Status Updates From Empire of Normality: Neurod...

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This contradiction – being caught between alienation and disablement – does not just help clarify how liberation is impossible under the capitalist mode of production. It also shows us how the interests of the working class and the interests of the surplus class are one.

A critical point---praxis must align the interests of workers and the precariously employed/unemployed.

"The same working of the same system harms both cognitive workers in the imperial core and manual workers in the peripheries, albeit in different ways."

Touching importantly on an egregious phenomenon:

While the rationale is about choice and harm reduction for people with terminal illnesses and in great pain, in practice 'euthanasia in Canada represents the cynical endgame of social provisioning within the brutal logic of late-stage capitalism.

Chapman's critique of Thomas Szasz's brand of anti-psychiatry is extremely helpful (as someone who briefly flirted with Szaszian idealism in the context of overwhelming engagements with psychiatry). It might have benefited from a bit more space for outlining Franco Basaglia's perspective as a dialectical counter, but still, Chapter 5 on "The Myths of Anti-Psychiatry" is the peak of this book so far.

On a more positive note: I appreciate the genealogy of the "average" as a social, not just mathematical concept, and how it lends an air of scientific credulity to reification of capitalist structures, hierarchies and naturalized ideals.

The dialectical role of technology as either a boon or an impediment to consciousness is also a thought-provoking thread here.

A generous birthday gift from my sister that's been on the list for a while!

First impressions are the usual pitfalls of liberal intersectionality ("empire of normality" as a neurotypical totality explicitly overarching above 'social class') with reductionist portrayal of "orthodox Marxism", dismissal-by-caricature of AES ('Lenin praised Pavlov!', so never mind Grunya Sukhareva?). Still some promising threads.