Handicap and Politics

This book is the product of a collaborative research effort of academics and practitioners of -accompaniment- - a method whose aim is to enable mentally handicapped adults to lead autonomous lives in an ordinary environment. Its intent is to present the idiom of -accompaniment-, explain its daily practice within a theoretical context, and demonstrate that handicap is a personal challenge which must be understood as a public issue. In the crucible of individual suffering which goes on day after day, a society is fashioned: as a reflection of issues which are or not put on the political agenda, in the consequences which follow, and in the discursive codes which are disseminated."