Connectivity – Contributions from the Network #9 – Naomi Eisenberg

Thanks to everyone who sent me comments and thoughts on the Connectivity writing project.  Over the next few days I’ll post up some of the feedback and thoughts that these pieces.  Remember to send comments on these things too and I’ll pull them all together.

This post came from Naomi Eisenberg Departments of Allied Health and Vascular Surgery, University Health Network, Toronto and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Naomi Eisenberg

Well, I think that a logical critique of the medical model could evolve from Foucault and his thoughts on the medical gaze…in The Birth of the Clinic he writes of how the patient is necessarily removed from the equation, leaving only the diseased body. The patient’s “self” is “other”ed before he/she can contribute to a discussion. And in turn, this “othering” not only marginalises the patient, but simultaneously reinforces an inequality within the power relationship.  I don’t know as much about the social models of disability, but from the brief piece that you wrote on the blog, it seems that the same argument could be built.