In the history of authoritarian governance, there have always been ruling power structures such as monarchies, dictatorships and corporatocracies (the combination of giant corporations, the wealthy and their political representatives). All these power structures have constructed a particular idea of “the professional” to act on their behalf. Power structures have […]
It was November 2011 when the lights were turned on again at the Embros Theatre, a historical building in the Psirri district of Athens that remained abandoned for 5 years as the Ministry of Culture let it fall into disrepair. In an attempt to bring it back to life, a […]
I’ve suffered from depression intermittently since I was a teenager. Some of these episodes have been highly debilitating – resulting in self-harm, withdrawal (where I would spend months on end in my own room, only venturing out to sign-on or to buy the minimal amounts of food I was consuming), […]
RAD BRAINS is an anti-capitalist mental health collective based in Oakland, California, United States. Our project is to use mental health as a lens for refining political analysis and bettering political practice. When we came together in the fall of 2012 as part of the Bread and Roses Mutual Aid […]
The most significant changes in mental health legislation in a generation were made with the introduction of the 2007 Mental Health Act. At the time, Black Mental Health UK (BMH UK) publicly stated that the new measures within this law would be a matter of life and death for black […]
On the night of the 8th of March, six feminists returning from an International Women’s Day event in Malmö Sweden were attacked by armed members of the fascist Svenskarnas Parti (Swedes Party). The attack hospitalised four people, placing one person in intensive care with serious head injuries, while a further three […]
On the Vicennial of the Zapatista Insurrection Neoliberalism, as is well known – and as Dardot and Laval’s (2009) La Nouvelle Raison du Monde makes more than clear – is not simply an economic system. It is a complex machine of subjectivation; a whole technology of the self that produces […]
Whenever a word gains universal appeal we have grounds for suspicion. We have all seen what words like ‘democracy’ mean in the mouths of neoliberal governments and what ‘equality’ becomes when it is spoken by members of the financial class, and how these redefinitions get naturalised. The appeal to words […]
I am leaving the NHS after 18 years of working inside it as a clinical psychologist. I now want to try to work outside it to promote more emancipatory approaches to mental health. Originally, I had the idea of infiltrating the mental health system with loving kindness. I had fairly […]
Socially, the dual strategies of exalting consumerism and increasing control have been central to the neoliberal project. Consumerism and control can be viewed as opposite sides of the same coin. People are encouraged to aspire to ever greater levels of conspicuous consumption, modelled after the lifestyles of a celebrity elite […]