>>engaged in. I do critique the paternalism that goes hand in hand with the
>>notion of "helping the disabled." There has been horrible horrible
>>abuse of disabled persons in the name of "helping" them. Who designed
>>the institutions? Do you really think that the state run institutions
>>were "good" places to live?
As was leaving home today, I encountered a mentally ill homeless person (judging from the fact that he was constantly talking to himself) waiting in the scorching heat for a church-run shelter nearby to open. The shelter opens around 8PMM and closes early in the morning. This is an epitome of private approach to mental disability. It is so, because there is little money to be made in tjis area, and private business is about making money. I think that a state run institutions would score much better. As a matter of fact, I think that state-owned institutions would score much better in almost every other aspect of social and economic life (from transportation to manufacturing to corporate accounting) except perhaps services and retail trade - but that is another issue.
>>I suggest reading Wolf Wolfensberger on the medical model institutions
>>for a start, though Michael Oliver is much better on disability matters
>>-- way advanced beyond Wolfensberger's critique because he challenges
>>normalizing. I am for oppressed groups empowering themselves. Foucalt
>>was particularly good at revealing the power structure of institutional
>>oppression.
I like Foucault - his "Surveille et punir" was quite provocative. I also like the idea of 'deconstructing' - which by all means has not been invented by pomos - it can be tracked back to Socrates, not to mention surrealists and their intellectual heirs. What irks me is the fundamentalist offshoot of that idea (aka "political correctness") which holds that calling things differently will change the reality itself (e.g. calling the disabled "physically challenged"). In my book, such practices belong to the same genre as "praying for the less fortunate."
wojtek