Hi Alistair,
Just to clarify, I am assuming by 'care in the community' you mean as an alternative to institutionalisation? Where instead of constant surveillance there are only specific points of contact. Sort of like the difference between a suspended sentence or parole and being in prison?
As per Deleuze's concept control operates through modulation, which for most readers of Deleuze this has meant affective modulation. It seems that 'care' in this context is a form of modulation. For example, people with mental health issues are institutionally diagnosed and then regulated through a loose network of personal contact and drugs. I am certainly not an expert, having only seen relatives and friends go through this process, but most of the drugs work upon the affect system either by flattening it or increasing the capacity to register positive affect and so on. Not sure what the anti-psychotics do.
The discursive formation of community care in mental health, for example, is organised around isolating and working open the symptoms of an 'illness'. (Illness in scare quotes because this is the first performative act of mental health discourse, to give a consistency to various symptoms and then bestow mental health workers and others, such as police, nurses, etc. with the capacity to recognise these symptoms.) Similarly, the discursive formation of aged care is about warding of 'risk' and maximising 'quality of life'.
Does this help? I am not sure what else to add without knowing more about your project.
Ciao,
Glen.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Alastair Kemp" <alastair.kemp@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Foucault List" <foucault-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, April 27, 2009 4:44 PM
Subject: [Foucault-L] Diagrams and Care in the Community
Just to clarify, I am assuming by 'care in the community' you mean as an alternative to institutionalisation? Where instead of constant surveillance there are only specific points of contact. Sort of like the difference between a suspended sentence or parole and being in prison?
As per Deleuze's concept control operates through modulation, which for most readers of Deleuze this has meant affective modulation. It seems that 'care' in this context is a form of modulation. For example, people with mental health issues are institutionally diagnosed and then regulated through a loose network of personal contact and drugs. I am certainly not an expert, having only seen relatives and friends go through this process, but most of the drugs work upon the affect system either by flattening it or increasing the capacity to register positive affect and so on. Not sure what the anti-psychotics do.
The discursive formation of community care in mental health, for example, is organised around isolating and working open the symptoms of an 'illness'. (Illness in scare quotes because this is the first performative act of mental health discourse, to give a consistency to various symptoms and then bestow mental health workers and others, such as police, nurses, etc. with the capacity to recognise these symptoms.) Similarly, the discursive formation of aged care is about warding of 'risk' and maximising 'quality of life'.
Does this help? I am not sure what else to add without knowing more about your project.
Ciao,
Glen.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Alastair Kemp" <alastair.kemp@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Foucault List" <foucault-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, April 27, 2009 4:44 PM
Subject: [Foucault-L] Diagrams and Care in the Community
Hi
Someone recently asked about diagrams, I've been reading Deleuze's Foucault and Deleuze mentions two things. Could anyone enlighten me?
Firstly, he mentions that "there is no similarity between the way in which the general hospital or the asylum locked up madmen in the seventeenth century and the way prison locked up delinquents in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The imprisonment of madmen was imposed like an 'exile' and took the leper as its model, while the confinement of delinquents was carried out by 'partitioning' and took its model from plague victims."
Earlier he states: "when Foucault invokes the notion of diagram it is in connection with our modern disciplinarian societies, where power controls the whole field: if there is a model it is that of the 'plague', which cordons off the stricken town and regulates the smallest detail. But if we consider the ancient sovereign societies we can see that they also possess a diagram, even if it relates to different matters and functions: here too a force is exercised on other forces, but it is used to deduct rather than to combine and compose to divide rather than to isolate the detail; to exile rather than to seal off (it's model is that of leprosy')"
I'm looking at care in the community as a new diagram, but, erroneously it seems, had assumed the asylum was disiplinarian, therefore the new diagram was one of control, but am not sure now it seems to be one of exile. There is still a discursive form of confinement, I have ideas of what the non-discursive form is.
Anyone any ideas? comments?
Best regards
Alastair Kemp
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