Like Foucault, I am struggling with the residual power of the institutions to label these social behaviors and choice and attempt to understand it in some "neutral" way.
I realise that I cannot easily do this as no matter how hard I try to consider their choice and listen to their own explanations, I still keep referring back to some medical model of "what is healthy” because the alternatives do not offer something as concrete. Perhaps this is the crux of the dilemma we all feel who do want to give credence to Pro Anas’ intelligence and freedom to choose and speak for themselves.
Yet we know that if we accept their freedoms and choices, then we too could be seen as either becoming complicit in their “downfall” if we follow Parson’s line of the healthy organism which rejects the sickness; or we too could be seen as “trouble makers” and be “tarred with the same brush” as the Pro Anas and have to face some echo of the social isolation that they face – and would we want this? What is stronger – our desire to understand or our desire to remain socialized and “be one of the pack”? |
