A genealogy of (bio)political contestation during the reform of the Mental Health Act 1983 in England and Wales.
Year: 2006
Type: dissertation
Abstract: In 1997 the Department of Health announced their intention to reform the Mental Health \nAct 1983. Since publishing the first Green Paper in 1999, the proposed reforms have \nreceived major criticisms from virtually all 'stakeholders' in mental health care. This PhD \noffers a genealogy of (bio)political action during the process of reforming the Act. The \nfocus is on the period from August 2002 to September 2003, with particular reference to \nthe activities of self proclaimed 'service users' and 'survivors' in two independent protest \ngroups: 'NO Force' and . Protest Against the Bill'. \nThe methodological premise (chapters two and three) is born from something of a lacuna \nin post-Foucauldian governmentality studies which, although well posited, offer little in \nthe way of advancing a genealogy of governmental contestation. My focus is twofold. \nFirstly, by advancing a (post)Foucauldian understanding of resistance - which, with \nrespect to power, 'always comes first' (Deleuze 1988) - I aim to develop the relationship \nbetween 'biosociality' or 'life politics' (Rabinow 1996, Rose 200 I) and mental health \nlaw. Secondly, I seek to draw on the correlate of governmentality: agonism, taking it into \ngovernmental contestations in broadly 'liberal democratic' societies by focusing on what \nTully (1999) calls "the free agonic activities of participation" (171). Together these \nadvance my focus on agonistic 'games of truth' enacted during the reform process. \nThis general methodological premise underpins my three major fieldwork chapters. \nChapter four focuses on agonism in actu through the process of demonstrating (in the \nform of a protest march undertaken by No Force). Beginning with, as Barry (200 I) notes, \nthe techniques and technologies "of telling and witnessing the truth" (176), I move \nthrough, and beyond Foucault, with respect to the importance of mediatisation and \ncirculation in agonistic truth telling today. Chapter five expands on my understanding of \nlife politics to offer a genealogy of the imbrications between human rights (law) and \nmental health (law) during the reforms. Here recourse to (human) rights is posited neither \nsimply as a (dangerous) 'empty category' nor exemplary of an expanding 'vital life' but \nhaving a distinct genealogy emerging from problematisations in mental health law. \nFinally, in chapter six, I tum to the use of testimony from 'psychiatric survivors'. This \nform of biopolitical truth speech is not only illuminating of agonistic games of truth but \nalso of that which is other to it (those who do not speak) and that what falls at the limits \nofbiopolitical truth speech (for those who cannot speak).
Author: Louisa Cadman
Language: English
Topic: Foucault, Power, and Ethics
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2582000558