coerced treatment

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Fri Jun 15 00:24:25 PDT 2001



>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>>
>> >I am overposting here -- this will be my last one for the day.
>> >
>> >Desegregation -- that means quit confining disabled persons to
>> >institutions and provide the option for one to live in the community
>> >like nondisabled people do for starters. Some nondisabled persons
>> >live with family, some live with friends and some live alone.
>> >
>> >Segregation is the historical reality for disabled persons, and not
>> >coincidentally the proliferation of institutions coincides with the
>> >rise of capitalism.
>> >Marta
>>
>> That makes sense, but in that case, our argument would be _for_ home
>> care necessary for assisted living, directly or indirectly provided
>> by the state, & improvement of it for both disabled persons &
>> care-giving workers. Clarifying what disabled persons & care-giving
>> workers need helps us better than a broad-brush criticism of the
>> medical profession tout court.
>>
>But it is the medical profession who commit disabled persons to these
>institutions and which has been complicit in organizing the
>segreation! You cannot separate them.
>
>Marta

So, where do you go from here? Give up on medicine? Or reform it? If the latter, criticisms had better be concrete & discriminating -- instead of abstract & all-encompassing -- with suggestions for better practices.

Moreover, the medical profession doesn't exist in isolation from the rest of social relations. Modern discrimination against & oppression of the disabled -- especially the Great Confinement of the disabled & other groups that Foucault discusses -- arose in response to capitalism that demanded the confinement of the unproductive & the disruptive (unproductive & disruptive from capital's point of view). Medicine is but a vehicle through which capital's class power has been exercised. Capital's power over experts (medical or otherwise), however, is contestable. The best example may be the removal of homosexuality from DSM in 1973, in response to the demand by the rising gay liberation movement.

While a multitude of micro-politics of power that pit doctors against patients, teachers against students, lawyers against clients, social workers against participants in state-funded programs, etc. are not unimportant, focusing upon them in such a way as to put capital out of sight (of theory & practice) is in the end counter-productive. In fact, capital would love you to think of doctors, nurses, orderlies, & other care-giving workers as your main enemies, just as it would love women to think of men as our main enemies. Micro-politics, instead, should be waged with a view to how they fit into the big picture: capital's exploitation of labor; & socialists' project to abolish it & establish the system of production for human needs & desires, not for profits.

Yoshie



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