I've been convalescing after a small operation.. picked up a copy of Laing's The Divided Self and have been enjoying it thoroughly. It is a pity the contemporary psychiatric establishment is quickly falling prey to neuroscientific reductionism.. What a rich and wonderful world exists just through the rabbit hole, and to be banished by a few milligrams of compressed colourless powder seems almost a crime. Will all this not result in a Romantic counter-revolution? Perhaps it already has..
I think where Laird may be used as a counter-critique is in his understanding that mental illness functions within a social field, that it can never be fully removed from it. Here neurological reductionism fails miserably in that it treats merely the underlying chemical realities. Perhaps this is precisely what it wishes though.. it ensures a long and profitable future for the pharmaceutical industry along with its boot-licking cronies the reductionists. No, Laird would perhaps agree with me that this will simply not suffice. The more fundamental treatment would involve not just the brain organ, but the whole field in which the brain organ functions, i.e. society. Such a great project has already been (re) proposed and is steadily reaching its new realization. That is: The Communist Hypothesis, the little red pill for the capitalist dis-ease.
Regards
jeremy.
The Communist hypothesis lives. In pure terms, it offers a vivifying approach to the the difficulties of existing & functioning within a community: From each, according to ability; to each, according to need.. That taken care of, there then remains the possibility of dreaming big dreams: The attainment of the stars, perhaps..
ReplyDeleteWhat does capitalism offer? The production and consumption of things-for-distraction. So that distraction may follow distraction into a future that doesn't really dream of much of anything..
Excellent comments.. Badiou wholeheartedly agrees:
ReplyDelete"To put it in a nutshell: we have to be bold enough to have an idea. A great idea. We have to convince ourselves that there is nothing ridiculous or criminal about having a great idea. The world of global and arrogant capitalism in which we live is taking us back to the 1840s and the birth of capitalism. Its imperative, as formulated by Guizot, was: 'Get rich!' We can translate that as 'Live without an idea!' We have to say that we cannot live without an idea. We have to say: 'Have the courage to support the idea, and it can only be the communist idea in the generic sense.'"
Lovely. Thanks for the edification.. Did not know what company i kept
ReplyDelete