Human rights and psychiatric power in dispute. Towards a radicalization of democracy?

Abstract

This article analyzes the type of power that is disputed in contemporary debates on human rights, mental health and equal recognition before the law (Art. 12 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: CRPD), where the most burning issue is the abolition of involuntary treatment and commitment. To do so, we intersect Foucault's and Agamben's perspectives on sovereign power and biopowers. We analyze the emergence of the psychiatric device as institution; legal medicine; biological determinism, and; line of thanatopolitical escape, the point of emergence of Nazi extermination. We connect this analysis with the emergence of human rights and UN regulations on "disability/mental illness" up to the CRPD. Among other things, we conclude that the authoritative interpretation of Art. 12 abolishes a state of exception to human rights, which is constitutive of modern democracy and of the emergence and deployment of the psychiatric device, whose competencies of sovereign power are in dispute.