Tad and Elizabeth are both presenting conference papers at this year’s Historical Materialism conference, held in Central London later this week. UK readers can register for the conference here.
This is the abstract for Tad’s paper Beyond critical psychiatry: Towards a materialist account of mental illness:
After
decades of dominance, biological psychiatry faces a crisis of legitimacy and
the emergence of new critical perspectives within and outside the profession.
Some have even questioned basic philosophical assumptions of psychiatric
research and practice. This growing critique is particularly evident in debates
over the diagnosis of depression, a condition whose prevalence and treatment
has risen dramatically in the neoliberal era, and whose validity is
increasingly under challenge. Yet, despite at times offering radical insights,
such critiques fail to provide a thoroughgoing rethinking of the mainstream
psychiatric project. A Marxist approach, drawing especially on the work of
Valentin Voloshinov and Peter Sedgwick, must start by integrating four key
insights to move beyond the limits of critical psychiatry’s current scope: (1)
The critique of medical individualism as the basic organising principle of
clinical practice, (2) the conceptualisation of emotion and cognition as
emerging at the boundary between the (biological) subject and society, (3) the
nature of health and illness, “mental” and “physical”, as social constructions,
and (4) the indissoluble link between identification of illness and the social
practice of treatment. The integration of these concepts within a materialist
account of the rise of depression locates it in a dynamic, contested space at
the intersection of powerful corporate and state interests, the reductive
biological horizons of capitalist medicine, and the growing social distress
produced by three decades of neoliberalisation — as well as growing subaltern
opposition to their effects. Such an account can act as a framework for further
investigations into mental health and illness in the context of projects for
social transformation, as well as contributing to alternative heuristics in
psychiatric research.
This is the abstract for Elizabeth’s paper Understood in their ‘originality and uniqueness’: Locating Gramsci’s organic intellectuals in the Australian Global Justice movement:
Antonio
Gramsci articulated the category of ‘organic intellectuals’ to describe
individuals whose role is ‘as constructor, organiser, “permanent persuader”,’
providing leadership within hegemonic projects to forge a ‘popular collective
will’. Gramsci linked this construct to that of ‘The Modern Prince’, a
strategic centre (or party) within subaltern hegemonic movements, bringing
together organic intellectuals within a common project. While these general
conceptions have been much discussed, they have less commonly been utilised in
the concrete study of modern social movements. The emergence of the Global
Justice Movement (GJM) in the late 1990s seems to provide a fertile context in
which to examine the relevance of Gramsci’s theoretical approach, especially as
the movement possessed clear anti-systemic characteristics and rapidly drew
together diverse social forces around common concerns and aims (both within and
across national boundaries). In the weeks after the Seattle protests of late
1999 it led Stephen Gill to proclaim the emergence of a ‘Post-Modern Prince’
which sought ‘to develop a global and universal politics of radical
(re)construction’. Contra Gill, Matthew D Stephen pointed to the limitations of
the GJM’s model of ‘unity in diversity’ vis-à-vis Gramsci’s problematic, noting
especially Gill’s silence on the role of organic intellectuals in cohering the
movement’s direction. Drawing on analysis of interviews with leading activists
from the Australian GJM, this paper demonstrates the utility of Gramsci’s
categories. It highlights the crystallisation of a layer of movement ‘networkers’
— akin to organic intellectuals — from within the various sectors of the
movement but whose orientation was to build a wider movement transcending those
sectoral divisions. It also points to the limitations of their development when
the GJM fell into decline, their inability to collectively respond to the challenges
faced by the movement, and ultimately the inability of the movement to produce
a self-conscious ‘Modern Prince’ to take it forward. It confirms Stephen’s
assessment of Gill’s premature celebration of the GJM, but also — following
Gramsci — suggests the potential for a deeper development of anti-systemic
movements through a conscious focus on uniting movement networkers as a central
aim of building an effective strategic centre.
