Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 22:17:23 -0700 (PDT)
From: andrew robinson <ldxar1-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: [postanarchism] re: strategic essentialism


What strikes me about the intuitionist example is that
the intuitionist is clear in her own mind on being an
intuitionist and in the goal to which her strategy
points (i.e. that this goal is intuitionist not
empiricist), but she deploys empiricism only in order
to deal with an empiricist.  If this is how strategic
essentialism works then probably I'm wrong about its
implications, but I was under the impression it
usually means something slightly different, because
the oppressed are supposed to believe in the "essence"
they adopt.

Anyway, a question I'd like to ask is:
What does all this mean in the context of
anti-psychiatry and mad liberation?

Would the affirmation of psychological difference or
as "mad" as a category be strategic essentialism? 
What about the strategic use of a specific psychiatric
label as a social protection - for instance, as a way
of getting benefits or a defence in court? - I can see
how it makes sense in these kinds of cases, but then
again, I don't think anti-psychiatry challenges the
differences in question to the same degree that an
anti-essentialist critique of race or gender might
attempt; it tends to revalue differences rather than
to deny them, and the deconstruction tends to be of
normality and of specific psychiatric categories
rather than the idea of difference as such.


		
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