Reconsidering Intellectual Disability : L'Arche, Medical Ethics, and Christian Friendship / Jason Reimer Greig.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Greig, Jason Reimer, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Church work with people with mental disabilities.

Medical ethics--Religious aspects--Christianity.

Medical ethics.

People with mental disabilities--Medical care--Moral and ethical aspects.

People with mental disabilities.

People with mental disabilities--Care--Moral and ethical aspects.

Arche (Association).

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (304 p.)

Place of Publication:

Washington, District of Columbia : Georgetown University Press, 2015.

Summary:

In 2004, the parents of Ashley, a young girl with profound intellectual disabilities, chose to stop her growth, perform a hysterectomy, and remove her breast buds. This "Ashley Treatment" (AT) was performed in consultation with pediatric specialists and the hospital ethics committee, who reasoned that these changes would improve Ashley's quality of life and ease the burden on her primary caregivers: her mother and father. But Jason Reimer Greig proposes that the AT represents the most pernicious elements of modern medicine in which those with intellectual disabilities are seen as objects and perpetual children in need of technological manipulations. Drawing on--and criticizing--contemporary disability theory, Greig contends that L'Arche, a federation of Christian communities serving the intellectually disabled, provides an alternative response to the predominant bioethical worldview that sees disability as a problem to be solved. Rather, L'Arche draws inspiration from Jesus' service to the "least of these" and a commitment to Christian friendship between the able-bodied and the intellectually disabled, in which the latter are understood not as objects to be fixed but as teachers whose lives can transform others into a new way of being human.

Contents:

Thesis : Ashley not as object but (God's) friend

Book outline

Situating the text : methodological assumptions

Situating the author : a project grounded in l'Arche

A new approach to an old dilemma : the "Ashley treatment" and its respondents

Ashley x

Ashley's embodiment

The Ashley treatment

The parent's motivations

Other perspectives

Responses in support : serving everyone's best interests

Those opposed : a medical fix for a social ill

Conclusion : Ashley under the medical gaze

Exposing the power of medicine through a Christian body politics

A caveat : cracks in the Baconian edifice

To relieve the human condition : the triumph of the Baconian project and technological biomedicine

The medical model of disability

Baconian biomedicine as one of the powers : a Christian view of the body

Excursus : on suffering (from) disability

Conclusion

Disability, society, and theology : the benefits and limitations of the social model of disability

The promises and perils of the social model of disability

The social model : from spoiled identity to disability pride

The social model : a critique

Theology and the social model

The disabled god

Spirit and the politics of disablement

Conclusion : from self-representation to friendship

No longer slaves but friends : the recognizing power of friendship

A theology of friendship

The nature of philia

Theological foundations : God's gift of friendship

Christian friendship : beyond sameness and "equality"

No longer slaves but friends : philia and the gospel of John

Asymmetry and friendship

Reciprocity and mutuality

The power of mutuality : receptivity and the body

Friendship as recognition

The church as community of friends : embodying the strange politics of the kingdom

The politics of dependence of the community of friends

The truthful narrative of the ecclesial self

The strange polis of the kingdom of God

Practicing an alternative politics

Practices : bodily political rituals

Footwashing : the theologic of the kingdom

Beholding the politics of the impossible: l'Arche as an embodiment of the church as a community of friends

The story of l'Arche : founded on pain and providence

L'Arche as a habitus of friendship and recognition

Vanier's theology and spirituality of friendship

A community of recognition : core members as teachers and exemplars

L'Arche as counter-culture

Footwashing : practicing the politics of the impossible

Footwashing in l'Arche

Receiving and undergoing the gift of God's friendship

Implications and contributions of this project.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781626162440

1626162441

OCLC:

933515955