ABSTRACT

This interview was conducted via email in late 2020 in preparation for Lockdown: Mental Illness, Wellness, and COVID-19, a three-day online conference organised by myself, Madison Magladry (Curtin University), Debra Shaw (University of East London), and Jeremy Gilbert (University of East London). Anne McGuire had agreed to speak as a keynote, but time differences between Western Australia and Canada made even a Zoom call keynote impractical (the difficulties of syncing Zoom sessions and time zones became one of the many new problems of academic life in 2020). Accordingly, McGuire very kindly agreed to respond to my questions via email, the results of which were subsequently published in the conference catalogue, and served as a platform for a panel discussion on the final day, which included Will Davies (Goldsmiths), Stephanie Alice Baker (City, University of London), and Jeremy Gilbert. I had become aware of McGuire’s work through my own research on neoliberal mental healthcare and the newly emerging logics of spectrality that could be detected in institutional psychiatry’s interest in dimensions of health, illness, and comorbidity, and in the popular discourses around the ‘mental health spectrum’. As an academic working in disability studies, McGuire’s work on ‘mental illness’ (or madness, as many would prefer) is thought provoking and productive in its capacity to reassess contemporary institutional and discursive reformulations of health, sanity, and normality—and, furthermore, how these reformulations are irreducibly linked to the disempowerment and exploitation of the mad. McGuire’s work took on a new significance for me in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent global lockdowns, and with the emerging global discussion of the necessity of a more positive stance on tele-health and digital platforms for ‘sufferers’ of ‘mental illnesses’. Her capacity to show how supposedly novel and progressive forms of psychopathology and care—such as the notion of the mental health spectrum, which purportedly moves us beyond stigmatising notions of abnormality—reproduce hierarchies and social injustice, was incredibly helpful for negotiating the rhetoric of ‘the new normal’ that pervaded 2020. It was in the attempt to locate the meaning of the ‘new normal’ for those circumscribed within the institutions and discourses of ‘mental illness’—i.e., the reinvention of existing norms, inequalities, and injustices both in response to, and in some instances by way of the COVID-19 pandemic—that I turned to, and continue to turn to, McGuire’s work.

摘要

本次采访于 2020 年末通过电子邮件进行，为“封锁：精神疾病、健康和 COVID-19”做准备，由我自己、Madison Magladry（科廷大学）、Debra Shaw（东伦敦大学）和 Jeremy Gilbert（东伦敦大学）组织的为期三天的在线会议。Anne McGuire 已同意作为主题演讲发言，但西澳大利亚和加拿大之间的时差使得 Zoom 通话主题演讲也不切实际（同步 Zoom 会议和时区的困难成为 2020 年学术生活的众多新问题之一）。因此，McGuire 非常友好地同意通过电子邮件回复我的问题，其结果随后发布在会议目录中，并作为最后一天小组讨论的平台，其中包括 Will Davies（金史密斯学院）、Stephanie Alice Baker（伦敦大学城市学院）和 Jeremy Gilbert。通过我自己对新自由主义精神保健和新出现的光谱逻辑的研究，我了解了 McGuire 的工作，这些逻辑可以在机构精神病学对健康、疾病和合并症方面的兴趣以及围绕“心理健康”的流行话语中发现。光谱'。作为一名从事残疾研究的学者，麦奎尔关于“精神疾病”（或许多人更喜欢的疯狂）的工作在重新评估当代关于健康、理智和正常的制度和话语重新表述的能力方面发人深省且富有成效——而且，此外，这些重新表述如何与对疯子的剥夺权力和剥削有着不可分割的联系。在 COVID-19 大流行和随后的全球封锁之后，麦奎尔的工作对我有了新的意义，并且随着全球对“精神疾病患者”的远程医疗和数字平台必须采取更积极立场的必要性进行了新的讨论。她展示了所谓的新奇和进步形式的精神病理学和护理的能力——例如心理健康谱的概念，据称它使我们超越了对异常的污名化概念——再现了等级制度和社会不公正，对于谈判“的修辞”非常有帮助。 2020 年普遍存在的新常态。它试图为那些被“精神疾病”的制度和话语所局限的人找到“新常态”的含义——即对现有规范、不平等和不公正的再创造为了应对并在某些情况下通过 COVID-19 大流行，我转向并将继续转向 McGuire 的工作。