Hi, I have a few short reflections to share in written form after reading chapter 4 ("MADNESS") from Health Communism by Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant before our video chat tomorrow at 12p ET.

As usual, we'll have our video chat on Saturday at 12pm ET; you can join here. We'll talk about chapter 4 of Health Communism (and whatever else comes to mind).

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MADNESS

The outcome of this dualistic understanding of "mild vs. severe mental illness" was that those who could not meet the rehabilitative expectations of psychiatrists were considered to be irreparably damaged, and thus categorically stripped of their personhood, agency, and autonomy.

Jeremy Bentham's elaboration of his Panopticon as "a mill to grind rogues honest and idle men industrious."

The asylums and the early psychiatric profession, filling its role as stewards of capitalist population management, were tasked with deriving as much labor and professional value from their wards as possible, within the bounds of the contemporary economic and class system.

Large state institutions, hospital-schools, and asylums were replaced by an assemblage of public-private, non-profit, and for-profit nursing and home-care corporations as the preferred locales for the sequestration of the surplus class.

Reflections

I'm not sharing the full text because it was several pages, but I would encourage anyone who has a chance (and the capacity) to read the stories of Mr. Frank and Miss Margaret in the middle of the chapter. I think it's hard to appreciate how abruptly your life can change when the state makes certain determinations about your mental capacity to take care of yourself, and how abruptly those determinations can be made. I don't really want to say much more than that in this format, but maybe we'll talk more about it in signal or video chat.

I also want to call out something that captured my attention on an initial read: this quotation from Jeremy Bentham, about the Panopticon as "a mill to grind rogues honest and idle men industrious"; it certainly feels like the modus operandi for the state when it comes to madness is to grind features away from those people, and take more and more surface away until they can be just sufficiently featureless for capital's purposes.

I might have more to say in places that are less permanent than here, but mostly I'm just reflecting on things. Might say more later, but probably not.

If you want to share something, I'd certainly love to hear it. All the usual ways (signal, video chat, etc...) are good, as usual.

I will gently suggest some circumspection when writing very publicly about one's own mental health, experiences with things of this nature, etc...

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If you haven't bought the book yet, you can still catch up. You can buy it here. Purchases made through the Workshops4Gaza fundraiser send proceeds (or more, if you opt to donate more) to The Sameer Project.

If you can't buy the book (or can't buy it from Open Poetry because of shipping constraints or something), please consider making a donation directly to The Sameer Project, if you have the money for it. If you don't please consider sharing the book (or the reading group) with comrades and other like-minded friends.

That's all for now; hope to talk tomorrow.