Redistribution and its Discontents: On the Prospects of Committed Work in Public Mental Health and Like Settings

Human Organization, Summer 2006 by Hopper, Kim

There are two, co-animating epiphanies here: The first occurs when Neoptolemus' internal ordeal-"the agony of recognized agency" (in Martha Nussbaum's [2003] phrase)-ends with compassion edging out duty for control of his soul. In exercising choice, Neoptolemus disobeys his superior, scuttles a promising career, disgraces his father, and defies the gods. But transgression is the point of the story. Nussbaum wants us to read these "stark fictions" of the Greek tragedy as theatrical invitations to question the settled verities of culture itself-what the gods have been understood to decree-and to test, repeatedly, the line between inevitable and contingent. Meant as provocations to action not reconciliations to fate, they force issues of responsibility denied, choice unseen, genealogies undetected and unquestioned. The second epiphany occurs when Philoctetes, deeply moved by the young man's gesture of solidarity, agrees to cooperate and put his bow at the Greeks' disposal. (Well, the god Heracles makes an unannounced and persuasive appearance to move things along.) His own defiant pride bends to the light touch of an outcast humanity shared.

Whatever else the myth of Philoctetes might have to teach us (Wilson 1947; White 1985), this much seems pertinent: Certain borders-born of injustice, long-simmering grudges, compound accident, or the defensive postures of a besieged all-but-broken self-will not be breached unless both sides run the risks of doing so. Structural duty must occasionally yield to the dodgy business of extending the reach of agency beyond its habitual limits. Without that extension, the restoration of lapsed connections is likely to be contrived, an exercise in artifice. (One might well trick or persuade, but at what cost? With what likelihood of lasting effect?) The lesson is clearest In Seamus Heaney's The Cure at Troy (1991), the latest effort to re-imagine the myth. But even in the original version, a tormented Neoptolemus breaks free of custom to challenge what the gods have ordained. His moral ordeal (that "agony of recognized agency") both echoes Philoctetes' own suffering and enables him to connect (Nussbaum 2003:38).

Here, then, is the tie-in to Ignatieff: The paradox of service-work is that this delicate matter of reaching out to those left behind, made redundant or declared deranged, must somehow be managed by people paid to do it. So much hinges, however, on that "somehow" and the mischief it works on prescribed routine. Against all odds, connecting does happen. Among the ranks of service work one may find practitioners of an unusually engaged labor, people who have found ways to practice that "economy of kindness" (Heaney's phrase) built on gesture and commitment, even if that means working "off the clock." This suggests that the service paradox-the therapeutic value of what can't be paid for-may yield to working resolutions in practice. Does this sort of "committed work" bridge moral engagement and salaried labor? If so, might it make refusal of services at the far margins of assistance less common? More generally, might a partial solution to welfare state's predicament lie in cultivating rather than stifling such improvisations?