In the world today, madness is undoubtedly present: one either forms part of it or trivializes what a panic attack or depression can be. Unwellness seems to be reduced to a private and personal matter, as if it was possible to simply decide to suffer and not stay in line with the arbitrary notion of what is normal. In addition, attention is diverted away from the political implications of a series of disorders typical of our age, and that, rooted in the precarious conditions of our current lives, turns our existence into an anxious one, with constant stress and a threat of never-ending suffering.

As part of the A Possible Strength: Towards a Poietics of Living Together activities program, this reading group and collective reflection emerge with the goal of revisiting a past that reverberates in the present: from Jacques Lacan and his intuition on illness capitalism, language, and bodies, to the developments and possibilities of being-another, touching on alternative psychiatry, communal experiences, reforms to the assistance to the ill since the 1970s, and finally the current intersection of biology and neo-liberalism, in the twilight of the welfare state, where pain and death are become primordial vectors in new bio-political reasoning.

The proposed series of texts and films seeks to delve into possibilities opened up decades ago by a number of militant-researchers that worked, not only on language and images, but also on the body. On sharing certain physical and psychological symptoms, they were able to show that  they are also common. As such, the group looks not only to find discursive negotiation, but also to address different practices, geared towards an exercise in enunciation that imagines new forms of insurrection and revolt.

This workshop is directed to professionals or users of mental health, to interested and affected persons, diagnosed and non-diagnosed, and at those interested in this way of managing this experience.

Program

Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid

Session 1. The Society of Stress

Monday, 11 June – from 5pm to 9pm

Accompanied by Amador Fernández Savater

Reading:
Suely Rolnik, “¿Una nueva suavidad?”, in Félix Guattari; and Suely Rolnik, Micro política. Cartografías del deseo, Madrid, Traficantes de Sueños, 2006

There are more and more bodies that, to different degrees, feel the obligations that are a by-product of living as a force that carries on its shoulders a constant state of unease. Anxiety, stress, exhaustion, and fatigue are words chosen by some theorists to describe the mutations of a society that distances itself farther from well-being with every crisis, while forms of contemporary production and reproduction demand more docile and precarious bodies.

Session 2. Début d'une lutte prolongée...

Wednesday, 20 June – from 5pm to 9pm

Accompanied by Guillermo Rendueles

Readings:
Félix Guattari, “Anti-psiquiatría y anti-psicología” and “El circuito alternativo de la psiquiatría”, from La revolución molecular, Madrid, Errata naturae editores, 2017

Film:
Peter Robinson, Asylum, USA, 1972, about Dr. Laing's Archway Community (96’)

This session seeks to analyze current illnesses beginning with the revision of a series of experiences that imagined an alternative future in the 1970s: Franco Basaglia's position in favor of socialized care, the ennobled marginalization of the Socialist Collective of Patients (SPK) in Heidelberg, the right to be mentally ill demanded at La Borde or in the sit-ins and strikes held by anti-Francoist psychiatrists. All these experiences, through different means, insist on the need to reflect on the relationship between clinics and politics, not as a dimension of personal life, but rather as the effect of certain social phenomena that stem from modes of production and domination.

Session 3. Other-transformation

Wednesday, 27 June - from 5pm to 9pm

Accompanied by Franco Castignani and La Rara Troupe

Readings:
Félix Guattari, “Devenir niño, devenir maleante” and “Devenir mujer”, from La revolución molecular, Madrid, Errata naturae editores, 2017
Fernand Deligny,Semilla de crápula,Buenos Aires, Editorial Cactus and Tinta Limón Ediciones, October 2017

Film:
Fernand Deligny, Josée Manenti and Jean-Pierre Daniel, Le moindre geste, France, 1971 (101’)

The pragmatic essays of Fernand Deligny and the collaboration between Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze (in their work Capitalismo y esquizofrenia) on how subjectification must transcend individual limits, sketch a singular and at the same time multiple way of being. It concerns pragmatics and a new epistemology that go beyond schizophrenia as a limit of capitalism, as demonstrated in the program of recent feminist struggles and in the work of different collectives that, bringing together people diagnosed and non-diagnosed, explores sensitivity and daily life as the center of the political sphere. Part of the session will take place in Dora García's Second Time Around exhibition hall.

Session 4. Exile

Wednesday, 4 July – from 4pm to 7pm

Accompanied by Montserrat Rodríguez Garzo

Readings:
Jacques Lacan, Seminario 7. La ética del psicoanálisis, Buenos Aires, Paidós, 1988

Film:
Horacio Valcárcel, Psiquiatría social, Spain 1970 (11’)

This session investigates exile as a place in the world basing it on the paths of two conflictive exiles, through Jacques Lacan, François Tosquelles, and Oscar Masotta. Using this focus as a foundation one can consider exile as a necessary way of being, and from where one can confront the primary deprivation borne out of the separation from one's roots. At the same time, and using it as an example, it is possible to come to terms with ostracism as one's own style, as an expression of individuality.

Grupo de lectura - Una fuerza posible: hacia una poiética del vivir-juntas

En el mundo contemporáneo, la locura se presenta sin matices: o se está enrolado en sus filas o se trivializa sobre lo que supone un ataque de pánico o una depresión. El malestar parece reducirse a una cuestión privada, de carácter personal, como si fuese posible simplemente decidir sufrir y no ajustarse al imperio arbitrario de lo normal. Además, la atención se desvía de las implicaciones políticas de una serie de trastornos propios de nuestra época que, enraizados en las precarias condiciones de vida actuales, hacen de la existencia una zozobra, un agobio constante o la amenaza de un dolor que no cesa.

Como parte del programa de actividades Una fuerza posible: hacia una poiética del vivir-juntas, surge este grupo de lectura y reflexión colectiva con el objetivo de recorrer un pasado que reverbera en el presente: desde Jacques Lacan y su intuición sobre cómo el capitalismo enferma el lenguaje y los cuerpos, a los devenires y posibilidades de ser-otro, pasando por la psiquiatría alternativa, las experiencias comunitarias y las reformas de la asistencia a enfermos desde los años setenta, hasta llegar, finalmente, al cruce actual entre biología y neoliberalismo, en el crepúsculo de la sociedad del bienestar, donde el dolor y la muerte se constituyen en vectores primordiales de la nueva razón biopolítica.

La serie de textos y películas propuestas busca profundizar en las posibilidades abiertas hace décadas por una serie de investigadores-militantes que trabajaron, no solo sobre el lenguaje y las imágenes, sino también sobre el cuerpo. Al compartir ciertos síntomas físicos y psíquicos, lograron evidenciar que lo propio es también común. Por tanto, el grupo no solo pretende llegar a un agenciamiento discursivo, sino también a abordar distintas prácticas, apuntando a un ejercicio de enunciación que imagina nuevas formas de insurrección y revuelta.

Esta convocatoria está dirigida a profesionales o usuarios de la salud mental, a personas interesadas y afectadas, diagnosticadas y no diagnosticadas, y a aquellas interesadas por esta forma de gestionar la experiencia.