중첩된 재난과 팬데믹 연대 ―한일 장애 활동가 및 간호사 구술을 중심으로

Abstract

I will investigate the crisis reponses of the disability activists and care workers in Korea and Japan. I will reconsider the assumed natural value of “humanity, health, and normalcy” and suggest the pandemic solidarity to transform the relationship between humanity and environment. I will conceptualize the phenomena in the narratives of the activists, and care workers, referring to news reports and literature.<BR>Chapter two is based on the interviews with the disability activists in the city Daegu. I focus on the multi-layered re-institutionalization by looking into the imminent collapse of the care giving system together with the cases of joint suicides related to the developmental disabilities at the time. I will highlight the importance of “self-sovereignty in which they can choose dependency” and their ambivalent feelings of “self-pride together with self-hatred.”<BR>Chapter three carries interviews with Mr. Noboru and Ms. Yumiko of Emergency Operation Center against New Corona Virus. I will examine the problems with the triage systems and self-determination strategies for the patients’ lives. I will locate those suffering in what I call “a disastrous state in pre-existence” and suggest a strategy of the “joint of cure and care” to support the disabled.<BR>In Chapter four, I make a comparison between Korea and Japan in the disability activists’ engagement with the multi-layered (re-)institutionalization and the effort to get rid of triage and self-determination system. Firstly, I interviewed Sinja and Gatsnori who run a “de-institutionalized institution” and asked them about their strategies for the patients’ independence from facilities, coercion and exclusion. Secondly, I had interviews with nurses at Dongsan Hospital in Daegu and highlight their activities through which they work as hub of cure and care. Thirdly, I will reconsider the possibilities for the disabled to form new relationships with their environments, decomposing the discourses of “humanity, health, and normalcy.”<BR>To sum up, I criticize the notions of “humanity, health and normalcy” and seek a radical change from the anthropocentric and non-disabled-centered relationships with the environments. For this purpose, I mark the intersecting area in which disability activists in Japan and Korea can complement each other in coping with this pandemic.