Portrait of a struggle for the emancipation of people with disabilities from the CHSLD (residential and long-term care centre) system: between arrangements and becomings
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Jonathan Marchand, who has been residing against his will for more than ten years in a long-term care hospital (CHSLD) in the Quebec region, decided to get out and “cage” himself in front of the National Assembly to demand his immediate release as well as that of people living in similar situations. The article offers an interpretation of this struggle for the autonomy of people with disabilities in connection with the living conditions imposed by institutional infrastructures and measures for housing, care and support in Quebec. The first part of the article offers a conceptual definition of the concepts of "assemblage" (agencement), "apparatus" (dispositif) and "becoming" as defined by Deleuze and Guattariin order to provide a framework for examining the relationships between the molar and molecular realities. The second part defines the notion of CHSLD through a review of the legal framework and of the scientific literature to understand its modalities of operation, limits and consequences of geriatricization on the lives of users. The third part concerns Jonathan Marchand's living conditions at the CHSLD. He describes his life, his experience and the strategies he puts in place, specifically the collective foundation of a support cooperative (coop ASSIST), to produce new conditions of autonomous living. The fourth part deals more specifically with his political action of occupying the front of the National Assembly of Quebec during which he caged himself for five days and five nights. Overall, the article suggests that the becoming of people depends, on the one hand, on the biopolitical assemblages that determine it through the coding and institutional practices of the apparatuses that are supposed to support them and, on the other hand, on a desire which leaks and produces molecular lines of flight. When desire is articulated politically, or in the form of micropolitical projects in which subjugated groups constitute themselves into subject groups, it opens up new horizons and possibilities of existence.