Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor by Paul Farmer (review)

468 Рецензии/Reviews всеми нарратив Октябрьской ре- волюции. Не случайно, что даже на снятые по особому разреше- нию фильмы о революции обру- шилась сильная критика в связи со множеством “отступлений” от “правильной” истории. Тем не менее, массовое “рассказывание Октября” имело другой, более значимый результат. Оно, как указывает автор, привело к тому, что “бывшие граждане царской империи начали артикулировать и осознавать себя членами новой коммунистической общности” (P. 201). Новый символический ланд- шафт с измененными названиями улиц и революционными памятни- ками на площадях, новые рассказы об Октябре, в которых личное и коллективное прошлое сливалось в одно неразрывное целое, прочно привязали советских граждан к советскому режиму. Фундаментальное исследова- ние Корни можно было бы не- сколько расширить по следующим направлениям. Прежде всего, было бы интересно наметить хотя бы общие контуры развития мифа об Октябре после 1927 г. Если, как утверждает автор, к этому моменту общепризнанная история революции еще не сложилась, то в чем изменились оценки Октября в последующие годы? Также можно было бы показать, как револю- ционный миф отражал характер государства и каковы были взаиAndrew GENTES Paul Farmer, Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor (Berkeley : University of California Press, 2003). xxiv+402 pp. Notes, Bibliography , Index. ISBN 0-520-23550-9. Paul Farmer is an internationally renowned physician and medical anthropologist at Harvard Medical моотношения государства и лич- ности. В частности, в работе очень мало говорится, например, о роли рабочих активистов, писавших мемуары, или простых свидете- лей революции в формировании ее истории. Как реагировали обычные рассказчики Октября на инструкции и установки Истпарта и на художественное видение, соз- дававшееся на экране, и повлияли ли обычные люди на особенности складывавшегося революционно- го мифа? Несмотря на эти оговорки, книга Корни служит заметной вехой в историографии и является обязательным чтением для иссле- дователей идеологии, массового сознания и истории культуры в советской России. 469 Ab Imperio, 2/2007 whereas suffering is admittedly a universal constant the extent to which these poor, disenfranchised, or subject populations suffer is both unnecessary and the result of “structural violence.” Part One illustrates the relationship between suffering and structural violence through portraits of such people as Acéphie, a young Haitian woman who died from AIDS as a result of her economically-necessitated liaison with a military captain; Sergei, a young man arrested for forgery soon after the break-up of the Soviet Union who contracted TB during his long pre-trial detention in Kemerovo ’s overcrowded prison; and Tzeltal-speaking residents of the Chiapan village of Moisés Gandhi who cast their lot with the Zapatistas in an effort to preserve their human dignity. Part Two is intended to analyze these cases while pressing the case that modern healthcare service is a human right. Farmer’s ethical basis for this view stems from “liberation theology,” which has been fundamental to many Latin American social reform movements over the past several decades. In actuality, each part of Pathologies of Power consists of a mix of anecdote and analysis: many individuals introduced early reappear later; and much of the analysis consigned to the second part is foreshadowed in the first. Taken as a whole, then, this book may be said to be both School, attending physician in infectious diseases and Chief of the Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and medical director of the Clinique Bon Sauveur in Haiti. He is also the founding director of Partners in Health (PIH), which since its establishment in 1987 has formed partner projects with community organizations in seven different countries including Russia, the United States, and Mexico to provide modern health care services for the economically disadvantaged. PIH focuses its efforts on combating the spread of tuberculosis and HIV-AIDS among some of the world’s most vulnerable populations. Author of more than 200 articles and books, Farmer has received a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award and is the subject of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy Kidder’s Mountain Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World (2004). Amartya Sen, Nobel laureate in economics, wrote the foreword to Pathologies of Power, and calls Farmer a “visionary analyst ” (P. xii). Farmer’s book is divided into two parts, the first called “Bearing Witness ,” the second “One Physician’s Perspective on Human Rights.” He draws upon his experiences with patients in Haiti, Chiapas, Boston, and Russian prisons to argue that 470 Рецензии/Reviews admirable and frustrating by turns. Admirable is the passion with which Farmer writes. He acknowledges from the beginning that he is no objective scholar: he is not distant from his topic nor does he claim to be without an agenda. On the contrary , he advocates without reserve that the poor people he argues are being victimized by globalization have the right to benefit from modern advances in medicine, and criticizes both fellow physicians and anthropologists for their scholarly and cerebral detachment from their subjects by suggesting, among other things, that practicing such professions without the accompaniment of praxis is itself a form of structural violence. Such forthrightness results in a narrative which at its best is a compelling read. Farmer unapologetically challenges the moral relativism he several times associates with postmodernism , stating in no uncertain terms that it is wrong for so many to suffer when there is such an abundance of worldwide wealth. The unequal distribution of this wealth is in Farmer’s view the pathology that supersedes all others.Another example of pathology is the United States governments’policies towards Haiti which during the Duvalier regime functioned at the expense of democracy and human rights, and during Aristide’s government thwarted the disbursement of loans to fightAIDS and other chronic diseases.Asimilar pathology...