The compassionate government and its patronizing care: The case of guardianships

Comment published on New York Times online blog, in response to opinion piece by John Leland, “I’m petitioning for the return of my life,” December 7, 2018:

Social service institutions are almost inevitably rather repressive. Certainly, they are forms of social control; there is no such thing as a neutral and disinteresting helping of people in need. This is all the more true as they generally lack a voice because they are subject to conversations in which they are not permitted to be true participants. One interesting feature of all relationships of domination (where one person has power over another) is its legitimating discourses: the official discourse of the profession concerned and the organization's set of rules, both of which are unchallengeable. These discourses function like schemata in which statements of subjugated persons are immediately classifiable, in such a way that in fact, as many people learn, in these situations there really is little point in trying to make any case for your greater freedom.  

I know first-hand that guardianships can be used as punishment or threat. I was threatened with it by a social worker when I was wrongly hospitalized psychiatrically as part of some police harassment to which I was subjected, apparently because they knew I am a writer and were worried about what I might say (I am on the left) .  

I had recently returned to America from Europe. I could easily be persuaded that that was my greatest mistake. 

Call it excess social control. "Resistance," anyone?