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Health Care Analysis
Erschienen in: Health Care Analysis 1/2017

05.09.2014 | Original Article

The Absent Interpreter in Administrative Detention Center Medical Units

verfasst von: Murielle Rondeau-Lutz, Jean-Christophe Weber

Erschienen in: Health Care Analysis | Ausgabe 1/2017

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Abstract

The particular situation of the French administrative detention center (ADC) medical units appears to be an exemplary case to study the difficulties facing medical practice. Indeed, the starting point of our inquiry was an amazing observation that needed to be addressed and understood: why are professional interpreters so seldom requested in ADC medical units, where one would expect that they would be “naturally” present? Aiming to fully explore the meanings of the “absent interpreter”, this article takes into account the possible meanings of this situation: the recourse to professional interpreters in France is far from expected given cumulative evidence of its benefits; perceptions of illegal immigrants and medical habitus itself may both hamper the use of a third party; the ADCs are a very stressful place for healthcare professionals, with conflicting missions, political issues enmeshed with medical goals, and heavy affective burden that may lead to self-protection. Silencing voices of suffering others might be seen as the hidden indecent truth of the “absent interpreter”. These reflections open a window to a larger issue with regard to the full range of medicine: what are the place, the role and the function of patient’s words and narratives in contemporary medicine? The highly invested somatic perspective and its political corollary giving primacy to bare life harbor potential risks of obscuring speeches and undervaluing narratives.
Fußnoten
1
This is alluded to in Michel Foucault’s Lectures at the College de France Security, Territory and Population [28].
 
2
Décret n° 2001-236 du 19 mars 2001 relatif aux centres et locaux de rétention administrative [40].
 
3
Actually, “habitus” characterizes the way of reasoning and acting of all participants: habitus of detainees appears to be resignated; habitus of policiers appears to be suspicious…. The mere awareness of “habitus” of oneself and of the other is a necessary requirement for careful listening and enables critical self-reflexiveness.
 
4
This perception of danger, which may be life-threatening, opposes the governmental notion of a “safe country” that allows the fears of nationals deported to the countries they fled to be deemed unfounded.
 
5
In a certain manner, keeping a distance is an official order, which objectively is a paradoxical injunction due to the fact that the organization of a healthcare service in the ADC is no less official.
 
6
The increasing issue of health and disease as grounds to exercise rights is not completely new. It is of note that this issue had been already encountered during the First World War. Painful electric shocks were administered for all “war neuroses”, although simulators looking to leave the battlefield were but a small minority of them [29].
 
7
Agamben [1] has proposed to consider biopolitics from another, more structural, angle. According to him, natural life (zoe) is normally inseparable from a particular form of life in actual living conditions (bios), which means a socially and politically qualified life. Nevertheless, life itself, so called ‘bare life’, is also politicized. Agamben claims that there is a special link etween sovereign power—extended now to medical power—and bare life, and that this link is the “hidden matrix” of modern political space, Probably he would consider ADC as a particular space where bare life tends to be separated from bios.
 
8
According to Levinas [45], the other calls in question the subject: “It is the revelation of a resistance to my powers that does not counter them as a greater force, but calls in question the naïve right of my powers”.
 
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Metadaten
Titel
The Absent Interpreter in Administrative Detention Center Medical Units
verfasst von
Murielle Rondeau-Lutz
Jean-Christophe Weber
Publikationsdatum
05.09.2014
Verlag
Springer US
Erschienen in
Health Care Analysis / Ausgabe 1/2017
Print ISSN: 1065-3058
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-3394
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10728-014-0285-4

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