i>War in the Neighborhood</i>

Seth Tobocman’s War in the Neighborhood (2000), a graphic narrative about squatting Manhattan’s Lower East Side, attempts to rethink politics (both oppressive and liberatory) of domestic space. This article examines meanings home terms suggested by Kristin J. Jacobson, whose theorisation ‘neodomestic fiction’ suggests move contemporary American literature toward representations domesticity that affirm productive instability. instability is made manifest work on terrain gender race, where practice an anarchistic prefigurative collide with recurrence misogyny racism destabilise spaces are already threatened gentrification neighbourhood. Tobocman depicts squats as motivated efforts put radical into practice, but acknowledges perils they encounter doing so, develops account workings power provides explanation. After describing multivalent accounts occupy central role U.S. politics, I examine contestations argue text, virtue its political emphasis urban preoccupation, highlights connections between neodomestic fiction critical literary geography.