From Mad in Argentina: People do not act badly or well because we have lived or stopped living certain traumatic experiences. Human persons act well, badly or regularly because we live in complex systems of networks of domination, oppression and exploitation that make us victims and, at the same time, victimizers, and in both cases free agents. A crazy person is neither good nor bad because they are crazy. Neither is a sane person. An identity is not a guarantee of anything because an identity does not replace human agency and praxis. Agency is not spontaneous, it occurs under determined material conditions (which includes symbolic conditions), but this does not make it any less agency. Human agency does not exist outside of specific conditions; they are the coordinates within which we act and that give direction to our actions. To dismantle some (many) malaises we need to dismantle the systems of oppression that generate them. There is no such thing as an individual cure for madness, for inferiority complexes, for guilt. Looking at our psyche and our biography is not enough to overcome the discomfort. We have to look at other people. This is valid for the oppressed and for oppressors, because the oppressor also has his complexes and his discomforts.
Read the full article here and the English translation here.Ā
