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The Anguish of Power: Remapping Mental Diversity with an Anticolonial Compass

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Part of the book series: Explorations of Educational Purpose ((EXEP,volume 8))

An analysis informed by anticolonial principles “challenges the normalizing gaze of the dominant in the construction of what constitutes valid knowledge and experience.” (Kempf, 2009). This chapter aims to participate in this challenge by exposing how, at the level of embodiment, colonization has worked to oppress diversity and to make the possibility of valued bodily, sensorial, and mental differences all but disappear. By embodiment we mean the kinds of social and political relations that are established with bodies, minds, and senses. In particular, this chapter explores “mental health” discourse as produced and distributed by the World Health Organization (WHO).

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Titchkosky, T., Aubrecht, K. (2009). The Anguish of Power: Remapping Mental Diversity with an Anticolonial Compass. In: Kempf, A. (eds) Breaching the Colonial Contract. Explorations of Educational Purpose, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9944-1_10

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